"Distressingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her simply, bravely—she was herself so brave—what there was to tell, that two weeks ago her husband was alive, and that he was now on his way to England—perhaps in England itself. She took it with an unnatural quietness. She grew distressingly pale, but that was all. Her hand lay clinched tightly on the seat beside her. He reached out, took it, and pressed it, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... the hospital at Scutari, the Times correspondent wrote: "Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant presence is an influence of good comfort even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is a ministering angel, without any exaggeration, in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... will cover many troubles especially common among women, where the weight of the internal organs becomes distressingly felt. These are usually supported without our being conscious of their weight at all. But in weakness, or after long fatigue and standing, it becomes felt as a severe downward pressure. This is often caused ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... destination, and hurried before him headlong and trembling. When he remembered that Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one and sister of the other of these gladiators, his heart was touched with sympathy for a woman so distressingly misplaced in life. Even his own situation in the general's house looked hardly so pleasing as usual in the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... mental tally of the girls within riding distance from camp. Jennie Miller was reported engaged to an AJ man, and besides, she lived too far away and was not pretty enough to be worth the effort of a twenty-five mile ride just to hear her play hymns distressingly on an organ with a chronic squeak in one pedal. There was Alice Boyle at the AJ, and there was Mary Hope Douglas, who was growing to be quite a young lady,—pretty good-looking, too, if she wouldn't peel her hair back so straight and tight. Mary Hope Douglas, Tom decided, was probably ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... counter-signs,—their range of proper names is so distressingly limited, and they make such amazing work of every new one. At first, to be sure, they did not quite recognize the need of any variation: one night some officer asked a sentinel whether he had the countersign yet, and was indignantly answered,—"Should tink I hab 'em, hab 'em for a fortnight"; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... turning, gliding into nooks that seemed each more charming than the other, and having a constant succession of delightful surprises, interrupted only by the mill-dams, which were distressingly frequent. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... first meeting with Elizabeth, Carlos is distressingly mawkish. She pictures him, in pitying indignation, as succeeding to the throne, undoing his father's work and at last marrying herself. Then he ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... horse at the very doorstep of the ranch, one arm, pinged by a dastardly rifle-bullet, dangling helplessly by his side. (It is, by the way, always the arm or shoulder; the cinema never allows him to get it distressingly in the leg ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... 'Trovatore,' and looking as wholesomely fresh and clean and dainty as the most honest gentleman in England. He gave his brother a good-humoured nod, and wished him good morning. "I am glad to see you don't keep distressingly early hours," he said, between the bars of the air he was humming. He was a man of perfect digestion, like all the Wentworths, and got up accordingly, in a good temper, not disposed to make too much of any little incivility that might have taken place. On the contrary, he helped himself to his brother's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... woman's sphere I certainly shall not protest against that belief. I am now under no bonds to be distressingly frank." ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars were "My dear true friends," "Fellow-soldiers glorious," and "Brothers inseparable." He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future that awaited the combined arms ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... to point out a very genteel-looking young man in black, who wears a distressingly long frock coat and a white neckcloth, who escorts Mrs. Meeker to her carriage, and enters ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... as it now appeared, General Frayling might be counted. The dry, exciting climate of St. Augustin, and its near neighbourhood to the sea, were calculated to aggravate the gastric complications from which that polite little warrior so distressingly suffered. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a very lonely night. When he went to the roost where the whole Robin family had been sleeping for several weeks, he found it distressingly silent, after the gay chatter that he had grown accustomed to hearing there. And try as he would, he could not keep just a hint of sadness ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... these evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his charger's tail was in a tobacconist's shop, and his head anywhere about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length this Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, waved their three right hands as commanding unseen troops, to 'Up, guards! and at 'em.' Hereupon a brazen band burst forth, which caused them to be instantly bolted ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... in the way which had formerly had the power of making him feel incredibly narrow. It seemed to point out that what he was thinking was distressingly obvious; and when you have agreed with the obvious what more is there to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... to the artistic mind, is avoided. In my friend's drop of ditch-water, as in heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. There are no waste parents, which should appeal to the scholastic mind, and the simple protozoon has none of that fitful fever of falling in love, that distressingly tender state that so bothers your mortal man. They go about their business with an enviable singleness of purpose, and when they have eaten and drunk, and attained to the fulness of life, they divide and begin again with renewed zest the pastime ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... success in the creation of a work of art the personal flavor or perfume of the artist himself were predisposed to place Little Eyolf very high among his writings. Nowhere is he more independent of all other influences, nowhere more intensely, it may even be said more distressingly, himself. From many points of view this play may fairly be considered in the light of a tour de force. Ibsen—one would conjecture—is trying to see to what extremities of agile independence he can force his genius. The word "force" has escaped me; but it may be retained as reproducing ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... as a cloak, stalks abroad the "observed of all observers." I could undervalue this species of writing if I thought proper, affect a contempt for idiomatic humour, or hint at the employment being inconsistent with the grave discharge of important official duties, which are so distressingly onerous, as not to leave me a moment for recreation; but these airs, though dignified, will unfortunately not avail me. I shall put my dignity into my pocket, therefore, and disclose the real cause ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and on the top of the knoll a clump of fir trees so highly thrust up into the sky that their foliage from a distance appeared as a black spot in the air above the crown of the hill. On reaching this place Mrs. Yeobright felt distressingly agitated, weary, and unwell. She ascended, and sat down under their shade to recover herself, and to consider how best to break the ground with Eustacia, so as not to irritate a woman underneath whose ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... unstinted appreciation of the house. The girls had the unvarying pink-and-white surfaces of their profession, but under it they obviously differed much, and the age and emaciation and ugliness among them had its common emphasis in the contrast of their smart masculine attire with the distressingly feminine outlines of their figures. "I should have thought it impossible to make a woman absolutely hideous by a dress that revealed her form," said Kendal to himself, as the jingling and the dancing and the music went on in the glare ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... drizzling. Sent back Chama's arrows, as his foolish brother cannot use them against us now; there are 215 in the bundle. Passed the Lopopussi running west to the Lofubu about seven yards wide, it flows fast over rocks with heavy aquatic plants. The people are not afraid of us here as they were so distressingly elsewhere: we hope to buy ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... there appears to have been some uterine lesion, for a well-known gynaecologist went down to the country to see her. Eventually 'she became unable to do anything almost for herself, for the nervous irritability had distressingly increased. To touch her bed, the ringing of a bell, sometimes the sound of a voice, sunlight, &c., affected her so as to make her almost cry out.' 'If she stood up, or even raised her hands to dress her hair, they immediately became blue and deadly cold, and she was done for.' Then followed ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... the lee of the bran-new artillery target, and they were just commencing practice, on this fine bright afternoon, by pitching thirty-two-pound shot into and about it, at intervals—as I pretty well knew—of distressingly uncertain duration. With frantic strength I grasped the Indian by the neck, and, plunging madly through the snow, dragged him after me a few paces in the direction of our former track; but, hampered as he was by the moose-trappings, the weight was too much for me, and I dropped him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... only one thing you can do," I said. "You can tighten this distressingly loose jacket. If you won't, then get out. And I don't care if you fail to come back for a week or for the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... enough for me; Belle is very good, but somehow her goodness makes a fellow uncomfortable. She is what I call distressingly good; one doesn't want to be treated like a wild beast in a menagerie, and to be every now and then stirred up with a ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... wish to say, sir," said Bones, "that during the period I have had the honour to serve under your command I have settled possibly more palavers of a distressingly ominous character than the average Commissioner is called upon to settle in the course ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... he was in my eyes depreciating his own wares. Did he hope that among such a handsome choice of diseases I might at least have one! I was very near to beating a hasty retreat on the spot. For the accommodation in Japanese inns is of a distressingly communistic character at best, and although at present there were few patients in the place, the germs were presumably still there on the lookout ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... at this time, also, that the military families of the Kwanto in general and of Kamakura in particular began to find their incomes distressingly inadequate to meet the greatly increased and constantly increasing outlays that resulted from following the costly customs of Kyoto as reflected at the shogun's palace. Advantage was taken of this condition by professional ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... quadrille, though I saw, or fancied I saw, the scowl on Mr. Vernor's sour countenance grow deeper as I led her away. My perseverance was not rewarded by any very interesting results, for my partner, who was either distressingly shy, or acting under constraint of some kind, made monosyllabic replies to every remark I addressed to her, and appeared relieved when the termination of the set enabled her ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to,—a multitude of these and, doubtless, an equal number of jail-birds, outwardly of the same feather, sought the American Consulate, in hopes of at least a bit of bread, and, perhaps, to beg a passage to the blessed shores of Freedom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any case distressingly little, to be done for them; neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a forcible appeal to the sympathies of an American, that these unfortunates claimed ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for home, leaving the little bear shut up. As much as two feet of snow had fallen on a level and the drifts in the hollows were much deeper. It was my first experience of the great snow storms of Maine; my legs soon ached with wallowing, and my feet were distressingly cold. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens |
