"Poignancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quick, praevernal Power That signall'st punctual through the sleepy mould The Snowdrop's time to flower, Fair as the rash oath of virginity Which is first-love's first cry; O, Baby Spring, That flutter'st sudden 'neath the breast of Earth A month before the birth; Whence is the peaceful poignancy, The joy contrite, Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight, That burthens now the breath of everything, Though each one sighs as if to each alone The cherish'd pang were known? At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart, With it the Blackbird ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... Van Lennop claimed his dance. She grew white even to her lips, and her knees shook unaccountably beneath her as she watched Dr. Harpe glide the length of the room in Van Lennop's arms. The momentary pain she felt in her heart had the poignancy of an actual stab. It was so—so unexpected; he had so unequivocally ranged himself upon her side, he had seen so plainly Dr. Harpe's illy-concealed venom and resented it in his quiet way, as she had thought, that this seemed like disloyalty, and in the first shock of ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... sobs struggled up into her throat and shook her from head to foot. For a while she was caught and tossed on great waves of anguish that left her hardly conscious of anything but the blind struggle against their assaults. Then, little by little, she began to relive, with a dreadful poignancy, each separate stage of her poor romance. Foolish things she had said came back to her, gay answers Harney had made, his first kiss in the darkness between the fireworks, their choosing the blue brooch ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... The poignancy of forcemeat should be proportioned to the savouriness of the viands, to which it is intended to give an additional zest. Some dishes require a very delicately flavoured forcemeat, for others, it must be full and high seasoned. What would be piquante in a turkey, would be insipid ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... The husband in such a partnership gains less attention; at the most, he is allowed a subordinate share of the common stock of woe. The clean case for observation—he miserable, she miles away from any such poignancy of emotion—was presented by Coralie's consistency. It was not in her to make a bargain and pull grimaces when she was asked to fulfil it. True, she interpreted it in her own way. "I promised to marry you. Well, I have. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... he reproached her, or perhaps himself, for it seemed, in the poignancy of his tenderness, as if he should have had it burning night and day. He set a match to the kindling and the flame answered it. She had taken one of the chairs at the hearth and he saw, in the leaping ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... yet put forth, and quite too deliciously torturing to the reviewer, whose only garden is in Spain.... The delightful humor which pervaded the earlier books, and without which Barbara would not be Barbara, has lost nothing of its poignancy."—Congregationalist. ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... there are few, very few, we suppose, who are not connected by the ties of blood, the bonds of matrimony, or the relation of father to child, who are all affected by such degradation as the gambler visits upon himself, and who feel the bitter poignancy of the stroke with greater force than he whose heart has been gradually but surely abased. While a man has a single relation or friend, he should not gamble; and if he stood alone in the world, with no friend, the fear of the eternal ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... laboratory was instantly blotted out in a swirling chaos of ruddy radiance that swept him up and away like a chip upon a tidal wave. There was a long moment during which he seemed to hurtle helplessly through a universe of swirling tinted mists, while great electric waves tingled with exquisite poignancy through ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... without capitulating to it. Then I hear of her having done Lady Teazle and Imogen, the Fiammetta of Catulle Mendes and the Salome of Hauptmann; I do not know even the names of half the parts she has played, but I can imagine her playing them all, not with the same poignancy and success, but with a skill hardly varying from one to another. There is no doubt that she has a natural genius for acting. This genius she has so carefully and so subtly trained that it may strike ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... listened while a woman who had been near San Francisco at the time of the earthquake and fire endeavoured to describe what was in truth indescribable, how the very air itself was at that time charged with a poignancy of agony—an impalpable spiritual agony, apart from such physical cause as heat and fire, an agony which arose from the grief ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... suddenly destroyed and put down by the nearest of his kin." For this he had allowed the murder of young Mar and driven Alexander of Albany into exile; but who can wonder if in his stricken soul he now perceived or imagined that no man can cheat the Fates? His own son, his boy! Some nobler poignancy of anguish than the mere sick despair and panic of the coward must surely have been in his mind as he realised this last and crowning horror. The profound moral discouragement of a man caught in the toils, and for whom no escape was possible; the sickening sense ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... a moment's silence, a silence which in this corner of the great room seemed marked with a certain poignancy. It was the Prime ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... subtilest, indefinable fascination which belongs only to imaginative reminiscence. In the future, I suppose, all this existence will have become such a childhood, its earth changed to sky, its dulness sharpened to a tender, delicious poignancy of allurement and suggestion. And were it not bliss enough for an immortality, this boundless deepening and refining of experience through memory and imagination? Only to feel thrilling in one's being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... integrity, and good sense, particularly animated by an honest indignation which the wrongs of his country had inspired. The earl of Chesterfield attacked this inglorious measure with all the weight of argument, and all the poignancy of satire. The duke of Argyle, no longer a partisan of the ministry, inveighed against it as infamous, treacherous, and destructive, with all the fire, impetuosity, and enthusiasm of declamation. It was defended with unequal arms by the duke of Newcastle, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... imitation of the several styles of his enemies, in which their peculiarities were so closely copied, and their extraneous passages (particularly those of Bach of Hamburgh) so inimitably burlesqued, that they all felt the poignancy of his musical wit, confessed ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... expression of her countenance had been one more of sorrow than of anger. The tone of melancholy reproach in which she had uttered the words: "I did not expect this from you, Monsieur de Buxieres!" seemed to convey the hope that he might, one day, be forgiven. At the same time, the poignancy of his regret showed him how much hold the young girl had taken upon his affections, and how cheerless and insipid his life would be if he were obliged to continue on unfriendly ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mentioned her father, and when she did it was usually connected with some phase of life over the mountains. I believe that she was so thankful to know he escaped the torture that his death lost much of poignancy. Only once did she revert to his taking off, and ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... almost intuitive in its passion, so subtly did it"—oh, do all sorts of things!—and "handling the plastic outlines of the theme with rare emotional skill and mastery of technique," "purest lyricism lifted to heights of poignancy,"—all that sort of stuff, you know. Next time a writer, or, better still, a fiddler or a pianist comes to your town, look in your home paper the morning after, and ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... dug his fingers and toes into the grass and bit a mouthful of it to stifle the cry wrung from him by the torturing poignancy of it. Was ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Maisie's illness and the fear of it which more than anything had held back their passion. Without that warning fear they were exposed at every turn. It might be there, waiting for them in the background, but, with Maisie going about as if nothing had happened, even remorse had lost its protective poignancy. They suffered the strain of perpetual frustration. They were never alone together now. They had passed from each other, beyond all contact of spirit with spirit and flesh with flesh, beyond all words and looks of longing; they had nothing of each ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... nature was her rapt and absolute perception of the Love of God, as the supreme reality in the universe. This Love, as manifested in creation, in redemption, and in the sacrament of the Altar, is the theme of her constant meditations. One little phrase, charged with a lyric poignancy, sings itself again and again, enlightening her more sober prose: "For nails would not have held God-and-Man fast to the Cross, had love not held Him there." Her conceptions are positive, not negative, and joyous adoration is the substance ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... with a sound like the rumbling of an earth-quake, broke away, and swept us along in its dreadful course. Now did it seem, indeed, as if we had been tempted with hope, only that we might feel to its full extent of poignancy the bitterness of absolute despair. I yielded in hopeless inactivity to the current; my companion, in the meantime, was separated from me—and I felt as if fate had singled out me, alone, as the victim; but, while thus yielding ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... well, to a certain degree, that we felt so. It softened the poignancy of our reflections over the difference in the condition of ourselves and our ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... least symptom of regret or compassion for her unhappy fate, the perfidious youth had exulted over her fall, and even made her a subject for his mirth, the blood revisited her faded cheeks, and resentment restored to her eyes that poignancy which sorrow had before overcome. Yet she scorned to give speech to her indignation; but, forcing a smile, "Why should I repine," said she, "at the mortifications of a life which I despise, and from which, I hope, Heaven speedily will set ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... an object on earth. Shrinking even from the affectionate attentions of his family, he went at once to Wiseton, where he passed several months in complete retirement ... his grief was too deeply seated to be otherwise than lasting; and for many years its poignancy remained unabated." ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... at which I give up my attempts, and admit my stupidity to be incurable. I grant "J.B." his "Auld Lang Syne." I grant the poignancy of— ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... we had romped together as children. How queer the place seemed! How shrivelled! Once it had had the wide range of a park. There, still weathering the elements, was the old-fashioned latticed summer-house, but the fruit-trees that I recalled as clouds of pink and white were gone.... A touch of poignancy was in these memories. I dropped the curtain, and turned to confront Nancy, who ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... reference to this. An impression of Justin as of something noble and firm seemed to emanate from the room where he lay and fill the house; in his complete abdication, he dominated as never before. More than that, there seemed to be a peculiar poignancy, a peculiar sweetness, in every little thing done for him; it made one honorable ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... etc.... And not only Frenchmen, but Americans, Argentinians, Australians, etc. etc.... Thousands of little children, without their parents' knowledge, took pen in hand and wrote to tell him their love: most of them called him Our Father. And there was poignancy about their effusions, their adoration, these sighs of deliverance that escaped from thousands of hearts at the defeat of barbarism. To all these naif little souls, Joffre seemed like St. George crushing the dragon. Certainly he incarnated for the conscience of mankind the victory of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... generally afford to be sincere, while romantic plays live in an atmosphere of ingenuity and make-believe. The Iphigenia is not of the same order as The Trojan Women. Yet it is a delightful play; subtle, ever-changing, full of movement and poignancy. The recognition scene became to Aristotle a model of what such a scene should be; and the long passage before it, from the entrance of the two princes onward, seems to me one of the most skilful and ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... was on an upper plateau, where questions as to beauty are answered by other than the shallow aspect of a girl. But would Henrietta eclipse her if they were side by side? Fleetwood recalled the strange girl's face. There was in it a savage poignancy in serenity unexampled among women—or modern women. One might imagine an apotheosis of a militant young princess of Goths or Vandals, the glow of blessedness awakening her martial ardours through the languor of the grave:—Woodseer would comprehend and hit on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... symptoms developed themselves with a rapidity and poignancy that made Fisher feel uncommonly anxious. Savitch's face became as white as marble—its paleness rendered startling by the sharp contrast of the black skull cap. His form reeled as he sat on the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... achieve a singular beauty. The absurdity that clung to everything connected with Dirk Stroeve gave it a curious note, like an unresolved discord, but made it somehow more modern, more human; like a rough joke thrown into a serious scene, it heightened the poignancy which all ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... You see an original genius both in the beauties and the faults of the work. Its language, so simply strong and daring in its homeliness, its free and energetic motion, its fresh fearless touch, its fidelity to nature and to life, the quick succession and sharp brief poignancy of its pictures, its absence of elaboration, and carelessness about minute lights and shades—all combine to prove that the author has an eye, an imagination, and a purpose quite peculiar to himself. He treats "the Grave" with as much originality as if he had been contemporary with ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... sings, with a fine poignancy, bold and new in the very delicacy of texture, in the sharp impinging of these gentlest sounds. In the depths of the dirge suddenly, though quietly, sounds the herald melody high in the wood, with ever firmer cheer, soon in golden horns, at last in impassioned ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... May 7, 1918. Captain Ball has finished the killing in the only way boys can finish the killing now, for he is dead. The last words, Requiescat in pace, have a new poignancy in days when children are growing up who ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... ambiguous expressions in the constitution; but it is not known to what extent, or in what manner he exercises it; nor upon what occasions he is contradicted or opposed. The censure of a bad appointment, on account of the uncertainty of its author, and for want of a determinate object, has neither poignancy nor duration. And while an unbounded field for cabal and intrigue lies open, all idea of responsibility is lost. The most that the public can know, is that the governor claims the right of nomination; that TWO out of the inconsiderable number of FOUR men can too often be managed without ...
— The Federalist Papers
... withered heart for a young heart; to smile upon illusions which now I cannot share, to cause happiness in which I should either have no belief, or tremble to lose? I should perhaps respond to his devotion with egoism, should weigh and deliberate while he felt; my memory would resent the poignancy of his happiness. No, if you love once, that love is never replaced, you see. Indeed, who would have my heart ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... that showed that Wrackham ought never to have been there; but there he was; and when you think of the unspeakable solemnity and poignancy of the occasion it really is rather awful that the one vivid impression I have left of it is of Charles Wrackham; Charles Wrackham under the yew tree; Charles Wrackham leaning up against a pillar (he remained standing during the whole of the service in the church) ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... I was performing my ablutions, guess my mortification, when a huge rat running from his hole leaped into the dish which was placed upon the floor. I was near fainting with agony at the sight, and could not refrain from tears; but at length recovering from the poignancy of disappointment, the rays of comfort darted upon my mind, and I reflected that as disgrace and imprisonment had instantaneously followed the fortunate recovery of my cup and ring, so this mortification, a greater than which could not have happened, would be immediately ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... he burst out. "I am more concerned about it than I can express. My boy and I are utter strangers to you and we have no way of proving our honesty. All I can say is that we are as much amazed at the turn affairs have taken as yourself, and we regret it with quite as much poignancy—perhaps more since it reflects directly upon us. If there ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... himself—a fraction becoming visible in the warmth of her love as certain secret elements become visible in rare intensities of temperature. And in the case of the objects before her, poor shabby witnesses of his days of failure, what they gave out acquired a special poignancy from its contrast to his present cherished state. His shirts were all in round dozens now, and washed as carefully as old lace. As for his socks, she knew the pattern of every pair, and would have liked to see the washerwoman ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... to it, because after being in the trenches and looking in the face of death as a kind of hobby the feeling of release and lightness that comes over one drives all other troubles clean away. But after a while this feeling seemed to be growing in poignancy. In fact at the end of the first fortnight I mentioned it ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... capable of being stirred, and in society at large will make their main appeal to the fundamental and constant emotions, cultivating the enjoyment of love, fear, and the other elemental passions for the very poignancy and thrill ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... All unconscious of how soon and how wondrously their sorrow was to be turned into joy, the appalling thought was alone present to them in all its fearfulness—"Lazarus is dead!" When He, the God-man Mediator, with the refined sensibilities of His tender heart, beheld the poignancy of that grief, the pent-up torrent of His own human sympathies could be restrained no longer. His tears ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... horrible. And perhaps, after all, he was mistaken; perhaps his dislike of the work had got upon his nerves, and showed him everything in the darkest colours. It could scarcely be as bad as he thought, or human society would be impossible. But argument could not blunt the poignancy of his feelings; he preferred, therefore, to leave them inarticulate, striving to forget. In any case, the ordeal would soon be over; it had to be endured for a few hours more, and then he would plunge ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... life was to be revolutionised. Such an alteration was to take place that even she could not doubt the immense yet incredible result. Then despair whispered its cold-blooded taunts, and her last hopeless words echoed in his ear. But he was too agitated to be calmly miserable, and, in the poignancy of his feelings, he even meditated death. One thing, however, he could obtain; one instant relief was yet in his power, solitude. He panted for the loneliness of his own chamber, broken only by his ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... was no trace in his memory of days when he of a time had been free. Not the faintest recollection existed of the time when he might have swung in the branches of equatorial forests. To him life was a desolation and a despair, and the poignancy of it all was sharpened by the clouds of dust which rolled ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... every inch of him has its own alertness and motion. He has a good head and face, thick black hair, heavy black brows and a keen eye. His figure would be an unfortunate one were it not for the animation which constantly pervades it; as it is, it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small, handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it.... He has two requisites of a debater—a melodious voice and a clear, sharply defined enunciation.... His forte in debating is his power ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... to move again; the instant his sensitive nostrils touched her still, warm body he knew that. But there had been no killing. That was what baffled Finn, and struck a kind of terror into his heart, to lend poignancy to his sorrow. One more look he gave at his mother's sightless face, this time where it rested on the crook of the Master's arm, and then he sat down on his haunches, and with muzzle raised high poured out his grief in the long-drawn Irish ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... instructive sympathy: Alfieri never subtly analysed the anatomy of individual nature, nor did he unconsciously mimic its action and tones; what most of us mean by pathos did not appeal to him. Neither metrical nor imaginative pleasurableness, nor descriptive charm, nor lyric poignancy, nor psychological analysis or intention entered, therefore, into Alfieri's conception of a desirable tragedy, any more than any of these things fell within the range of his special talents; for, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... in her mind, incipient even before he had quite gone, and now defining themselves momently with added poignancy. A woman who, in her retirement at home, charges herself with the control of a man's conduct abroad, is never likely to be devoid of speculation upon probable disasters to ensue upon any abatement of the activities of ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Madame Gregoriev had, more than once, wished—nay, prayed for death. But a hopeless desire and the inevitable reality are generally two widely different things. And the clearest possible proof of the poignancy of the mental suffering of her past life lay in the fact that, fully understanding her position, it was a matter of only a few hours before she could accept, with some show of tranquillity, this last incident of, this fitting climax ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... my mother's than mine was. She has never, as I, lived away from home long enough to become self-dependent, and hence in her first loss, and all that it involved, she drooped like a rain-beaten lily. But she is of a nature whose wounds soon heal, even though they may be deep, and the supreme poignancy of her sorrow has ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to desert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression, nor variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his love of lyricks, that, having written, with great vigour and poignancy, his Epistle to Curio, he transformed it afterwards into an ode disgraceful only to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... love, filled up in some degree the vacuum left by his loss, who was so prematurely ravished from me in the flower of youth, leaving me a widow at eighteen; and though that loss is one I never can replace or forget, the poignancy of its effect has been in a great degree softened by the kindnesses of my excellent father-in-law, the Duc de Penthievre, and the relations resulting from my situation with, and the never-ceasing attachment of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... him sharp, although he affected to disbelieve them, and tried to persuade himself that he did so. But, after all, these cares and disappointments did not touch the root of his deep resentment against Osborne. There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger. And the squire believed that Osborne and his advisers had been making calculations, based upon his own death. He hated the idea so much—it made him so miserable—that he would not face it, and define it, and meet it with full inquiry and investigation. He chose rather to cherish the ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and other terms of rhodomontade in which it was couched. Still it might have succeeded as a mere ruse of war. That it did not succeed was matter for profound chagrin, and the circumstances of insult and humiliation by which the refusal was accompanied added poignancy ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... only my conscience, but also the delicacy of feelings which I undoubtedly possess, that revolted against it. I felt this so deeply that I could not write about it. I have grown more callous since. I still reproach myself from time to time, and seriously reflect, but the feeling has lost its poignancy. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not more, but less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter not now into any question of choice of books; only let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the package of the circulating library, wet with the ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... his gifted son doubtless inherited the handicraft as well as the name; but his position at Court released him from the drudgery of manual labor. He was thus also brought in contact with the luxurious side of life, and became acquainted with those scenes of pleasure which he recalls only to add poignancy to the sorrow with which he contemplates the yesterday of life. Omar's astronomical researches were continued for many years, and his algebra has been translated into French: but his greatest claim to ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... censure of those, who, in planning the expedition, were far more anxious to make discoveries, than to extend their importance by the labours of the naturalist. Considering then from whom it comes, a liberal interpreter would concede a little allowance to its poignancy of complaint. Men very naturally attach superior importance to studies which have long and almost exclusively engrossed their own attention, and are exceedingly apt to ascribe to ignorance, or something still more dishonourable, that indifference to them which those who are in power seem to manifest. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Margaret will need to take Dugald over his mathematics, I fear, before he goes up to the entrance." At which remark the painful feeling which the reciting and singing had caused Barney to forget for the time, returned with even greater poignancy. ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... compassion. But there arose, to call off attention from these less dignified objects of the public interest, a long train of gallant cavaliers, restored so capriciously to liberty, in order, as it seemed, to give the greater poignancy and bitterness to the instant renewal of their captivity. This was the very frenzy of despotism in its very moodiest state of excitement. Many began to think the Landgrave mad. If so, what a dreadful fate might be anticipated for the sons or representatives of so many noble families, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... remembrance of her former wonderful escape inspired her with confidence in the mercy of God. But Hippolitus and Ferdinand were now both lost to her—lost, perhaps, for ever—and the uncertainty of their fate gave force to fancy, and poignancy to sorrow. ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... dissipation, had broken all off decidedly, and no more had been heard of the young man. It was many years previously; but those cheeks and the tone of the reply made her suspect that there was still poignancy in ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... elisions and falsifications. He must remember, too, that his one concern with the one all-prevalent truth in normal existence is jealously to exclude it from his book.... For "living" is to be conscious of an incessant series of less than momentary sensations, of about equal poignancy, for the most part, and of nearly equal unimportance. Art attempts to marshal the shambling procession into trimness, to usurp the role of memory and convention in assigning to some of these sensations an especial prominence, ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... not deem it womanly to explore, unchaperoned, the less well-known quarters of four continents, to penetrate even to regions where skirts were considered improper and side-saddles were unknown. Even the nearness of Miss Desmond's fiftieth birthday hardly lessened at all the poignancy of his disapproval. Besides, she had not always been fifty, and she had always, in his recollection of her, smoked cigarettes, and travelled alone. Yet he had a certain well-founded respect for her judgment, and for that fine luminous common-sense of hers which had more than once shewn ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... to join in an everlasting chorus of praise and glory to our Lord and Saviour! I grieve for our lost darling as a father only can grieve for a daughter, and my sorrow is heightened by the thought of the anguish her death will cause our dear son and the poignancy it will give to the bars of his prison. May God in His mercy enable him to bear the blow He has so suddenly dealt, and sanctify it to ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... That fine air is difficult to breathe long, and life, with its rounds of custom and duty, recalls us. So we descend with the musician, through varying harmonies and sliding modulations. . .deadening the poignancy of the minor third in the more satisfying reassuring chord of the dominant ninth, which again finds its rest on the key-note—C major— the common chord, so sober and uninteresting that it well symbolizes the common level of life, the prosaic ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... If she were not to see him alone again, she might as well ask him to come to the house on Thursday evenings only, and to show her no attention in public; if she could not have the old hours again, she wanted nothing less. And she wanted them passionately; those hours came back to her with a poignancy of happiness in memory that the present had not revealed, and the thought that they had gone for ever filled her with a suffocating anguish that was as complete as it was sudden. She implored him under her breath to come to her, then prayed that ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... herself. Not so much as Mrs. Brindley because she had the necessities of her career gripping her and claiming the strongest feelings there were in her. Also, she was much the younger, not merely in years but in experience. And separations have no real poignancy in them for youth. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... felt a desperate courage to stand his ground. All his sense of suffering, of the shipwreck he had made, and of what he might have to face in the next few days, had become fused into one large poignant emotion. It was an extra poignancy to be aware that Helen would continue to suffer because of his determination to face the consequences. But he was married to Cleo, and, unless she expressly left him, he must ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... comfort. They knew that he loved them. Many times before when he had entered their home he had brought a benediction. They had a feeling of security and peace in his presence. Even their inconsolable grief lost something of its poignancy when the light of his face fell upon them. Every strong, tender, and true human love has a wondrous comforting power. We can pass through a sore trial if a trusted friend is beside us. The believer can endure any sorrow if Jesus is ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... heighten the poignancy of spoken words (which mean nothing in themselves), but words can but rarely, in fact I doubt whether they can ever, heighten the effect of ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... bother about age. Neither of you has any age. And I'm not imploring you to have her. I'm only telling you that she's there for you if you want her. But doesn't she attract you? Isn't she positively irresistible?" She added with poignancy: "I know if I were a man I ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for something excellent in your moral character was that which riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. —— as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... his arrogance; he caused numbers of the most illustrious senators and others to be put to death, upon the most trifling pretences. One AE'lius La'ma was condemned and executed only for jesting, though there was neither novelty nor poignancy in his humour. Occea'nus was murdered only for celebrating the nativity of O'tho. Pomposia'nus shared the same fate, because it was foretold by an astrologer that he should be emperor. Sallus'tius Lucul'lus his lieutenant in Britain, was destroyed ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... heard of persons groaning during prayers, to add a certain poignancy and finish to them; old Jan Vanderlinde, her mother's brother, always did it after he was converted; and she would have looked upon it as no especial sign of grace in any one; but to groan at hymn-time! She ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... to deepen the poignancy of the impending parting—for that she and Garth must part ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... another part—a device used with even more exquisite result in the chorus of "Full fathom five." Purcell is in many ways like Mozart, and in none more than in these incessantly distinctive touches, though in character the touches are as the poles apart. In Mozart, especially when he veils the poignancy of his emotion under a scholastic mode of expression, a sudden tremor in the voice, as it were, often betrays him, and none can resist the pathos of it. Purcell's touches are pathetic, too, in another fashion—pathetic because of the curious sense of human weakness, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... at the western casement. She had thrown aside her hat and coat, and never in all my life had I seen anything so ethereal as the worn face and wasted form she thus disclosed. Had it not been for the haunting and pathetic smile which by some freak of fate gave poignancy to her otherwise infantile beauty, I should not have known the woman who stood there with my name formed ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... moment that began to happen he was the same sweet Peter Measel with the same assurance of every other body's wickedness and his own divinity, only with something new in his young life to add poignancy. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... such mistakes it was inevitable that she should gradually come to lay the blame on Ralph. She found a poignant pleasure, at this stage of her career, in the question: "What does a young girl know of life?" And the poignancy was deepened by the fact that each of the friends to whom she put the question seemed convinced that—had the privilege been his—he would have known how to spare her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... also cried as if her heart would break, catching her indrawn breath with a strange sound of anguish, forlornness, the terrible crying of a woman with a loving heart, whose heart has never been able to relax. Alvina was hushed. In a second, she became the elder of the two. The terrible poignancy of the woman of fifty-two, who now at last had broken down, silenced the girl of twenty-three, and roused all her passionate tenderness. The terrible sound of "Never now, never now—it is too late," which seemed to ring ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... a turn to the conversation; she would not mortify him, but she could neither listen nor understand. He, who was so full of stalwart force, a doomed man, yet calm and happy under his sentence; he, only discovered to be so fondly loved in time to give poignancy to the parting, and yet rejoicing himself in the poor, tardy affection that had answered his manly constancy too late! His very calmness and stillness cut her to the heart, and after some ineffectual ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... decorously shaded by her hand. Above her in the pulpit, the minister in an ecstasy of petition set forth the needs of the church, the state and the individual. Esther did not hear a word until a sudden dropping of his voice forced a certain phrase upon her attention. He was praying, with an especial poignancy for "that blessing which maketh rich ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... and sudden noises; who stands between well-meaning and importunate outsiders and the retirement of the bereaved; who decrees that the last rites shall be performed smoothly and with beauty and gravity, so that the poignancy of grief may in so ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the deserted hamlet pictured by Goldsmith was neither one thing nor the other, but first Irish and then English. Criticism purely aesthetic cannot destroy the poignancy and profoundness of the theme and throughout the touch ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... healer of all sufferings, all sorrows, can do much, but memory clings with a pertinacity which defies all Time's best efforts. Time may soften the poignancy of deep-rooted sorrow, but it cannot shut out altogether the pain of a mother's grief at the loss of an only son. In spite of all Hervey's crimes he was "the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." The story of his villainies was ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... poignancy of every sorrow save those of remorse. Maria was now again in a regal palace, surrounded with every luxury which earth could confer. She was young and beautiful. She was beloved, and almost adored. Every monarch, every prince, every embassador ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Manchester, to act, and if I have any great difficulty or delay to encounter in finding an engagement in London, I shall probably do so.... The step I am about to take is so painful to me that all petty annoyances and minor vexations lose their poignancy in the contemplation of it (a quelque chose—a bien des choses malheur est bon), and having at length made up my mind to it, smaller repugnancies connected with it have ceased to affect me with ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... White chapel or an uneducated ploughman, is not the same to the listener. In one case the sentiment comes to the mind's ear with certain completing and enhancing qualities of sound which give it accuracy and poignancy. The words themselves retain all their possible suggestiveness in the speaker's just and clear enunciation, and have a borrowed beauty, besides, from the associations of fine habit betrayed in the voice and ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... otherwise. No human being can be more delicate than a Chinese woman in her dress, in her behavior, and in her conversation; and should she ever happen to be exposed in any unbecoming manner, she feels with the greatest poignancy the awkwardness of her situation, and if possible, covers her face, that she may not ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... "effects" were astonishingly well contrived by both author and producer (Mr. HOLMAN CLARK). You were not let down at the supreme moment by a hurried shuffle of dimly seen forms or the click of an electrician's gear suggesting too solid flesh. The house was in a queer way stunned by the poignancy of the last scene between the young ghost-mother and the long-sought unrecognised son, and had to shake itself before it could reward with due applause the fine playing of as perfect a cast as I have seen for a long time. There's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... the agony of his sister's suspense. Her face he could not see, but her trembling figure gave evidence of the poignancy of her anguish. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Gustavus (though hitherto too idle to learn much himself) did not see why a man should be sneered at for being an accomplished scholar as well. Therefore he had good foundation for being pleased at the proffered friendship of such a man, and remembering the poignancy of Edward's anguish on the foregoing eve, Gustavus generously resolved to see him at once and offer him the hand which a nice sense of feeling made him withhold the night before. Mounting his pony, an hour's smart riding brought him to Mount ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... no engagement between them, and if she elected to marry in the meantime so much the better, in the squire's opinion. He had had little doubt that Sylvia would marry when she had had time to forget some of the poignancy of first love. But in this he had been mistaken. Sylvia had steadfastly refused every lover who ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... home! The helpless, hopeless sickness of the heart for dear familiar faces! The seeing of alien places through tear-dimmed eyes, the answering to strange voices with an aching throat, and the poignancy of memory! Jim's mind dwelt monotonously on the worn spot in the library hearth rug where he and Uncle Denny had spent so many, many hours. There was the crack in the brown teapot that his mother ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... proud of him, alas! until I began to perceive that, as matters were working, the boy was morally certain to be ashamed of me. This was a hard discovery; and it went hard with me after I had made it. But nothing could reduce the poignancy of the inquiry with which I had first gathered him to my heart, in the solitudes where he had found me lurking: If I were a spiritual outcast, what ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... suffering and they were to be strangers. And united by the memory of what they had endured together in ties closer than those of brotherhood, they clasped each other in a wild embrace, and the kiss that they exchanged at that moment seemed to them to possess a savor and a poignancy such as they had never experienced before in all their life; a kiss such as they never could receive from lips of woman, sealing their undying friendship, giving additional confirmation to the certainty that thereafter their two hearts would be but ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... certain ceremonious jargon, more ridiculous to the ear of reason than the voice of a puppet. You have invented sounds, which you worship, though they tyrannize over your peace; and are surrounded with empty forms, which take from the honest emotions of joy, and add to the poignancy of misfortune." "Sir!" said Harley—his friend winked to him, to remind him of the caution he had received. He was silenced by the thought. The philosopher turned his eye upon him: he examined him from top to toe, with a sort of triumphant contempt; Harley's coat happened to be a new one; ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... character and chapter suspensions, is new, tantalisingly, bewilderingly, refreshingly, new. The colour is toned down, is more sober than the prose of the Eastern stories. Sometimes he employs the personal pronoun, and with what piquancy as well as poignancy may be noted in the volume Youth. This contains three tales, the first, which gives the title-key, has been called the finest short story in English, although it is difficult to discriminate. What could ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Gale rose and walked down a shadowy aisle between the mesquites. On his way back the Yaqui joined him. Gale was not surprised. He had become used to the Indian's strange guardianship. But now, perhaps because of Gale's poignancy of thought, the contending tides of love and regret, the deep, burning premonition of deadly strife, he was moved to keener scrutiny of the Yaqui. That, of course, was futile. The Indian was impenetrable, silent, strange. But suddenly, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... done the deed, but they were obliged to delay their vengeance out of respect for the sacred place (Peace-stead) where they were assembled. They at length gave vent to their grief by loud lamentations, though not one of them could find words to express the poignancy of his feelings. Odin, especially, was more sensible than the others of the loss they had suffered, for he foresaw what a detriment Baldur's death would be to the AEsir. When the gods came to themselves, Frigga asked ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... a thing that was greater than disappointment settled upon him heavily, driving from him his own personal dread of this night's ghastly adventure, and adding to his suspense of the last forty-eight hours a hopelessness the poignancy of which was almost like that of a physical pain. Tavish was dead, and in dying he had taken with him the secret for which David would have paid with all he was worth in this hour. In his despair, as he stood there alone in the cabin, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... ravine, throw into relief the quiet form, detached in look and feeling, as of one upborne by the spirit far above the brutal throng. Nowhere does that spiritual emotion find deeper expression than in the "Visitation." The passion of thanksgiving, the poignancy of mother-love, throb through the two women, who have been travelling towards one another, with a great secret between them, and who at length reach the haven of each other's love and knowledge. Here, too, the dying light, the waving tree, the obliteration of form, and the feeling ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... claim a superiority, for uniform and undeviating dignity, over the Roman satirist. The age, whose appetite for scandal had been profusely fed by lampoons and libels, now learned, that there was a more elevated kind of satire, in which poignancy might be united with elegance, and energy of thought with harmony of versification. The example seems to have produced a strong effect. No poet, not even Settle (for even the worst artist will improve from beholding a masterpiece), afterwards ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... will no longer intrude upon your grief. When time has somewhat assuaged the poignancy of your affliction, I will again call on you to ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Being, when we were both young, in sore straits, and hard pressed for money, he parted with this talisman to me, on condition that after his death I should return it to his eldest surviving son. You may guess the poignancy of the grief with which I tell you then that this heirloom is no longer mine. Many years ago I gave it into the hands of Runjeet Singh for a time, in the belief that its potency would aid our national fortunes" (what equivalent Lehna received, he doubtless deemed it irrelevant to state). "The ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... truth or a convincing lie, and I was lost in a game where I didn't know the rules. The explanation I thought might get me out alive might be the very one which would bring down instant and painful death. Suddenly, with a poignancy that was almost pain, I wished Rakhal were standing here ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... effulgence of the stars by night—the combination of all that was exciting and voluptuous in this transcending land, by inspiring a quicker spirit of life and an added sensitiveness to every articulation of her frame, only gave edge to the poignancy of her grief. Each long hour was counted, and "He suffers" was the burthen of all her thoughts. She abstained from food; she lay on the bare earth, and, by such mimickry of his enforced torments, endeavoured to hold communion with his distant pain. I remembered in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... it seem here? Does the author make the scene of the arrival of the Prussians vivid? How is this done? Note the dramatic contrast between the arrival of the Prussians and the actions of the peasants. How has the author drawn the character of Bernadou? By what details does the author give special poignancy to the pathos of her account? What is the significance of the title "A Leaf in ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... arrow had gone home; but when she met the look that was fixed on her after her little shaft was fired, Lucy's resolution faltered. The tears came rushing to her eyes so hot and rapid that she could not restrain them. Some trouble of her own gave poignancy to that outbreak of filial grief. "Papa is so very ill!" she said, with a sob, as a scalding drop fell upon her hand; and then got up suddenly, afraid of the consequences. But the Curate, mortified, wounded, and disheartened as he was, had no comprehension either of the bitterness ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... in which to make his creation, not a momentary picture, but a carving in jade and granite and adamant. It is not the ever-victorious and successful that we take into the adyta of our hearts. It is the poignancy of ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... splashed softly against the fallen rocks forty to fifty feet below. They seemed to be calling to him. It was almost like a summons from far away—almost like a bugle-call heard in the mists of sleep. Somehow they soothed him, lessening the poignancy of his anguish, checking his wild rebellion, making him aware of a strangely ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... him. In this tribe the taboo is not much observed at any time except by the relations of the dead. Similarly the Jesuit missionary Lafitau tells us that the name of the departed and the similar names of the survivors were, so to say, buried with the corpse until, the poignancy of their grief being abated, it pleased the relations "to lift up the tree and raise the dead." By raising the dead they meant bestowing the name of the departed upon some one else, who thus became to all intents and purposes a reincarnation of the deceased, since on the principles of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... her, and a sharp pang of jealousy shoots through her heart. The fact that she has never sought to win that heart to herself by kindness, that she has forfeited her child's respect, and never deserved its love, only increases her resentment and adds poignancy to the pang. She feels the slight form start and shiver with a strange, fearful repulsion as she places it on her lap. Would the strong natural affection nature had implanted there, so cruelly crushed out, now nearly if not quite ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which came to be regarded as peculiarly Rooseveltian during the rest of his days. We are apt to speak of "mere" physical courage as being inferior to moral courage; and doubtless there are many heroes unknown to the world who, under the torture of disease or the poignancy of social injustice and wrongs, deserve the highest crown of heroism. Men who would lead a charge in battle would shrink from denouncing an accepted convention or even from slighting a popular fashion. But after all, the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... indeed inherited by her son; he is, on the contrary, conspicuous throughout for the purity of his intentions; and his care and anxiety to escape from the predicted crime, added naturally to the poignancy of his despair, when he found that he had nevertheless been overtaken by it. Awful indeed is his blindness in not perceiving the truth when it was, as it were, brought directly home to him; as, for instance, when he puts the question to Jocasta, How did Laius look? and she answers ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... friend's house," he urged, "So do not watch me, pray!" "Well, I will leave you in peace," said I, "Though of this poignancy You ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... one to miss the honours of which successive generations had dreamed as far back as the school had existed. It was a thing no one had considered when the great news was passed around in the spring. Now it was brought home to those most nearly concerned with that poignancy of realization of which only youth is capable. It gave to the whole class a peculiar atmosphere as if it had been marked in advance for defeat. The teachers seemed to feel it, too, and especially the old Rector, who, after so many ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... strongly felt the poignancy of this sarcasm, and whose constant and unaffected value of Mrs Delvile by no means deserved it, was again silenced, and again most cruelly depressed: nor could she secretly forbear repining that at the very moment she found herself threatened with a necessity of foregoing the society of her ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... twenty to realize the tragedy of it. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans! To be twenty, in a garret, with the freedom and the joy of it! Yes; the dear poet was right. In those "brave days" the poignancy of life comes not in the garret, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... that are never detached from the thought, but that seize it in its very centre, in its interior, that join and bind it. In that respect, fully obeying his own genius, he has gone beyond and some times exceeded the genius of language. His concise, vigorous and always forcible style, by its poignancy, emphasises and repeats the meaning. It may be said of his style that it is a continual epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor, a style that has only been successfully employed by the French once, by Montaigne himself. If we wanted to imitate him, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... former important participation in its busy scenes, and his present worse than insignificant position there, rose in vivid contrast in his awakening mind; and the thought of his past but squandered wealth came up only to add poignancy to the sense of his present poverty and humiliation, which thus, and for the first time, was brought home to his agitated bosom. Suddenly leaping from his seat, from the torturing force of the reflection, he exclaimed: ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... do not know if either of the other two were conscious of the new note of life which she seemed to bring with her into our shabby, smoke-smelling room, but to me it came home, even in those first few moments, with wonderful poignancy. An alien note it was, but a wonderfully sweet one. We three men had drifted away from the whole world of our womenkind. She seemed to bring us back instantly into touch with some of the few better and rarer memories round which the selfishness of life ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be at home again, though this was a home-coming like none other she had ever known. Four months' use had not robbed memory of its poignancy, and the moment of arrival at the House she found unexpectedly painful. However, there came at once the remeeting with papa, and the first and worst hour of reconnection with the old life again was lubricated with reunion and ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the robbery, which added so much poignancy to the sorrow at Garthowen. Ebben Owens seemed to take his son's disappearance much to heart, and to feel his absence more ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Buck, the poignancy of his ancient regret having been modified by his long course of consolation from the lips of Avery, was the first to recover. This faded woman, trying to stay time's ravages by her rouge, displaced the beauteous image he had cherished so ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... little less painful than the worst of the accidents that had befallen me: yet, so harassed was my mind, and so wearied with grieving, that I did not feel it with half the poignancy. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... wardrobe that which remained some moments in her hand, while the incidents of purchase and the first joys of possession, to one who had possessed so little in her life, came back to her with a certain poignancy. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... more elegant works of polite literature. For these—and I could add to them dozens of later stories and poems, ephemeral perhaps but showing what may be done when we burst the bourgeois chain—for these are discoveries in the vigor, the poignancy, the color of our democratic ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... perhaps great sorrows, would have come to him in due time, and would have deepened and enriched his vein of song. The first great emotion which found him, when he rallied to the trumpet-call of France and freedom, did, as a matter of fact, lend new reality and poignancy to his verse; but the soldier's life left him small leisure for composition. We must regard his work, then, as a fragment, a mere foretaste of what he might have achieved had his life been prolonged. But, devoted though he was to his art, he felt that to live greatly ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... I thought those Laws not severe enough to suppress them as Enemies, nor yet sufficiently favourable to attach them to us as Friends. They were not so cruel as, wholly, to serve for quelling; and yet they had a Poignancy that might tend to provoke. And all this I imputed to the Resentment that was blended with the Humanity of our Ancestors. Their Humanity left to Papists a Power of hurting, while their Resentment abridged the Inducements that might engage them to ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... instance, still more, the details of the Prodigal Son—of the same deep and tender thinking as we find in the most authentic sayings about marriage applied to the parental and brotherly relation. But he himself, realising, as it would seem, with peculiar poignancy, the sacredness of marriage and the claim of the family, is yet alone, and must be alone to the end. The fabric of the Kingdom rises before him; his soul burns in the fire of his message; ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and Evil confounded, Prophaneness, Irreligion, and Unlawful Love, made the masterly Stroaks of the fine Gentleman; Swearing, Cursing, and Blaspheming, the Graces of his Conversation; and Unchristian Revenge, to consummate the Character of the Hero; Sharpness and Poignancy of Wit exerted with the greatest Vigor against the Holy Order; in short, Religion and all that is Sacred, Burlesqu'd and Ridicul'd; To see this, I say, and withall, to reflect upon the fatal Effects which these things have already had, and how much worse are likely to follow, if not timely prevented, ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... a poignancy, a beauty, that, now that he was to lose it all, was like a wound, the wonder of this Cambridge. Then he had it, the marvellous moment! On the other side of the window the still court, a few twinkling lights, the powdering snow—and here the vitality, the energy, ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... man leaped to his feet and turned his face westward towards the sea with outstretched arms, and a look and gesture of utter yearning gave poignancy and spirit to the careless, sleepy grace of his face and figure. He seized the boy's arm. "See now," he cried, his voice trembling upon the verge of music, "it is nearly twelve years that I have been a wanderer, shorn ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... suggested, and no more, by the threefold question of unutterable tenderness, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" When Jesus finds His disciples sleeping at the gate of Gethsemane, He rebukes them; but how is the rebuke disarmed of its poignancy by the merciful apology which is added—"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak!" How different from their unkind insinuation regarding Him, when, in the vessel on Tiberias, "He was asleep"—"Master carest ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... him and filled him with a sort of remorse, of desperate rage against himself, as if he had been guilty of a crime. And this embittered his every hour; if through momentary forgetfulness he permitted himself to indulge in a little gaiety his distress soon returned with greater poignancy than ever, bringing with it a sudden and inexplicable sadness. He did not dare to question himself, and his dissatisfaction with himself and his ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... was all different, but they clung to their love for it still. Through the heart of the day, during those hours which from his early boyhood had been to him working hours, this removal from life brought to the man a poignancy of realisation which beat with undiminishing force against the wall of his endurance. It was when he finished his breakfast and the day's work would naturally begin that it came home to him the hardest. They would go into the library, and Ernestine would read to him—how she delved ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... the heart-whole boy who had stepped off the transport, passionately desiring the adventure of life. One night while the heat, overpowering and enervating, poured into the windows of his room he struggled for several hours in a vague effort to immortalize the poignancy ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of it showed that the reporter felt the poignancy of his words—that the harness maker was bankrupt. For nearly fifty years he had kept a harness shop in that same little town, and competition by a younger, more aggressive man had taken away a good many ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... collector and translator was Dr. J. Mapletoft. It must be acknowledged, that although no nation exceeds our own in sterling sense, we rarely rival the delicacy, the wit, and the felicity of expression of the Spanish and the Italian, and the poignancy of some of the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Kriemhilds and Isondes You storm'd about at Trinity! Nothing at heart but handsome Blondes! 'Folk say that you and Fanny Fry—' 'They err! Good-night! Here lies my course, Through Wilton.' Silence blest my ears, And, weak at heart with vague remorse, A passing poignancy of tears Attack'd mine eyes. By pale and park I rode, and ever seem'd to see, In the transparent starry dark, That splendid brow of chastity, That soft and yet subduing light, At which, as at the sudden moon, I held my breath, and thought 'how ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... love and life, he is constantly aware of the imminent and inexorable tyranny of death. The ideas which he expresses are few and simple—ideas common to all men; but they take a special colour from his own feelings and experiences, and he renders them with a poignancy which is his own, with a melancholy gaiety and a desperate imaginative sincerity. His figure is so interesting in itself—that of the enfant perdu of genius—and so typical of a class, that the temptation to create a Villon legend is great; but to magnify his proportions to ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... down our spines, the sound of singing, a faint far-off chorus of the loveliest voices that ever fell on mortal ears. The tone had that marvelous silver clang of the woodland thrush with yet a deeper, human poignancy, a note of passionate longing and endearment, shy but assertive, wild, but oh! so alluring. We chinned ourselves expectantly on the edge of our ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the grave and again shouted those heroic words to Drouet d'Erlon: "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" For an instant a thousand sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that accompanied the ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived dream. A moment later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a white horse with housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the rider's hand; his three-cornered hat ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... escape into the open air, would relieve the tension of my feelings. But it was not so. The moment the door had closed behind me the agony of the thought that I had seen her perhaps for the last time, and the poignancy of my regret that I had not been able to put to her one question which rang in my brain, became ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... us by all the providences and events of our changeful lives. Our sorrows by their poignancy, our joys by their incompleteness and their transiency, alike call us to Him in whom alone the sorrows can be soothed and the joys made full and remain. Our duties, by their heaviness, call us to turn ourselves to Him, in whom alone we can find the strength to fill the role that is laid ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... porcelain vase is cracked in a furnace—to direct their ideas of the aims of life towards worthy and unselfish ends, to foster true loyalty because of God from whom all authority comes—and this lesson has its pathetic poignancy for us in the history of our English martyrs—to show the claims that our country has upon the devotion of its sons and daughters, and to inspire some feeling of responsibility for its honour, especially to show the supreme ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... the hopes that had been entertained gave poignancy to the sudden disappointment and grief, and the home children could not acquiesce in the dispensation with the same quiet reasonableness as those who had been so long separated from them as not to miss the gentle countenance, or the 'sweet toils, sweet ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as an abstraction, fend for itself. But you've a bonny English soul within you, and for that you are fighting. And so had poor Taffy Jones. And I have a bonny Scottish thirst, the poignancy of which both of you have been happily spared. I will leave you, laddie, to seek in slumber ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... sensibility developed by the European and American civilization. A recent suicide for love which excited all Venice at that time—an Austrian officer hopelessly attached to an Italian girl had shot himself—had suggested their talk, and given fresh poignancy to the misgivings in ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... and composed many of his poems in prison. He was a poet of great originality, for he broke away from the conventional subjects and the allegorizing habit of the Middle Ages and gave to the lyric a personal note and a depth and poignancy of feeling that made it almost a new creation, though he still adhered mainly to the traditional forms and showed a special preference for the ballade. Most of his ballades are introduced into his main works, the Petit Testament and ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... every kind." No fastidious delicacy spoils their sports of fancy: though ten times told, the tale to them never can be tedious; though dull "as the fat weed that grows on Lethe's bank," the jest for them has all the poignancy of satire: on the very offals, the garbage of wit, they can feed and batten. Happy they who can find in every jester the wit of Sterne or Swift; who else can wade through hundreds of thickly-printed pages to obtain for their reward such witticisms ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... every thing concurred to make us dear to each other, and therefore to give a greater poignancy to the pain of parting ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... throughout his poems are several passages in which the passion is treated with similar force and truth. The poem which begins "'Tis said that some have died for love" depicts the enduring poignancy of bereavement with an "iron pathos" that is almost too strong for art. And something of the same power of clinging attachment is shown in the sonnet where the poet is stung with the thought that "even for the least division of an hour" he has taken pleasure in the life ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... and yourself, I had no welcome. But, apart from this immediate circle, and apart from the deep, comfortable glow experienced at the first sight of the "old country," I found England and the English dull, conventional, and uninspired. There was no poignancy. The habits and the outlook stood precisely where I had left them. The English had not moved. They played golf as of yore, they went to the races at the appointed time and in the appointed garb, they gave heavy dinner-parties, they ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... seems to be involved in that other of the function of the Blessed Virgin as the fount of mercy and compassion, and at this time when the cult of the Mother of God had reached its highest point of potency and poignancy anything of the ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... own?—Do you allow her to condemn the only instances of wit that remain to this generation; that dear polite double entendre, which keeps alive the attention, and quickens the apprehension, of the best companies in the world, and is the salt, the sauce, which gives a poignancy to all ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson |
