Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Low-spirited   Listen
adjective
Low-spirited  adj.  Deficient in animation and courage; dejected; depressed; dispirited; not sprightly.
Synonyms: depressed, dispirited, down(predicate), downcast, downhearted, low.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Low-spirited" Quotes from Famous Books



... will not answer for the consequences if Miss Garston nurses Gladys,' interposed Miss Darrell eagerly. 'You have no idea how she excites her. They talk, and have mysteries together, and Gladys is always more low-spirited when she has seen Miss Garston. You know I have only dear Gladys's interest at heart, and in a serious nervous illness like ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... wind turned; it begun to thicken up, and a kind of gray mist came over things; I got low-spirited directly. Then a silver rain began to fall. I could see the drops touch the ground; some flashed up like long pearl ear-rings, and the rest rolled away like round rubies. It was pretty, but melancholy. Then the pearls gathered themselves into long strands and necklaces, and then ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... Fatigued, low-spirited, feverishly perplexed, Sibylla did not know what she could do. She was not in a state that night to give much care to the future. All she hoped was, to stay in that haven until something else could be arranged for her. Let us give her her due. Somewhat careless, naturally, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... when he was ill, and exceedingly low-spirited, and persuaded that death was not far distant, I appeared before him in a dark-coloured gown, which his bad sight, and worse apprehensions, made him mistake for an iron-grey. "Why do you delight," said he, "thus to thicken the gloom of misery ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... OLD JOE, It is actually all over! I was so low-spirited at the station yesterday, and this morning, when I woke, I couldn't seem to accept the dismal truth that you were really gone, and the pleasant tramping and talking at an end. Ah, my boy! it has been such a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Janet, who sat by him in low-spirited silence, was really suffering less than he. Oliver had undertaken the responsibility of returning the picture, and Oliver was a dependable boy who could manage it far better than she could. She thought little of what was to be said or done and was only ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs

... and low-spirited enough ourselves at the idea of going away all in a hurry. We had come to like Melbourne, and had bit by bit cheated ourselves into thinking that we might live comfortably and settle down in Victoria, out of reach of our enemies, and perhaps live ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... had emanated from the banshee, and when I laughingly tried to argue him out of his conviction he took me up rather sharply with the assertion that, had I been of Irish birth or extraction, I would know better than to make light of the matter. To my amazement, he seemed quite depressed and low-spirited at the mere mention of it, so I quickly dropped the subject and asked him if during his watch he had observed anything to confirm his earlier suspicion that we might possibly be attacked. He admitted that ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... she rose, emptied her box, and filled it again with chocolate drops; and for the next few days she was angry with me, and avoided my company. I felt grieved, I became low-spirited, but I could not make up my mind to tell her that I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... have been very unwell and low-spirited. The cause of this, folks seem to agree, was over-exertion during mother's sickness. To tell the truth, I was so anxious about her that I did not try to save my strength at all, and excitement kept me up, so that I was not conscious of any special fatigue ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... to her distress, she was weakened by the painful task she had just completed. She was low-spirited and broken-hearted, and really ill. Her eyes gave out; and no greater inconvenience could have just then befallen her. Her mental activity was temporarily paralyzed, and yet she knew that prompt measures were necessary to avert the evils crowding upon her. She had truly been anointed ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... the Polanders and Swedes fell before me, didst thou from thy soul congratulate me? Didst thou get drunk at home or abroad, or praise the Lord of Hosts and Saint Nicholas? Wert thou not silent and civil and low-spirited? ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... the payment of forty or fifty dollars, he will take care of the child for a year and that "maybe it won't live any longer than that," and unless the hospital is equipped with a social service department, such as the one at the Massachusetts General, the girl leaves it weak and low-spirited and too broken to care what becomes of her. It is in moments such as these that many a poor girl, convinced that all the world is against her, decides to enter a disreputable house. Here at least she will find food and shelter, she will not be despised by the other inmates ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... as I know no Cree, our conversation wasn't very lengthy. At first, however, in spite of the danger of his discovering who I was and what I was doing there, I was pleased to see him, for I was getting moody and low-spirited with living by myself. I tried to be content with supposing that he was a trapper, who had strayed out of his district and had lighted on ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron, standing midleg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher—an ornithological Marius —reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't make up his mind whether the waters ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... daylight walk. You all stand greatly in need of fresh air and exercise; and I really think there is now no cause to fear any molestation, otherwise I should not of course suggest such a thing. It will never do, you know, for you to remain cooped up here day after day—you will get low-spirited and out of health; and I am inclined to believe it will be rather a good idea than otherwise to accustom these fellows to the sight of you moving freely and ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... his head sagely. Benito puzzled, half resentful, gazed after him. He abandoned the walk to the dock and returned with low-spirited resignation to his tasks at Ward ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... concealment, by presenting me to every other boy who came back, great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this form of introduction, 'Look here! Here's a game!' Happily, too, the greater part of the boys came back low-spirited, and were not so boisterous at my expense as I had expected. Some of them certainly did dance about me like wild Indians, and the greater part could not resist the temptation of pretending that I was a dog, and patting and soothing me, lest I should bite, and saying, 'Lie down, sir!' ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... me more pleasure than his dear, long-wished-for visit. At nine o'clock Fritz and I went to tea at the Prince Regent's; we four were alone together. The Princess was rather low and unwell, the Prince low-spirited, and I thinking of nothing but Affie and of how dear he is. While we were sitting at tea we received bad news from Sans Souci,[3] but nothing to make us particularly uneasy. Fritz and I went home and to bed, not being in a humour to sit ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... dreaded it so! Ain't he handsome? He's old, though—thirty-five! He's broken-hearted, too! Somebody died, or something else, that he was going to be married to, ever so many years ago; and they say he hasn't hardly spoken to a lady since. That's so romantic! I don't wonder he preaches such low-spirited kind of sermons. Only I wish they warn't quite so. I suppose it's beautiful, and heavenly minded, and all that; but yet I'd rather hear something a little kind of cheerful. Don't you think so? But the poetry was elegant—warn't it? I guess it's original, too. They say he ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... reply, but she pressed his hand. Then, after a moment's silence, she said, 'My Ferdinand must not be low-spirited about dear Armine. I have confidence in our destiny; I see a happy, a ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... may be virtuous, and wise, and good, but two candles will not do for animal spirits. Every night the room in which I sit is lighted up like a town after a great naval victory, and in this cereous galaxy, and with a blazing fire, it is scarcely possible to be low-spirited; a thousand pleasing images spring up in the mind, and I can see the little blue demons scampering off like parish boys pursued by ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... Bassano gave a ball in honor of the queen, and Hortense, although low-spirited and indisposed, summoned her resolution to her aid, and arrayed herself for the occasion. Her blond hair, that reached to her feet when unbound, was dressed in the ancient Greek style, and adorned with a wreath of flowers, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... reconsider his unfortunate decision. I have intimated to him that the burden of the business is too much for me, and that he must be extremely at a loss for the services of one to whom he was so much accustomed, and whose situation, I am confident, nobody else can satisfactorily fill. He went to bed very low-spirited. I ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... tell us that God blessed Donne and his wife "with so mutual and cordial affections, as in the midst of their sufferings made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of dull and low-spirited people." It was not for Walton to go in search of small blemishes in him whom he regarded as the wonder of the world—him whose grave, mournful friends "strewed ... with an abundance of curious and costly flowers," as Alexander the Great strewed the grave ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... business affairs prospering. As for my mother, she was afraid even to say a word, or to weep aloud, for fear of still further angering him. Gradually she sickened, grew thinner and thinner, and became taken with a painful cough. Whenever I reached home from school I would find every one low-spirited, and my mother shedding silent tears, and my father raging. Bickering and high words would arise, during which my father was wont to declare that, though he no longer derived the smallest pleasure or relaxation from life, and had spent his last coin ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... as low-spirited as I was," she said after a pause. "If Miss Kathleen will do something for Aunt Church, it stands to reason that Aunt Church won't ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... especially when I got up of a morning, produced by the strange manner in which I saw things going on in our family; and to dispel it in some degree, I had been in the habit of taking a dram before breakfast. On the morning in question, feeling particularly low-spirited when I thought of the foolish step our governor would probably take before evening, I took two drams before breakfast; and after breakfast, feeling my melancholy still continuing, I took another, which produced a slight effect upon my head, though I am convinced ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... that the world could do to him. How could he be really unhappy while he possessed such an assurance of love as this, and while his mother was able to give him so glorious an example of endurance? He was not really unhappy. The low-spirited broken-hearted wretchedness of the preceding day seemed to have departed from him as he hurried on his clothes, and went off to his sister's room that he might show his letter to Emmeline in accordance with the promise he ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... much better than trying to compose them myself. You must get the book for me. But, Edna, don't go to school to-day, stay at home with me; I am so lonely and low-spirited. I will tell Mr. Hammond that I could not spare you. Beside, I want you to help me arrange some valuable relics belonging to my son, and now that I think of it, he told me he wished you to use any of his books or MSS. that you might like ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... suffering with a fearful headache to-day, yet, as your note of Wednesday is received, I must write. I am grieved to find that you are so wretchedly low-spirited. * * * On Wednesday, the 20th of November, K. sent me the telegram I send you. If he is not in earnest, what does it mean? What is the rate of expenses that B. has gone to in my business, that he dares to withhold my immense amount of goods? ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... to the subject of travelling—and fatigue. "When one begins," he says, "to be low-spirited and dejected, to yawn often and be drowsy, when the appetite is impaired, when the smallest movement occasions a fluttering of the pulse, when the mouth becomes dry, and is sensible of a bitter taste, seek refreshment and repose, if you ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... a low-spirited sort of way, characteristic of Mrs. Beecot, but with a true motherly heart. After two pages of lamentation over his absence, and a description of how the head of the household managed to bear up against the ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... him perfectly; be sure I do him justice. He has had losses, des malheurs, as we say. He is very low-spirited, and his daughter is too much for him. He is the pink of respectability, and he has sixty years of honesty on his back. All this I perfectly appreciate. But I know my fellow-men and my fellow-Parisians, and I will make a bargain with you." Newman gave ear to his bargain and he went on. "He would ...
— The American • Henry James

... now—I shall see you at dinner. Wilson will be delighted when he hears that you have got round again, for he was low-spirited about it, I can tell you, which is more ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... time to time, we raised much money for our school. I cannot, in words, express the valuable aid these people gave us in our work. Sometimes when I had worked hard all day with poor results, I would go to their home in the evening discouraged and low-spirited, but would always find there a hearty welcome and a word of cheer. I would always leave with new zeal and fresh courage. Their home has been to me a home now for twenty years and although they are now dead, I never go to ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... summer of 1782, when Cowper was low-spirited, Lady Austen told him in lively fashion the story upon which he founded the ballad of "John Gilpin." Its original hero is said to have been a Mr. Bayer, who had a draper's shop in London, at the corner of Cheapside. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... you of. He was in love, and clandestinely engaged to a young lady, whose family were wealthy and would not for a moment hear of the match. I was his only confidante, and he liked to come in evenings and talk to me of Helen. Sometimes, seeing me so lonely and low-spirited, he would stay with me within half an hour of Harry's return; but Heaven knows neither he nor I ever dreamed it could be wrong. No harm might ever have come of it, for my husband knew and liked him, but for that gambling companion, whose ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... you become low-spirited!" she exclaimed. "It is a great pity your kind friend has gone away. But doubtless you will ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... not say that. As proof that I do care I will give you my whole confidence, I will be absolutely honest with you. Will you think me very low-spirited if I tell you that a man still holds a place in my life—a man who cares nothing for me? I ought to forget him—my pride should make it possible, and yet I can not, and somehow I do not ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... we shall be; I shall be low-spirited because I know that Madame will be alone; you, hard and savage as you wish to appear, will be sighing all the while. Take me with you to Madame's dinner, and that will be a delightful surprise. I am sure we shall be very merry; you were ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... time Dotty would have laughed heartily. It was so absurd for a child to be lonesome when there were three in the bed! But Dotty was too low-spirited even to smile. Mrs. Rosenberg came up and boxed Rosina's ears; and after that the ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May

... appointed, I made my appearance at Trianon, and had the honour to dine tete-a-tete with Her Majesty, which was much more congenial to my feelings than if there had been a party, as I was still very low-spirited ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... Irritable, crabbed, and low-spirited, his campaign had proved a disastrous failure. Instead of planning battles, he had planned pillaging and foraging expeditions, and his hungry and disaffected army had converted the rich fields of Bohemia into a gloomy and desolate waste. At last succoring winter came to the help of the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... cold he caught last week at New-park. Princess Emily came thither to fish, and he, who is grown quite indolent, and has not been out of a hot room this twelve- month, sat an hour and a half by the water side. He was in great danger one day, and more low-spirited than ever I knew him, though I think that grows upon him with his infirmities. My sister was at his bedside; I came into the room,-he burst into tears and could not speak to me - but he is quite well now; though I cannot say I think he will preserve his life long, as he has ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... declined behind a birch on a distant hill and it seemed a tree with a blazing heart of fire. The great golden willow at the lane gate was laughter-shaken in the wind of evening. Even amid all the changes of our shifting world we could not be hopelessly low-spirited—except Sara Ray, who was often so, and Peter, who was rarely so. But Peter had been sorely vexed in spirit for several days. The time was approaching for the October issue of Our Magazine and he had no genuine fiction ready for it. He had taken so much to heart Felicity's taunt that ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... were, oxygen from the air." This oxygen is the only stimulating drink we can take with lasting advantage to ourselves for the purpose of invigorating our strength. It is the wine and spirit of life, an abundance of which Nature has supplied us with ready-made. If you are low-spirited, drink oxygen. Take active exercise in the open air and inhale it. When next you see a lawn tennis player hard at a strenuous game, remember he or she is not necessarily overstraining or injuring health, but taking long, deep draughts ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... in the street where this tavern of despair frowned amid congenial desolation. Nobody welcomed us at the door—the sign creaked dolefully, as the wind swung it on its rusty hinges. We walked in, and discovered a low-spirited little man sitting at an empty "bar," and hiding himself, as it were, from all mortal inspection behind the full sheet of a dirty provincial newspaper. Doleful was our petition to this secluded publican for shelter ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... come out with him. One was a low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face; who kept his hands continually in the pockets of his scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and dog's-eared from that custom; and was not particularly well brushed or washed. The other, a full sized, sleek, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... said Agafea Mihalovna. "The dog now...why, she understands that her master's come home, and that he's low-spirited." ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... that low-spirited I do not know how to talk to her. She has little to say, and sits with her seam, and her eyes cast down, and all her pretty, merry ways are gone far away. I wonder where! Do you think she is ill, Christina?" ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... that the tragic occurrences through which he had passed would have made Matt melancholy and low-spirited, but such was not the case. Mrs. Lincoln had naturally been of a light heart, and the boy partook of much of his mother's disposition. He loved a free-and-easy life, loved to roam from place to place. With a captain who was a friend of Uncle Dan, he had made ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... camping in the midst of unspoilt nature, I never felt depressed, no matter what happened, and was absolutely regardless of climatic conditions; but in those miserable settlements—feeble attempts at civilization—I must confess that I used to get low-spirited too, and often thought what an idiot I had been to leave my happy homes in Florence and in London, in order to come to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... She felt low-spirited and out of sorts that turn of the year. It was worse than rheumatism.... Then she suddenly conceived the idea that it was the rheumatism "driven inside her." Joanna had heard many terrible tales of people who had perished through quite ordinary ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... you?" shouted Mr. Williams, his roving glance searching ambient heights. Another low-spirited yodel reaching his ear, he perceived the head and shoulders of his friend projecting above the roofridge of the stable. The rest of Penrod's body was concealed from view, reposing upon the opposite slant of the gable ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... were rather low-spirited, hunger making them very quiet and peaceable; and there was rarely an oath to be heard in the camp—not even a solitary enfant de garce. It was time for the men with an expected supply of provisions from Mr. Fitzpatrick to be in the neighborhood; and the gun ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... Etherington in a manner so sudden and unaccountable—the obvious ill-humour of Lady Penelope—and the steady, though passive, sullenness of Lady Binks, spread among the company a gloom like that produced by an autumnal mist upon a pleasing landscape. The women were low-spirited, dull, nay, peevish, they did not well know why; and the men could not be joyous, though the ready resource of old hock and champagne made some of them talkative.—Lady Penelope broke up the party by well-feigned apprehension of the difficulties, nay, dangers, of returning by so rough a road. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... blind king of the winter months, was Balder's brother, and as unlike him as darkness is unlike daylight. While one rejoiced, and was merry and cheerful, the other was low-spirited and sad. While one scattered sunshine and blessings everywhere, the other carried with him a sense of cheerlessness and gloom. Yet the ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... necessarily an irritable one, and the suspense which some bear with constitutional indifference or philosophical resignation, and some with a disposition to believe and hope the best, was intolerable to Lady Forester, at once solitary and sensitive, low-spirited, and devoid of strength of mind, whether ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... a sort of holiday for Toby. That's the fact. He didn't seem to wait so long for a sixpence in the wind, as at other times; the having to fight with that boisterous element took off his attention, and quite freshened him up, when he was getting hungry and low-spirited. A hard frost too, or a fall of snow, was an Event; and it seemed to do him good, somehow or other—it would have been hard to say in what respect though, Toby! So wind and frost and snow, and perhaps a good stiff storm of hail, were Toby ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... arrived, Frank was low-spirited and moody, but very glad to see me. I brought him up here at once. He seemed overjoyed at meeting Selma, and would not let her go out of his sight for a moment. Still he appeared excited and uneasy, till I met him at the supper table. Then he was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... nothing but iced champagne; and therefore in the earlier part of the dinner, whilst others were engaged in eating, he kept talking loudly and telling stories. But at dessert, on the contrary, and when the general conversation began to be lively, he became serious, silent, and sometimes low-spirited. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... not low-spirited at all, and though her voice sounds rather hysterical, it is merely her manner of speaking, slightly accentuated perhaps by more trouble than usual. She is fairly well used to such events by now. Yarty himself is angry. His ordinary habits are bound to be upset ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... have suffered more than you. Forgive me; much should be forgiven a man who has suffered much. My imagination is subject to the wildest alarms. Great, unlooked-for joy has rendered me mistrustful. I have been especially low-spirited of late. After having resolutely fought against my happiness, I tremble now lest it escape me; it appears to me too beautiful not to prove only a dream. To be loved by you! How can I help fearing to lose the great boon? Each ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... little Eva!" said St. Clare, trembling as he spoke, but speaking cheerfully, "you've got nervous and low-spirited; you mustn't indulge such gloomy thoughts. See here, I've ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... bad; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular statements A to Z; and that Jupe 'must be kept to it.' So Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... Performance has not yet begun. The Audience is limited, and low-spirited, and may perhaps number—including the Attendants—eighteen. The only people in the front seats are, a man in full evening dress, which he tries to conceal under a caped cloak, and two Ladies in plush opera-cloaks. Fog is hanging about in the rafters, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... past had been worried, thoughtful, and low-spirited, was almost cheerful this evening. She was amusing herself with blowing about the fluffy feathers which Noemi was wearing in her hair. The latter, languid and absent-minded, with a dreamy look in her eyes, was replying in monosyllables to Mme. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... he had with the Duke was at the time of the Reform Bill, when he went down with him for a week to Strathfieldsaye, during which time he was more low-spirited and silent than Croker said he ever saw him before or since. He reproached himself for what he had done, particularly about Catholic Emancipation, the repeal of the Test Act, and his resignation ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... darling, that you love him, but you cannot love a mean, low-spirited creature; and if he prove to be such, let us be thankful ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... came over for a week. They stayed in rooms, in the Avenue de l'Opera. They visited shops, theatres, and friends, and Lady Pinkerton began a novel about Paris life. Clare had been run down and low-spirited, and the doctor had suggested a change of scene. Hobart was in Paris for the week-end; he dined with the Pinkertons and went to the theatre with them. But on Monday he had to ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay

... placed them therefore, to use his own words as attributed to him by my informant, "between the flattery of the dazzling world without, and the silence of his chamber of study and meditation." They no doubt answered their object, in rendering the possessor at times low-spirited, since they were certainly likely to have that effect even upon a stranger. On the day of my introduction, however, I had little time for observation. My name had been announced, and I passed rapidly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... just? The very best things we have! It is a pity your modesty doesn't equal your taste. I should miss the smallest thing we have made; and whenever I get low-spirited, I turn them all out of the box and gloat over the collection—eleven pin-cushions, three sets of mats, a table centre, three work-bags, two handkerchief sachets, six babies' shoes, and a nice wool shawl! It's ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... I shall not regret it. If ever I'm low-spirited about anything, I'll think of giving Mr. Beaton his freedom, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... enough, and their songs always seem like rejoicings over our reconciliation that day ever so long ago; you remember, don't you, Fred? but I should like a bird very much to give to Miss Schomberg; she seems low-spirited, and says she is often very lonely. A bird would be nice company for her, shall we ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... this little story wanted dearly to be told. It used to wait about where people were telling stories, and when a story was ended and the merry laugh went round, it would say to itself, "Now they will certainly tell me," but they never did. So at last this little story got quite low-spirited and wandered off by itself out of the house, and through the garden into the orchard, and there in the orchard, under an apple-tree, there was a little girl lying fast asleep among the buttercups and daisies. The little story looked all around to see that ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... consisted of some young gentlemen who were having their hair powdered in order to go to an attack on the castle. Arthur, the originator of the enterprise, also made what proved to be a dangerous revelation. He engaged his brother, a doctor, in the scheme. The brother grew so nervous and low-spirited that his wife, seeing that something was amiss with him, gave him no rest until he had revealed the secret. She, perhaps to save her husband, perhaps from Whig proclivities, instantly sent an anonymous letter to Sir Adam Cockburn, lord justice-clerk ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Mr. Pickwick felt very low-spirited and uncomfortable when he was left alone, and he went slowly to bed. He was awakened from his slumbers by the noise of his bed-fellows, one of whom, wearing grey cotton stockings, was performing a hornpipe; while another, evidently very drunk, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... hears the Aasgaardsreija coming, one must throw oneself on the ground and pretend that one sleeps. If one does this not, one is carried away by the troop, and struck down in a fainting-fit in a place far distant from where one was. People often, after this, are low-spirited and melancholy all their days. But the virtuous, who throw themselves down immediately on the approach of the troop, suffer nothing, excepting that every one of the airy company spits upon him in passing; when the ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer

... ladyship's flunkey, to beg me to go to her, whom he described as in a state of desperation. Christianity required that I should obey the summons; so, with what haste I could, thinking that perhaps, as she had been low-spirited for some time about the young laird's going to the Indies, she might have got a cast of grace, and been wakened in despair to the state of darkness in which she had so long lived, I made as few ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... sapphire, sapphirine, amethystine, turquoise, ultramarine, sky-colored; livid, ecchymosed; rigorous, severe; (Colloq.) melancholy, downhearted, depressed, despondent, dejected, low-spirited, dispirited, hypochondriac, chapfallen, gloomy, (Colloq.) gloomy, inauspicious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in the stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to the country that summer ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... the beginning of July, on a very bright and hot day. Sitting by the door of the railway-carriage, he watched the trees and the strangely built little houses in the outskirts of Paris fly past. He felt low-spirited, and vexed at having yielded to that new longing, and at having broken through his usual habits. The view, which was continually changing, and always the same, wearied him. He was thirsty; he would ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... came over me until lately how much good that old woman did in the world. I remember what a comfort it was to go and talk with her. Well, I am getting into a frame of mind to want to be an Aunt Hepsy. There is so much sawdust in everything—No, I'm not low-spirited. I'm just philosophical—I've a mind to write a life of Aunt Hepsy, and let the world see what a real useful ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... despondency. I am at present not very well. I do not mean that I have any specific illness, but headaches and side-aches, so that I am one moment in a state of feverish excitement and the next nervous and low-spirited; this is not a good account, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... low-spirited, senor," she said. "I have so hoped that you would find the treasure you wanted, and marry this lady you love, and it would be such joy for us to have in some small way repaid the service you rendered us, that I felt quite ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... Diana touched the bell, and when the waiter made his appearance gave the order. She felt low-spirited and nervous, in spite of the discovery that her father was alive and well; and indeed the extraordinary events of the last few days were sufficient ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... "I was low-spirited this morning, Katy," said Mrs. Redburn, when the physician had gone. "I really felt as though my end was rapidly approaching. I am sorry I mentioned my ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic

... help feeling that there was some shadow hanging over the Hartley family. They were never sad or low-spirited, but sometimes Mrs. Hartley would sigh, or Grandma Cromarty would look anxious, as if at ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells

... for a long time, I went up to my room and to bed; I was low-spirited and sad, sad, sad! and I sat at my window. Not a sound could be heard outside but the beautiful warbling of a bird in a tree, somewhere in the distance. No doubt the bird was singing in a low voice during the night, to lull ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... upon which I have ever touched a native. The truth was that I had not the slightest intention of being buried. I wanted to live and marry Marie, not to die and be put in a hole by Hans. Only I saw no prospect of marrying Marie, or even of seeing her again, and that was why I felt low-spirited. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... them only a week, and, though the dear old ladies had tried their best to make her happy, they had not succeeded very well, for she was unlike any child they had ever seen, and they felt very much as if they had the care of a low-spirited butterfly. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... afraid to approach us, until the interpreter went and told her that neither we nor the Indian who remained with us, would prevent her from going where she pleased. Upon this she came to solicit a fire-steel and kettle. She was at first low-spirited, from the non-arrival of a country-woman who had promised to elope with her, but had probably been too narrowly watched. The Indian hunter, however, having given her some directions as to the proper mode of joining her own tribe, she ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin

... heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen Princes and Princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with the Princess ...
— The Magic Fishbone - A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Miss Alice Rainbird, Aged 7 • Charles Dickens

... country, or is hidden by the people. A good deal, I have no doubt, has been hidden within a few weeks. The Governor himself laments that he changed a dollar yesterday for two karoubs (two pence) less than its current value in Tripoli. His Excellency is very low-spirited, and very sick. His Excellency prays that the Pasha will allow him to return to Tripoli a few months. Being a good man, the system of extortion which he is obliged to put in practice to meet the demands of the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... that all sort of justice passes in the world for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity of royal greatness. Or at least, there are set up two sorts of justice; the one is mean, and creeps on the ground, and therefore becomes none but the lower part of mankind, and so must be ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... should be quite happy, dear Anthony, if I could see you looking so. But you are ill and low-spirited; I read it all in your dim eye and dejected looks. Come, sit down, and take a cup of tea. You have eaten nothing all day. Here is a nice fowl, delicately cooked, which Ruth prepared for your especial benefit. Do let me ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... rest, now—modified by searchings for the lost trail. I was tired to death, mother, and low-spirited, and sometimes coming uncomfortably near to losing hope; but the miners in this little camp are good fellows, and I am used to their sort this long time back; and their breezy ways freshen a person up and make him forget his troubles. I have been here a month. I am cabining ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... reason Rachel did not seem as low-spirited as usual that evening. Capt. Bowling entertained them with narratives of his personal adventures, and it was later than usual when the lamps were put out, and they ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... forgive easily, I fear, Mr. McNeil," said she, in a low tone, "but I will try and think less bitterly of that unpleasant affair in the future. I would be sorry to think that I had, even unintentionally, spoiled your life; but you will not feel so low-spirited when you get stronger. The best years of your life are yet before you, and I will soon drop out of your memory as entirely as if you had never known me. Forget me as soon as you can; that is the best wish I can ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... for a bath, having found a sheltered horse trough behind a broken wall, I took Mr. Burton for a walk through the town in an endeavor to bring him to a more cheerful frame of mind. He was still very low-spirited, but he offered no confidences until we approached the only undestroyed building in sight. He stopped then ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... should care much for that, if I could fight the battle through and win it, thus ending a life of much smoulder and a scanty fire in a blaze of glory. But I should smother myself in mud of my own making.... I am not low-spirited, nor fanciful, nor freakish, but look what seem to me realities in the face, and am ready to take whatever may come. If I could but go to England now, I think that the sea-voyage and the 'old Home' ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... left the master came into the stable to give some directions, and to give his horses the last pat. He seemed very low-spirited; I knew that by his voice. I believe we horses can tell more by the ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... the money, Robert, you may stop at the store and buy a quarter of a pound of their cheapest tea. I am afraid it's extravagant in me to buy tea when there's so little coming in, but it cheers me up when I get low-spirited and helps me to bear what I have ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger



Words linked to "Low-spirited" :   dejected, low, down, downhearted, dispirited, grim, blue, low-spiritedness, downcast, down in the mouth, depressed, gloomy



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com