"Pathetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unfortunate but high-souled nobleman in expectation of ignominious death are interesting and pathetic, but they have no claim to a tune, even if they were less rugged and unmetrical. But the poem stands notable ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... can never be dull. But here, in winter at least, it is extraordinarily—" he paused for the exactly right word, in a calm way that was peculiar to him and that seemed to emphasise his fine self-possession—"pathetic, and suggestive of calamity." ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... taking her part. Once, when she was very small, she ran away with Katy's doll, and when Katy pursued, and tried to take it from her, Clover held fast and would not let go. Dr. Carr, who wasn't attending particularly, heard nothing but the pathetic tone of Clover's voice, as she said: "Me won't! Me want dolly!" and, without stopping to inquire, he called out sharply: "For shame, Katy! give your sister her doll at once!" which Katy, much surprised, did; while Clover purred in triumph, like a satisfied kitten. Clover ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what a thankfulness that the tenth rate is ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... She looked very wistful and pathetic at that moment. A lump rose in my throat as I strove to dry her eyes ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... ate breakfast before day, by the light of a candle covering its candlestick with a tallow glacier. It made only a hole of shine in the general duskiness of the big dining-room. The landlady bade them a pathetic good-by. She was sure there were dangers ahead of them. The night stage had got in three hours late, owing to a breakdown, and one calamity she said, is only ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... fulfilment of which is a fading dream. A solitary figure is the hero of the third novel, The Fool (1909), as well. It is a young clergyman who settles in a small Franconian town with the sole purpose of doing good. He visits those who are weary and heavy-laden; with pathetic faith in the goodness of humanity he sees in every man a brother, and finally he suffers the Saviour's fate of pining away and dying unrecognized for what he was. This is Kellermann's profoundest and best ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... sentiment prompts him to look up at my window; he gives a whimper and a wag, and goes on. I try to persuade myself that he didn't see me, and that he does this, other mornings, when I am not thus perversely bolstered up in rebellion, and peering through blinds at wrong hours. Isn't there something pathetic in the very idea that a dog may have a behind-your-back attachment of that sort?—that every morning he looks up at an unresponsive blank, and wags, and ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... to direct that calm and tenacious bravery which the German opposed to the pathetic and spontaneous fury of the Frenchman, against the inward enemy, against the highly suspicious and, at all events, unnative "cultivation" which, owing to a dangerous misunderstanding, is called "culture" ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... intensely pathetic in being thus, as it were, spectators of a tragic drama which is being acted on two separate stages at once—the dreadful link of connection, which is unseen to the separate actors, being only too vividly seen by the spectators. It was with ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... was matted and plastered with some thick liquid, giving him a curious frowsy appearance. He was evidently in a towering rage but it was also apparent that he was suffering great pain, his ferocious growls being interspersed with long, low, pathetic whines. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... London slums, I had occasion to observe that among the women of the poor, and more especially in those who had lost the first bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly in the fear of being disgusting. There was an almost pathetic anxiety, in the face of pain and discomfort, not to be disgusting in the doctor's eyes. This anxiety expressed itself in the ordinary symptoms of modesty. But, as soon as the woman realized that I found nothing disgusting in whatever was proper and necessary to be done under the circumstances, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of applause when "Enoch Arden" was announced. Eleanor took her place at the piano while Anne stepped forward and began the pathetic tale to the subdued strains of the music that Eleanor had ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... month of October 1795, Pitt decided to come to terms with France, if the Directory, newly installed in power, should found a stable Government and exhibit peaceful tendencies. His position in this autumn is pathetic. Reproached by the emigres for recalling the Comte d'Artois from Yeu, taunted by Fox for not having sought peace from the Terrorists, and reviled by the populace as the cause of the dearth, he held firmly on his way, shelving the emigres, maintaining that ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... noblest of all ballads; while one of the greatest of modern poems opens with something personal and pathetic, key-note ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... lifting her pathetic eyes to his. "It isn't that. Oh, please be good to me! Don't ask me to say anything more. Don't make it hard for me, Brandon. I love you—I love you. To be your wife would be the most glorious—No, no! I must not even think of it. I must put it out of my mind. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... to take him from me, grannie, after he's been and struck me?" interposed his wife, in a tone half pathetic, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... three lines all rhyme, but the rhyme changes with each succeeding triplet. It would be difficult to persuade the English reader that this is a very effective measure, and one in which many a gloomy or pathetic tale has been told. In order to realise how a few Chinese monosyllables in juxtaposition can stir the human heart to its lowest depths, it is necessary to devote some years to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... "they are alike except that this seems more pathetic. There is no doubt of the truth in my mind. Of course she saw the difference as Miss Lilian grew older and she was afraid she might have defrauded her of some better fortune. Oh, I pity the poor woman profoundly. She had a hard life. Mrs. Barrington, this must have seemed a haven of rest ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... The traditional anecdotes relative to the Argonautic expedition are introduced with propriety, and embellished with the graces of poetical fiction. In describing scenes of tenderness, this author is happily pathetic, and in the heat of combat, proportionably animated. His similes present the imagination with beautiful imagery, and not only illustrate, but give additional force to the subject. We find in Flaccus a few expressions ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... his worried eyes, His wrinkled, shrewd, pathetic face, His shop, and all he sells and buys ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... harangue of Constantine, and from the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Chrysostom. People generally got drunk at these feasts; and this excess was looked upon as a thing that might be permitted. This evidently appears by the pathetic complaints of St. Augustin and St. Cyprian: the former of these holy fathers expresses himself after this manner:—— "Drunken debauches pass as permitted amongst us, so that people turn them into solemn feasts, to honour the ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... paces apart, and passed out of the garden to a low, shelving bank and looked downward where a sea of glass rippled on to the broad, firm sands. What a picture of desolation! The grey, hot mist, the whitewashed cabin, the long, ugly potato patch, the weird, pathetic figure of that old man from whose brain the light of life had surely passed for ever. And yet Trent was puzzled. Monty's furtive glance inland, his half-frightened, half-cunning denial of any anticipated visit suggested that there was ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... own pure motives, entered into a union which her letters to him, full of love, tenderness, and fidelity, proved that she regarded as a sacred marriage; all the circumstances, and, not least, the pathetic way she writes to him of their child later on, prove how she only wished to remain faithful to him. It was now that the sad experiences of her early life told upon her and warped her better judgment; she who had seen ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... them simply what had happened; how he had been to see Arthur, who had talked to him upon the subject, and what he had said, and for his part he had made up his mind, and wasn't going to use cribs any more; and not being quite sure of his ground, took the high and pathetic tone, and was proceeding to say "how that, having learnt his lessons with them for so many years, it would grieve him much to put an end to the arrangement, and he hoped, at any rate, that if they wouldn't go on with him, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... trees, and old Ladrone edged close to the big fire to share its warmth. This caused us to bring in the other horses and put them close to the fire under the big branches of the fir tree. It was deeply pathetic to watch the poor worn animals, all life and spirit gone out of them, standing about the fire with drooping heads and half-closed eyes. Perhaps they dreamed, like us, of the beautiful, warm, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... [When the pathetic peroration of M, de Seze was read to the King, the evening before it was delivered to the Assembly, "I have to request of you," he said, "to make a painful sacrifice; strike out of your pleading the peroration. It is enough for me to appear before such judges, and show my entire innocence; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... squeezing his hand, "you are always so wise and good. That's just the point; we must not spoil the happiness by the sorrow, though that is what Marian is always trying to do. Poor Marian, she's such a pathetic creature; I ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... are not blessed with the gift of oratory, from the practice of their favourite art, if it serves to fill up their time, and gain a degree of reputation. I am an admirer of eloquence [c]; I hold it venerable, and even sacred, in all its shapes, and every mode of composition. The pathetic of tragedy, of which you, Maternus, are so great a master; the majesty of the epic, the gaiety of the lyric muse; the wanton elegy, the keen iambic, and the pointed epigram; all have their charms; and Eloquence, whatever may ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... Eleanor stood beside the elderly bride that the affair ceased to be funny to her. For the first time, she saw something pathetic and beautiful in the permanence of a love that, starved and thwarted and blasted by ridicule, could survive the years and make two faded, middle-aged people like Aunt Enid and Mr. Chester eager to drain the dregs of life together, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... wrote in a rather pathetic tone to the Shogun touching the relative strength of the Japanese and the foreigners: "I held a council the other day with my military nobility (Daimios and nobles), but unfortunately inured to the habits of peace, which for more than two hundred years has existed ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... and so irreparably complete, is one of the strangest events of that still imperfectly comprehended time. There had been, and were still to be, plenty of instances of the downfall of power, as ruinous and even more tragic, though scarcely any one more pathetic in its surprise and its shame. But it is hard to find one of which so little warning was given, and the causes of which are at once in part so clear, and in part so obscure and unintelligible. Such disasters had to be reckoned ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... Shelby,'" read the reporter. "There ought to be a story in a man who has the nerve to subscribe himself like that in a New York hotel. What do you know about his pathetic case?" ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... to breakfast with a particularly disagreeable expression. He said "good-morning" into his newspaper as usual without noticing her pathetic little smile. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... the pathetic voice, "that They will sometimes let old Antony out of hell for an hour, to sit on her jasper seat and see the Reverend Mother walk up the golden stairs, with the splendid Knight on one side and the great Lord ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Wonderful One-Hoss Shay, we do so in spite of the religious and pathetic motive of the greater part of Dr. Holmes's work, and of his fancy, which should be at least as conspicuous as his humour. It is fancy rather than imagination; but it is more perfect, more definite, more fit, than the larger art of imagery, which is apt to be vague, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... been; men they were whom religious feeling guided correctly in choosing their expressions, and with whom the state of the language in some respects cooperated, by furnishing a diction more homely, fervent, and pathetic, than would now be available. For their apostolic functions English was the language most in demand. But in polemic or controversial cases Greek is indispensable. And of this Lady Carbery was sufficiently convinced by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and, thinking himself childless, the fact that his title and his old name, of which he was very proud, would die with him had been a great grief. His happiness in the knowledge of Ahmed's existence was pathetic, he was consumed with impatience for his son's arrival. Nothing had been said to Ahmed in case Lord Glencaryll should prove difficult to convince and thereby complicate matters, but his ready acceptance of the affair and his eagerness to see his son ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... this time as if nobody loved him. As a song, it was not a very pathetic song, being all about coons spooning in June under the moon, and so on and so forth, but Gussie handled it in such a sad, crushed way that there was genuine anguish in every line. By the time he reached the refrain I was nearly in tears. It seemed such a rotten sort ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the word. But I do love the poor old thing. Her letters are rich. She tells me about all the new babies and who's courting who and how the horses are. It is pathetic." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... without sympathy. Hard and painfully blunt as he could be, he was nevertheless compassionate towards women, though not always happy in expressing his feelings, and when Millicent folded her slender hands with a pathetic sigh, he was moved to sincere pity and indignation. He knew that some of the worthy Colonials' wives and daughters could be, on occasion, almost brutally frank, and that, in spite of his efforts, Leslie was not ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... dresses worn on the occasion; but Glover was the corsair, and burnt cork had to suffer, and I know that there was quite a pretty Miss whom he had no especial objection to embracing as Medora. When he said, "My own Medora!" it was quite pathetic—enough to cause a titter among the younger portion of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... history shown itself in the form of aggression, but French mysticism clings to the ideal and the hope of a glorious future for a deathless France soon to be renewed. All peoples that have declined or suffered an adverse fate, even the pathetic remnants of the American Indians, expect the return of their lost power. Such mysticism is, we may think, the only condition under which national life in many cases can continue. The religious or the mystical mood of nations is created by the need of making belief dynamic, ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... lacquered, now moldering and fallen into dust. At the four corners of the room the old gods, life-size, had been gathered into piles and covered with matting, and from beneath this dusty covering protruded dirty, battered heads and gilded bodies, ludicrous and pathetic. ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... pathetic soliloquy was found written on the back of a hundred pound note of the National Bank, which passed through our hands lately, and we are sorry we can now add our sympathies to those of our poet on the transitory nature ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... The glorious symphony Hath need of pause and interval of peace. Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease, Save hum of insects' aimless industry. Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry Of color to conceal her swift decrease. Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-agd summer! Vain this show! Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset One meadow with a single violet; ...
— A Calendar of Sonnets • Helen Hunt Jackson
... clear, a little petulant perhaps, but still very sweet. She is quite small—a little girl—and clad in deep mourning. There is something pathetic about the dense black surrounding such a radiant face, and such a childish figure. Her eyes are fixed on the professor, and there is evident anxiety in their hazel depths; her soft lips are parted; she seems hesitating as if not knowing whether ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... written none of these more elaborate works, she would deserve a permanent place in our literature for a considerable library of short stories, among which I should name "A Berkshire Tradition," a pathetic tale of the Revolution; "The White Scarf," a romantic story of Mediaeval France; "Fanny McDermot," a study of conventional morality; "Home," of which the Westminster Review said, "We wish this book was in the hands of every ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... the difficulty which a black boy experiences in America in competing with his white rivals, Booker Washington tells us that his own pathetic and desperate struggle taught him that 'success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.' There ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... put them on my writing! You do not know what it is to write! It cramps your back, it obscures your eyes, it breaks your sides and stomach!" It is interesting to note the various forms which these final words of the scribes took; sometimes the Explicit is a pathetic appeal for remembrance in the prayers of the reader, and sometimes it contains a note of warning. In a manuscript of St. Augustine now at Oxford, there is written: "This book belongs to St. Mary's of Robert's Bridge; whoever shall steal it or in any way alienate ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... through a pane of glass," said the butler, in a soft voice suited to the pathetic nature of the communication. "By great good fortune her ladyship had been dressed for the day, and had got her turban on. This saved her ladyship's head. But her ladyship's neck, sir, had a very narrow escape. ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... murk so characteristic of London draped the grimy structure of the station, and a fine drizzle was falling. London had endued no holiday garments to greet Flamby, but, homely fashion, had elected to receive her in its everyday winter guise. A pathetic little figure, she stepped out of the carriage. Something in the contrast between this joyless gloom and the sun-gay hills she had known and loved brought a sudden mist before Flamby's eyes, so that she remained unaware of the presence of a certain genial officer until ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... quick, too, to catch the difference between his speech and her own. She was quick—and pathetic. Her self-correction amused him, with a strain of pity in his amusement. If a girl like that had only had a chance.... And just then Steptoe broke in on his musing ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... with peach-trees, and topped with wistaria and valerian, and the handsome wild caperplant; and against the wall stood rows of tall golden sunflowers late in their blooming; the sun they seldom could see for the wall, and it was pathetic always to me, as the day wore on, to watch the poor stately amber heads turn straining to greet their god, and only meeting the stones and the cobwebs, and the peach-leaves of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... new and old theories of life, new and old standards of values, new and old centres of authority, new and old ambitions and dreams. And in this chaos there are only two principles of order, the first (which is also the ultimate cause of all our disorder) being the pathetic fact that nearly all the actors in the bewildering drama are still seeking for happiness outside themselves, the second being the ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... had been pronounced and the bridal pair were kneeling at the altar Dame Nellie Melba, wearing a blue dress and hat, crept from the side chapel to the choir and to the joy of the audience sang the pathetic 'Ave Maria' that Desdemona sings in the last act of Verdi's Othello when she feels her predestined doom approaching."—"Evening Standard" on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... followed up, and a few days later the band was almost annihilated. The plunder recovered proved them guilty of many late attacks. This was toward the end of the Indian war that had for so many years been disastrous to the community, and which in many of its aspects was deeply pathetic. Originally the Indian population was large. The coast Indians were spoken of as Diggers, and inferior in character. They were generally peaceful and friendly while the mountain dwellers were inclined to hostility. As a whole they did not represent a very high type of humanity, ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... neither they nor Anne Boleyn's can stand a moment's comparison with the unsullied purity of Catherine's life or the lofty courage with which she defended the cause she believed to be right. There is no more pathetic figure in English history, nor one condemned to a crueller fate. No breath of scandal touched her fair name, or impugned her devotion to Henry. If she had the misfortune to be identified with a particular ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... without heat, or fear, or haste. He carried a superb reserve and used no epithets. He showed how the landlords were born into their environment, just as the Irish peasantry were heirs to theirs. The speech was so full of sympathy and rich in reason, so convincing, so pathetic, so un-Irishlike, so charged with heart, and a heart for all humanity, even blind and stupid Englishmen, that everybody was captured, bound with green withes, by his quiet, convincing eloquence. The audience was melted into ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... there, with her hands pressed to her heart, her great pathetic eyes dilated with a curious fear. It was a long time before she spoke, though it was easy to see that she had penetrated Berrington's disguise. But then, he had spoken in his natural voice, which made all the difference. It seemed to him that the grey lady would have ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... stories of the strange lands he'd roved through, I'd begin to say to myself that he must surely be just lying. Then the fellow'd mention some little happening that he'd describe so vividly, would you believe it, I felt the tears in my eyes, for it would be sort of pathetic. So during that whole hour I sat there and changed my mind every ten minutes, now blowing hot, and again cold. I came away in as muddled a state as I went there. His actions seem to stamp him a rogue if ever there was ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... The pathetic career of the Gracchi had much significance in Roman history. They were the unconscious sponsors of a revolutionary movement which did not end until the republic had come under the rule of one man. They failed because they put ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... he had not the joyous nature so characteristic of the time. Moreover, as I have said, he retained the old sweet religious spirit, and clothed it with new forms of beauty in his sacred paintings. There is something pathetic about many of these—the Virgin, while she nurses the Infant Christ, seems to foresee all the sorrow in store for her, and but little of the joy. The girl angels who nestle around her in so many of his pictures, have ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... The brief pathetic life of Powhatan's daughter is well portrayed. (p. 76) This large oblong volume contains ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... of Henry II,, the best and most just of these (the Norman) princes, * *Peter, of Blois, a judicious and even elegant writer, of that age, gives a pathetic description of the venality of justice, and the oppressions of the poor, * * and he scruples not to complain to the king himself of these abuses. We may judge what the case would be under the government of worse ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... return for them money. Girls and boys alike should study these annuities. Life insurance is a helpful form of investment for those who have dependents. The girl at work should not put her savings into speculative investments. Business men of the best standing say it is pathetic to see the waste of girls' savings in unwise investments. One of the best investments a girl can make is to continue ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... up mysel'," said the old man, with an affected indifference that was pathetic in its self-abnegation. "I thought twa going a warfare together might do better than ane alone. Ye ken Christ sent out the disciples by twa and twa. And, Davie, when you are hard beset, just utter the name of Christ down in your heart, ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... merchant class. An incident of the afternoon was the singing by five thousand school-children of mixed Eastern races and the presentation of a bouquet to the Duchess. The effect of "God Save the King" in their quaint, native accents was described as being strangely pathetic. On the following morning the Ophir steamed out of the harbour bound for Australia and left eastern civilization behind for the forms and customs of England transplanted upon Australian soil. The shores of Sumatra were coasted, the Straits ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... aspirant. Although Dickens has told the whole story most feelingly in an introduction to Miss Procter's "Legends and Lyrics," issued after her death, to hear it from his own lips and sympathetic heart, as I have done, was, as may be imagined, something better even than reading his pathetic words on ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... legislation of Congress. Permanent deadlock was thus proposed as the remedy for the ills of sectional conflict. Resolute as the old nationalist was, he could not bring himself in these closing days of his life to pronounce to his party the word "secession." It was pathetic to see the disappointed and broken leader of the South as he literally wore his life away trying to defeat Clay, his lifelong antagonist, or to conciliate Webster, for whom he had ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... reckon as the second in the group, because he treats the two former as so closely connected as to be but one in numeration, need not detain us long. It is found only in this Gospel. The first point to be observed in it is the cry of these two blind men. There is something pathetic and exquisitely natural in the two being together, as is also the case in the similar miracle, at a later period, on the outskirts of Jericho. Equal sorrows drive men together for such poor help and solace as they can give each other. They have common experiences ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... turn of a hair how much. She had the air of a spoiled child, which became her; was golden and rosy; could pout; had dark blue eyes, which she could cloud at will, and fill, as we know, with tears. She excelled in pathetic silences, to which her parted lips gave an air of being breathless. She was beautifully dressed in cloudy, filmy things, and had a soft, slight, drooping figure. Innocence was her ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... The most pathetic page in the history of the Negro race in America is the story of reconstruction days. Kept in ignorance during the days of slavery his one great desire under freedom was for knowledge and self-improvement. Because the white South was spiritually unprepared to deal with ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... remained mute. In view of the fact that she believed love to be dead between them, this method of stimulating an outworn romance seemed sentimental and insincere. Had he loved her, she might well have thought it boyish and pathetic. What he spoke of as a disguise had seemed so natural as to escape her notice; and this indicated the height from which she had never really descended and could now never descend. He had lost his great opportunity of appearing the mayor in her eyes. It was no part ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... bright, as well as a pathetic side to scenes like this. The two have shared for fifty years, but if the days have been full of toil, with them have come strength of body, of mind and sterling character. If the burdens have been heavy, each has made the other's lighter, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... madame went on. "Presently they told her that it was consumption. She went to a hospital and she wrote a pathetic little note to the man. He tore it up. There had been an article in the papers a few weeks before proving that consumption was among the diseases which were more or less infectious. He sent her a few brutal ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its indescribable glamour, its affecting sincerity, its restraint, its exquisite and unflagging simplicity. The hesitant and melancholy personages who invest its scenes—Melisande, timid, naive, child-like, wistful, mercurial, infinitely pathetic; Pelleas, dream-filled, ardent, yet honorable in his passion; old Arkel, wise, gentle, and resigned; the tragic and brooding figure of Golaud; Little Yniold, artless and pitiful, a figure impossible anywhere save in Maeterlinck; the grave and simple diction, at times direct and homely in phrasing ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... attempt, gentlemen," said Albert, "to move your sympathy by a pathetic description of my own feelings as a man, and as an advocate. Whatever mine may be, it is my wish and my duty to repress them. I have need of that calm possession of my understanding, which will be necessary to convince yours of the innocence of my friend. To convince is my object. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Community set them down as a pair of lovers. They took walks together, and were not seldom encountered in the wood-paths: Hollingsworth deeply discoursing, in tones solemn and sternly pathetic; Zenobia, with a rich glow on her cheeks, and her eyes softened from their ordinary brightness, looked so beautiful, that had her companion been ten times a philanthropist, it seemed impossible but that one glance should melt him back ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has to forget me," he answered calmly. "You can bring me back to bed when she is through." And to this plea was added a pathetic wag of the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... pathetic figures at the coronation was that of the widowed Queen-Mother, Alexandra, who had come as a beautiful young girl nearly forty years before from over the sea to marry ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... defects is, in true tenderness of feeling. He has very few passages which can be called pathetic. His Elegies and funeral Odes, such as those on "Mrs Killigrew" and "Eleonora," are eloquent; but they move you to admiration, not to tears. Dryden's long immersion in the pollutions of the playhouses, had combined, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the initiative against the patricians, at my suggestion, and the Annals were written by a plebeian demagogue, instead of by one of that party, whose account of my extinction by command of the emperor was pathetic. He apologized in turn for my imperial master and me, saying truly, that the misunderstanding between us was past cement: for each of us loved the man but hated his office; and as the man is always more in his office than he is in himself, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... arrived at Djenan-el-Maqui she found Claude in the little dining-room with Caroline, who was seated beside him on a chair, leaning her lemon-colored chin upon the table, and gazing with pathetic eyes at the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... pathetic in the position of the Bristol poet on that spring evening—alone, and as he thought deserted, and driven to despair by what he believed to be the ill-treatment of the people ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... mournful story of colonel Lee's little bugler, and how he was murdered by colonel Tarleton. This "poor beardless boy", as Lee, in his pathetic account of that horrid transaction, calls him, had been mounted on a very fleet horse; but to gratify a countryman who had brought some news of the British, and was afraid of falling into their hands, Lee ordered the boy to exchange his horse, a moment, for that of the countryman, which happened ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... man there," pointing to Miller, "is Karl von Mueller, captain in the Secret Service." A low moan broke from Kathleen, and she looked anywhere but at Miller, who had stepped forward to stand between her and the pine table with its pathetic burden. "Von Mueller," continued ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... was illustrated by translations into English verse, was followed by another on Josephin Soulary, in whom she saw more than her maturer judgment might have justified. There is something very interesting and now, alas! still more pathetic in these sturdy and workmanlike essays in unaided criticism. Still more solitary her work became, in July, 1874, when her only sister, Aru, died, at the age of twenty. She seems to have been no less amiable than her sister, and if gifted with less originality and a less forcible ambition, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... glad to see the end of the Manchus. Among other acts of desolation, the large and beautiful city of Soochow was burnt and looted, an outrage for which the T'ai-p'ings were held responsible, and regarding which there is a pathetic tale told by an eye-witness of the ruins; in this instance, however, if indeed in no others, the acts of vandalism in question ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... permanent and beautiful things in his literary work. Past and Present (1843) is certainly a success—a happy and true thought, full of originality, worked out with art and power. The idea of embedding a living and pathetic picture of monastic life in the twelfth century, and a minute study of the labours of enlightened churchmen in the early struggles of civilisation—the idea of embedding this tale, as if it were the remains of some disinterred ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... some very pathetic additional particulars. It is in three parts—a plaintive prayer and portraiture of the psalmist's mental distress (vers. 1-8); a vehement supplication against his foes, and indignant recounting of their treachery (vers. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... much, or rather a good deal too little, for the Signora Ballatino. She had hitherto been standing in a meek attitude of pathetic appeal, wearing a fixed smile of ineffable sweetness but she evidently felt that she could go a bit farther than that herself, even if she was a lady. Calling the chairman "an old messer," and telling him for Gawd's sake ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... systems, and that those systems are optimistic. It is as though they said: 'Things must be good. But as they obviously are not good, they must really be other than they are.' And hence these extraordinary doctrines, so pitiful, so pathetic, so absurd, of the eternal good God who made this bad world, of the Absolute whose only manifestation is the Relative, of the Real which has so much less reality than the Phenomenal. Or, if all that be rejected, we transfer our heaven ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Johnson remarked, with his usual pointed severity, 'Here is a man telling the world what the world had all his life been telling him.' His 'Monody' expresses real grief in an artificial style, but has some stanzas as natural in the expression as they are pathetic ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... his ungraciousness; for my angry passions rose, at this rebuff, in a way that would have scandalized good Dr. Watts. He was a disappointment in all respects, (the rebel, not the blessed Doctor,) for he was neither fiendish, romantic, pathetic, or anything interesting; but a long, fat man, with a head like a burning bush, and a perfectly expressionless face: so I could dislike him without the slightest drawback, and ignored his existence from that day forth. One redeeming ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... its boundary. The Germans exacted, further, an enormous indemnity for the unjustifiable attack which the French had made upon them. This was fixed at five billion francs, and German troops were to occupy France till it was paid. The French people made pathetic sacrifices to hasten the payment of this indemnity, in order that the country might be freed from the presence of the hated Germans. The bitter feeling of the French for the Germans dates from this ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... again. These big children called men were almost to be pitied. She had expected a fight, but the man had thrown up the sponge from the outset, and now he was going to give himself into her hands. Only for that pathetic look in his eyes and that searching tone in his voice she could have found it ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... for children look more picturesque as bridesmaids than the {73} average half-dozen grown-up girls who cannot be chosen for their appearance. Elderly bridesmaids in youthful frocks and girlish hats are ridiculous to the unthinking, but pathetic to those ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... on every side, the pathetic figures of men who could not let go after their greatest usefulness was past; of other men who dropped before they realized their arrival at the end of the road; and, most pathetic of all, of men who ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... breaks in from time to time to bewilder and deflower these quiet homes; not "passionate sorrow" only, for the overthrow of the soul's beauty, but the loss of, or carelessness for personal beauty even, in those whom men have wronged—their pathetic wanness; the sailor "who, in his heart, was half a shepherd on the stormy seas;" the wild woman teaching her child to pray for her betrayer; incidents like the making of the shepherd's staff, or that of the young boy laying the first stone of the sheepfold;—all the pathetic episodes of ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... waited all those centuries for this night; who has given up to the coming hour all the freedom of eternity, won in the old way, in hope of a new life in a new world such as she longed for...!" She stopped suddenly. As she had gone on speaking there had come with her words a strange pathetic, almost pleading, tone which touched me to the quick. As she stopped, I could see, before she turned away her head, that her eyes were full ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... of joy streamed down her face, and then Mercy's flowed too. She uttered a little pathetic cry of joy. "Ah," she sobbed, "the bit of comfort I needed so has come to my heavy heart. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... so humble, so pathetic, so self-forgetful in the homage that the tears sprang to the girl's eyes and she longed to put her arms about his neck and draw his face close to hers and tell him how her heart was ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... Nan, simply; and then she added, with quaintness that was pathetic, "You see, we are so unused to the feeling, and it is over-hard at first: by and by we shall be more used to not having our own ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... weeks to do. And it suddenly impressed me as something poignant, as something with the Vergilian touch of tears in it. It seemed so full of history, so vocal of the tragic expedients to which men on the prairie must turn. It seemed pathetic. It brought a lump into my throat. Yet that Joseph's Coat of metal was a neatly done bit of work. All it needed was a coat of paint or two, and it would look less like a crazy-quilt solidified into a homestead. And I suddenly ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... but his fear of losing an army made all pleadings vain. In fact, as I ascertained by the following cablegram which came into my hands, Napoleon's instructions for the French evacuation were in Mexico at the very time of this pathetic scene between him and Carlotta. The despatch was in cipher when I received it, but was translated by the telegraph operator at my headquarters, who long before had mastered the key of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... line seems to me particularly interesting—even pathetic. It is a telegram sent by the late Czar Nicolas to his Imperial Cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm. It is dated July 29, ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... that she couldn't read, run, and ride as much as she liked. A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic. But the training she received at Aunt March's was just what she needed, and the thought that she was doing something to support herself made her happy in spite of ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... wrote to you once that you must be unconcerned when you write pathetic stories. And you did not understand me. You may weep and moan over your stories, you may suffer together with your heroes, but I consider one must do this so that the reader does not notice it. The more objective, the stronger will ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... France loaded Wilfrid with rich presents, and sent him over to England in a gallant ship to bear the mournful tidings of poor Prince Edwin's death to England's king. She thought that when Athelstane should hear the sad tale told in the pathetic language of the faithful page, his heart would be touched with remorse for what he ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... the present editor for severity during the chairmanship of the critical department are invited to take a vicarious revenge this month, observing the uncensored remarks of the present juvenile chairman concerning our pathetic ignorance. Of us Master Galpin says: "when the author approaches involved or technical subjects, he shows clearly the unfortunate circumstance that he has never profited by an advanced education." This certainly should ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... show a remarkable freedom of dealing with the sacred text. They repeat in terser language what I ventured to utter four years ago regarding the Book of Genesis. 'Profoundly interesting and indeed pathetic to me are those attempts of the opening mind of man to appease its hunger for a Cause. But the Book of Genesis has no voice in scientific questions. It is a poem, not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is for ever beautiful; in the latter it has been, and it will continue to be, purely ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the passengers to be put to death, in detail, until it came the turn of Herrera. As he was about to be cast into the sea, his daughter sprang wildly forward, and kneeling before the cruel pirate captain, she beseeched him in such earnest and pathetic tones to spare her father's life, or let her die in his stead, that Rowland, fired by the voluptuousness of her extreme beauty, and perhaps touched by her tears, promised to spare her father on condition that she would become his wife. Such were the dread alternatives. Death for her father ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... Author of Waverley is a master of the pathetic, is evinced by several well-known passages. Such are the funeral of the fisherman's son in the Antiquary—the imprisonment and trial of Effie Deans, and the demeanour of the sister and the broken-hearted father—the short narrative of the smuggler in Redgauntlet—many parts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... the stranger came from behind the bushes. Cautiously he returned to the road. His fine lips curled in a curious mocking smile. But it was himself that he mocked, for there was a look in his dark eyes that gave to his naturally strong face an almost pathetic ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... deep, creamy, golden hue, with delicate traceries of mould, like fairy cobwebs. The Smoked Beef, and Doughnuts, as being more sober and unemotional features of the pageant, appeared on either side the remains of a Cold Chicken, as rendering pathetic tribute to hoary age; while sturdy, reliable Hash and Fishballs reposed right and left in their mottled and rich brown coats, with a kind of complacent consciousness of having been created according to Mrs. GLASS'S standard dictum, First ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... true. In March Speed wrote him that he was "far happier than he had ever expected to be." Lincoln caught at the letter with an eagerness which is deeply pathetic: ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... of a translation of one of Jonas Lie's earlier works—"Den Fremsynte" ("The Visionary")—the reviewer expressed a hope that I would follow up that translation with "an English version of Lie's 'Livsslaven,' that intensely tragic and pathetic story of suffering and wrong." It is in accordance with this suggestion that the present ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... musings, the people of New York do not suffer any appearances of neglect to accumulate round the last resting-place of those who died unfriended and alone. Another feature, not to be met with in England, strikes the stranger at first with ludicrous images, though in reality it has more of the pathetic. In one part of this cemetery there are several hundred graves of children, and these, with most others of children of the poorer class, have toys in glass cases placed upon them. There are playthings of many kinds, woolly dogs and lambs, and little wooden houses, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... subject you ought to talk on. Why I can hardly wait to hear it. Who better can tell it? If you are short of facts, just romance a little, that's allowable where facts are scarce. Tell 'em personal incidents and don't make 'em too solemn or pathetic. Make 'em laugh. Personally, I'm going to get a close-up seat, for in that big barn of a place I doubt if you ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... of nature and truth—and in every respect worthy of "one of the most elegant, pathetic, and original living poets of England." Moreover, it is just such a book as we expected from the worthy vicar of Bremhill; dedicated to the Bishop of Bath and Wells; and dated from Bremhill Parsonage, of which interesting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... and from the heart, and seems made to convey both profound thought and deep emotion. There is no index of character so sure as the voice. There are tones, tones brilliant and gushing, which impart a quick and pathetic sensibility: there are others that, deep and yet calm, seem the just interpreters of a serene and exalted intellect. But the rarest and the most precious of all voices is that which combines passion and repose; and whose rich and restrained tones exercise, perhaps, on the human frame ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... my family (it was to a female too!) in the name of the Chairman of my Committee, to say, that I had fallen a sacrifice to the fury of the mob, whose rage had been turned against me by some circumstance. The caitiff described, in very pathetic language, the distress of my friends, and requested instructions for the funeral of the mangled corpse. This letter was written in the most plausible manner; the hand-writing and name of the Chairman of my Committee was forged, and every thing was admirably calculated to give the impression, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... work on the plans. He could not keep at it, and contented himself with going the round of the fields two or three times a day and watching the men. The sudden flame of energy that Pelle's youth had called to life within him had died down, leaving a pathetic old man, who had been out in the cold all his life, and was now luxuriating in a few late rays of evening sun. He no longer measured himself by Pelle, and was not jealous of his taking the lead in anything, but simply admired him ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... fully armed foot-soldier, upon whom she turns to deliver a blow with her sword. "Every reader will be struck by the beauty and spirit of the Amazon, alike in her action and her facial expression. The type of head, broad, bold, and powerful, and at the same time young and blooming, with the pathetic- indignant expression, is preserved with little falling off from the best age of Greek art. ... In spirit and expression almost equal to the Amazon is the horse she bestrides." [Footnote: The quotations ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... to weigh more heavily upon her. "If I were mother of his children," she said to herself, "it would not make so much difference if I did grow old and ugly. He would have the children to give him pleasure." "I don't see what there is left for me to do," she said again and again. Sometimes she made pathetic attempts to change the simplicity of her dress. "Perhaps if I wore better clothes, I should look younger," she thought. But the result was not satisfactory. Her severe style had always been so essentially her own that any departure from it only made her look still more altered. ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... pathetic address to his soldiers, and foretells that henceforth all mothers, wives, and old men, will point them out as they pass, saying, "There go our deliverers!" and adds—"I grow proud in speaking to you." "Inhabitants of this beautiful ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... away. She steered a course clear of the crowd of girls, the ends of her mantle floating behind her, like a brig in full sail before the breeze, while her poor little daughter hung out of the doorway gazing after her, sobbing bitterly, and mouthing in pathetic, helpless misery. ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... work there is something which a reader would wish to bear in his memory for ever. For power of animated description, for eloquent reflections upon the events of everyday life, and for soft, touching, pathetic appeals to the best feelings of the heart, these tales are worthy of a place on every library table in the kingdom. They are well calculated to add to ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... who has put in our prayer, 'Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil'? Here I live in temptation: I am always thrown into evil. If I were not—" Her voice was very quiet, and had a strange pathetic note in it. It ceased, and ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... it short at the end of one verse, for he could endure no more of that—the tears were in his eyes. Ugly as the dialect was in itself and often as it had revolted him in former days, there was something hauntingly pathetic about it when combined with religion, and sung in Keewatin by that weakling voice; the London voice, shut up in the mildewed box, was an exile like himself. When he was a child, he had heard his mother sing those words, and ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... sweeping it aside, rattled the windows and waved wildly in mid-air a venturesome rose which had clambered to the second story of the old inn. The barn-yard appeared even more dismal because of the coming darkness and the hens presented a pathetic picture of discomfort as they tucked their heads under their wet feathers for the night, while his lordship, the rooster, was but a sorry figure upon his high perch, with the moisture regularly and unceasingly dripping through the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... during the singing of the last portion of it, the pious man who guided these orisons, sympathized so deeply in the passion of lamentation which encompassed him, that his accents were scarcely audible. The overpowering scene was closed by a brief and pathetic prayer to the Most High, that to His dying servant he would "stretch out His everlasting arms," and "to the friendless prove ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... months before that period had expired. The ode entitled Dejection, to which reference has so often been made, was written on the 4th of April 1802, and the evidential importance which attaches, in connection with the point under inquiry, to this singularly pathetic utterance has been almost universally recognised. Coleridge has himself cited its most significant passage in the Biographia Literaria as supplying the best description of his mental state at the time when it was written. De Quincey quotes it with appropriate comments in his ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Goulburn, vol. ii., p. 99; ed. 1866). What is this but to say, in polite language, that Jesus was very effeminate? The Christian religion has all the vices of slavery, and encourages submission to evil instead of resistance to it; it has in it the pathetic beauty of the meekness of the bruised and beaten wife still loving the injurer, of the slave forgiving the slave-driver, but it is a beauty which perpetuates the wrong of which it is born. Better, far better, both for oppressor and for oppressed, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... aspect spread itself over the glowing sky and earth. The nights grew vocal with the invisible chorus of insect life; there was a mellow splendour in the moonlight, which touched the distant hills and wide-spreading waters with a pathetic prophecy of change. And now, ripe, serene, and rich with the accumulated beauty of the summer, the autumn flowers appeared. Their movement was like the stately dances of olden times; youth and its overflow ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... he began to sing, and to sing well. His voice was strong, clear, and mellow, and its tones rose and fell in the silent night air with a pathetic and wonderful sweetness. The burden of his song was "We may be ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... It was not able to attain to the great heights of emotion; but to such a height of grief as it could rise to, it rose. As for his display of that grief, had he been a pretty boy the onlookers could not have failed to find it pathetic; as it was, for all that they were most of them keenly sensible of his royal condition, they were hard put to it ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... trip in Billy's machine and when we tiptoed into the accident ward the nurse smiled at us. And so did Patsy. He was a pathetic-looking little wisp as he lay there with the bedclothes lifted away from his body, but he smiled and moved his head a bit on the pillow. Fosgill sat down at the head of the cot and leaned over, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... words on the prevention of gaming, the consideration of which gave rise to this hasty sketch; I mean by dramatic exhibitions of its direful effects. On our stage we have a pathetic tragedy by E. Moore, which, though seldom acted, is a fine domestic moral to old and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... window). Beg pardon, ma'am; but can you tell me what became of that—- (He recognizes Bohun, and loses all his self-possession. Bohun waits rigidly for him to pull himself together. After a pathetic exhibition of confusion, he recovers himself sufficiently to address Bohun weakly but coherently.) Beg pardon, sir, I'm sure, ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... Gautier took him up among his Grotesques and embalmed him in the caressing and immortalising amber of his marvellous style and treatment; while at the end of the same century one of the chief living poets and playwrights of France made him the subject of a popular and really pathetic drama. His Pedant Joue is not a stupid comedy, and had the honour of furnishing Moliere with some of that "property" which he was, quite rightly, in the habit of commandeering wherever he found it. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Flagellation is not of the body—it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says Pythagoras, "for sleep in them is ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... up into her daughter's face with a perplexed frown. She seemed scarcely to have heard what had been said to her, not even to have been aware that any escape was possible. She felt for Beatrice's hand, and taking it in her own, stroked it with pathetic helplessness. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... stood alone and erect in the ring of the dead, no longer attempting to defend himself, either because he was weak with wounds, or because his ammunition was exhausted. There he stood silent and solitary, presenting one of the most pathetic yet splendid sights told of in the generation that he adorned. There was no more firing now, but the natives stole out of their cover and came up to the man quietly, peering at him half afraid. Then one of them lifted his assegai and drove it through his breast. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... John Ridd, and anxiety to relieve you, I made no condition precedent, you are not the man to take advantage, as a lawyer might. I do not even want your promise. As sure as I hold this glass, and drink your health and love in another drop (forced on me by pathetic words), so surely will you be bound to me, until I do release you. Tush! I know men well by this time: a mere look of trust from one is ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore |
