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Lamentations

noun
1.
An Old Testament book lamenting the desolation of Judah after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC; traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah.  Synonym: Book of Lamentations.






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"Lamentations" Quotes from Famous Books



... posts about ten feet high. They cover these coffins with handsome red broadcloth, and deposit in each all the trinkets and valuables belonging to the departed. One other grave there the Indians visit annually, and mourn over with their lamentations,—that of a Frenchman named Sublette, who brought them down and directed them how to vanquish their enemies, the Pawnees, ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... the vigilance of a dozen frontiers, he took out a small bundle. This he opened carefully, his eyes blurring. Mad fool that he had been! How many times had he gazed at these trinkets in these sixteen or more years? How often had he uttered lamentations over them? How many times had the talons of remorse gashed ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... quarrel with the duke; but the idea of endeavouring to prevent a duel never even occurred to her. In those days affairs of honour were regarded as sacred things, that women did not dream of interfering with, or rendering more trying to their near and dear ones by tears and lamentations, in anticipation of the danger to be incurred ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... will earn with a tenth or perhaps a twentieth of your nervous output. Nor have you the right to look for more; in the wages of the life, not in the wages of the trade, lies your reward; the work is here the wages. It will be seen I have little sympathy with the common lamentations of the artist class. Perhaps they do not remember the hire of the field labourer; or do they think no parallel will lie? Perhaps they have never observed what is the retiring allowance of a field officer; or do they suppose their contributions to the arts of pleasing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the land of clouds through valleys dark, listening Dolours and lamentations; waiting oft beside a dewy grave She stood in silence, listening to the voices of the ground, Till to her own grave-plot she came, and there she sat down, And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... the freedman; and, Sallust's head now declining fairly on his breast, they bore him off to his cubiculum, still muttering lamentations for Glaucus, and imprecations on the unfeeling overtures ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... not my position. While believing in Moral Progress as a fact, I also believe that we are much nearer to the beginnings of it than the end. We should do well to accustom ourselves to this thought. Many of our despairs, lamentations, and pessimisms are disappointments which arise from our extravagant notions of the degree of progress already attained. There has been a great deal of what I have called philosophic pharisaism. Perhaps it would be better called ...
— Progress and History • Various

... prisoner to the most convenient point of the city for carrying their blood-thirsty designs into execution. We blush while we record the atrocious deed; in this city, containing nearly 5,000 souls, in the broad light of day, this aged wretch was stripped and flogged, we believe within hearing of the lamentations and the shrieks of his afflicted wife ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... a short, heavy moan, as nearly as it may be described, and not a sharp rending note; a vast, deep groan, somewhere deep in the earth, as though a volcano were about to erupt. It was not over in an instant, but went on, like the suppressed lamentations of some creature trying to break its chains. It might have been some prehistoric, tremendous creature, unknown to man, unknown to these times. But it was our creature. It was of our day. Else ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... deathless being and ethereal essence. This is a feeling of beauty which was but faintly known to the human heart in those ages of the world when all other feelings of beauty were most perfect; and accordingly we find, in the most pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, lamentations over the beauty intensely worshipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever over its now beamless head. But to the Christian who may have seen the living lustre leave the eye of some beloved friend, there must have shone a beauty in his latest smile, which ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... had a certain masculine roughness of demeanor which repelled expansiveness. She had an abrupt, exclamatory way of speaking that forced back all that Germinie would have liked to confide to her. It was in her nature to be brutal in her treatment of all lamentations that were not caused by pain or disappointment. Her virile kindliness had no pity to spare for diseases of the imagination, for the suffering that is created by the thought, for the weariness of spirit that ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... honour of the goddess Demeter. She was a daughter of Kronos. She had given to Zeus a daughter, Persephone, before his marriage with Hera. Persephone, while playing, was carried away by Hades (Pluto), the god of the infernal regions. Demeter wandered far and wide over the earth, seeking her with lamentations. Sitting on a stone in Eleusis, she was found by the daughters of Keleus, ruler of the place; in the form of an old woman she entered the service of his family, as nurse to the queen's son. She wished ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... "nous pouvons demander encore de grandes richesses et un empire, mais nous ne pouvons pas demander dix enfants. Vous avez t si imprudent. Vous avez demand une saucisse. Vous prfrez une saucisse, sans doute, une grande famille." Et la pauvre femme continua ses lamentations et rpta si souvent: "Vous avez t trs imprudent," que l'homme perdit patience et dit: "Je suis fatigu de vos lamentations: je voudrais que cette saucisse ft pendue au bout ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber

... dismounting, for she had expected to see a canyon like those lovely spots hidden among the San Bernardino hills; but this place was no different from the rocky, barren mountains surrounding Silver Bow. However, there was little time for lamentations, for with surprising ingenuity, Mr. Catt had arranged a delightful program for the two days the young folks were in camp, and not a moment of the brief holiday was dull even for Rosslyn and Janie. So it was with reluctant hearts that the party ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... over the coin and sent for his attorney. His soul passed away, mourned by Little Thunder until the will was read, when his lamentations ceased; he soundly berated Mynheer, the Patroon, in his coffin and refused to go to his burying. Then he became an ardent anti-renter, a leader of "bolters," a thunderer of the people's cause, the devoted enemy of land ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... spite of his reproaches they did not cease from their laughter or labour, nor did the flying Sancho stop his lamentations, mingled now with threats and now with prayers. Thus they carried on their merry game, until at last from sheer weariness they stopped and let him be. And then they brought him his ass, and, helping him to mount it, wrapped him in his coat, and the kind-hearted Maritornes, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... not steep thy heart In such relenting dew of lamentations; But kneel with me and help to bear thy part, To rouse our Roman gods with invocations, That they will suffer these abominations, Since Rome herself in them doth stand disgraced, By our strong arms from forth ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... Chinese writer to the people of Kuche in the same region. (Chin. Repos. IX. 126.) In fact, the character seems to be generally applicable to the people of East Turkestan, but sorely kept down by the rigid Islam that is now enforced. (See Shaw, passim, and especially the Mahrambashi's lamentations over the jolly days that were no more, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... resounding lamentations over the decadence and decline of taste, and slip in eulogies of Messieurs Etienne Jouy, Tissot, Gosse, Duval, Jay, Benjamin Constant, Aignan, Baour-Lormian, Villemain, and the whole Liberal-Bonapartist chorus who patronize Vernou's paper. Next you draw a picture of that ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... my mother might apply to the minister to defeat my purpose. But my request is granted, my resignation is accepted. I shall not recount with what reluctance it was accorded, nor relate what the minister has written: you would only renew your lamentations. The crown prince has sent me a present of five and twenty ducats; and, indeed, such goodness has affected me to tears. For this reason I shall not require from my mother the money for which ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... of the latter end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century and that his special field of art was the frottola are almost the sum total of the story of his career. We know that he wrote two sacred songs in the frottola style, nine "Lamentations" and one "Benedictus" for three voices. Petrucci's nine books of frottole (Venice, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... reached the conviction at last that I should not be judged in regard to my motives, which were innocent, but only according to my action, which was punishable. Thereupon I began to feel very despondent, and to utter divers lamentations. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... year. Sandy was shivering under the clock when I met him accidentally, and took him home. But by that time the harm had been done. Several of the congregation had been roused from their beds to hear his lamentations, of whom the men sympathized with him, while the wives triumphed austerely over Bell Dundas. As I wrung poor Sandy's hand, I hardly noticed that a bright light showed distinctly between the shutters of his kitchen-window; but the elder himself ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... their Greek origin and their former greatness. For once a year at a fixed date all Greeks were wont to gather together and to bewail in public, outside the great temple of Poseidon, their lost liberty and their vanished power. It is evident that the Lucanians did not fear the tears and lamentations of this unhappy subject state, for this custom continued to be observed throughout the whole period of Samnite oppression, and survived even till Roman times—perhaps to the very end of the city's existence,—although in the course of passing generations there could have been but few persons ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... a mere scattering of crudest huts along the river front, seemed deserted, but from nearly every hut came the low wailings of the sick and the frightened. Noting that the lamentations had ceased a few minutes after Terry went out, the doctor stepped to the door and watched his progress from shack to shack, saw how the picturesque little savages grouped about him. They knew him and listened to him confidently, so that the parboiled doctor was as much disgusted ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... heeds us. We are but a burden to you, And we see that the departed 180 Have no place among the living. "Think of this, O Hiawatha! Speak of it to all the people, That henceforward and forever They no more with lamentations 185 Sadden the souls of the departed In the Islands of the Blessed. "Do not lay such heavy burdens In the graves of those you bury, Not such weight of furs and wampum, 190 Not such weight of pots and kettles, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... of the poet's lamentations, at the prospect of "torrid climes" and the roars of the Atlantic. To Burns, Scotland was the land of promise, the west of Scotland his paradise; and the land of dread, Jamaica! I found these lines ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Corpse arrives at the great Market-place, where all the Dead are burnt, a Priest makes a Funeral Oration; which done, a great Number of Mourners, hired for that purpose, begin their Lamentations, which last till the Body is entirely consum'd. The Fire is made with Billets, on which the Arms of the Deceased are either carv'd or painted, which cannot cost less than an English Crown each. Every one of the Company is presented with two ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... votive offering had vanished, and blasphemous lamentations and curses against the Supreme Being, whom he abused for defrauding him of fortune by trickery, shocked the quietude. Then a spasm of religious fervour jerked him to his knees as he patronised the Almighty for having accepted a pledge for ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... I have sent home with papers, &c., will apprise you. I cannot find that he is any loss; being tolerably master of the Italian and modern Greek languages, which last I am also studying with a master, I can order and discourse more than enough for a reasonable man. Besides, the perpetual lamentations after beef and beer, the stupid, bigoted contempt for every thing foreign, and insurmountable incapacity of acquiring even a few words of any language, rendered him, like all other English servants, an incumbrance. I do assure you, the plague of speaking for ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... midst of these lamentations the famous registered letter came to my door, with healing under its seal. It bore the postmark of San Francisco, where Pinkerton was already struggling to the neck in multifarious affairs; it renewed the offer of an allowance, which his improved ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the haymakers; and every time a man or a horse appeared in that field, the blackbird was thrown into utter despair, and the air rang with his lamentations. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... Polynices and his Argive allies: the Chorus is a bevy of scared Cadmean maidens, to whom the very sound of war and tramp of horsemen are new and terrific. It ends with the news of the death of the two princes, and the lamentations of their two sisters, Antigone and Ismene. The onslaught from without has been repulsed, but the male line of the house of Laius is extinct. The Cadmeans resolve that Eteocles shall be buried in honour, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... deal, but they will prove misleading if the purpose for which they were composed be forgotten. This purpose was to express the complaints and desires of the nation. It appears in their very name, "Cahiers of Lamentations, Complaints, and Remonstrances."[Footnote: The titles vary, but generally bear this meaning.] We must not, therefore, look to the cahiers for mention of anything good in the condition of old France; and we must remember that people who are advocating ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... all of you like the new Lamentations of Jeremiah—'to be continued in our next'—that's all," said Hans, seizing his wide-awake. "It's no use being one thing more than another if one has to endure the company of those men with a fixed idea, staring blankly at you, and requiring all your remarks to be small foot-notes ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... voice of priests, And none at them but women lamenting, Tearing their hair, with troubled minds, Keening pitifully after the Fenians. The pipes of our organs are broken; Our harps have lost their strings that were tuned That might have made the great lamentations of Ireland; Until the strong men come back across the sea, There is no help for us but bitter crying, Screams, and beating of ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... of this shameful murder was made known to the parents, what do we think must have been the sad scenes resulting? What lamentations? What sighs and groans? But I dwell not on these things; they are for the man with the gifts of eloquence and imagination to describe. It was certainly a marvel that both parents were not struck lifeless with grief. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... the Tyrolese becomes weaker; loud lamentations burst from their ranks. They are exhausted and weary, owing to the heavy exertions of the day; hunger and thirst torment them, and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labors, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... uncle grows tedious; and one wishes at last that he himself could be 'put up the spout.' Mr. Glover, from the sepulchral depth of his voice, gave effect to the odious Creontic menaces; and, in the final lamentations over the dead body of Haemon, being a man of considerable intellectual power, Mr. Glover drew the part into a prominence which it is the fault of Sophocles to have authorized in that situation; for the closing sympathies ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... One of these rooms was occupied by Mrs. Lincoln and her attendants, with Miss Harris. Mrs. Dixon and Mrs. Kinney came to her about twelve o'clock. About once an hour Mrs. Lincoln would repair to the bedside of her dying husband and with lamentations and tears remain until overcome by emotion.... A door which opened upon a porch or gallery, and also the windows, were kept open for fresh air. The night was dark, cloudy, and damp, and about six it began to rain. I remained in the room until then without sitting or leaving ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... other of my Greek acquaintances, paid me a visit. Dervish took the money, but on a sudden dashed it on the ground; and clasping his hands, which he raised to his forehead, rushed out of the room weeping bitterly. From that moment to the hour of my embarkation, he continued his lamentations, and all our efforts to console him only produced this answer, 'He leaves me.' Signor Logotheti, who never wept before for anything less than the loss of a paras, melted; the padre of the convent, my attendants, my visitors, and I verily believe that even Sterne's foolish ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... relatives or heirs, the freedmen, friends, and clients, all clothed in black, except the women, who are in white, without colour or gold upon their dress. Young Publius will walk with his head covered by his toga; Bassa with her hair loose and dishevelled. The whole party will utter lamentations, though under more restraint than those of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... to no one but himself, because he represents the spirit, the time, and the idiom of his time? Sickly, too highly strung, perhaps, since his art has the melodies of our generation, since in the strained note of his lamentations as in his resounding triumphs, there is always a gasp of the breath, a cry, a fever that are alike our own ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... protested he was innocent, bewailed his wife and children, and supplicated the genie, in the most moving expressions. The genie, with his cimeter still lifted up, had the patience to hear his unfortunate victims to the end of his lamentations, but would not relent. "All this whining," said the monster, "is to no purpose; though you should shed tears of blood, they should not hinder me from killing thee, as thou hast killed my son." "What!" exclaimed the merchant, "can nothing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... verses of the law. Samuel wrote his book and judges and Ruth. David wrote the book of Psalms by (?)(38) ten elders, by Adam the first man, by Melchizedek, by Abraham, by Moses, by Heman, by Jeduthun, by Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah wrote his book, the books of Kings and Lamentations. Hezekiah and his friends wrote Isaiah, Proverbs, Canticles, and Coheleth; the men of the great synagogue, Ezekiel, the twelve prophets, Daniel and Esther. Ezra wrote his own book and the genealogies of Chronicles ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson

... to find themselves very discontented and unhappy. At length they decided to pray to Fate (which meant the Voters of the State) to relieve them from the burden under which they were groaning, and restore their power. Then Fate heard their cries and lamentations, and was kind enough to come to their relief. "Now, why don't you use your power?" she asked. "Oh!" said the late unhappy, and indeed wretched majority, "we only wanted a chance to quarrel a little among ourselves, and call each other hard names." "Couldn't you have done that before?" asked ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... farm of Balbig of Delnabo, was the greatest sufferer. From the proximity of his abode to their haunts, it was the misfortune of himself and family to be the nightly audience of Clashnichd's cries and lamentations, which they considered anything ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... accession to power of the unscrupulous Borgia family, with Alexander VI. upon the papal throne; the French invasion of Naples—all these and other similar calamities bringing in their train the destruction of Italy, occupied his attention and filled his correspondence with lamentations and ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... there really existed that sort of God, what would be the use of forgiving what He does? He'd only do it again. That is His record!" she added fiercely, "—indifference to human agony, utter silence amid lamentations, stone deaf, stone dumb, motionless. It is not in me to fawn and lick the feet of such an image. No! It is not in me to believe it alive, either. And I do not! But I know that love lives: and if there be any gods at all, it must ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... that sleep had no room to enter even into his thoughts. Deep and appalling were the curses and threats of vengeance which the enraged settler uttered upon all who bore the name of Grantham; and with these were mingled lamentations for his son, scarcely less revolting in their import than the curses themselves. Nor was the turbulence of the enraged man confined to mere excitement of language. His large and muscular form struggled in every direction, to free himself ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... other Egyptians, and their whole time was occupied either in study or the service of their gods. There was a gloomy tone to the religion of Egypt, which struck the Greeks, whose worship was usually cheerful. Apuleius says "the gods of Egypt rejoice in lamentations, those of Greece in dances." Another Greek writer says, "The Egyptians offer ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... her in the Cambrian fashion, an honour which, to their great surprise, she always declined. Among these, Harry Ap-Heather, whose father rented an extensive sheepwalk, and had a thousand she-lambs wandering in the mountains, was the most strenuous in his suit, and the most pathetic in his lamentations for her cruelty. ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... violently in contact with the posterior portion of his body, simultaneously asking him, "Why the h—- he did not pray before? It's not a damned bit of good praying now the trouble has arisen! Get on to your pins," said the irate officer, "and do some useful work! This is no time for snivelling lamentations. Keep the men in heart!" There was pretty fair logic in this rugged outburst of enlightenment. But while this striking flow of opposition to prayer under such circumstances was proceeding, the thought of peril was briefly obscured by the sight of a pretty little girl, ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... chloroform pad under his nose; he drew two or three deep breaths, and then a strange thing happened: Derancourt began to sob in a terrible manner, and to talk of all those things he had never mentioned. The grief he had suppressed for months overflowed, or rather, rushed out in desperate, heartrending lamentations. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... followed every change and turn in this whole calamitous affair, am like one benumbed at this awful crisis. I too go and come through the streets, hear people say in shouts, in cries, with bitter tears and wild lamentations, "Juliet is dead!" "Orrin is dead!" and get no sense from the words. I have even been more than once to that spot where they lie in immovable beauty, and though I gaze and gaze upon them, I feel nothing—not even ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... patience, "when you get through with the Job business I'll heave ahead and talk. Don't let me interrupt the lamentations on no account. Finished? All right. Now, you listen ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... as to show, that the war of extermination, sometimes waged by western rangers, was not without example—that the cruelty and hatred of the pioneer to the barbarous Indian, might originate in exasperation, which even moved the puritans; and that the lamentations, over the fictitious "wrongs" of a turbulent and bloody savage, might have run in a ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... empty, was supposed to be closed, but from force of habit Bart took down the shutters and lurked disconsolately behind the bare counter. Several old customers who had not heard of the sale entered, and were disappointed when they learned that Aaron was leaving. Their lamentations made Bart quite low-spirited. However, he was polite to all, but his manners broke down when a Hindoo entered to sell boot-laces. "I ain't got nothing to sell, and don't want to ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... was enjoying a very good joke all by himself, could not forgo the temptation of stopping to inquire if Mrs. Eustace and Nannie had heard any news of the prodigal. They found the two at breakfast in the courtyard, an open letter spread before them. Nannie received them with lamentations. ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster

... I grieve over my political and military prospects that were lost in the royal storm of '30, when plebeian cannon riddled the Tuilleries and shattered a senile crown. I was only sixteen, and hardly understood the lamentations of my father, whose daily refrain was, "My child, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... blight an imprudent man's character. But du Croisier had no mind to slacken his hold until he knew what he was about. He meditated until he fell asleep on the magnificent manner in which his hopes would be fulfilled by the way of the Assize Court or by marriage. The murmur of voices below, the lamentations of Chesnel and Mme. du Croisier, sounded sweet in ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... Merrifield perfectly understood Miss Hacket's ignorance of the doings in Constance's room— listening patiently even when the tender-hearted woman began to excuse her sister for having accepted Dolores's lamentations at being cut off from her so. called uncle. 'Dear Connie is so romantic, and so easily touched,' she said, 'though, of course, it was very wrong of her to suppose that Lady Merrifield could do anything harsh or unkind. She is in great grief ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... rather than common sense usually presides over the discussions of these subjects. Discussions on the condition of the laborers, lamentations over its wretchedness, denunciations of all who are supposed to be indifferent to it, projects of one kind or another for improving it, were in no country and in no time of the world so rife as in the present ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... in man's energies and efforts: thy firm path through the stream of ages I long to trace and recognize, as far as may be permitted to me even in this body of earth. The song of praise to Thee from the whole of humanity, in times far and near,—the pains and lamentations of men, and their consolations in Thee,—I wish to take in, clear and unhindered. Do Thou send me thy Spirit of Truth, that I may behold things earthly as they are, without veil and without mask, without human ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... long-suffering sorrow to be met with among the peasantry. It withdraws into itself and is still. But there is a grief that breaks out, and from that minute it bursts into tears and finds vent in wailing. This is particularly common with women. But it is no lighter a grief than the silent. Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... of an hour, during which whenever he recollected her, Uncle Silas treated the young lady with a hyper-refined and ceremonious politeness, which appeared to make her uneasy, and even a little shy, and certainly prevented a renewal of those lamentations and invectives which he had heard faintly from ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... peculiar color and length of the hair, he hastened, in a state bordering on absolute distraction, to the fatal scene. A British officer, with a few attendants, had, in the mean time, removed the corpse to a wagon by the road side, and was guarding it, when the lover arrived to claim it. But his lamentations were so terrible, and his conduct so frantic, that it was deemed advisable to remove him, and bury the remains from his sight. From that hour, the bereaved lover was an altered and ruined man. And he died soon after, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... as became a man of the world, suspended his judgment and listened with an amused impartiality to the lamentations of the ladies. But even he never denied that New York had changed; and Newland Archer, in the winter of the second year of his marriage, was himself obliged to admit that if it had not actually ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... squatted at the root of a huge mangrove and broke forth into loud lamentations, while the last remaining cur took advantage of his preoccupation to sneak ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... thirty or more cottages that we visited, but they, without exception, were all alike—the dead and the dying in each; and I could tell you more of the truth of the heartrending scene, were I to mention the lamentations and bitter cries of each of those poor creatures, on the threshold of death. Never in my life have I seen such wholesale misery, nor could I have thought it so complete. All that I have stated above," ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... whose other arm engirdles the mutilated maniac, who shouts so fiercely that he wakes up the sleepers and dispels the drowsiness of the rest. On all sides they turn towards him; half rising, they listen to the incoherent lamentations which end by dying in the dark. At the same moment, in another corner, two prostrate wounded, crucified on the ground, so curse each other that one of them has to be removed before the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... rose again, blended with the solemn voices of the choir, sublimed and dilated now, reaching him as though from weird night gulfs of the upper air, and charged with an overmastering pathos as of the lamentations of angels. In the dimness and silence, in the aroused and exalted condition of his being, the strains seemed unearthly in their immense and desolate grandeur of sorrow, and their mournful and dark significance was now for him. Working within him the impression of vast, innumerable, ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... There is a hat lying in the grass.' They went forward together. Rachael took it up, shaking from head to foot. She broke into a passion of tears and lamentations: Stephen Blackpool was written in his own hand ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... against the current, often without waiting to break their fast. Sometimes they stopped for a buffalo-hunt on the neighboring prairies; and there was no lack of provisions. They passed Lake Pepin, which Hennepin called the Lake of Tears, by reason of the howlings and lamentations here uttered over him by Aquipaguetin; and, nineteen days after his capture, landed near the site of St. Paul. The father's sorrows now began in earnest. The Indians broke his canoe to pieces, having first hidden their own among the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... others lamented him as a son or a nephew. The mourning nations selected as their representative a high chief, usually a distinguished orator, familiar with the usages and laws of the League, to conduct these ceremonies. The lamentations followed a prescribed routine, each successive topic of condolence being indicated by a string of wampum, which, by the arrangement of its beads, recalled the words to the memory of the officiating chief. In the "Book of Rites" we have these addresses ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... torn her clothes, and beaten her breast, and disfigured her face, and given vent to mourning and lamentations. But she does not seek death, nor surrender herself to grief, nor court despair. She renews her strength. She reserves her arts for another victim. She hopes to win Octavius as she had won Julius ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... war is that the Hohenzollerns and the junkers are so constituted mentally that they never will be haunted with awful visions like those that visited the more plastic conscience of Charles IX after St. Bartholomew; but at least it will be some compensation to picture them rending the air with lamentations over their own downfall and hurling curses at ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... alone prevented the army from being annihilated. Out of 500 English 50 lay dead, and 50 more were badly wounded. The survivors fell back to Armagh 'so dismayed as to be unfit for farther service.' Pitiable were the lamentations of the lord deputy to Cecil on this catastrophe. It was, said he, 'by cowardice the dreadfullest beginning that ever was seen in Ireland. Ah! Mr. Secretary, what unfortunate star hung over me that day to ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... fate Derrick had so narrowly escaped, and the Young Sleepers who followed him were left without a leader, they were thrown into a sad state of confusion. Two of them started to run back, another threw himself on the floor and burst into loud lamentations, while the fourth stood motionless and silent from fear. Of them all, only Paul Evert, the crippled lad, ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... by one, their companions ascended, were bound to the plank, the ax fell, and their heads dropped into the basket. It seems that there must have been some supernatural power of support to have sustained children under so awful an ordeal. There were no faintings, no loud lamentations, no shrieks of despair. With the serenity of martyrs they met their fate, each one emulous of showing to her companions how much like ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... built the hall Heort, but was long unable to enjoy it on account of Grendel's persecutions. Marries Wealhtheow, a Helming lady. Has two sons and a daughter. Is a typical Teutonic king, lavish of gifts. A devoted liegelord, as his lamentations over slain liegemen prove. Also very appreciative of kindness, as is shown by his loving gratitude to Beowulf.—29; 212; 41; 810; 151; ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin

... senseless on the ground. And seeing her down the citizens and the inhabitants of the provinces began to wail from grief and affection for their king. And the birds of the air and the beasts of the field were touched by the lamentations of Kunti. And Bhishma, the son of Santanu, and the wise Vidura, and the others also that were ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... lamentations by assuring her, with various affectionate pats on the arm, that he knew she would never go annoyin' her poor ould grandfather, but they'd say no more about it, for a bit anyhow. He withdrew, leaving Roseen still sobbing amid the ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... undertaker's concern. Besides, what then?" cried the savage, checking Lucien's lamentations merely by his attitude. "How many generals died in the prime of life for the Emperor Napoleon?" he asked, after a short silence. "There are always plenty of women. In 1821 Coralie was unique in your eyes; and yet you found ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... quality of modern seamen. Perhaps they had deteriorated, I said unwillingly to myself. I remembered also the alarmist articles I had read about the great number of foreigners in the British Merchant Service, and I didn't know how far these lamentations were justified. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... too much hurt to walk, and a litter was speedily formed, and he was carried back to the camp, where his arrival in that state excited the most lively lamentations on the part of Tim. The next morning he was much recovered; and was able, in the cool of the evening, to take his place in a howdah, and to return to the ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... expression: for instance, sorrow is the same feeling throughout the human race; but the Oriental prostrates himself upon the ground, throws dust upon his head, tears his garments, is not ashamed to break out into the most violent lamentations. In the north, we rule our grief in public; suffer not even a quiver to be seen upon the lip or brow, and consider calmness as the appropriate expression of manly grief. Nay, two sisters of different temperament will show their grief diversely; one will love to ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... town gave columns to it. The population of Valencia turned out as on a pilgrimage to look at the hulk, half sunken in the shifting sands. No one gave a thought to the lost fishing boats, and people seemed not to understand the wailing and lamentations of the poor women whose ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... The lamentations of old Crony brought to mind the 347complaints of honest Jack Falstaff against his associates. "There is no truth in villanous man!" said our monitor. "I remember when a gentleman might have reeled round the environs ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... dinner-party, or a few friends in the evening,—and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very much attached to us, and wouldn't go. He was a tearful boy, and broke into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother—no anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... cried Professor Theobald. "It must be most galling when their lamentations prevent one from committing one's justifiable homicide in peace and quietness. Imagine the discomfort of having a half-educated victim to deal with, who can't hold his tongue and let one perform the operation quietly ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... physician, and, although just sitting down to table, had his horses saddled, and galloped off to the scene of the disaster, accompanied by Count Gamba and his suite. Women and children wept and moaned, the crowd each moment increased, lamentations were heard on all sides, but, whether from despair or laziness, none came forward. Generous anger overcame Lord Byron at this scene of woe and shame; he leapt from his horse, and, grasping the necessary implements, began ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... laughed at these lamentations. "Why, what nonsense you speak!" she said. "It is only for a little while that I am going away. I hope to come back in about three months. And many of you can now read the Bible for yourselves. And as to the grand gentleman, that is all fancy; I want no grand gentleman for a husband. ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous

... the country to the gates of Valencia, early in the morning, and at noon day, and at night, so that he never let them rest. And the three hundred knights whom Abeniaf had collected went out against his foragers, with the men of the town, and the Christians slew many of them, so that there were lamentations daily within the walls, and wailings over the dead that were brought in. And in one of these skirmishes, a rich Moor was taken who was Alcayde of Acala, which is near Torralva, and they gave him grievous torments till ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... filled with lamentations and woe, there first arose in Hungary, and afterward in Germany, the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, called also the Brethren of the Cross, or Cross-bearers, who took upon themselves the repentance of the people for the sins they had committed, and offered prayers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... not repeatedly been refused admittance to her sister. Juliet's hair being finished, she ordered Ann to undo the small mountain of mourning goods, and select the plainest garment. And, after all, it was with much hesitation, and continued wringing of hands, and moans and lamentations, that she allowed herself to be arrayed in these insignias of her widowhood. She more than once gave up her purpose, only as often ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... for retirement, he had no longer any liking but for solitude, for those places which were adapted to the holy sorrow of penance, where he unceasingly addressed himself to God in fervent prayer, accompanied by lamentations, which cannot be described: God at ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... the lady all this time will have been on the point of saying a hundred times: "Excuse me, Professor, but really ... I have an engagement ... I have a great deal to do...." When she has looked without seeing anything, her lamentations are bitter: "What a lot of time I have wasted!" And yet she has nothing to do, and fritters away all her time! What she lacks is not time but patience. He who is impatient cannot appraise things properly; he can only appreciate his own impulses and his own satisfactions. He ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... possibility of being buried alive by the excessive haste with which people are catched up and hurried away, before it can be known almost whether all sparks of life are extinct or no. Such management, and the lamentations one hears made by the great, that they should thus be forced to keep bad company after death, remind me for ever of an old French epigram, the sentiment of which I perfectly recollect, but have forgotten the verses, of which however these ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... or Protestant Barnaby's Sorrowful Lamentations; a Ballad about Homer's Iliad. By Mrs Centlivre ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... and my companions with moss, and an armed guard having taken his seat by the side of each of us, they pushed off from the shore. During our journey by water that night, the Japanese kept perfectly quiet. They spoke not a word, and turned a deaf ear to all our lamentations and complaints. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... flute, both of them reed pipes, the smaller being merely a shepherd's pipe. They were used for lamentations and for certain festivals, as in Isaiah xxx, 29: "Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, the Holy One ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... the parents redoubled their lamentations. They ran with pikes and mattocks to the mountain, and searched till evening to find the opening by which their children had disappeared, without being able to find it. At last, the night falling, they returned ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... said Sir William Howe to the officers who attended him: "we have no time to hear lamentations now!" ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... epithalamiums; for pleasant music, that fearful noise of ordnance, drums, and warlike trumpets still sounding in our ears; instead of nuptial torches, we have firing of towns and cities; for triumphs, lamentations; for joy, tears." [3567]"So it is, and so it was, and so it ever will be. He that refuseth to see and hear, to suffer this, is not fit to live in this world, and knows not the common condition of all men, to whom so long as they live, with a reciprocal course, joys and sorrows ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... nations. In England it was lately determined by the Admiralty to cut the Victory, a one-hundred gun ship (which it will be recollected bore the flag of Lord Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar,) down to a seventy-four, but so loud were the lamentations of the people upon the proposed measure that the intention was abandoned. We confidently anticipate that the Secretary of the Navy will in like manner consult the general wish in regard to the Constitution, and either let her remain in ordinary or rebuild her whenever ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... nose, a cracked lip or a purple eye, and he had been compelled to struggle pretty hard for even those blessings. And to him the pity of it all was that he was as hard as nails and as strong as a bullock—a sad waste, if one were to believe him in his bitter lamentations. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... she was only doing what thousands of women do, with a self-renunciation and heroism, of which men, impatient and complaining, have no conception. Have not these big babies with beards filled all literature with their outcries, their griefs and their lamentations? It is always the gentle sex which is hard and cruel and fickle ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... lamentations over the influence of this atmosphere of scientific thought upon the most eminent contemporary Christian scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, London, 1893, and the article in the Contemporary Review for May, 1892, by ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... possessed, gold, houses, lands—all he had he would give to that little child if that little child would only live. But the fading eyes saw other things, and the ears that were deaf to the old man's lamentations heard voices that soothed the anguish of that last solemn hour. And so ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... For herein, they were not like harps or lutes, but they felt, they felt the power and strength of their own words. When they spake of our peace, every corner of their hearts was filled with joy. When they prophesied of mourning, lamentations, and woes, to fall upon us, they wept in the bitterness and indignation of spirit, the Arm of the LORD being ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... aspect of this life: with its thousands of eyes, infinitely sad in their expression, it looked into his heart, asking him for it knew not what,—and then the radiant images of the future died in his soul; a groan out of the powerlessness of the man mingled in the discordant chorus of lamentations and tears from poor ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... in such sort that they were not able to help themselves or to turn them upon the floor. This done he withdraws and leaves them there to condole 10 their misery and to mourn under their distress. So all that day they spent their time in nothing but sighs and bitter lamentations. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... for while at work he had been standing on one leg, after the fashion of a stork. Then he gathered together into one bundle all he had cut, placed it on his shoulder, and started off with it towards his favourite retreat, heedless of the tears and lamentations ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... extreme need was overcome with pity. There knelt Domitia Lepida, urging the terror-mad woman not to wait the executioner, since life was over and nothing remained but to lend death the dignity of suicide. But the dishonoured self was empty of courage, and long-drawn weeping choked her useless lamentations. Then suddenly the doors were flung open with a crash, and the stern tribune stood silent in the hall, while the freedman Euodus screamed out curses, after the way of triumphant slaves. From her mother's hand the lost ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... any more than a stone thrown into the sea makes a permanent gap. Why should Darius have waited for morning, if his penitence had moved him to a firm resolution to undo the evil done? He had better have sprung from his bed, and gone with his guards to open the den in the dark. Feeble lamentations are out of place when it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... protects these sacred spots from robbery or insult. The friends of the deceased, especially the women, repair here at sunrise and sunset for some time after his death, singing his funeral dirge, and uttering loud wailings and lamentations. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... shock seemed to pass southwards in the direction of Knype. The bed shook; the basin and ewer rattled together like imperfect false teeth in the mouth of an arrant coward; the walls of the hotel shook. Then silence! No cries of alarm, no cries for help, no lamentations of ruin! Doubtless, though earthquakes are rare in England, the whole town had been overthrown and engulfed, and only Mr Cowlishaw's bed left standing. Conquering his terror, Mr Cowlishaw put his head under the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... entirely recovered, though delivered and tended with the greatest tenderness and affection by her daughter, Lady Margaret Erskine: they live in a house lent to them by the Duke of Bedford; the Duchess is Lady Mary's niece.(280) Ten of the letters, indeed, are dismal lamentations and frights of a scene of villany of Lady Mary, who, having persuaded one Ruremonde, a Frenchman and her lover, to entrust her with a large sum of money to buy stock for him, frightened him out of England, by persuading him that Mr. Wortley had discovered the intrigue, and would ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... process can be traced with perfect definiteness. The older incantations, associated with Ea, were re-edited so as to give to Marduk the supreme power over demons, witches and sorcerers: the hymns and lamentations composed for the cult of Bel, Shamash and of Adad were transformed into paeans and appeals to Marduk, while the ancient myths arising in the various religious and political centres underwent a similar process of adaptation to changed conditions, and as a consequence their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... probably have been allowed by Gracchus. It would have been resented by the people, and did not appeal to the statesmanship, widely spread in the Greek and not unknown in the Roman world, which regarded it as one of the duties of a State to provide cheap food for its citizens. The lamentations of a later day over a pauperised proletariate and an exhausted treasury[609] cannot strictly be laid to the account of the original scheme, Except in so far as it served as a precedent; they were the consequence of the action of later demagogues who, instructed by Gracchus ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... the floor of my little cabin, rolling to and fro with the violent motion of the brig, overcome with terror. He was convinced that we were going to be drowned, and in the intervals of furious sea-sickness uttered piteous lamentations in Dutch, English, and various native tongues, mingled with curses and prayers of the most primitive and ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... she professed to follow, never identified herself with one of the unpopular reforms of her day, whose pen never by any chance slipped outside the prescribed literary line of safety, to cheer the martyrs to truth in her own generation; lamentations from such a source over Lucretia Mott, are presumptuous and profane. If such a life of self-sacrifice and devotion to the best interests of humanity; such courage to stand alone, to do and say the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... all look like a Sunday. In some churches they had no service; in others hardly any People. In the forenoon we had a discourse from behind the table, from the yesterday's watch-word; "I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment, lest any hurt it," &c. In the afternoon was preaching on Lamentations III. 39-41: "Wherefore doth a living man complain, &c. Let us search and try our ways," &c. Both times we had ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... vision and prophecy are of the future and the great deeds of men to come, and henceforward Aeneas makes no allusion to the past and the figures that peopled it, abandons talk and lamentations, "virtutem extendit factis." At the outset of Book vii. we feel the ship moving at once; three lines suffice for the fresh start; Circe is passed unheeded. "Maior rerum mihi nascitur ordo," says the poet ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler



Words linked to "Lamentations" :   Old Testament, Book of Lamentations, Writings, Ketubim, Hagiographa, book



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