"Woeful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... met one whose knowledge of the simplest rudiments of learning was confident and precise. Spelling, geography, grammar, arithmetic, were never, with them, positive knowledge, but rather matters of chance and guess. Even the brightest girls showed a woeful ignorance of the "three R's." In only one thing did I find them universally well taught, and that was in handwriting. However badly spelled and ungrammatical their written language might be, it was invariably neatly and legibly—often ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... palace, and threw herself on her knees before Angelo, saying, "I am a woeful suitor to your honour, if it will please your honour to hear me." "Well, what is your suit?" said Angelo. She then made her petition in the most moving terms for her brother's life. But Angelo said, "Maiden, there is no remedy: your brother is sentenced, and he must die." "O just, but severe ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with a great army. A fierce battle ensued, in which Roland at first had the advantage, but the Duke, being reinforced, pressed him hotly, and in the end Roland was defeated and slain. Blancheflour received news of her lord's death immediately before the birth of her son, and, sore stricken by the woeful news, she named him Tristrem, or 'Child of Sorrow.' Then, recommending him to the care of Rohand, to whom she gave a ring which had belonged to King Mark, her brother, to prove Tristrem's relationship to ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of books, and a just contempt of learning,—but for these events, I say, and some others too long to recite (especially a prudent neglect of taking brimstone inwardly), I doubt the number of authors and of writings would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold. To confirm this opinion, hear the words of the famous troglodyte philosopher. "It is certain," said he, "some grains of folly are of course annexed as part in the composition of human nature; only the choice is left us whether we please ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... the house she filled with her exceeding moan, When sudden, wondrous to be told, a portent was there shown; 680 For as his woeful parents' hands and lips he hangs between, On topmost of Iulus' head a thin peaked flame is seen, That with the harmless touch of fire, whence clearest light is shed, Licks his soft locks and pastures round the temples of his head. Quaking with ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... red-hot iron on her palm, it would scarcely have been more scorching than the touch of his gold, and only the vision of a wan and woeful face in that far off cheerless attic room, restrained her impulse to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that woeful message came, he had counted the minutes he could spend with her, and now he was timing his visit so as to curtail it to the least possible duration, and taxing his ingenuity as to how best to avoid seeing her alone. It was Saturday, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... which Veile's woeful condition made upon the people of the gasse was wonderful. Those who had danced with her that evening on the wedding now first recalled her excited state. Her wild actions were now first remembered by many. It must have ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... not this day feared, but felt, that the rotten dregs of Popery, which were never purged away from England and Ireland and having once been spued out with detestation, are licked up again in Scotland, prove to be the unhappy occasions of a woeful recidivation. Neither is there need of Lyncean eyes, for if we be not poreblind, it cannot be hid from us. What doleful and disastrous mutation (to be bewailed with tears of blood) hath happened to the church and spouse of Christ in these dominions? Her comely countenance is miscoloured with the ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... post? Shall I look upon the Grail once more and live?" But long-gathering despair to-day reaches its climax in Amfortas, at the necessity to perform the rite required. The torture to him cannot be measured of the vision which creates ecstasy in the others. "Woeful inheritance fallen to me!" he complains, in his passion of revolt against this divine infliction, "that I, the only sinner among all, should be condemned to be keeper of holiest holies, and call down blessings upon ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... had made a woeful change in her. She was as gaunt as a suckling she-hound, an old terror lay lurking in her young eyes. For one hour of dread is worse than a year of weeping. One may grieve, honestly and deeply, without wearing away the cheeks or burning out the heart, for there is a soft sorrow ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... parks an' halls, An' letters to ther name; But happiness despises walls, It's nooan a child o' fame. A robe may lap a woeful chap, Whose heart wi grief may bleed, Wol rags may rest on joyful breast, Soa ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... Palais Royal rather than to a court of justice; and that the post he was in obliged him to express his surprise at such conduct. The Prince replied that the First President had no reason to wonder at his great precautions, since he (the Prince) knew by recent woeful experience what it was to live in a prison; and that it was notorious that the Cardinal ruled now in the Cabinet more absolutely than ever ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "you don't see. You don't understand. Fay loves you." He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter were acting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. He seemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... Having heard his woeful relation through, I did what any one entitled to the name of man, would have done under the like circumstances. He was provided with an overcoat, and furnished with a little basket of provisions; and I promised to call in the afternoon, and examine into his condition ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... love?" thought Rose, contemptuously. "She is as cold as a polar iceberg. She ought to marry that knight of the woeful countenance beside her, and be my lady, and live in a castle, and eat and sleep in velvet and rubies. ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... so; and the boys tried to drag her on with a promise of a blackbird's nest; but she thought them unfeeling to such woeful distress, and first tried to reason with Bessie, then to soothe her, till at last, finding all in vain, she thought bed the only place for the child, and led her into the house, helped her, still shaking with sobs, to undress, and was going to see her lie down in the bed which ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... removed. The people are sober, and are rapidly advancing to knowledge, their political exertions and dignity have broken away much of the prejudices against them, and a man passing through any part of Ireland expects to find woeful poverty and strong discontent, but he does not fear the abduction of his wife, or attempts to assassinate him on every lonely road. The coaches, cars, and roads, too, have become excellent, and the hotels are sufficient for any reasonable traveller. One very marked ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... next two months many things happened. It had early transpired that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph Hill. Whosoever was sheltering her—if she was still alive—had been persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts to find trace of her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a broken heart. She had entered the dining-room when he was laying the table and discovered him watering the knives and forks with tears. Unaccustomed to see men weep, she enquired the cause. He dried his eyes with a napkin and told a woeful tale of a faithless love in Neuchatel, a widow plump and well-to-do. He had looked forward to marry her at the end of the year, and to pass an unruffled life in the snugness of the delicatessen shop which she conducted with ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... South-Eastern Europe. Every blunder into which petty municipal minds could fall when confronted with a wild revolutionary welter, marked the hesitant policy of the British Government. This aimless chaos of soul was the main cause of the woeful waste of our political advantages and enormous resources in the accomplishment of secondary ends which generally led nowhere. It was thus that they forfeited the active support of Turkey, Bulgaria ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... room and talked, and were silent, as their hearts moved them. Rahal had little to say. She was thinking of Ian and of the new life he was going to, and of the long, lonely days that might be the fate of Thora. "The woeful laddie!" she whispered, "he has had but small chances of any kind. What can a lad do for himself and no ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Left, the Lych to devour, The Sallow kite and the Swart raven, Horny of beak,— and Him, the dusk-coated, The white-afted Erne, the corse to Enjoy, The Greedy war-hawk, and that Grey beast, The Wolf of the Wood. No such Woeful slaughter Aye on this Island Ever hath been, By edge of the Sword, as book Sayeth, Writers of Eld, since of Eastward hither English and Saxons Sailed over Sea, O'er the Broad Brine,— landed in Britain, Proud Workers of War, and o'ercame ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... throng upon the shore of a great stream: Whereat I thus: "Sir! grant me now to know Whom here we view, and whence impell'd they seem So eager to pass o'er, as I discern Through the blear light?" He thus to me in few: "This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive Beside the woeful tide of Acheron." Then with eyes downward cast and fill'd with shame, Fearing my words offensive to his ear, Till we had reach'd the river, I from speech Abstain'd. And lo! toward us in a bark Comes on an old man hoary ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... I was prevented from seeing or even writing to Mrs. Granger. My very going to divine service or the sacrament, were a source of woeful offences. The only amusement I had left me, was the visiting and attending the sick poor, and performing the lowest ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Statesman has not been at all well. He is sitting up in his room, and his doctor has come to see him for the third time in three days. This means that the malady is not yet seriously regarded: once a day is still sufficient. Nevertheless, he is a woeful wreck to look at; and the doctor looks at him with the greatest respect, and listens to his querulous plaint patiently. For that great dome of silence, his brain, repository of so many state-secrets, ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... pay bad Peggy back For her malicious tricks; Nor does she see That even he Enjoys her woeful "fix". ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... plays many parts: His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms: And then, the whining school-boy with his satchel, And shining morning-face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then, the lover; Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then, a soldier; Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel; Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice In fair round belly, with good capon ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... do not like these partings. They always sadden my heart. They make me long for that life where partings shall be no more. Oh, my dear ones, do you all strive on to attain to that blessed life! Think what would be our woeful grief—if such can assail us there; if memory of the past may be allowed us—should we find any one of our dear ones absent—of you who now stand around me! I speak to you all—not more to one than to another—absent through his own fault, his own sin, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... beginning of disintegration in the Empire and aroused the opposition of the Mahrattas and Sikhs. But until this period Mohammedan rule was not marked by special bigotry or by any persistent attempt to proselytize. A woeful chronicle of selected outrages can indeed be drawn up. In the great towns of the north hardly a temple remained unsacked and most were utterly destroyed. At different periods individuals, such as Sikander Lodi of Delhi and Jelaluddin (1414-1430) in Bengal, raged ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful 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 ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... leads me to think that there would be no discrepancy at all comparable to that between the two accounts, and I speak from the woeful memories of the many Royal Commissions I have wearied over. The accuracy of a good modern reporter ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of this day and night, it was known that the Youths had not slept, neither had they eaten, save once, as they who had the watch through the Great Spy-Glass did affirm. But they to hasten alway at a woeful speed towards the North, along that Great Dismal Road, so that presently they must cease, or slay ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... to us, oddly enough, from the United States, and stings us vindictively when we put it into our mouths. But the wine, the glorious wine, would have made amends to anybody but Mr. Vimpany for the woeful deficiencies of the food. Tumbler-full after tumbler-full of that noble vintage poured down his thirsty and ignorant throat; and still he persisted in declaring that it was nice light stuff, and still he unforgivingly bore in mind ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... her lips; she had overestimated her strength; she could not sing it. The marble images around her, like ghosts of the past, looked mutely down at her grief. She could not weep; her eyes were dry, and there was an intolerable weight on her heart. Just before her stood the Niobe, rigid and woeful; she put her hands over her eyes, and drooped her face on the melodeon. Gloom and despair crouched at her side, their gaunt hands tugging at the anchor of hope. The wind rose and howled round the corners of the house; ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... woeful visage Melbourne sate— A pint of double X his grief beguiled; And inly pondering o'er his fate, He bade th' attendant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... familiar moods, at such times as she has met Noll Goldsmith, & walk'd and talk'd with him, calling him old acquaintance. Southey certainly has no pretensions to vie with you in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain tale better than you. I will enumerate some woeful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from that simplicity which was your aim. "Hail'd who might be near" (the canvas-coverture moving, by the by, is laughable); "a woman & six children" (by the way,—why not nine children, it would have been just half as pathetic again): "statues of sleep they ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... hangs a tale of sad mistrust and mistake, and the mistrust and mistake, alas, were mine. Now, while you see Margery, I will prepare for walking; and as we go through the wood I will try to tell you the woeful thing which came between him and me and placed our lives so far apart. Your wise advice will help me, and your shrewd knowledge of men and of the human heart may find us a way out, for indeed we are shut in ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... minute's delay would be fatal; some making for the river, into which they plunged in a wild effort to reach the eastern shore, while among the frantic masses appeared here and there a fugitive from the scene of battle, perhaps wounded and telling his dreadful story of the defeat, with all the woeful consequences ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... all then, ye were not destined to leave me in your heedlessness and to wander far; but fate has turned you back. Poor wretch that I am! What a yearning for Hellas from some woeful madness seized you at the behest of your father Phrixus. Bitter sorrows for my heart did he ordain when dying. And why should ye go to the city of Orchomenus, whoever this Orchomenus is, for the sake of Athamas' wealth, leaving your mother alone to ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... making a woeful slip when I was taken over a cotton mill. The man who was conducting us pointed to what looked like a heap of dirty wool, and explained that it was the raw material. "And is that just as it comes off the ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... quality of the inspirations is exhilarating, and they feel strengthened and uplifted. But there are other days when they feel very much alone. The influence that affects them is weak; they get only hazy impressions, and there is a woeful lack of ideas. It seems as if the heavens were brass, or that they themselves were unresponsive. They know not why, but whatever they can 'lay hold of' to speak, or whatever the spirit people can project into their sphere seems forced ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... she Was drawn, hid in that pearly galaxy Of snow-white pigeons. Next upon the height Of Pergamos uplift a beam of light That for its core enshrined a naked youth, Golden and fierce. She knew the God sans ruth, Him who had given woeful prescience to her, Apollo, once her lover and her wooer; Who stood as one stands glorying in his grace And strength, full in the sun, though on her place Within the temple court no sun at all Shone, nor as yet upon the topmost wall ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... over her as she spoke, and, casting a wild, woeful look about her, she laid her head upon the pillow like one who never cared to lift it up again. Hester, a sharp-eyed, middle-aged woman, watched the pale creature for a moment, then left the room muttering, "Something is wrong, and Sir Richard ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... our chief That he gave her wounds repose; And the sounds of joy and grief From her people wildly rose, As Death withdrew his shades from the day. While the sun look'd smiling bright O'er a wide and woeful sight, Where the fires of funeral light ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... about that Shirley. She has money yet she came in on a scholarship. Then, there was the registered package of jewelry that brought disaster upon you and the messenger boy, Tim. He said it was addressed to Sarah. She surely shows a woeful lack of luxury, yet someone ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... three days speak the rest. How this young man can be Alfonso's heir I know not—yet I do not doubt it. His are these dominions; I resign them—yet I knew not Alfonso had an heir—I question not the will of heaven—poverty and prayer must fill up the woeful space, until Manfred shall ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... the fourfooted beasts were the sole things that did not flee from her; and the woeful and mad slaughter of them by the peasants was to her a grief passionate in its despair. She did not reason on what she felt; but to her a bird slain was a trust betrayed, an innocence defiled, a creature of heaven struck ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... progress with the Scandinavian footgear. For in snow-shoe walking the feet must be lifted straight up and then carried forward before they are planted, and any attempt to slide them forward makes a woeful tangle; to try to lift the ski off the ground, however, is to invite ridiculous distress, and the whole art of scooting on the ski is in the long, sliding motion. It is a sort of skating on incredibly long skates that must not be lifted ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... right," agreed the son of the Diamond X owner. "They won't be much good for shipping to market until they get some fat back on their bones." Many of the cattle were in woeful shape, and all suffered from lack of water, since the rustlers had driven them so hard, endeavoring to get far away with them as soon as possible that they had not stopped to ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... extraordinary to note how almost the whole of Europe appears to be carried away with the idea that the causes of this terrible South African war are, as it were, only of yesterday's date. The seeds of which we are reaping so woeful a harvest were not sown yesterday, nor a few years ago only. We are reaping a harvest which has been ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... character—and I do trust that I am not cruel! But I must admit that when I greeted Don Pedro, on his return, with added cordiality, it was nothing in his dark, eager countenance that set my heart beating—but rather the glimpse I had caught of a bitten lip, a knotted brow, and a pair of woeful gray eyes gazing out ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... other, but go seek adventures. The first battle they fought was with two Saracens, and the Dwarf, who was very courageous, dealt one of the champions a most angry blow. It did the Saracen but very little injury, who lifting up his sword, fairly struck off the poor Dwarf's arm. He was now in a woeful plight; but the Giant coming to his assistance, in a short time left the two Saracens dead on the plain, and the Dwarf cut off the dead man's head out of spite. They then travelled on to another adventure. This was against three bloody-minded Satyrs, who were carrying ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... times as loud as I could raise my voice, but all to no purpose. I looked towards my windows, and could see nothing but the clouds and sky. I heard a noise over my head, like the clapping of wings, and then began to perceive the woeful condition I was in: that some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock, like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body, and devour it; for the sagacity and ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... up for a moment with Joe Henderson. I hope the draft gets hold of that bird. They were going to have tea at the Biltmore when they got back to the city. I almost bit the end off of a sentry's bayonet when I heard this woeful piece of news. Liberty looks a ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... and uttering loud noises of diverse kinds, while, indeed, the battle was raging fiercely and the very vitals of the combatants were being struck, and the troops, O sire, desirous of victory, were rushing with speed, while, verily, everything on Earth seemed to be undergoing a woeful destruction, during that time when innumerable ladies of birth and beauty were being made widows, during, indeed, the progress of that fierce engagement in which the warriors behaved without any consideration for friends and foes, awful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... rings round and round the world; In pitiful defeat a warrior lies. A last defiance to dark Death is hurled, A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies. Alone he falls, with wide, wan, woeful eyes: Eyes that could smile at death — could ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... her a sense of measureless and most woeful loss. She realized for the first time all that his going away would mean to her—of all that it would leave her bereft. He had been the one human being to whom she had been able to bring herself to speak freely. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... mountain coquette might care. He himself stood appalled that this ghastly fable should delude his heart's beloved, amazed that it should cost her one sigh, one sob. Her racking paroxysms of grief over this gruesome figment of a grave he was humiliated to hear, he was woeful to see. He felt that he was not worth one tear of the floods with which she bewept his name, uttered in every cadence of tender regret that her melancholy voice could compass. It must cease, she must know the truth at whatever cost. He broke through the ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... he saw that the last tramcar was ready to start, and the lights through the windows of the Cafe du Globe, and he felt a longing to tell somebody of the catastrophe that had happened, to excite pity, to make himself interesting. He put on a woeful face, pushed open the door, and went up to the counter, where the landlord still was. He had counted on creating an effect, and had hoped that everybody would get up and come to him with outstretched hands, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the wedding-day, The morning that must wed them both But Stephen to another maid Had sworn another oath; And, with this other maid, to church Unthinking Stephen went— Poor Martha! on that woeful day A pang of pitiless dismay Into her soul was sent; A fire was kindled in her breast, Which might ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the opinion that the hymn may have been an evening prayer, but it seems more satisfactory to place it merely in the general category of penitential psalms, with a request for a sign that the deity has been appeased. The sinner, after describing his woeful state,— ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... never would yield the ground? Which mocked at the coal-black Angel? The cup of despair goes round. Vainly he calls upon Michael (The white man's seraph was he,) For Michael has fled from his tower To the Angel over the sea. Who weeps for the woeful City Let him weep for our guilty kind; Who joys at her wild despairing— Christ, the Forgiver, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... mated to a man so selfish that I cannot think of her even now with a steady mouth. Hers was the tragedy of living on, more mournful than the tragedy that kills. In Thrums the weavers spoke of "lousing" from their looms, removing the chains, and there is something woeful in that. But pity poor Nanny Coutts, who took her chains to bed ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... at the North a profound sentiment for attacking slavery. The war was protracted beyond all early expectation; it was costly, bitter, woeful. What was to be at last the recompense for all this blood and tears? Was there, if victory came at last, to be with it no advance, nothing but the old Union, half slave and half free? For nothing ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the quiet of these parts, freed from the anxious and troublesome solicitations, hurries, and perplexities of woeful Europe," Penn had exclaimed, on his return from his first visit back to England. But the quiet had disappeared; even the old Quaker homes, that had held out alike from blaming foe and encouraging ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... greatly impoverished; and when the gloomy winter days came on, with their biting frosts and keen cold winds, the prospects at Lyndardy grew as dull as the leaden clouds that hung in the sky. Our mother's woeful sighs were painful to my ears, while I felt how helpless I was to soften her sorrows. Sometimes, when I saw the tears in her eyes, I would silently wish for her sake that I was older and could do more towards filling ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... Woeful news. Herstan and all his family, who had returned in peace to their dwelling, have come to us homeless and destitute. The Danes, as in 1006, suddenly issued from their ships. They took their way upwards through Chiltern, and so to Oxford, burning the ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... now she sayeth, "Krishna, Krishna, come!" Lovingly she prayeth, "Fair moon, light him home." Yet if Hari helps not, Moonlight cannot aid; Ah! the woeful ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... artist did not, now, need to drive himself to his task, as the begging musician on the street corner forces himself to play to the passing crowd, for the pennies that are dropped in his tin cup. Rather was he driven by the conviction of a great truth, and by the realization of its woeful need in the world, to such adequate expression as his mastery of the tools of his craft would permit He was not, now, the slave of his technical knowledge; striving to produce a something that should be merely technically good. He ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... been a free spender. His books, his pictures, his garden, his mania for curiosities, had run away with thousands of pounds, and now, when he surreptitiously tried to convert these things into cash again there was a woeful falling off in their value. He knew nothing of the art of driving a bargain; and, where others would have made a profit with the same opportunities, he invariably lost money. He had bought badly to begin with, and he sold disastrously. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... his next novel, Oliver Twist, had the serious purpose of mitigating the evils under which the poor were suffering. Its hero was a poor child, the unfortunate victim of society; and, in order to draw attention to the real need, Dickens exaggerated the woeful condition of the poor, and filled his pages with sentiment which easily slipped over into sentimentality. This also was a popular success, and in his third novel, Nicholas Nickleby, and indeed in most of his ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... caught from him; nor does it seldom happen that a character of admirable qualities loses its better life because the atmosphere that should sustain it is rendered poisonous by such breath as this man mingled with Zenobia's. Yet his reflections possessed their share of truth. It was a woeful thought, that a woman of Zenobia's diversified capacity should have fancied herself irretrievably defeated on the broad battlefield of life, and with no refuge, save to fall on her own sword, merely because Love had gone against her. It is nonsense, and a miserable wrong,—the result, like so ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a very grand meal, that dinner. We partook of the cold remains of a joint which one of ourselves had made a woeful attempt to cook the day before, and which now tasted anything but delicious. Miss Henniker was in her usual place, and as we sat with our eyes rigidly fixed on the plates before us, we were conscious of her glancing once or twice towards one and ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Tommy's face presented a very woeful appearance. His cheek and lips were swelled and black, and the loss of his two front teeth ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... hopelessly a man of the world!—of that woeful outside one, I mean. It is now Sunday; half-past eleven in the morning. Everybody else is gone to church—and I am left alone with the cat, in ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Simon Gonzalez, refused to marry me today; And before tomorrow comes, I suppose, I shall be torn to pieces, by the Ghosts, and Goblins, and Devils, and what not! For God's sake, your Holiness, do not leave me in such a woeful condition! On my bended knees I beseech you to keep your promise: Watch this night in the haunted chamber; Lay the Apparition in the Red Sea, and Jacintha remembers you in her prayers to the last day ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... thin house in the country, an actress spoke very low in her communication with her lover. The actor, whose benefit it happened to be, exclaimed with a face of woeful humor, "My dear, you may speak out, there is ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... meeting at night round the old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes ill-humoured. But can we be surprised at them, remembering their woeful lot? Tiny and odd as they are, they have a heart, a longing to be loved. They are good and they are bad and full of fancies. On the birth of a baby they come down the chimney, to endow it and order its future. They are fond of good spinning-women—they ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... longing of thine? Shalt thou without burial behold the Stygian waters and the awful river of the Furies? Cease to hope prayers may bend the decrees of heaven. But take my words to thy memory, for comfort in thy woeful case: far and wide shall the bordering cities be driven by celestial portents to appease thy dust; they shall rear a tomb, and pay the tomb a yearly offering, and for evermore shall the place keep Palinurus' name.' The words soothed away his distress, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... the palace and threw herself on her knees before Angelo, saying, "I am a woeful suitor to your Honor, if it will please your Honor ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... directed upon him his hang-dog eyes, and his voice was the voice of a man that would not be disturbed from woeful musings. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... outmatched? By the Three Kings! do you imagine me such a fool as to teach you artisans the higher qualities of the sword? There would have been a woeful surprise for the eighteen had they ventured another step farther. However, that's all past and done with, and we'll say no more about it. Let us sit down here on the sward, and indulge in the more agreeable ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... their woeful hap did rue, For Love did know that their desires were true; Though Fate frowned. And now drowned They in sorrow dwell, It was the purest light of heaven for whose ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... and continued: "We were in sad and woeful want after the war. Once I asked my father why he let us go so hungry and ragged, and he answered: 'How can we help it? Why, even the white folks don't have enough to eat and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... of Advent, stooping a little to listen to the woeful supplications of man as they rise from earth; in that case, she must be an Old Testament queen, dead long before the birth of the Messiah ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... came a time when the little city was threatened with a woeful flood, because of a breaking flume; but by a simple and wise device Felion stayed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my bits of rhymes In weary, woeful, waiting times; In doleful hours of battle-din, Ere yet they brought the wounded in; Through vigils of the fateful night, In lousy barns by candle-light; In dug-outs, sagging and aflood, On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood; By ragged grove, by ruined road, By hearths accurst ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... him who looketh from on high, The guard of woeful mortals, whosoe'er Unto their fellows cry, And find no pity, find no justice there. Abiding in his wrath, the suppliants' lord Doth smite, unmoved by cries, unbent by ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... but it would seem that he survived her. Jonathan having married a second wife remained in Concord. For two years the old man lived with his eldest son, seeing the Nashaway Valley blooming with the fruits of civilized labor; seeing new families filling the woeful gaps made in the old by Philip's warriors; seeing children and grandchildren grasping the implements that had fallen from the nerveless hold of the earliest bread-winners, with hopeful and pertinacious purpose to extend the paternal domain; seeing too, may we not trust, from the Pisgah height ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Brahmana and his wife. Then Kunti quickly entered the inner apartments of that illustrious Brahmana, like unto a cow running towards her tethered calf. She beheld the Brahmana with his wife, son and daughter, sitting with a woeful face, and she heard the Brahmana say, 'Oh, fie on this earthly life which is hollow as the reed and so fruitless after all which is based on sorrow and hath no freedom, and which hath misery for its lot! Life is sorrow and disease; life is truly a record of misery! The soul is one: but it hath to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... secrecy of his nature seemed evident until one almost lost sight of his lineaments. Rebecca stood close to her sofa, regarding him with woeful, fascinated eyes. Mrs. Brigham clutched Caroline's hand. They both stood in a corner out of his way. For a few moments he raged about the room like a caged wild animal. He moved every piece of furniture; when the moving of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... never touch'd his hand, Sweetly suppos'd them mistress of his heart. My woeful self, that did in freedom stand, And was my own fee-simple, (not in part,) What with his heart in youth, and youth in art, Threw my affections in his charmed power, Reserv'd the stalk, and gave ...
— A Lover's Complaint • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... gone, and I need no longer mind what color my face is, nor what shape of woeful jealousy my late so ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... could pass the abbey Adriana knelt before him, and told a woeful tale of a mad husband rushing about stealing jewelry and drawing his sword, adding that the Abbess refused to allow her to lead ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... Miss Trotwood's," said the young woman, and then she hurried in, and left me standing at the gate. My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition, my hat was crushed and bent, my shirt and trousers stained and torn, my hair had known no comb or brush since I left London, my face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered with ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... own country than to be distinguished for any knowledge which the learned only can appreciate. "Will the greatest Mastership in Greek and Latin, or [the] translating [of] these Languages into English, avail for the Purpose of acquiring an elegant English Style? No—we know just the Reverse from woeful Experience! And, as Mr. Locke and the Spectator observe, Men who have threshed hard at Greek and Latin for ten or eleven years together, are very often deficient in their own Language."—Preface to the British ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... how the victor sack'd and burn'd the town: How to the ladies he restored again The bodies of their lords in battle slain: And with what ancient rites they were interr'd; All these to fitter times shall be deferr'd. 130 I spare the widows' tears, their woeful cries, And howling at their husbands' obsequies; How Theseus at these funerals did assist, And with what gifts ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... that thousands of girls before her had been fascinated by well-told tales of the life to be lived out in the world of cities, of wealth, of artificial gayeties ... the lure of travel, of excitement.... And Scattergood did not covet the duty of carrying a woeful story to old ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of Latisan—the breaking of her grandfather's last prop. She had intensified in woeful degree the fault of her father; she had compassed the ruin of the old man at a time when he was unable to restore his fortunes by his own effort. The doors of the house on the hill were barred by the iron of unforgiveness and ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... point the diligence course to Ciudadella branches off to the northward, turning again after a while due west on to General Stanhope's road. But that was nothing to me then. Turning my back upon it, I took another path, in woeful disrepair, which led me down by many windings between high stone walls and straggling clumps of prickly pear. There were few houses to stop the view—only some two or three farm buildings. Cottages can ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... and fed by father and mother And gladdened with gifts. God alone knows What fate shall be his in the fast-moving years. 10 To one it chances in his childhood days To be snatched away by sudden death In woeful wise. The wolf shall devour him, The hoary heath-dweller. Heart-sick with grief, His mother shall mourn him; but man cannot change it. 15 One of hunger shall starve; one the storm shall drown. One the spear shall pierce; one ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with wide, astonished, woeful eyes—disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... blood in Venice, and, trader-like, she was avid of possessions. You can surmise how she must have watered at the mouth to see so fine a morsel cast thus into her lap, and yet to know that the consumption of it might beget a woeful indigestion. Venice shook her head regretfully. She could not afford to quarrel with her ally, King Louis, and so she made answer—a thought contemptuously, it seems—that Giovanni should have made his offer while he ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... he tried to avert his troubled face as he passed us on his way to the door. When he had left us, I caught sight of Phillis's face, as, thinking herself unobserved, her countenance relaxed for a moment or two into sad, woeful weariness. She started into briskness again when her mother spoke, and hurried away to do some little errand at her bidding. When we two were alone, cousin Holman recurred to Holdsworth's marriage. She ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... both far and near Has played the very deuce then, And little Al, the royal pal, They say has turned a Russian; Old Aberdeen, as may be seen, Looks woeful pale and yellow, And Old John Bull had his belly full Of dirty ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... track! A few days ago—only few hours ago-our hearts had beat hopefully at the prospect and there was no hint of this, the overwhelming tragedy. Our fellow, comrade, chum, in a woeful instant, buried in the bowels of the awful glacier. We could not think of it; we strove to forget it in the necessity of work, but we knew that the truth would assuredly enter our souls in the lonely days to come. It was to be a fight with Death ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... glancing at myself and discovering for the first time by the brilliant light of the cabin lamp the woeful ruin wrought upon my uniform. "I really beg your pardon, sir, for presenting myself in this plight, but the urgent nature of my business must be my excuse." And I forthwith plunged in medias res and told what I had ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Cromwell's coup d'etat of 1653, by which the Rump had been turned out of power, and which the now Restored Rumpers, and especially such of their leaders as Vane, Scott, Hasilrig, and Bradshaw, were bound to remember as Cromwell's unpardonable sin, and the woeful beginning of an illegitimate interregnum? He had justified it, hardly anonymously, in his Letter to a Gentleman in the Country, published in May 1653, only a fortnight after the fact (Vol. IV. pp. 519-523). He had justified it a year later in his Defensio ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... 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 woeful state, put him into a tea-cup, and soon washed off the batter; after which she kissed him, and laid ...
— The History of Tom Thumb, and Others • Anonymous
... had gone to bed, a man came and lay down beside her as soon as she had put out the light, and how she never saw him, because he was always up and away before the morning dawned; and how she went about woeful and sorrowing, for she thought she should so like to see him, and how all day long she walked about there alone, and how dull, and dreary, and lonesome ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... over now with Napoleon. He is never proof against tears, so sends for their mother, who falls into his arms and faints. She is tenderly laid into his bed, saved from her woeful fate, and when Lucien Bonaparte arrived by command next morning, to take instructions for the impending divorce proceedings, that horror had disappeared from their outlook, and both Josephine and Napoleon were wrapped ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... her hand she bore, With velvet bound, and broidered o'er, Her breviary book. In such a place, so lone, so grim, At dawning pale, or twilight dim, It fearful would have been To meet a form so richly dressed, With book in hand, and cross on breast, And such a woeful mien. Fitz-Eustace, loitering with his bow, To practise on the gull and crow, Saw her, at distance, gliding slow, And did by Mary swear - Some lovelorn fay she might have been, Or, in romance, some spell-bound ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the first grey dawning a new day did begin, King Siggeir bade his bondsmen to dight an earthen mound Anigh to the house of the Goth-kings amid the fruit-grown ground: And that house of death was twofold, for 'twas sundered by a stone Into two woeful chambers: alone and not alone Those vanquished thralls of battle therein should bide their hour, That each might hear the tidings of the other's baleful bower, Yet have no might to help him. So ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... of the unnumbered dead still rode the storm, and the world was filled with their woeful lamentation. But, as I lay in the dark, there came to me a faint perfume as of violets at evening-time, elusive and very sweet, breathing of Charmian herself; and putting up my hand, I touched the handkerchief that bound ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... best of the woeful change. The deep, quiet love she had given to her son she transferred to Felicita, who, she well knew, had been his idol. She believed that the sorrows of these last few months had not sprung out of the ground, but had for some reason come down from God, the God of her fathers, in whom she ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... reveal the woeful greatness of my ignorance. My geography has run mad. I am planting forests in the midst of corn-fields, so Dickie assures me, and making hay generally—as you, my dear, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... have to their father's inheritance. Then to have fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ is another branch of this dignity, and this is that which introduceth the other. Christ is the middle person, the Mediator between God and man, given for this end,—to recover men from their woeful dispersion and separation from God, and reduce them again to that blessed society. And, therefore, our acquaintance, as it were, first begins with him, and by him we are led to the Father. No man can come to the Father but by the Son, therefore, if you have his friendship, you have done ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... that babbled under grass, Once saw a Poet pass— A Poet with long hair and saddened eyes, Who went his weary way with woeful sighs. And on another time, This Brook did hear that Poet read his rueful rhyme. Now in the poem that he read, This Poet said— "Oh! little Brook that babblest under grass! (Ah me! Alack! Ah, well-a-day! Alas!) Say, are you what you seem? Or is your life, like other lives, ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... weaknesses and prejudices which his friends have kindly taken care to draw from their dread abode[802]. I brought on myself his transient anger, by observing that in his tour in Scotland, he once had "long and woeful experience of oats being the food of men in Scotland as they were of horses in England."' It was a national reflection unworthy of him, and I shot my bolt. In return he gave me a tender hug[803]. Con amore he also said of me 'The dog is a Whig[804];' I admired ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... train, but forgot to notify us of the switch in the plans. She travelled by the regular train from Paris to some place along the line, where she got out and waited for the special which was following along behind, straight through from Paris, too. A woeful waste of money, it seemed to me. Her idea was to throw a couple of plain-clothes men off the track, and, by George, sir, she succeeded. They thought she was changing from a train to some place in Switzerland, and went off to watch the other station. Then she sneaked aboard the special, which ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... trusting for his support to the hospitality of a brave, unsophisticated race, who could hardly endure the nominal yoke of regicides, and preserved the sanctuary of their domestic retreats unpolluted by the presence of spies and informers. From these, his occasional hosts, De Vallance learned many woeful particulars of the miseries of the prisoners taken at Worcester, "who were driven like cattle to London, many of them suffered to perish for want of food, or from pestilential diseases arising from crowded prisons, and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... came flocking into my mind an innumerable company of my sins and transgressions, my soul also being greatly tormented between these two considerations: Live I must not, die I dare not. But as I was walking up and down in the house, a man in a most woeful state, that word of God took hold of my heart: "Ye are justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ." But oh, what a turn it made upon me! At this I was greatly lightened in my mind, and made to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... And changed with agony, the failing head Is drooping heavily; but still again, And yet again, the weary eyes are raised To seek the face of One who hangeth pale Upon another cross. He hears no shrill And taunting voices of the crowd beneath, He marks no cruel looks of all that gaze Upon the woeful sight. He sees alone That face upon the cross. Oh, long, long look, That searcheth there the deep and awful ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... incubators into the market. The devices I now refer to consist of a row of box incubators which, instead of being heated by single lamps, are heated by continuous hot water pipes. This scheme effects a considerable saving in fuel cost and labor, but the bulkiness of construction and the woeful lack of evaporation control are still ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... her golden hairs, And taking him between her arms did wash his wounds with tears; She meint[5] her weeping with his blood, and kissing all his face (Which now became as cold as ice) she cried in woeful case: Alas! what chance, my Pyramus hath parted thee and me? Make answer, O my Pyramus: it is thy Thisbe, even she Whom thou dost love most heartily that speaketh unto thee: Give ear and raise thy heavy head. He, hearing Thisbe's name, Lift up his dying ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... plunge and roll headlong over. Unluckily in one of these somersaults a man was injured. Flung ahead into the snow by the first lurch, the sledge and wine-cask crossed him like a garden-roller. Had his bed not been of snow, he must have been crushed to death; and as it was, he presented a woeful appearance when ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to see little Fanny. He was trying to drive her from his mind by occupation, or other mental excitement. He labored, though not to much profit, incessantly in his rooms; and, in his capacity of critic for the "Pall Mall Gazette," made woeful 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "That is a woeful lack," gravely replied Lord Strange. "Specially when you do consider that English was the tongue that Noah spake afore the flood, and the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... have been all agog with joy," interrupted old Lady Storms who heard. "She was a woeful disappointment to many a gossiping woman, and a lesson to all the shifty fools who sell themselves to a man, and then trick him out ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... earth up to their necks, with only their heads out" 88 So the man gave him a pair of snow shoes 96 The King went into the Castle, and at first his Queen didn't know him, he was so wan and thin, through wandering so far and being so woeful 104 ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen |
