"Pathetically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proportion, because of her necessary ignorance concerning the nature of men, and the temptations to which they were exposed. I replied that I believed I understood these matters thoroughly, and I went on, quite simply and honestly, to make clear to him that this was so. In the end my pathetically chivalrous little Southern gentleman admitted everything I asked. Yes, it was true that these evils were ghastly, and that they were increasing, and that women were the worst sufferers from men. There might ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... foreman, received a surly nod and dismounted, smiling inwardly. It amused him exceedingly to see the dictatorial Tex forced to take orders from this slip of a girl. Evidently she was not quite so pathetically helpless as he had supposed the afternoon before. He began to wonder how she did it, for Lynch struck him as a far from easy person to manage. He was still turning the question over in his mind when he received a shock which for the moment banished ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... having dutifully invested himself, with those sacred relics, came pathetically limping ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... the retardment of his fame; for he has pathetically expressed this sentiment in his testament, where he bequeaths his name to posterity, AFTER SOME GENERATIONS SHALL BE past. BRUCE sunk into his grave defrauded of that just fame which his pride and vivacity perhaps too keenly prized, at least for his happiness, and which he authoritatively exacted ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... some smaller mind broke in, in a moment he was down at the level of that mind, half bantering and wholly sympathising. Nevertheless, some of us have never forgotten the things he showed us as he led us up, and the possibility of soaring very high without losing touch with those whose levels are pathetically human. . . . I do know that he helped {28} me much, and that many things he said I shall never forget, and thank ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... after referring to their ostentatious self-righteousness, pathetically shows the unfitness of pitting against one another teachers who share in an equality of forlorn destitution and contempt (iv. 6-13). He concludes this section with an affectionate but authoritative speech: he says that he has sent ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... looked up at him pathetically, then riveted her eyes upon the tablecloth, and rocked herself to and fro, but ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... They tell pathetically of the groping of man's heart after God. But the groping is in the pitch dark, and amid a mass of foul, filthy cobwebs that blind the eyes with their dust, and grime all the life. I have no doubt that untold numbers of true hearts in ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... felt mightily relieved. The marshal displayed signs of a returning energy that augured well for the enterprise. After the chairman had impressively announced that something must be done, and that he was willing to lead his little band to death's door—and beyond, if necessary—Mr. Crow pathetically upset all their hopes by saying that he had long been expecting such a calamity, and ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... up with hopeful eyes, but shook her head. "No, it's no use, Elsie. It's awful good o' you, and I used to feel like that, too; but I've waited too long. I guess I'm jist tired," she added pathetically. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Rowe, in which is set forth the story of the generous Emperor of Tartary, the "very glass and fashion of all conquerors." The play is prefaced by a fulsome "Epistle Dedicatory," addressed to the sacred person of the "Right Honourable William, Lord Marquis of Harrington," and showing, almost pathetically, how frequently the literary workers of Queen Anne's "golden age" were wont to beg the influence of some powerful patron. The dedication seems absolutely grovelling when viewed from the present standards, but Mr. Rowe ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... that long meadow in the breast of which the Stadium lay hidden, the sheep-bells sounded almost pathetically; a flock was there happily ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... of John Forster, biographer of Dickens, an intimate friend of his own grandfather and father, as a man of violent, noisy passions, but very lovable; his attitude towards Dickens pathetically affectionate. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... another Company, who gave us the greatest amusement during our Tank-mechanism Course. He was pathetically in earnest, but appeared to have no brains at all. Sometimes, while asking each other catch questions, we would put the most ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... friends," he pathetically replied, "I know you love me, but I can't cheer up any more. My heart's gone, and I want ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... rejoicing; she had expected him to groan with despair. It is no wonder that her plan of action was demolished on the instant; it is not surprising that every vestige of resourcefulness was swept away by this amazing reverse. She stared at him so pathetically, so ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... crocodile does not change, but all things else do: even the shadow of the pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen to call up the image of Fanny from thirty-five years back, arises suddenly a rose in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... German host, refugees of all classes were streaming into Brussels—young and old, rich and poor, priest and layman. Nearly all bore some burden of household treasure, many some pathetically absurd family heirloom. Every kind of vehicle appeared to have been called into use, from smart carriages drawn by heavy Flemish horses to little carts harnessed to dogs. Over all reigned a stupefied ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... implied from the first. The bridegroom was barely of age, the bride not seventeen, and Dr. May had owned it was very shocking, and told Richard to say nothing about it! Hector had coaxed and pleaded, pathetically talked of his great empty house at Maplewood, and declared that till he might take Blanche away, he would not leave Stoneborough; he would bring down all sorts of gossip on his courtship, he would worry Ethel, and take care she finished nobody's education. What ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... off of the negotiations by their unreasonable demands. They went further; it was loudly proclaimed that the Swedish government had not kept their word, had broken their agreement etc. etc., and, when all of a sudden Sweden became identical with the government of Sweden she was pathetically pointed at as untrustworthy etc. etc. The amount of moral indignation contained in these Norwegian accusations has plainly been made manifest by late events. Their object—to throw on Sweden the responsibility of plans that were designed to be executed in Norway—was ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... blue eyes, imploring pathetically, like a baby in distress, it is quite impossible to resist him—and we started down ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... she said after a little pause, "just an impudent midshipman, I should not mind it. Do you know, Dick, they give terriers gin to prevent their growing; don't you think you might stop yourself? It is quite sad," she went on pathetically, "to think that you may grow up into a great ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... the bill that had been handed to him, saw the amount, shook his head pathetically, and smiled. "There must ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... method of removing sexual tension and in the ensuing relief one of the chief pleasures of life. It cannot be said that either of these ideals is absolutely unsound; each is part of the truth; it is only as a complete statement of the truth that they become pathetically inadequate. It is to be noted that both of them are based solely on the physical act of sexual conjunction, and that they are both exclusively self-regarding. So that they are, after all, although the nearest approach to the erotic sphere he ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... hugging it pathetically to his bosom the secret theory that there was something distinguished ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for me I shall have to marry an heiress?" the Duke said, pathetically. "Marriage is the most tiresome ennui at any time, but to be forced through sheer beggary to take some ugly woman you don't like and don't want is cruel hard luck, is ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... placed her hands on his shoulders as before, an attitude pathetically suggestive of her effort to fix his attention upon her words. The poise of her little head was extremely winning in her desire for his admiration. "Do you think I would make a pretty wife, even for a mayor?" ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... assent. No sane man in Mr. Browning's position could have been ignorant of the responsibilities he was incurring. He had, it is true, no experience of illness. Of its nature, its treatment, its symptoms direct and indirect, he remained pathetically ignorant to his dying day. He did not know what disqualifications for active existence might reside in the fragile, recumbent form, nor in the long years lived without change of air or scene beyond the passage, not always even allowed, from bed-room to sitting-room, from sofa to bed ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... gate her whole attitude changed. She uttered a queer sound, half-whoop, half-sob, and flung herself out of the saddle. In a moment she had reached him, was hanging to his arm in mute greeting, everything else in the world forgotten. It was pathetically like the re-union of a lost dog ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... that first day while my people were becoming acquainted. Then it was Jimmie, dear blessed old, maladroit, hot-tempered Jimmie, always so completely at home in a business deal, and always so pathetically awkward and so confidently bungling in domestic crises, who supplied us with sufficient material for a book on "How Not to ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... chosen comrades. Byron, if not one of the safest, was one of the warmest of friends; and he plucked the more eagerly at the choicest fruit of English public school and college life, from the feeling he so pathetically expresses,— ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Queen was constant in her protection of Sir Robert, and the day before she died gave a strong mark of her conviction that he was the firmest supporter the King had. As they two alone were standing by the Queen's bed, she pathetically recommended, not the minister to the sovereign, but the master to the servant. Sir Robert was alarmed, and feared the recommendation would leave a fatal impression; but a short time after, the King reading ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... by the Indian Department of the University of New Mexico. This Indian school is named in honor of Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, who has rendered such valuable services to the Indians in setting forth in thrilling terms their wrongs, and in pleading so pathetically for their rights. The Ramona school is under the efficient supervision of Pres. H.O. Ladd, and is aided in part by the American ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... surprise, mingled, perhaps, with compunction. For the first time he appreciated the actual shabbiness of her clothes. Everything about her was so neat—pathetically neat, as it seemed to him in one illuminating moment of realization. The white linen collar, notwithstanding its frayed edges, was spotlessly clean. The black bow was carefully tied to conceal its ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her servants had learned not to disturb. The pause had lasted some five minutes when the door opening into the outer hall opened, vigorously, and the Princess started suddenly up, her face changing pathetically, a look of dread ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... shore. There was little sound, and none agreeable save the whir of the ship's sewing machine at which Smee sat, ever industrious and obliging, the essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee. I know not why he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because he was so pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn hastily from looking at him, and more than once on summer evenings he had touched the fount of Hook's tears and made it flow. Of this, as of almost everything else, Smee ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... When a youth of twenty-three, battling with the vulgar prose of life, falls into such a tone in writing to a middle-aged lady who has befriended him; when he lets his imagination brood upon the coming luxury of tears and of beautiful emotions; when he is so pathetically eager to reign without a rival in the heart of his friend, and to assure her of his everlasting loyalty in the world to come,—how shall we expect him to express himself when he undertakes to speak the language ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... bowled along the Middle Island Country Road she wanted to know if I had ever driven there before. I had to say "yes" (I couldn't lie to her), and then she asked an embarrassing question or two. But she was almost pathetically easy to put off, so afraid she was of being overcurious. I would have given a good deal to burst out with the whole truth, in that mood of mine, a mood of exaltation with my soul flaming up like a beacon. But even if I'd seriously thought of speaking, I couldn't with the back of the car boiling ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... his learned colleague Mr. Durham, who afterwards on his death-bed asked, What he thought of these things?—He answered, That he was of the same mind with what he had formerly heard—and did much regret that he had been so sparing in public against these woeful resolutions, speaking so pathetically of their sinfulness and the calamities they would procure, that Mr. Durham, contrary to his former practice, durst never after speak ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... of the Conciergerie, the most dismal prison in Paris, where those doomed to die awaited their execution. The queen listened, unmoved, to the order, for her heart had now become callous even to woe. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at the feet of the officers, and most pathetically, but unavailingly, implored them not to deprive them of their only remaining solace. The queen was compelled to rise and dress in the presence of the wretches who exulted over her abasement. She clasped her daughter for one frantic moment convulsively to her ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... o'clock Felicity, in her wonderful orchid-mauve tea-gown, was conversing pathetically with Jasmyn Vere, one of the habitues of what her ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... followed the wedding: a general congratulatory expression, mingled with admiration, affection, and good-will. In his interview Clemens had referred to the pain in his breast; and many begged him to deny that there was anything serious the matter with him, urging him to try this relief or that, pathetically eager for his continued life and health. They cited the comfort he had brought to world-weary humanity and his unfailing stand for human justice as reasons why he should live. Such letters could not ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Molloy,—the sister of my mother, who had been dead some years,—pathetically urged me to enter the church, in the hope, as she said, that that would keep me in the right way; but I honestly felt that the church was not my vocation, and that I was much more likely to go the wrong way if I assumed an office for which I was unfit. Then she proposed that I should become a ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... vestibule, where I have no doubt it was the object of much inquiring and suspicious scrutiny, and took my place in a convenient pew. It was a small church with an odd air of domesticity, and the proportion of old ladies and children in the audience was pathetically large. As a ruddy, vigorous, out-of-door person, with the dust of life upon him, I felt distinctly ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... fitful talents, and in the character of his best work in fiction—a pathetically slender life's product—Marcus Clarke is still alone in Australian literature. Others have shown the cheerful, hopeful, romantic aspects of the new land; he, not less honestly, but with a more concentrated and individual view, has pictured some of the monotony of its half-grown ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... want to shew how independent I am of everybody, I drive abroad in my donkey carriage. I am rather proud of my donkey, a lithe-limbed pathetically eager little beast, deep bay with white tips to his ears. Marigold bought him for me last spring, from some gipsies, when his predecessor, Dan, who had served me faithfully for some years, struck work and insisted on an old-age pension. He is called Hosea, a name ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... kindness from his fellows, and he blinked at it as he blinked at the unwonted brightness of the sun. The lines about his mouth where the smiles used to gather had changed and grown stern with the hopelessness of years. His lips drooped pathetically, and hard treatment had given his eyes a lowering look. His hair, that had hardly shown a white streak, was as white as Maurice Oakley's own. His erstwhile quick wits were dulled and imbruted. He had lived like an ox, working without inspiration ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to the start I've 'ad," said the other, pathetically; "there's a ghost on the wharf, Joe. I want you to come up with me and see what ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... day in the parlor with the remains of the hereditary napery and plate, the numerous covers hiding nothing but the naked truth, while their common humanity, squatting on the floor in the kitchen, fished its scanty meal from an earthen pot with pewter spoons, is pathetically humorous and would have delighted Caleb Balderstone. In after-life, Leslie's profession made him acquainted with some of the best London life of his time, and the volume is full of agreeable anecdotes of Scott, Irving, Turner, Rogers, Wilkie, and many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Morris, and I am sure that Mary likes him, and I'd wish the two of them to inherit what I have got. They wouldn't have very long to wait for it, Colonel, for those doctors may say what they will, but I tell you," he added, pathetically, tapping himself over the heart—"though you don't mention it to Mary—I know better. Oh! yes, I know better. That's about all, except, of course, that I should wish to see her settled before I'm ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... Naomi felt comfortable with him as a playmate, for he, too, suffered from a handicap and yet was cheerful and gay notwithstanding. He knew a host of stories told him by his old grandmother, and the long hours slipped away quickly while their little tongues chattered, though their hands and feet were pathetically still. ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... as you have strolled through some nook in the suburban wood, have you paused in philosophic mood at the motley relics of good cheer which sophisticated the retreat, so pathetically eloquent of pristine joys to which you had been a stranger? Here in my present picnic is the suggestive parallel, for even though no such actual episodes as those I have described had been witnessed by me, an examination of the premises ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butter-scotch lay with its string ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... with his aunt and their two guests, Hyde's sisters, whom he endeavoured to cheer up by saying that things were developing as favourably as could be expected, and that he hoped to have good news for them ere long. They were simple souls, pathetically grateful for any scrap of sympathy and comfort, and he strove to appear more confident about the chances of clearing this unlucky brother than he really felt. It was his intention to go round to Number Seven during the evening, to deliver Mr. Pawle's message to Miss Wickham, but before he rose ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... another world of his own creation. In spite of his white hair he was not old. Not more than forty-five, or, perhaps fifty, Marjorie decided. The other man was much older, sixty at least. He was very thin, and his gentle face wore a pathetically vacant expression that brought back to Marjorie the rush of bitter words Constance had poured forth on the day when she had declined to be friends. "We take care of an old man who people say is crazy, and folks call us Bohemians and gypsies and ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... young preacher. Then she had dim backwaters of anti-Popery in her mind, and they helped the reaction. She had come out, lance in rest, to defend the victim of calumny; in a very few days she had thrown him over, and was explaining pathetically to anybody who would listen that she had had a shock to her faith in humanity. And the story, starting by describing her own state of mind and being almost entirely subjective, ended in bringing home to her listeners ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the plays of Schiller, Shakespeare, and Moliere, although they know it means weeks of rehearsal and the complete memorizing of "stiff" lines. The audiences sit enthralled by the final rendition and other children whose tastes have supposedly been debased by constant vaudeville, are pathetically eager to come again and again. Even when still more is required from the young actors, research into the special historic period, copying costumes from old plates, hours of labor that the "th" may ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... recruits that came in yesterday from breaking outright. Poor boys, they're awfully young—I believe they fibbed about their ages—and look like cherubs. None of them has ever been away from home before, and they are pathetically homesick. But they have told us about their homes and their mothers and fathers and the little brothers and sisters, and Mollie has joked with them and—Well, anyway, Allen, I believe we have made them feel that ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... forced the skirts and petticoats on Milly's bed, and the disordered apparatus on the dressing-table, and the scented soaps on the washstand, and the row of tiny boots and shoes which Leonora had arranged near the wardrobe, to apologise pathetically and wistfully ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... didn't want to go. Immediately he married an old woman, in the last stages of leprosy, and began petitioning the Board of Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife. There was no one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his poor wife as well as he could. But they saw through his game, and he was deported on the steamer and given the freedom of the world. But he preferred Molokai. Landing on the leeward ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... woods were just beginning to think about spring, the muscles in one particular egg tugged with all their little might, the backbone straightened with a great effort, the shell was ripped open, and the tail of a brand-new brook trout thrust itself out into the water and wiggled pathetically. ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... rules for enforcing it. But of Anne as a valuable coadjutor in the present instance there could be no doubt, and, to do her justice, she anticipated no danger in the meeting of a fine girl, full of eager interest in life, and the demoralised being her son so pathetically described. She was quite sincere in her desire to lift the gifted young man from his moral quagmire, but this new opportunity to exercise her power, almost moribund since her party was no longer in Opposition, was a stronger ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... us much. It makes the manhood of our Lord pathetically true, as showing Him bearing the prosaic but terrible pinch of hunger, carried almost to its fatal point. It teaches us how innocent and necessary wants may be the devil's levers to overturn our souls. It warns us against severing ourselves from our fellows by the use of distinctive powers for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... new intimacy and deplored it, and had no one to confer with about it except Agatha, but Agatha flatly refused to open her lips upon the subject. It was a mercy that Wilbur at last came home and unloosed her tongue. As she pathetically said, "I simply could not contain ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... in his favourite corner by the wall, smoking his clay. He wore a large frock-coat, vague in shape, pathetically respectable. The round hat was greasy round the edges, brown and dusty on top. The shirt was clean but unstarched, and the thin throat was tied with an old black silk cravat. He looked himself, the old servant out of situation—the old servant who would never ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... expect to see the like o' that!' exclaimed honest Mary Quince, 'Did you ever see such a young lady? She's no more like one o' the family than I am. Law bless us! and what's she dressed like? Well, well, well!' And Mary, with a rueful shake of her head, clicked her tongue pathetically to the back of her teeth, while ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the reading of the commonest and simplest contract—with its "parties of the first part," and "parties of the second part," and "parties of the third part,"—before my temper is all gone. Ashcroft comes up here every day and pathetically tries to make me understand the points of the lawsuit which we are conducting against Henry Butters, Harold Wheeler, and the rest of those Plasmon buccaneers, but daily he has to give it up. It is pitiful to see, when he bends his earnest and appealing eyes upon me and says, after one ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... looked again the face seemed to have changed. It was no longer a waxlike mask, but Henrietta, girlish and pathetically at rest. Death seemed to have cancelled her marriage and womanhood; he had never seen her look so young. A minute passed, and then a tear dropped on the coverlet. He started; shook another tear on his hand, ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... which struck Grigory particularly, and confirmed a very unpleasant and revolting suspicion. This Lizaveta was a dwarfish creature, "not five foot within a wee bit," as many of the pious old women said pathetically about her, after her death. Her broad, healthy, red face had a look of blank idiocy and the fixed stare in her eyes was unpleasant, in spite of their meek expression. She wandered about, summer and winter alike, barefooted, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of a small lizard, and a breakable lizard at that; but she did her work thoroughly and there was not a cleaner, better-cared-for infant in Glen St. Mary. She even took to weighing the creature every day and jotting the result down in her diary; but sometimes she asked herself pathetically why unkind destiny had ever led her down the Anderson lane on that fatal day. Shirley, Nan, and Di did not tease her as much as she had expected. They all seemed rather stunned by the mere fact of Rilla adopting a war-baby; perhaps, too, the ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for it. At the far end stood a small unused baling machine, and beside it a set of iron scales. And on the bench, set up under the windows, stood a few oddments of appliances of a scientific nature. For the rest it was pathetically empty. It was altogether a tragic expression of the failure of the living as ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... were showered on us. Lunches were the chief form of entertainment and very interesting and delightful they were. There was a lunch at the British Legation, one at the French Legation, one at the Belgian Legation where the minister was so pathetically glad of any crumbs of news of his beloved country; a delightful dinner to meet Prince Gustav of Denmark, an invitation to meet Princess Mary of Greece, another lunch with Madame Tscherning, the president of the Danish Council of Nurses, and the "Florence ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... Minister, Noor Mahomed, had a conference at Peshawur. The first, and indeed the only point discussed, was the demand that British representatives should reside in Afghanistan, which was a sine qua non. Noor Mahomed pathetically pleaded that Lords Lawrence, Mayo, and Northbrook, successive Viceroys, had all in turn promised that this should not be insisted on; and he ended by saying that Shere Ali would rather perish than submit. It was evident that further ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... leading from the upper story of the palace into that of the prisons, and which, from its being appropriated to the passage of the accused from their cells to the presence of their judges, has been so poetically, and it may be added so pathetically, called the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... all these years, through which the good Fra Giulio had watched this son of his affections, whom he loved with a love "passing the loves of earth" he pathetically told himself,—"as if God thus made up to him for all the loves he had resigned,"—now that the name of Fra Paolo was uttered with reverence while his own was unknown, he still expressed his heart in many tender cares, providing the new cassock before the scholar had noticed ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... as if convincing and consoling herself, and there was an accent of loneliness in it all that pierced Lemuel's preoccupation; he had hardly noted how almost pathetically glad she was to see him. "You'll ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... window. The wimple had been thrown back and a single tress of golden hair had escaped across the forehead. The countenance was unhappy, but beautiful for all its misery. The lids were heavy, as if weighted down with sorrow; the cheeks were pallid, the lips colorless and pathetically drooped. A white hand, resting on the slight frame of the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... she, "the poor girl has been basely betrayed; and if I thought you would not blame me, I would pay her a visit, offer her my friendship, and endeavour to restore to her heart that peace she seems to have lost, and so pathetically laments. Who knows, my dear," laying her hand affectionately on his arm, "who knows but she has left some kind, affectionate parents to lament her errors, and would she return, they might with rapture receive the poor penitent, and wash ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... I had never suspected this side of him, though I remember now that I once saw him coming out of a milliner's shop. He looks rather an ascetic—rather donnish, don't you think? I remember that he talked to me one day quite pathetically about feeling his age and about liking young people round him. He's an odd character. Fancy him mixed up in an affair with Olga Nilssen! Or, rather, fancy her involved in an affair with him! What can she have seen in him? She's not mercenary, you know—at least, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... us,' he sighed; 'even if I were ungenerous enough to ask it, she wouldn't receive me now.' My face spoke my scorn. 'Don't blame her,' he said, pathetically; 'it isn't natural she should, poor little thing! This for what she might have been to me.' Then, he kissed the pictured face, and sorrowfully laid it back again upon his heart. 'I thought to go back to her a colonel at least—a general, perhaps,' he went on, with a piteous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... experience to carry it beyond the brink of perishable things, and to give it a birth amid the realities of wonder, fear, and hope. Far be it from the writer to class him amongst those whom the poet Campbell so pathetically, and yet so indignantly describes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... Democritus of our day, once compared human life to a table pierced with a number of holes, each of which has a pin made exactly to fit it, but which pins being stuck in hastily, and without selection, chance leads inevitably to the most awkward mistakes. For how often do we see," the orator pathetically concluded,—"how often, I say, do we see the round man stuck into the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the apparatus and the scene was shifted back to the planet of Xoran, this time to the interior of what was apparently a vast laboratory. Here scores of Xoranian scientists were working upon captives who were pathetically like human beings of Earth itself, working with lethal gases and deadly liquids as human scientists might experiment upon noxious pests. The details of the scene were so utterly revolting, the tortures that were being inflicted so starkly horrible, that Leah and Gordon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... overcomes, which makes life on a large scale possible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Most of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mouse sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... in truth, it is merely a duodecimo pamphlet of thirty-one pages. It was written for fame and money, as the author very frankly—yes, and very hopefully, too, poor fellow —says in his preface. The money never came—no penny of it ever came; and how long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred —forty-seven years! He was young then, it would have been so much to him then; but will he care for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cannot help relating a pathetically amusing remark I once heard in a Dorsetshire cottage. I had looked in on the good housewife in the course of a long walk, and she was telling me about the needs and straits of a recent time of illness. The aged Vicar of the large and thinly-peopled parish was a well-to-do man, and not at ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... the young people of his acquaintance. I do not think he was always quite candid in giving his invitations, for on one occasion a certain count, who had taken refuge from the glare of the sala in our parlor for the purpose of concealing the very loud-plaided pantaloons he wore, explained pathetically that he had no idea it was a party, and that he had been so long out of society, for patriotic reasons, that he had no longer a dress suit. But to us they were very delightful entertainments, no less from the great variety of character they ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Jacko! thou art hungry too; Thy dim and haggard eye Pleads more pathetically true, Than prayer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... "Kamerad!" I begged pathetically. "Come, Dunny, let's be sociable. After all, you know, it's my last evening; and if you call me such names, you will be sorry when I am gone. By the way, speaking of Huns—it was you, the neutral, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... to these, were the kindly and sensible utterances of Mr. Lincoln on his journey from Springfield to Washington, about the same time, for Inauguration as President of the United States. Leaving Springfield, Illinois, February 11th, he had pathetically said: ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... day, she tarried in her corner mute and motionless, eying all comers and goers with a haughty stare. Sometimes she leaned there with rigid finger pressed upon her lip, like a statue of Silence; sometimes her hands were pressed pathetically to her breast, like a Mater Dolorosa; sometimes both arms hung lax and limp by her side, like those of a heart-broken creature; and sometimes she wildly clutched empty air, like a Leatherstonepaugh enthusiastically inebriated or gone stark, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... of course! Oh, dear me! good-by, poor dear. Oh, how pathetically amusing!" said she, walking with Notely toward ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... in silence. His councilors could not agree with him. The proud old man drew his slender body to its full height, lifted his hands and cried pathetically: ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... give way to this feeling than he sees how unkind it is to trouble the young with such musings, and says pathetically to Ferdinand, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the old beast?' said Dallas, pathetically, 'Can't you see him getting round the Old Man? A capital lad at heart, I am sure, distinctly a capital lad, but thoughtless and headstrong, far too thoughtless for a position so important as that of head of my House. The ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... about pathetically to disclaim any such fell designs, when it was noticed that Frau Kahle had risen to bid farewell, and with her Lieutenant Pommer, whose escort home she had accepted, her husband being off on a short ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... long ago it was—how pathetically long ago! And here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn and alone, arranging to get that argument out of ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... depopulated territories of their alien peoples, a vaster vision, for an account of which we are indebted to Tekin Alp, opened before their prophetic eyes. Out of the 10,000,000 inhabitants of Persia they claim that one-third are of true Turkish blood, and in the new Turkey which, so they almost pathetically hope, will be established at the conclusion of the European War by the help of Wilhelm II., those Persian Turks must be incorporated into the true fold of Allah, God of Love. The province of Adarbaijan, for instance, the richest and most enlightened district of Persia, they ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... backwards and forwards for a while whining and looking pathetically sorrowful; but after the boys had coaxed and caressed him, and had explained many times over that his master could not possibly come back, he seemed to resign himself to the inevitable, and trotted at their heels with drooping tail, but with gratitude in his eyes whenever they paused ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... into the reasons which induce me, upon this occasion, to produce the speech of an eminent patriot, in which the nature and scope of that Association, as well as the motives on which it is grounded, are very fully and pathetically set forth; and this in such terms, as, if the reader were not told that this was a speech to Sir Dudley Diggs, then chairman of a committee of the whole house, by Sir Benjamin Rudyard, he might mistake it for a speech made only a few years since, so agreeable is it, in language ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... have not; but if we do," remonstrated the Picture, pathetically, "you know all those men will come trooping home with us. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... his son's tragic end was communicated to Captain Bourne by his faithful mate, who pathetically, and with unconscious humour, exhorted his master not to give way to grief. "It is a bad job," said he, "but it would have been much worse had it been ourselves, and we were very near done for." His bereaved master was a man of very few words. He asked some ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... over Miss Campbell paid the bill, which was pathetically small, since there was no charge ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... dance, they would choose the best of Phoebe's roses to decorate their horses' bridles; and perhaps their hatbands, also. Peaceful would then suck harder than ever at his pipe, and his faded blue eyes would wander pathetically about the little paradise of his making, as if he wondered whether, after all, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... from the world about him. He resigned the vice-presidency of the senior class and took to reading and walking as almost his only pursuits. He voluntarily attended graduate lectures in philosophy and biology, and sat in all of them with a rather pathetically intent look in his eyes, as if waiting for something the lecturer would never quite come to. Sometimes Amory would see him squirm in his seat; and his face would light up; he was on ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... unfortunate tragedy of Alarcos pathetically admits: "Ay! ever pert is youth that baffles age!" The youth of Disraeli was "pert" beyond all record, and those who cannot endure to be teased should not turn to his early romances, or, indeed, to any of his writings. Henrietta ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... uneventful week at the manor. Erica often thought of the definition of happiness which Charles Osmond had once given her "Perfect harmony with your surroundings." She had never been so happy in her life. Waif, who was slowly recovering, grew pathetically fond of his rescuer. The children were devoted to her, and she to them. She learned to love Gladys very much, and from her she learned a good deal which helped her to understand Donovan's past life. Then, too, it was the first time in her life that she had ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... was aware of it, Godfrey had not been the only man in Betty's life. There had been two men, out in France, who had loved her, and lost no time in telling her so. One had been killed; the other still wrote to her at intervals, begging her earnestly, pathetically, to marry him, and sometimes she half thought ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... mask shaped like a beak. The thing turned its head and looked intently at them without moving. Then they saw it was a bird, very large in size, but so forlorn, old, and broken that it could only flutter piteously its little flippers of wings and patiently and pathetically waggle ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... learn to be what he wants me to," she said a little pathetically to Saidie—"It is like standing on tiptoe all the time trying to reach up to his standard. I'm sick of it. If he loved me well enough to marry me, the same love ought to be strong enough to make him contented with me. After all, I'm the same Bella ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... Furnival was almost pathetically pleased to see Straker there; and Miss Milner, flushed but serene in the moment of introduction, said that she had heard of Mr. Straker very often from—she hesitated, and Straker saw what Fanny had meant when she said that ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... and looked at me so pathetically that I snatched the tongs out of the bellows-man's hand—for he was going to put an end to its sufferings in all kindness—and, picking it up gently, I made up my mind I would cure it. Then I carried the bird into my own room, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she had on one side a young and pretty woman in a charming dress and hat, more suitable for a past June than a present December, even a Riviera December. Her face, too, which she turned with a gaze of interest on Mary and her costume, was slightly, pathetically faded, like the petals of a white rose gathered while in bud and pressed between the pages of a book. She was like a charming wax doll which had lost its colour by being placed too near ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... story of Hero and Leander, associating in a manner unwarranted by ancient historians their fate with the vicissitudes of Great Yarmouth and the red herring. In the same way Dekker makes choice of that exquisite tale of Orpheus which reads so pathetically in the prose of King Alfred, and ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... He was practically above law, and could not with safety be attacked in any way. Pausanias could only counsel moderation and patience; perhaps some fortunate chance would alter matters. Drusus spent the evening in a pathetically forced attempt to read his Callimachus. He was weary physically, and intended to retire early. AEmilia, who felt sorry enough for the plight of her rather distant cousin, had tried to console him and divert him with guitar[84] music, and had called in an itinerant piper,[85] but ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... it had produced on her, she could not say. Although she found it difficult to believe in the first explanation she was deeply touched, and perhaps a little flattered, by the possibility of the second. Certainly his attitude toward her had changed. In everything that he said or did, he now seemed pathetically anxious to please her, and even this was encouraging. She didn't tell Considine what had happened. She knew very well that he would consider the incident trivial and, in a few words, shatter her illusion of its significance. And this fear proved that she was not ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... an approaching train. This finally comes to am end; and at the opening in the sheds I climb up into a pine-tree to obtain a view of Donner Lake, called the "Gem of the Sierras." It is a lovely little lake, and amid the pines, and on its shores occurred one of the most pathetically tragic events of the old emigrant days. Briefly related : A small party of emigrants became snowed in while camped at the lake, and when, toward spring, a rescuing party reached the spot, the last survivor of the partly, crazed ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... about again. "I can't see why she does," he mused pathetically. "I can't remember ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... private audience. He told his story with much simple eloquence—so pathetically, indeed, that his warmhearted mistress is said to have been moved to tears at the recital. He described the difficulties which he had encountered and the machinations of the enemies who had been constantly thwarting him. He pleaded that he had been ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... thrown himself at the feet of the Chevalier de St. George, as the only possible resource he had left. Accordingly he wrote him a most moving letter, giving him a detail of his present sufferings, very pathetically representing the distress to which he was reduced, and humbly imploring his protection, with what little assistance might be necessary to enable him to support such a burthen of calamities, as he found ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... in herself. She felt in her soul the divine afflatus, and pressed forward gloriously to her goal. Mr. Geer had as much firmness, not to say obstinacy, as falls to the lot of most men; but Mrs. Geer had more; and as Launce Outram, hard beset, so pathetically moaned, "A woman in the very house has such deused opportunities!" so Farmer Geer grumbled, and squirmed, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the Christian faith; he had met two other Brethren at the court; his tongue was glib and his imagination lively; and now he poured into Zinzendorf's ears a heartrending tale of the benighted condition of the slaves on the Danish island of St. Thomas. He spoke pathetically of his sister Anna, of his brother Abraham, and of their fervent desire to ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... honeymoon were crossing the Channel, and the movement of the waves seemed to be going on right inside the bride. In a fleeting moment of internal calm she murmured pathetically to the bridegroom in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... people of the house noticed she hardly knew. Aunt Janet had fallen into the habit of watching her covertly, pathetically; she was trying in her own way to read the secret hidden away behind a changed Joan. But she did her best to keep her curiosity out of sight; she was very gentle, very anxious to divert Joan's thoughts ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... out of his boy's eyes in the youthful portrait, and you see the logical end in that desperate and pitiful mask, the drawing of the last period in the Meynell Book. His was certainly the severed head, and his feet were pathetically far away, down on a stony earth. That he should have forfeited the ordinary ways of ease, is as consistent with his appearance, as it was necessary to his nature. That he should find himself on the long march past the stations of the cross, to the very tree itself, for his poetic purpose, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... the child agreed pathetically, and she sank wearily down against her father's knee. "I'll just pray ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... elderly Don of settled habits, who had even mistaken a pompous condescension to the young men of his College for a natural and sympathetic relation—that was what he was. The melancholy truth stared him in the face. He was sharply disillusioned. He had lingered on, clinging pathetically to youth, and with a serene complacency he had overlooked the flight of time. He was a dull, middle-aged man, fond of sentimental relations and trivial confidences, who had done nothing, effected nothing; had even egregiously failed in the one thing he had set himself ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Really," said Celia, pathetically, "we might just as well have gone to a house where there wasn't a weighing-machine at all. I don't believe it's trying. Are you sure you ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne |
