|
|
|
More "Maudlin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Russia, represented the generous, democratic ideals and principles vital to every Jew in that they must be securely established before the emancipation of the Jew could be realized. Their hatred of Czarism was not engulfed by any maudlin sentiment; they knew that they had no "fatherland" to defend. They were not swept on a tide of jingoism to forget their tragic history and proclaim their loyalty to the infamous oppressor. No. Their ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... away in disgust. Such language was to him simply disgusting. It fell upon his ears as false maudlin sentiment falls on the ears of the ordinary honest man of the world. Barrington Erle was a man ordinarily honest. He would not have been untrue to his mother's brother, William Mildmay, the great Whig Minister of the day, for any earthly consideration. He was ready to work with ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Stanton," said Sibley in tones of maudlin sentiment, "you are cruel to deprive me of your cousin's society even for a moment. I'll forgive you this once, but never again." And then he availed himself of the opportunity to pay another ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... angry with himself for entertaining it. It was maudlin. After all Chabrillane and La Motte-Royau were quite exceptional swordsmen, but neither of them really approached his own formidable calibre. Reaction began to flow, as he drove out through country lanes flooded with pleasant September sunshine. His spirits rose. A premonition of victory ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... like David in his wrath, saying that all men are liars. They're not. They're just as good as women, if not better. I've no betrayed virgin's grouch against men. But I've made myself too busy to worry about sex. It's no use talking tosh. Sex is the root of the whole sentimental, maudlin——" ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... and in agony she asked herself if she had given as much as she had demanded. Had she not thought too much of her own rights and wrongs and too little of his hopes and burdens? And perhaps because of this he was to be crushed at a blow, and his enemies laugh at his calamity and give to her their maudlin pity. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... disreputable-looking animals as one could picture, for Betsy Brindle and her daughter, a pretty little year-old heifer, were unquestionably, undeniably, hopelessly intoxicated. Betsy was swaying and staggering from side to side, wagging her head foolishly and mooing in the most maudlin manner, while Sally, whose potations affected her quite differently, was cavorting madly thither and yonder, one moment almost standing upon her head, with hind legs and tail waving wildly in mid- air, the next ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... and ending by one or other of the delirious disputants getting "chucked" into the sea, and having a swim before recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark triangular objects, moving in scores around the raft, and cutting the water, ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... no such honeymoon as yours. A few brief days of happiness, and then The dream was over. I had married one Who was the sport of vagrant impulses. We had not been a fortnight wed, when he Came home to me with brandy in his brain— A maudlin fool—for love like mine to hide As if he were an unclean beast. O Grace! I cannot paint the horrors of that night. My heart, till then serene, and safely kept In Trust's strong citadel, quaked all night long, As tower and bastion fell before ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... one place he was troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the prayer-book and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and came away maudlin, how he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he was at ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... on the preponderating role played by American capitalism in the war. In an article which adopts as title that of Norman Angell's book The Great Illusion, Reed declares that the pretence of fighting kings is maudlin, and that Money is the true king. Putting his finger on the sore spot, he adduces figures showing the colossal profits made by the great American companies. Under the bizarre title The Myth of American Fatness,[27] he shows that it is not, as Europe fancies, the American nation ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... dealing the cards a few minutes later, when the long-haired man emerged from the gambling hell, and imitating the maudlin, sauntered up to the bar and asked for a drink. After being served, he walked about halfway to the door, then whirling suddenly, stepped to the end of the bar, placed his hands upon it, sprang up and stood ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... the House met his defiance by a concurrent resolution emphatically condemning his reconstruction policy, and thus opening the way for the coming struggle between Executive usurpation and the power of Congress. His maudlin speech on the 22d of February to the political mob which called on him, branding as traitors the leaders of the party which had elected him, completely dishonored him in the opinion of all Republicans, and awakened general alarm. Everybody could now see the mistake of his nomination at Baltimore, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... not care how much or how little you love me. That depends upon you, as well as myself. I believe the time will come, when you will love me as you ought, and I say this in perfect calm conviction, in all my weakness, and with all my maudlin habits clinging to me. Strangely enough your doubt of me has made me rise up in arms to champion my cause, or else I should lie down forever in the dust, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... of exhibiting, the degree of licence to which they capriciously permit their favourite slaves occasionally to carry their familiarity. They seem to consider it as an undeniable proof of the general kindness with which their dependents are treated. It is as good a proof of it as the maudlin tenderness of a fine lady to her lap-dog is of her humane treatment of animals in general. Servants whose claims to respect are properly understood by themselves and their employers, are not made pets, playthings, jesters, or companions of, and it is only the degradation ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... passed, to put out all Papists in office And a deal of do of which I am weary But do it with mighty vanity and talking Feared she hath from some [one] or other of a present Fell a-crying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another Found to be with child, do never stir out of their beds Had his hand cut off, and was hanged presently! Hates to have any body mention what he had done the day before House of ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... Bounderby said, 'Your health, ma'am!' she answered with great feeling, 'Thank you, sir. The same to you, and happiness also.' Finally, she wished him good night, with great pathos; and Mr. Bounderby went to bed, with a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender, though he could not, for his life, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... had on earlier days, half-maudlin from "his drop at the 'Bull and Bush,'" exclaimed to Maggie, "I can't call myself a success! I'm a rotten failure if you want to know, and I had most things in my favour to start with, went to Cambridge, had a good opening as a barrister. But it wasn't quick enough for me. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... regular efficiency expert in sport. Take fall and spring, when the wild geese come through, he'll soak grain in alcohol and put it out for 'em over on the big marsh. First thing you know he'll have a drunken old goose by the legs, all maudlin and helpless. Puts him in a coop till he sobers up, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... maudlin solemnity] Only be true to yourself, Miss O'Dowda. Keep serious. Give up making silly jokes. Sustain the note of passion. ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... did despise Anarchists and Nihilists," sighed Ray, "since I was trapped into reading some of those maudlin Russian novels, with their eighth-century ideas grafted on nineteenth-century conditions. Baby ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... small legacy of annoyance for me; for while I was still searching the horizon for some sign of her continued existence I became aware of certain raucous sounds issuing from the forecastle, which I was quickly able to identify as the maudlin singing which seamen are so prone to indulge in when they are the worse for liquor. Presently Polson, who had gone forward to turn-to the watch after dinner, came aft with an expression of vexation upon his weather-beaten countenance, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... an interesting account to give of his meeting with Dick Hardman down at Yellow Mine. The young scion of the would-be dictator of Marco fortunes had been drunk enough to rave about what he would do to Panhandle Smith. Some of his maudlin threats, as related by Brown, caused a good deal of merriment in camp, except to Blinky, who grew ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... Bickerstaff, commenting on the letter in No. 59, printed above, says: "I have looked over our pedigree upon the receipt of this epistle, and find the Greenhats are a-kin to the Staffs. They descend from Maudlin, the left-handed wife of Nehemiah Bickerstaff, in the reign ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Government for aid" in the way of labor legislation. Without a quiver, a member of the capitalist group will run tens of thousands of pitiful child-laborers through his life-destroying cotton factories, and weep maudlin and constitutional tears over one scab hit in the back with a brick. He will drive a "compulsory" free contract with an unorganized laborer on the basis of a starvation wage, saying, "Take it or leave it," knowing that to leave it means to die of ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... pull him down into her arms, mother him and tell him not to mind—there was something so intolerably pathetic about his effort to sit soberly straight—but she resisted this impulse savagely. The alcohol in her own veins was responsible for this. She could not quite trust herself not to go maudlin. So she froze herself tight and huddled away from him into ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... curse of rage Cummings stepped forward, and, with rough hands, separated the boon companions, thrusting the tramp without ceremony under the table, Moriarity in the meantime shaking Cook in vain attempts to rouse him from his maudlin stupor. Cook, however, was too far "under the influence" to be aroused, and to the vigorous shakings and punchings would respond only with a hiccough and part ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... he muttered, with a maudlin laugh, and springing from his seat with unsteady steps, he crossed the room and stood by the couch, looking down eagerly into the beautiful white face upon the pillow. As if impelled by that steady, serpentine, fiery ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... abandon that bespoke the age when the world was young. Their voluptuous forms entwined with clustering grapes and leaves, they poured tipsy libations of red wine from golden chalices; while old Silenus, god of drink, astride a donkey, applauded with maudlin joy. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... elaborately arranged it behind her. About her forehead she bound a narrow fillet of fine, furry hares' skin. She donned new garments; her ahttee was made of the delicate skins of birds, her hood of white fox hides. To all this Olafaksoah seemed blind; at times, with coarse, half-maudlin tenderness, he caressed her, called her his "little girl" and promised to "come back next spring." But Annadoah ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... not lost Professor Casimir Wieniawski from sight a moment since the hour of ten, and that "distinguished noble refugee" was now in a maudlin way, murmuring perfunctory endearments in the ear of the ex-prima donna, who tenderly gazed upon him in a proprietary manner. Alan Hawke had judged it well to ply the champagne, and, at the witching hour of midnight, he critically inspected Casimir's condition. "He is probably ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... even this condescension—to his unbounded astonishment—she declined with thanks. And then the silly little fool grew more desperate than ever, and battered up his poor brains with strong drink, and wept in maudlin fashion to his acquaintances. At last one of these—a fellow of the same kidney, but with more enterprise than himself—said to him: 'Why don't you carry her off?' Nathan opened his eyes very wide, stopped his ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... did not seem much likelihood of it. Two or three apple and gingerbread stalls, from which draggled children were turning slowly and wistfully away to go home; a booth full of trumpery fairings, in front of which tawdry girls were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their button-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated tobacco, to the treble accompaniment ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... churning, sprawling, desperate efflux from east to west began; once more the Golden Horde was on the march. They did not come, as had their ancestors, on wildly charging horses, threatening with lances and deadly scimitars, but on foot, wretched and begging. Even had I been as maudlin as Stuart Thario desired I could not have fed these people, for there were no longer railroads with rollingstock adequate to carry the freight, no fleets of trucks in good repair, nor was the fuel available had they existed. The world receded ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... make as good a picture as Vandyke or Rubens could. I was silent—"Why now," said he, "you think this very vain, but why should not one speak truth?" This truth was uttered in the face of his own Sigismonda, which is exactly a maudlin street-walker, tearing off the trinkets that her keeper had given her, to fling at his head. She has her father's picture in a bracelet on her arm, and her fingers are bloody with the heart, as if she had just bought a sheep's pluck in St. James's Market. As I was going, Hogarth put ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... necessary. They had started toward Martin's on the way home, when Warrington discovered that he was out of cigars. He ran back three or four doors while John proceeded slowly. Just as he was about to cross the alley-way a man suddenly lurched out into the light. He was drunk, but not the maudlin, helpless intoxication that seeks and invites sociability. He was murderously drunk, strong, nervous, excited. He barred ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... at Buenas Tierras, was not yet drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired state of beatitude—a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana peels—until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition to extend the hospitality ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... to himself he could only have been interesting, as the figure of a man surviving, in an alien but not unfriendly present, the past which held so vast a part of all that had constituted him. If he had thought of himself in this way, it would have been without one emotion of self-pity, such as more maudlin souls indulge, but with a love of knowledge and wisdom as keenly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... His maudlin speech and woe-begone manner roused Jack's sympathy. He knelt down beside him, and ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... after midnight, and Stiffner lay dead-drunk on the broad of his back on the long moonlit verandah, with all his patrons asleep around him in various grotesque positions. Stiffner's ragged grey head was on a cushion, and a broad maudlin smile on his red, drink-sodden face, the lower half of which was bordered by a dirty grey beard, like that of a frilled lizard. The red handkerchief twisted round his neck had a ghastly effect in ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... of a prince. John Leech's Master Slender," she continues, "was picturesquely true to the gawky, flabby, booty squire.... His mode of sitting on a stile, with his long ungainly legs dangling down ... ever and anon ejaculating his maudlin cuckoo cry of 'Oh sweet Ann Page,' was a delectable treat." Without disrespect to Leech's memory, it may be said that others of his friends did not form a similarly favourable opinion of his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... and with maudlin shoutings, to a small tree that stood by itself, and bound him to it with so many lashings that only his head was free to move. Then they heaped dry wood about him, piling it up until it was ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... stamens trip, And headlong in the pollen roll'd, Crawl out quite dusted o'er with gold; Or else his heavy feet would stumble Against some bud, and down he'd tumble Amongst the grass; there lie and grumble In low, soft bass—poor maudlin bumble! ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... a jack-knife beside her, was drunk with ecstasy. His expression when he looked at her resembled that of a particularly maudlin Airedale. Having her all to himself, with nobody to interfere, was an almost overwhelming joy. He longed to pour out his soul in gratitude for all that she had done for him at the hospital; he burned to tell her that she was the most beautiful and holy thing that had ever come into his life; but ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... she left the room and locked the door behind her on the maudlin, babbling creature inside. Then she flung a shawl over her head and ran from the house. It was not far to the Morgan homestead. She ran all the way, hardly knowing what she was doing. Mrs. Morgan answered her knock. She gazed in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... flushed. "You introduced her to the fastest people in New York, then left her entirely to her own resources while you went away and made an ass of yourself. Well, something must have happened to alarm her, and, since you were too maudlin to be of any assistance, she evidently took the bit in her teeth. I can't blame her. For Heaven's sake, why did you set her in with THAT crowd? If you wanted to take her slumming, why didn't you hire a guide and go into the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... snowdrift With a loud and startling neigh; Tried to tell his half-dazed master Where his mate, old Simon, lay. Pressing on, he reached the border Of Nebraska's whitened plain, Where his mind in maudlin fancies Yielded to the bitter strain, As he saw far in the distance, Like a battered mast at sea, Once again the twisted branches Of the ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... with his simple straightforward notions of right and wrong worth, much maudlin unmerciful indulgence which we hear in these days: and yet not going to the bottom of the matter either, as we shall see in the next war. But, rambling on, he told me how he had come home, war-worn and crippled, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... into line with those convivial associations, which content themselves with an annual exposition of the grievances of Ireland, over the short leg of a turkey, a "bumper of Burgundy," and that roar of lip artillery, against the usurper, which dies away in a few maudlin hiccups, about two o'clock in the morning, to be revived only at the expiration of another twelve months. Under the burden of any commonplace name, such, we say, might have been the fate of the organization ere this; and so we regard the knowledge and genius which ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... might be difficult to prove his innocence. To our surprise, however, for we had some faith in the fellow, instead of taking this matter with the indifference of a brave man, he has chosen to behave like a child. In his present half maudlin state he would, I am afraid, if in serious danger of conviction, make statements likely to cause a good deal of inconvenience to myself, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... looked round his company—at some with the maudlin tear of sentiment still on their cheeks, at others eager to escape this soft moment and make ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... he sprang toward me and threw his arms about my neck, and for a brief moment as I held my boy close to me the tears welled to my eyes and I was like to have choked after the manner of some maudlin fool—but I do not regret it, nor am I ashamed. A long life has taught me that a man may seem weak where women and children are concerned and yet be anything but a weakling in the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... said, with a bow and air of maudlin humility, "I have to apologise for requiring you to start out on a journey at such a late hour. Duty is often an ungracious master. Luckily, your drive is not to be a very extended one—only to the city; ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... may advance—whereas men, for the most part, are content with abstract reasoning and supply their own incidents if they feel inclined. Also that a finely bred fragile type of woman such as Beatrice inspires both fear and a maudlin sort of sympathy, and that man is prevented from crossing such a one to any great extent since men are as easily conquered by maudlin sympathy ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... face was as white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the eyes. Others had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was a drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a sot. But, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... doorway, down the couple of steps to the floor of the saloon, and he staggered a little, simulating drunkenness. He fell over the pool tables, jostled Mexicans at the bar, laughed like a maudlin fool, and, with his hat slouched down, crowded here and there. Presently his eye caught sight of the group of cowboys whom he had ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... there were a few who had been overcome by the heat of the bibulatory conflict, and who had relapsed into partial helplessness in chairs around the walls; and there were others who began to stagger and talk thickly at the counter, growing obscure and maudlin in their oaths, and shaking hands altogether too often, indicating the sleepy stage ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... broke in the maudlin Secretary. "Doth he not bear testimony that good sherris maketh the brain apprehensive and quick; filleth it with nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which being delivered by the tongue become excellent wit? Wherefore let us drink, gentlemen, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... not yet retired to their bunks was soon evident to him from the fact that snatches of maudlin song came floating down to him occasionally upon the pinions of the dew-laden night breeze; but these dwindled steadily as he drew nearer to the vessel, and about a quarter of an hour before he arrived alongside ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the red hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she despised utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince who might have set the clocks going and the pages to running in fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the court had not stirred at the false alarm; she must forevermore remain ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the hunchback having failed to drink Peppers maudlin, was now deliberately provoking a fight. The bloated face ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... his heels. It was with the utmost difficulty they could be extricated from the clutches of the publicans and the embraces of their pot companions, who followed them to the water's edge with many a hug, a kiss on each cheek, and a maudlin ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... unsusceptible, insusceptible; unimpressionable[obs3], unimpressible[obs3]; passionless, spiritless, heartless, soulless; unfeeling, unmoral. apathetic; leuco-|, phlegmatic; dull, frigid; cold blooded, cold hearted; cold as charity; flat, maudlin, obtuse, inert, supine, sluggish, torpid, torpedinous[obs3], torporific[obs3]; sleepy &c. (inactive) 683; languid, half-hearted, tame; numbed; comatose; anaesthetic &c. 376; stupefied, chloroformed, drugged, stoned; palsy-stricken. indifferent, lukewarm; careless, mindless, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... finish. Very suddenly the surrounding group had scattered, and he peered up through maudlin tears to learn the cause. One man alone stood above him. The room had grown still as ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... they condescend in tragedy to wheedle away the applause of the spectators, by representing before them fac-similes of their own mean selves in all their existing meanness, or to work on their sluggish sympathies by a pathos not a whit more respectable than the maudlin tears of drunkenness. Their tragic scenes were meant to affect us indeed, but within the bounds of pleasure, and in union with the activity both of our understanding and imagination. They wished to transport the mind to a sense of its ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... chang'd from him Whose gen'rous Belcour touch'd all hearts with rapture, Whose honest Major charm'd with native humour, Whose Charlotte, pleasant, frank and open hearted, Call'd forth our tears of pleasure—April showers! His pages now, stuff'd with false maudlin sentiment, Scarce please our whimpering-girls ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... there a parson much bemused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, Who pens a stanza ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... well—her mother had been drinking. Judge Sharp's benevolence had provided the means of a carouse for those two wretched women. They both came in reeling from one sick bed to another; the older muttering taunts upon the wretched inmates; the other shedding maudlin tears more horrible and disgusting still. After wandering about the ward for a time, the two wretched creatures seated themselves upon the floor, and throwing their arms around each other, sunk into a brutal slumber which lasted ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... that stood here and there. Perhaps there was a servants' table-d'hote just then. I was rather pleased to find solitude; and undisturbed I found out my lady-love's carriage, in the moonlight. I mused, I walked round it; I was as utterly foolish and maudlin as very young men, in my situation, usually are. The blinds were down, the doors, I suppose, locked. The brilliant moonlight revealed everything, and cast sharp, black shadows of wheel, and bar, and spring, on the pavement. I stood before the escutcheon ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lay several chapeaus said to have belonged to distinguished Britishers. Mr. Soloman suddenly makes his appearance in the little shop, much to Mr. McArthur's surprise. "Say-old man! centurion!" he exclaims, in a maudlin laugh, "Keepum's in the straps-is, I do declare; Gadsden and he bought a lot of niggers-a monster drove of 'em, on shares. He wants that trifle of borrowed money-must have it. Can have it back in a ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... man, can't you see how it happened? I saw the poor woman's pride and happiness hung on her faith in that picture. I tried to make her understand that it was worthless—but she wouldn't; I tried to tell her so—but I couldn't. I behaved like a maudlin ass, but you shan't pay for my infernal bungling—you mustn't ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... beloved Paris. In Italy she shows herself scarcely more than affectionate to her doting spouse. Marlborough's letters to his peevish duchess during the Blenheim campaign are not more crowded with maudlin curiosities than those of the fierce scourge of the Austrians to his heartless fair. He writes to her agonizingly, begging her to be less lovely, less gracious, less good—apparently in order that he may love her less madly: but she is never to be jealous, and, above all, never to weep: for her ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Mullan felt a maudlin impulse to cheer at Feeny's enthusiastic answer. Even poor old Plummer gave a half-stifled cry. Possibly he dreamed that rescue was at hand; but there was little time for rejoicing. Springing back whence he came, the unseen emissary was heard shouting some order to his fellows. The next instant ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... skimmed palely along the street like blown bits of paper on a gray lake. They were agreed on all things, from the absurdity of the bouncer in Childs' to the absurdity of the business of life. They were dizzy with the extreme maudlin happiness that the morning had awakened in their glowing souls. Indeed, so fresh and vigorous was their pleasure in living that they felt it should be expressed ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... his brother Faco were not in the sheep business for any maudlin sentiment. They did not march ahead of their beloveds waving a crook as wand of office or appealing to the esthetic sides of their ideal followers with a tabret and pipe. Far from leading the flock with a symbol, they drove them with an armful of ever-ready rocks and clubs. ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... as if my casement enshrined that form like the snowdrift and that throat like the swan's. But, although he vanishes finally, the street has become alive. Two men pass in deeply-interesting conversation, one of them assuring the other that he has not done "a stroke's work" in two years. He is maudlin, of course. "A stroke's work"? And as if any man could expect to find work and to do it after keeping such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... misdemeanants had been cast loose again. Culpepper had been kept by the guards from entering the palace, where he had no place. But he had fallen in with the Magister Udal in the courtyard. Being maudlin and friendly at the time, he had cast his arms round the magister's neck claiming him for a loved acquaintance. They had drunk together and had started, towards midnight, to find the chamber of Katharine Howard, Culpepper seeking his ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... for a bookish fool! Learn that lovely ladies yield themselves but to those who are masterful in their wooing, who have wooed often, and triumphed as often. O Innocent of the innocent! Forget the maudlin sentiment of thy books and old romances—thy pure Sir Galahads, thy "vary parfait gentil knightes," thy meek and lowly lovers serving their ladies on bended knee; open thine eyes, learn that women to-day love only the strong ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... after a speechless moment, "I'll be dinged if it isn't! I am going to vote for you, anyhow." Which he proceeded to do, although in somewhat maudlin fashion. ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... to-night, remind me to be more than usually particular in praying for Mr. Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done me an injustice." No amount of self-indulgence weakens or lowers his pious and reflective tone. "Those are her daughters," he remarks, making maudlin overtures to Mrs. Todgers in memory of his deceased wife. "Mercy and Charity, Charity and Mercy, not unholy names I hope. She was beautiful. She had a small property." When his condition has fallen into something so much worse than ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... truth were told, he is a warm-hearted, generous, plucky fellow, with boundless vanity and a romantic vein of maudlin sentiment that seduces him from time to time into the gin-and-water corner of an Indian newspaper. Under the heading of "The Forest Ranger's Lament," or "The Old Shikarry's Tale of Woe," he hiccoughs his column of sickly lines (with St. Vitus's dance in their feet), and then ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... of earning a living greatest. There was an outward starch and acerbity produced by toil and danger. But when people felt they could unbend, they were not icebergs but volcanoes, because the fires which burned unseen were those of the soul. The mirth of wine is maudlin and short-lived. It prompts to no labor, and kindles no sacrifices. It is satanic; it blazes and dies, a horrid mockery, exultant and evanescent. But the joy of homes, the beaming face of forgiveness, the charity which covers a multitude of faults, the assistance ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... his heart thumping heavily at sound of the voice, thick though it was and maudlin. Dade drunk and full of coarse foolery was a sight he had never before looked upon; but Dade's presence, drunk or sober, made his own plight seem a shade less hopeless. He did not dare a second ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... emotion, acting together, were making the man almost maudlin. Nicholas knew well what climax ten minutes would bring. So, with a word or two of friendly thanks and farewell, he left the house, and sought a familiar hotel, where he was too well known to be refused even ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... wholesome feeling can be pushed so far that it becomes a weakness and a sign of disease. Pity for the sufferings of our brute neighbors may be a manly feeling; and then again it may be so fostered and cosseted that it becomes maudlin and unworthy. When hospitals are founded for sick or homeless cats and dogs, when all forms of vivisection are cried down, when the animals are humanized and books are written to show that the wild creatures have schools and kindergartens, and ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... for a glass; but the camaraderie is apt to end in blows, and is a poor caricature of the bond knitting all who are filled with the Spirit to one another, and making them willing to serve one another. The roystering or maudlin geniality cemented by drink generally ends in quarrels, as everybody knows that the truculent stage of intoxication succeeds the effusively affectionate one. But they who have the Spirit in them, and not only 'live in the Spirit,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... "will do. Miss Childe and I came here to lunch, not to listen to maudlin memories of the Great War. Did I ever tell you that a Spaniard once compared me to that elusive bloom to be found ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... marriage, I used to see a brother-in-law of mine, now dead, mad with drink—beating his wife in his frenzy, and then sobbing and howling in maudlin repentance, vowing never to touch liquor again, and yet, the very same evening, sitting down to drink and drink—it would fill me with disgust. But my intoxication today is still more fearful. The stuff has not to be procured or poured out: it springs within ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... presently, when he grew a trifle maudlin over his own sorrows, began to call him "Frankie," and "my boy," and somehow it mattered, from a man with the Major's obvious record. Frank pulled himself up only just in time to prevent a retort when it first happened, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... curious non sequitur which the restraint, consciously or unconsciously inculcated by the Gaelic League, is likely to make more apparent, for it is killing that conception of the Irishman as typically a boisterous buffoon with intervals of maudlin sentimentality which the stage and the popular song have so long been content to depict without protest from us, and which left Englishmen with feelings not more exalted than those of their sixteenth and seventeenth century ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... tale-bearers, and the like, who came between them—meaning Molly Doyle—whom, as he waxed eloquent over his liquor, he came at last to curse and rail at by name, with more than his accustomed freedom. And he described his own natural character and amiability in such moving terms, that he wept maudlin tears of sensibility over his theme; and when Dobbs was gone, drank some more grog, and took to railing and cursing again by himself; and then mounted the stairs unsteadily, to see "what the devil Doyle and the other —— old witches were ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... address, the manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions, steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost every thing:—no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning,—slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... footsteps were heard approaching, and Phil scarcely had time to don his priest's habit, draw the hood well over his head, and conceal his bar and pruning knife in the ample folds of the garment when a belated frequenter of one of the numerous posadas of the city staggered past, humming in maudlin tones the refrain of a bacchanalian song which he cut short when he realised that the two dark figures which he jostled were, as he supposed, connected with the dread institution which lay back ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... he and another lumber jack grappled. The Clown had thrown his antagonist fairly, the lumberjack's shoulders striking the rough floor with a whack that made things jingle. The next moment the two had treated one another at the bar, and with a mutual, though maudlin appreciation of each other had gone back to their respective chairs among the line tilted ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... usum vulgi. But their worst enemy recently has been, it may be feared, the irreconcilable opposition of their spirit to what is called the modern spirit—though this latter sometimes takes them up and plays with them in a fashion of maudlin mysticism. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... "Don't be maudlin, Joe!" Her tone was very cold. "If you must know, we need the money and——Well, I guess I learned enough about tea and tea rooms in the past ten or eleven months to know whether one will pay or not—if it's properly run. Got awfully hardboiled while you ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... were baked in the true "camp-meeting" style, the whisky was drunk, and—so was the company. Bill Day's rather red eyes grew redder, and his nose shone with delight as he shuffled the greasy pack of "kyerds." The maudlin smile crossed the habitually melancholy lines of his face in a way that split and splintered his visage into a curious ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... moral cowardice, tempted Horace B—, and he yielded. Like tinder touched by flame, he blazed into drunkenness, and again and again the proud-spirited, manly, and cultured young lawyer and jurist was seen staggering along the streets, maudlin or mad with alcohol. When he had slept off his madness, his humiliation was intense, and he walked the streets with pallid face and downcast eyes. The coarser-grained men with whom he was thrown in contact ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the grim narrative of the murder. We all know it. One knows not which is the more repugnant—the degradation of the poor child Salome to the level of a dancing-girl, the fell malignity of the mother who would shame her daughter for such an end, the maudlin generosity of Herod, flushed with wine and excited passion, the hideous request from lips so young, the ineffectual sorrow of Herod, his fantastic sense of obligation, which scrupled to break a wicked promise and did not scruple to murder a prophet, or the ghastly picture ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... that except upon a basis of even such rigor, sorrowful, silent, inexorable as that of Destiny and Doom, there is no true pity possible. The pity that proves so possible and plentiful without that basis, is mere ignavia and cowardly effeminacy; maudlin laxity of heart, grounded on blinkard dimness of head—contemptible as ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... In maudlin spite let Thracians fight Above their bowls of liquor; But such as we, when on a spree, ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... think, when thou wert early in the field, How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, Dulness hath thrown ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the toasters and speakers lose more and more their control over speech and actions. What was at first mischievous abandon and merry jest, gradually degenerates into loquaciousness, coarseness and querulous brawls. Here and there one of the maudlin crowd drops off in the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... veracity, unfortunately, is not highly infectious, and it is a little difficult not to believe that the high and serene virtues of the great man gone were promptly exploited for the small men left. One miracle there seems no reason to doubt. John, in an almost maudlin fit of emotional repentance, made peace at the funeral with his Cistercian enemies and founded them a home at Beaulieu in the New Forest. Indeed, these were the true miracles which recommended Hugh to the English people, so that they regarded him as a saint indeed, ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Scotland, where Winton had carried her off. But she had not weakened in her resolution a second time, and suddenly he had given up pursuit, and gone abroad. Since then—nothing had come from him, save a few wild or maudlin letters, written evidently during drinking-bouts. Even they had ceased, and for four months she had heard no word. He had "got over" her, it seemed, wherever he was—Russia, Sweden—who ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "What I am about to say," he explained as he suddenly heaved a sigh, "is not the maudlin talk of a man under the effects of wine. As far as the subjects at present set in the examinations go, I could, perchance, also have well been able to enter the list, and to send in my name as a candidate; but I have, just now, no means whatever to make provision for luggage and for travelling ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... little bit maudlin about that farm, Mr. Headman, and it will do you good to get away for a few days. There are some other things in life, though I admit they are few, and we are not to forget them. I am up to my ears in plans ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... feet hustling in winter—or die. It is not a land for people who think; the world owes them a living. They have to earn the living and earn it hard, and if they don't earn it, there are neither free soup kitchens nor maudlin charities to fill idle stomachs with ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... though God should hereafter give me a son, who should cut the princess out of Burgundy, will she not be queen of France? What more would the perverse girl have? By God, Hymbercourt, it makes my blood boil to hear you, a man of sound reason, talk like a fool. I hear the same maudlin protest from the duchess. She, too, is under the spell of this girl, and mourns over her trumped-up grief like a parish priest at a ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... was his good-humored yet firm determination, perhaps it was his resigned philosophy, but something in the speaker's manner affected Mr. Byers's alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner's hand with drunken fervor. "Thash so! your thinking o' me an' Mish ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... did he?" said Westcott in a maudlin tone. "How'd 'e get out? How'd 'e like it fur's he went? Always ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... discordant, monotonous wail, as of someone singing a song unfamiliar to him; from across the street floated a medley of other noises, above which could be heard the jangling music of a heavily drummed piano. There came to her ears coarse oaths and the maudlin ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 1896. Since 1898, however, he has doubled about, or, perhaps more aptly, performed a journalistic somersault—having written a diffuse biography and other works dealing with Rizal. He is strong in unassorted facts, but his comments, when not inane and wearisome, approach a maudlin wail over "spilt milk," so the above is given ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... squarely against Congress and the people, while the House met his defiance by a concurrent resolution emphatically condemning his reconstruction policy, and thus opening the way for the coming struggle between Executive usurpation and the power of Congress. His maudlin speech on the 22d of February to the political mob which called on him, branding as traitors the leaders of the party which had elected him, completely dishonored him in the opinion of all Republicans, and awakened general alarm. Everybody could now see the mistake ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Then he falls to telling of her Grievance, till (half maudlin) she weeps again: Just my Condition, cries a third: so the Frolick goes round, and we poor Cuckolds are anatomiz'd, and turn'd the right side outwards; adsbobs, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... gone far enough. He took up the heavy bird, which made some maudlin objections, and carried it gingerly to the fence. 'Here's the victim, Mr. Humpage,' he said lightly. 'I think it will be itself again in a couple of hours or so. And now, perhaps, we can let the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... good-humored yet firm determination, perhaps it was his resigned philosophy, but something in the speaker's manner affected Mr. Byers's alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner's hand with drunken fervor. "Thash so! your thinking o' me an' Mish Byersh is like troo fr'en'," he said thickly. "I wosh only goin' to shay ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... said:- "Hist, Ringan! seest thou there! Canst guess which road they'll homeward ride? Oh! could we but on Border side, By Eusedale glen, or Liddell's tide, Beset a prize so fair! That fangless Lion, too, their guide, Might chance to lose his glistering hide; Brown Maudlin, of that doublet pied Could make ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... parson, much bemused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk, foredoomed his father's sou to cross, Who pens a stanza, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... words. I do not pretend to. I say that Comrade Gregory is unfit to be Thursday for all his amiable qualities. He is unfit to be Thursday because of his amiable qualities. We do not want the Supreme Council of Anarchy infected with a maudlin mercy (hear, hear). This is no time for ceremonial politeness, neither is it a time for ceremonial modesty. I set myself against Comrade Gregory as I would set myself against all the Governments of Europe, because ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... hid—I don't pretend to say How, nor can I indeed describe the where— Young, slender, and packed easily, he lay, No doubt, in little compass, round or square; But pity him I neither must nor may His suffocation by that pretty pair; 'T were better, sure, to die so, than be shut With maudlin ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... about "the sympathy of hearts created for each other," "the soft communion of sympathetic souls," and much more of the same kind. Sentimental journeys became a favourite amusement, and formed the subject of very popular books, containing maudlin absurdities likely to produce nowadays mirth rather than tears. One traveller, for instance, throws himself on his knees before an old oak and makes a speech to it; another weeps daily on the grave of a favourite dog, and constantly longs to marry a peasant girl; a third ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... loving appreciation of the intrinsically "true, good, and beautiful" was part of the homage that his nature rendered to its Creator, and instead of flowering into a morbid and maudlin sentimentality which craves low-browed, long straight-nosed, undraped statuettes in every nook and corner,—or dwarfs the soul and pins it to the surplice of some theologic dogmata claiming infallibility—or coffins ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... after profuse and maudlin protestations of his most dutiful zeal all the days of his life for "the service, honour, reputation, and contentment of your princely Grace," observed that he had not thought it necessary to give him notice of such idle and unfounded matters, as being likely to give the Prince annoyance and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... for she was a simple person who responded easily to the emotions of others. Before she could slip away to bed Sir Langham cornered her again, conjuring her to "will" him to sleep and "to go on doin' it" after they parted in Bombay. He became rather maudlin, and she seized the opportunity of telling him that her best efforts would be wholly unavailing if he at all relaxed the temperate habits, so necessary for the cure of his gout, that he had acquired during the voyage. She was stern with Sir Langham, and her admonitions ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... if there is a man on board with enough sense left to run the engine, and the captain—look there!" pointing to a maudlin and dishevelled Canadian wearing a captain's cap, and just then trying to preserve his equilibrium on a wooden settle near the railing. "It would be a blessing if the brute tumbled overboard, and we were ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Seven Patrons of Happiness, which form a sort of encyclopaedia or museum of curiosities derived from the cults of India, China and Japan, are also components of the amazing menagerie and pantheon of this sect, in which scholasticism run mad, and emotional kindness to animals become maudlin, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... of that," Borrowdean answered, seriously. "Mannering is au fond a man of sentiment. There is no clearer thinker or speaker when his judgment is unbiassed, but on the other hand, the man's nature is sensitive and complex. He has a sort of maudlin self-consciousness which is as dangerous a thing as the nonconformist conscience. Heaven knows into whose hands he ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... These are very popular, apparently, as poems for children to recite; yet in the one case it is beyond any teacher's power to show children the unearthly flaming beauty which alone gives the poem its peculiar quality and undefinable power; and in the other the maudlin sentimentalism and almost priggish piety of the verses are positively dangerous to the child's health of mind. Both types of recitation work out in the end to this—that when the child attains adolescence, and the great world of literature dawns on the hungry mind, an ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... of water and filled his pipe, joking him about easy days in the hospital while they sweated in the woods. The drunken cook came out, carrying his rolled blankets, began maudlin sympathy, and was promptly squelched, whereupon he retreated to the float, emitting conversation to the world at large. Then they carried Renfrew down to the float, and Davis began to haul up the anchor to lay the ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... what will hasten this development most of all? The proper rearing of children. Don't feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature. Let their souls drink in all that is pure and sweet. Rear them, if possible, amid pleasant surroundings. If they come into the world with souls groping in darkness, let them see and feel the light. Don't terrify ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... remembered suddenly that she had once drawn Molly behind the trees when the old man passed along the road. Poor, defrauded Molly! Forgetting his bitter quarrel with her, he was ready to fall upon her neck in maudlin sympathy. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... blessed with a sense of humour, a curious non sequitur which the restraint, consciously or unconsciously inculcated by the Gaelic League, is likely to make more apparent, for it is killing that conception of the Irishman as typically a boisterous buffoon with intervals of maudlin sentimentality which the stage and the popular song have so long been content to depict without protest from us, and which left Englishmen with feelings not more exalted than those of their sixteenth and seventeenth century ancestors, to whom "mere Irish" ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... just as swiftly and just as deleteriously as it affects a tragedian, a crossing-sweeper, or an ambassador to the Court of St. James. And once a bottle of Cte Rtie or Scharlachberger is in her, even the least emotional woman shows the same complex of sentimentalities that a man shows, and is as maudlin ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... he could have bitten off his tongue. Now she would think him a maudlin flirt. He looked to the ground and saw his dusty, worn shoes. He was afraid to hear her speak, afraid to look up. At last he did, expecting to find her gone. But she was there, looking at him as she had when he told her she was beautiful, ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... had; for he was sleeping sweetly, with open lack-lustre eyes, and a maudlin smile at the ceiling; while the negress, with her head fallen on her chest, seemed equally unconscious ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... roundly back to St. James's for the deanery of St. Paul's.(186) I could not help being diverted the other day with the life of another Bishop of Oxford, one Parker, who, like Secker, set out a Presbyterian, and died King James the Second's arbitrary master of Maudlin College.(187) ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... do see me,' said Monks, rising boldly, 'what then? Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words—justified, you think, by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead man's Brother! You don't even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you don't ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... how now, Billy Bowles? Sure the priest is maudlin! (To the public) How can you, d—n your souls! Listen ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... The voices at the table droned on, as from a great distance, and Nicanor lay and listened. They spoke of some woman. No name was mentioned, but the description of her, as it fell from the old man's maudlin lips, sent his heart pounding. So might be described another woman, who for him held life and death and all that lay between. The voice of Valerius at his ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... them to halt, a man, plashing through the flood, staggered towards them. Without an umbrella, with dripping, disordered clothes, yet with a hot, flushed face, around which the long black hair hung wildly, he approached, singing to himself, with maudlin voice, a song which would have been sweet and tender in a lover's mouth. Friend Mitchenor drew to one side, lest his spotless drab should be brushed by the unclean reveller; but the latter, looking up, stopped suddenly, face to face ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... on the list!" commanded Madden brusquely, with ill-concealed disgust that Smith should be maudlin just when needed. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Ta'en on the morn she was a bride, 550 When Roderick forayed Devan side. The gay bridegroom resistance made, And felt our Chief's unconquered blade. I marvel she is now at large, But oft she 'scapes from Maudlin's charge. 555 Hence, brain-sick fool!"—he raised his bow. "Now, if thou strik'st her but one blow, I'll pitch thee from the cliff as far As ever peasant pitched a bar!"— "Thanks, champion, thanks!" ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... lieutenant volunteered. "And believe me, one welcomes a change of clothing and a dry bed after a week in this reeking sieve. As for you, my friend, if it lay with me, you should receive the treatment due a gentleman." A wave of maudlin camaraderie affected him. He passed an affectionate arm through Lanyard's and was suffered, though the gorge of the adventurer revolted at the familiarity. "I am sorry to leave you. No, do not be astonished! No protestations, please! It is quite true. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... your language...." Garlock paused. For one of the very few times in his life, he was at a loss for words. He thrust his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. "Hell, I don't want to get maudlin, either ... so ... well, how many men, do you think, could have gone the route with me on this hellish job without killing me ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... can say to myself with truth, that I do not care how much or how little you love me. That depends upon you, as well as myself. I believe the time will come, when you will love me as you ought, and I say this in perfect calm conviction, in all my weakness, and with all my maudlin habits clinging to me. Strangely enough your doubt of me has made me rise up in arms to champion my cause, or else I should lie down forever in the dust, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... your condition ye'll not find on this side of Oxford. A fair chamber, looking to the sun; sheets smelling of lavender from Dame Margery's own store, and, for the matter of that, spread by the fair hands of Maudlin, her daughter—the best favored lass that ever danced under a Maypole. Ha! have at ye there, young sir! Not to speak of the October ale of old Gregory, her father—ay, nor the rare Hollands, that never paid excise duties ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... furnace, that gave no warmth to the damp atmosphere, and with scarcely an article of furniture, a woman half stupid from drink sat on a heap of straw, her bed, with her hands clasped about her knees. She was rocking her body backward and forward, and crooning to herself in a maudlin way. A lighted tallow candle stood on the floor of the cellar, and near it a cup of water, in which was a spoon and some ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... was clear and flushed with vivid crimson, toward which the prairie rolled away in varying tones of blue. Lights shone in the windows behind the veranda, and from one which stood open a hoarse voice drifted out, singing in a maudlin fashion snatches of an ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... a Saint," said Eulogius, who was rapidly passing from the mellow stage of good fellowship to the maudlin, "that even after his celestial assumption he is permitted to continue a source of blessing and benefit to his fellow-creatures as yet dwelling in the shade of mortality! The thought of the services of my bell, in averting lightning ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... requite you, Sir, and we'll eat it cheerfully. And if you come this way a-fishing two months hence, a grace of God! I'll give you a syllabub of new verjuice, in a new-made hay-cock, for it. And my Maudlin shall sing you one of her best ballads; for she and I both love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men. In the meantime will you drink a draught of red cow's milk ? ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired state of beatitude—a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana peels—until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition to extend the hospitality and courtesy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... alibi it might be difficult to prove his innocence. To our surprise, however, for we had some faith in the fellow, instead of taking this matter with the indifference of a brave man, he has chosen to behave like a child. In his present half maudlin state he would, I am afraid, if in serious danger of conviction, make statements likely to cause a good deal of inconvenience to myself, my sister's friends, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pray do'—whimpered the baronet in a maudlin tone, moved by the unfeigned passion of his housekeeper. I gave him a look, and the driveller added—'if ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... thy dust let there be spent The gush of maudlin sentiment; Such drift as that is not for thee, Whose life and deeds and songs agree, Sublime in ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... but the camaraderie is apt to end in blows, and is a poor caricature of the bond knitting all who are filled with the Spirit to one another, and making them willing to serve one another. The roystering or maudlin geniality cemented by drink generally ends in quarrels, as everybody knows that the truculent stage of intoxication succeeds the effusively affectionate one. But they who have the Spirit in them, and not only 'live in the Spirit,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to be more than usually particular in praying for Mr. Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done me an injustice." No amount of self-indulgence weakens or lowers his pious and reflective tone. "Those are her daughters," he remarks, making maudlin overtures to Mrs. Todgers in memory of his deceased wife. "Mercy and Charity, Charity and Mercy, not unholy names I hope. She was beautiful. She had a small property." When his condition has fallen into something so much worse than ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... more interested than any body to see the event, remained coolly on the stage to hear the story. The Queen's maid of honour entered without her handkerchief, and with her hair most artfully undressed, and reeling as if she was maudlin, sobbed Out a long narrative, that did not prove true; while Narbas, with all the good breeding in the world, was more attentive to her fright than to what had happened. So much for propriety. Now for probability. Voltaire has published a tragedy, called "Les Gu'e,bres." Two Roman ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... adorn, 110 Behold yon flowery antiquated maid Bright in the bloom of threescore years display'd; Her shalt thou bind in thy delightful chains, And thrill with gentle pangs her wither'd veins, Her frosty cheek with crimson blushes dye, With dreams of rapture melt her maudlin eye. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... rudiments of scientific analysis, that they do not correspond to anything. Instead of forming any true addition to the data of economic science, they are like images belonging to the dream of a maudlin school-girl. They have only the effect of obscuring, not completing, the facts to which the orthodox economists too closely confined themselves, but which, though incomplete, are so ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... I had no such honeymoon as yours. A few brief days of happiness, and then The dream was over. I had married one Who was the sport of vagrant impulses. We had not been a fortnight wed, when he Came home to me with brandy in his brain— A maudlin fool—for love like mine to hide As if he were an unclean beast. O Grace! I cannot paint the horrors of that night. My heart, till then serene, and safely kept In Trust's strong citadel, quaked all night long, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... did not immediately relax his grasp. It was evidently not safe to let him go. His fit of anger bordered upon hysterics. Presently he grew calmer but more maudlin. Trent at last released him, and, thrusting the bottle of brandy into his coat-pocket, returned to his game of Patience. Monty lay on the ground watching him with ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... appreciate suffering in others, and gave her an innate sense of fellowship with the downtrodden. She resolved to use that sense as a searchlight aiding her to see and overcome obstacles. She told herself that she was done with maudlin sentimentality. On the rare occasions when she had accompanied her mother to Chicago, the two women had found delight in wandering about the city's foreign quarters. When other small-town women buyers snatched occasional moments of leisure for the theater or personal shopping, these two had ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... at the sight of us, in a maudlin manner; and he continued languid and sluggish all through the interview. It struck me more forcibly than any other change could have done, that he never once appeared to pluck up any spirit, or attempted to recall a spark ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... subject.' Was there ever a passage like this? The sympathy of the writer is wholly with the child, and the child's absolute indifference to his own sufferings. It might have been safely predicted that this man, should he ever attain to pathos, would be free from the facile, maudlin ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... the imbecile Peter, he had enough sense to appreciate the abilities of Catharine; and a sort of maudlin idea of justice, if it were not, perhaps, utter stupidity, dissuaded him from resenting her freedom in the choice of favorites. Upon commencing his reign, he yielded himself to the guidance of her imperial mind, hoping to obtain some dignity by the renown which ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... wrong. I don't know whether it's my fault or not, but you seem to be hopelessly twisted in your view of life. You're floundering. Of course it's none of my business. I've done what I was paid to do, and you've got to work things out in your own way. If you want to drink yourself maudlin, that's your privilege. I can move out, but while I'm here in this house I'm not going to sit idly by while you make a fool ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... has led him to such startling comparisons as that between a warrior drawn from his horse and a bird snared by the limed twig of the fowler,[509] surely as inappropriate a simile as was ever framed. More distressing still is the maudlin pathos of the simile which likens Medea to a dog on the verge of madness.[510] But such gross aberrations are rare; against them may be set some of the freshest and most beautiful similes in the whole range of Latin poetry. The silence that follows on the wailing of the women of Cyzicus ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... cried happily. Then, abruptly his manner changed, for he felt himself perilously close to the maudlin in this new yielding to sentimentality. Such kisses of tenderness, however agreeable in themselves, were hardly fitting to one of his dignity. "You clear out of here, boy," he commanded, brusquely. "I'm a working man. But here, wait a minute," he added. He brought forth ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... pretty tight after the races, and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me—I don't remember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always wanted to fight each other when we got a bit on, and we'd fight if we weren't stopped. I remember once Jim got maudlin drunk and begged and prayed of me to fight him, as if he was praying for his life. Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver, used to say that Jim and me must be related, else we wouldn't hate each other so much when we ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... and whose infant tongue had been taught to utter a prayer against being led into temptation. There in the room where all who had loved me were; lying in the unconscious slumber of death was I, gazing, with a maudlin melancholy imprinted on my features, on the dead forms of those who were flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. During the miserable hours of darkness I would steal from my lonely bed to the place where my ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... return. He protested with maudlin earnestness that I was entirely mistaken,—that I was intoxicated; then asked me to swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and hands ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... me that he'd not have done it, except that she begged him with her last breath to promise it. He said the words with great maudlin tears raining down his face, when my ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... a man spending his life to show the folly of Methodism should burst into maudlin tears at sight of John Wesley, and say, 'Oh, if all men, my ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... those less partial to her, and she had the whole town talking over which was the favored suitor. She rode with his grace in the morning, played at billiards with Danvers in the afternoon, perhaps to be off in the evening with McMurtree of Ainswere, who was maudlin in his infatuation for her and whom she pronounced the best dancer ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... dolt incapacity. Matter it is of mirthful memory To think, when thou wert early in the field, How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, Dulness hath thrown a jerdan at ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the five in the rear seats absorbed in their own maudlin comicalities. The fellow beside Jack did not seem to take any interest in his surroundings, and the five gave the front seat no further attention. Jack drove circumspectly, leaning a little forward, his bare arms laid up across the wheel and grasping the top of it. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... murder. We all know it. One knows not which is the more repugnant—the degradation of the poor child Salome to the level of a dancing-girl, the fell malignity of the mother who would shame her daughter for such an end, the maudlin generosity of Herod, flushed with wine and excited passion, the hideous request from lips so young, the ineffectual sorrow of Herod, his fantastic sense of obligation, which scrupled to break a wicked promise and did not scruple to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Tusser frequently speaks of the "dairy-maid Cisley," and in April Husbandry tells Ciss she must carefully keep these ten guests from her cheeses: Gehazi, Lot's wife, Argus, Tom Piper, Crispin, Lazarus, Esau, Mary Maudlin, Gentiles and bishops. (1)Gehazi, because a cheese should never be a dead white, like Gehazi the leper. (2) Lot's wife, because a cheese should not be too salt, like Lot's wife. (3) Argus, because ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... murmured, and sighed heavily. "God! How happy might we not have been but for that evil chance...." He checked abruptly. His hands fell from her shoulders to his sides, he half-turned away, brusque now in tone and manner. "I grow maudlin. Your sweet pity has so softened me that I had almost spoke of love; and what have I to do with that? Love belongs to life; love is life; whilst I... Moriturus ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... another Cervantes did not ridicule our border romances by describing a second Don Quixote's adventures on the prairies. We are pleased to notice, that in the new series of Frontier Tales, by Lee & Shepard, there is an agreeable absence of sensational writing, of that maudlin sentimentality which make the generality of ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... halting, no quiver of maudlin pity, when he slowly rose from his grass-covered lair in the darkness and called ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... she had been crying, that she was suffering cruelly, but he offered her courage rather than maudlin sympathy. Hope seemed to flow through her veins at the meeting of the eyes. Whatever a man could do for her would be done ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... to register a protest against the curious but prevalent notion that any such concentrated effort for the spiritualization of society must tend to work itself out in the direction of a maudlin humanitarianism, a soft and sentimental reading of life. This idea merely advertises once more the fact that we still have a very mean and imperfect conception of God, and have made the mistake ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... of watching bees linger so long beside the vats of the distillery that they became maudlin. And the love of high stimulants in literature is one of the character marks of our generation. Excess threatens our people. Men are anxious to be scholars and hurry along a pathway that leads straight to the grave. Men are anxious ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... not all like the maudlin hero, who is sneaking round the right entrance, in wait to steal the pretty wife of his rich and tyrannical neighbor from the paste-board cottage at the left entrance? and when he advances down to the foot-lights and defiantly informs the audience that, "he who lays his hand on a woman except in ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Russia, under the leadership of the Czar, Alexander I, in the autumn of 1815, had entered into a Holy Alliance to sustain by reciprocal service the autocratic principle in government. Although the effusive, almost maudlin, language of the treaty did not express their purpose explicitly, the Alliance was later regarded as a mere union of monarchs to prevent the rise and growth ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... "Notre Dame" can deny the presence of a certain savage delight in scenes of grotesque and exaggerated terror. No one who has read "Les Miserables" can deny the existence in him of a vein of lovely tenderness that, with a little tiny push over the edge, would degenerate into maudlin sentiment ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... commenting on the letter in No. 59, printed above, says: "I have looked over our pedigree upon the receipt of this epistle, and find the Greenhats are a-kin to the Staffs. They descend from Maudlin, the left-handed wife of Nehemiah Bickerstaff, in the reign of Harry ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... one, and almost mechanically, we crawled back into the shelter of the bank. As I lay against the parapet, wholly wretched and not entirely master of my mind, I could hear my kinsman maundering to himself in an altered and melancholy mood. Now he would repeat to himself with maudlin iteration, "Sic a fecht as they had—sic a sair fecht as they had, puir lads, puir lads!" and anon he would bewail that "a' the gear was as gude's tint," because the ship had gone down among the Merry Men instead of stranding on the shore; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "That's better than growing maudlin over a raft of saints who never did me any good. Your Titians and your Veroneses are splendid; there's color and life there. But these cross-eyed mosaics!" Merrihew threw up ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... aware of what you say of Otway; and am a very great admirer of his,—all except of that maudlin b—h of chaste lewdness and blubbering curiosity, Belvidera, whom I utterly despise, abhor, and detest. But the story of Marino Faliero is different, and, I think, so much finer, that I wish Otway had taken it instead: the head conspiring against ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sentimental as any one a few years ago," said Ann, returning to the dropped subject. "Just after I left college, I was quite maudlin. I dreamed of moons and Junes and loves and doves all the time. Then something happened which made me see what a little fool I was. It wasn't pleasant at the time, but it had a very bracing effect. I have been quite different ever since. It was a man, ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... while I was still searching the horizon for some sign of her continued existence I became aware of certain raucous sounds issuing from the forecastle, which I was quickly able to identify as the maudlin singing which seamen are so prone to indulge in when they are the worse for liquor. Presently Polson, who had gone forward to turn-to the watch after dinner, came aft with an expression of vexation upon his weather-beaten ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... torn the red hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she despised utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince who might have set the clocks going and the pages to running in fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the court had not stirred at the false alarm; she must forevermore remain ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... pointing to the group before them, "look, yon wretched mother, whose voice an instant ago uttered the coarsest accents of maudlin and intoxicated prostitution, is now fostering her infant, with a fondness stamped upon her worn cheek and hollow eye, which might shame the nice maternity of nobles; and there, too, yon wretch whom, in the reckless effrontery of hardened abandonment, we ourselves ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of them the Misfortune to be troubled with the Cholick, they have a noble Celler of Cordials and strong Waters. When they grow Maudlin, they are very apt to commemorate their former Partners with a Tear. But ask them which of their Husbands they Condole, they are not able to tell you, and discover plainly that they do not Weep so much for the Loss of a Husband, as for ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Englishman to see the salaried viceroy of France, at the most important crisis of his fate, sauntering through his haram, yawning and talking nonsense over a despatch, or beslobbering his brother and his courtiers in a fit of maudlin affection, without a respectful and tender remembrance of him before whose genius the young pride of Louis and the veteran craft of Mazarine had stood rebuked, who had humbled Spain on the land and Holland on the sea, and whose imperial voice had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that men pause to regard him as a miracle of conceit and assurance rather than as a prophet; and that his commonplaces about "olive leaves," "calumets," "universal brotherhood," "fatherland," etc., have no more influence than the maudlin rigmarole of the madman whose preternatural force is lost in senility. It is time for Elihu Burritt to go back to his shop: the world ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... are this morning!" exclaimed George Sheldon with unmitigated disgust; "a regular raven, by Jove! You come to a fellow's office just as matters are beginning to look like success—after ten years' plodding and ten years' disappointment—and you treat him to maudlin howls about the Court of Chancery. This is a new line you've struck out, Hawkehurst, and I can tell you it isn't ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Concord.[116] On March 4 Representatives' Hall was packed to hear addresses against the amendment by Miss Emily P. Bissell of Delaware; Mrs. A. J. George of Brookline, Mass.; Judge David Cross of Manchester and Dr. Abbott. The Concord Monitor of that date in a leading editorial said: "Through a maudlin sense of false sentiment the constitutional convention sent this question to the people ... and the people will deal with it as it deserves." On March 5 came the speeches of the suffragists. Representatives' ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... family wishes to have his wife and children brought in contact with the most maudlin and banal phases of life. He defends them from the sensational editor and the unpleasant advertiser. He subscribes to a newspaper which he does not fear to ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... I sent Newson and Cooper home to the Shipwreck Dinner at Woodbridge, and supposing they would be maudlin on Saturday, gave them Sunday to repent on, and so have lost the only fine Days we have yet had for sailing. To-day is a dead Calm. 'These are my Trials!' as a fine Gentleman said to Wesley, when his Servant put rather too many Coals ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... across the veranda, cleverly simulating drunkenness. Furious as he was, he was cool enough to play a definite and reasonably safe game. He lost his balance ten feet from Leyden's chair, recovered himself with a damp hiccough and maudlin apology, then darted forward and sprawled among the hilarious group with hands outstretched for the table to ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... compromise relatively wise and right. The bad man, so called, may have been in large part relatively bad. This much we may say scientifically, and without the slightest cheapness. It does not mean that we shall waste any maudlin sentiment over a desperado; and certainly it does not mean that we shall have anything but contempt for ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... wrote, "there is nobody in the whole of the Roullens aerodrome whom I do not detest with a detestation beside which my hatred for you seems as maudlin adoration. This is notwithstanding the fact that I make the most marvellous progress in the art of flying. It is merely something in their faces which annoys me. Let me therefore see yours again, in the hope that it will make me think more kindly ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... a very long time before they were admitted to the baby and breakfast. Douglas was entirely unimpressed by the squirming red morsel of humanity that Little Marion proudly brought into the kitchen for their inspection. But Charleton was maudlin with admiration. It was, it seemed, easily the first child ever born in Lost Chief, not excepting Little Marion who had ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... Doyle—whom, as he waxed eloquent over his liquor, he came at last to curse and rail at by name, with more than his accustomed freedom. And he described his own natural character and amiability in such moving terms, that he wept maudlin tears of sensibility over his theme; and when Dobbs was gone, drank some more grog, and took to railing and cursing again by himself; and then mounted the stairs unsteadily, to see "what the devil Doyle and the other —— old witches were about in ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... wrestle as he and another lumber jack grappled. The Clown had thrown his antagonist fairly, the lumberjack's shoulders striking the rough floor with a whack that made things jingle. The next moment the two had treated one another at the bar, and with a mutual, though maudlin appreciation of each other had gone back to their respective chairs among the line tilted ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... a back street or court in some slum. His father and himself had long ago sunk into the world where to wash one's self is not a part of every-day life. They had lived amid dirt and foulness, and when his father had been in a maudlin state, he had sometimes cried and talked of the long-past days when he had shaved every morning and put on ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... efflux from east to west began; once more the Golden Horde was on the march. They did not come, as had their ancestors, on wildly charging horses, threatening with lances and deadly scimitars, but on foot, wretched and begging. Even had I been as maudlin as Stuart Thario desired I could not have fed these people, for there were no longer railroads with rollingstock adequate to carry the freight, no fleets of trucks in good repair, nor was the fuel available ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... where guilty women have been acquitted through maudlin sentiment or in response to popular clamor, nothing could be more erroneous than the idea that few women who are brought to the bar of justice are made to suffer for their offences. Thus, although no woman has ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... asked the persistent boatman to have a drink, at the same time handing him a bottle of very strong wine that had been given him to use in case he needed a stimulant. The fellow, already half intoxicated, absorbed most of the contents and was soon maudlin. He ran his boat around and across Boyton to the latter's great annoyance. He became drowsy, however, and finally fell into a deep sleep. That was the opportunity Paul desired. He seized the anchor that was in the bow of the fellow's boat and dropped it in ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... me chiefly about a wife he was returning to at Bohn. He became almost maudlin in his sentiment, and at intervals he raised his voice sufficiently to allow our traveling ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... a speechless moment, "I'll be dinged if it isn't! I am going to vote for you, anyhow." Which he proceeded to do, although in somewhat maudlin fashion. ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a sense of values—you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a little ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... giddiness foreshadowed a new danger in his uncharted ride. It became again a problem for him to keep his seat in the saddle. He was aware at intervals that he was steadying himself like a drunken man. His efforts to guide the horse only bewildered the beast, and the two travelled on maudlin curves and doubled back on their track until de Spain decided that his sole chance of reaching any known trail was to let go and give the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... over the country to Eureka, and the stage not venturing to the eminence upon which stood our hotel, we were obliged to go to the express office to take passage, where we were shocked at the sight of three maudlin men in an advanced stage of inebriety, throwing showers of silver money upon the ground, and ostentatiously allowing the crowd to gather it up; while we were still more shocked to find that they were to be inside passengers, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... not thought too much of her own rights and wrongs and too little of his hopes and burdens? And perhaps because of this he was to be crushed at a blow, and his enemies laugh at his calamity and give to her their maudlin pity. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... interrupted the fisherman; "I won't have 'em go sneaking off to bed just as I come home. I heard that little 'un say one day she was afraid of me sometimes. Afraid, indeed; I'll teach her to be afraid," he repeated, working himself into a passion over some maudlin recollection of the children's talk in ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... on a couch and, sitting beside him, bade him be a man and not a fool. He tried to rouse Bigot by irritating him, thinking, in his coarse way, that that was better than to be maudlin over him, as he considered it, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Lavender, Rosemary, Muscovy, Maudlin, Balm, Thyme, Walnut Leaves, Damask Roses, Pinks, of all a like quantity, enough to fill your Still, then take of the best Orrice Powder, Damask Rose Powder, and Storax, of each two ounces; strew one handful or two of your Powders upon the Herbs, then distil them with a soft ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... the loveliness of them, until they come at last to loathe the lovely husks, turned to ugliness in their false imaginations. Loving but the body of Truth, even here they come to call it a lie, and break out in maudlin moaning over the illusions of life. The soul of Truth they have lost, because they never loved her. What may they not have to pass through, what purifying fires, before they ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Socrates and Jesus." (Discourses, p. 83) The charity which hopes that men may be forgiven the crime of "religions" which, if there be a God at all, must be "abominations," one can understand; but these maudlin apologies for the religions themselves, —as if they were not themselves crimes, and involved crimes in their very practice,—I do not understand. According to this, all that man has to do is to be sincere in any thing, however diabolical, and it is at once transmuted ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... more amusing. The spectacle of the faces wilting into maudlin abstractions under the caress of the music brought a grin to him. The sounds had drugged the polite little masks and left them poised morosely in a sleepy dream. The lavender stocking crept tenderly into evidence. The owlish glasses focused with noncommittal stoicism ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... said Mr. Larkyns, "we'll go to Charley Symonds' and get our hacks. You can meet us, Harry, just over the Maudlin Bridge; and we'll have a canter along ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... bright, their cheeks flushed; they looked like big men who had dined well. These were Butler, Tommy and Paul, leaving for Belgium: otherwise Juve, Loreuil and Vinson bound for France! Copious libations of generous wines and strong liqueurs had reduced Butler-Vinson to the condition of a maudlin puppet: Tommy and Paul had made Butler ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... notes. I found that in most essentials the two stories were identical, although Gedge had been maudlin drunk when he admitted ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... from rectitude on the part of one Biggers, leading hand of the quarter-deck, who had returned from leave with a small flat flask tucked inside his cholera belt. The flask contained whisky, and had been thrust there by a friend ashore in an access of maudlin good-fellowship on parting. The night had been a convivial one, and Leading Seaman Biggers overlooked the gift until, coming on board, the keen-eyed officer of the watch drew his attention to it. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... were told, he is a warm-hearted, generous, plucky fellow, with boundless vanity and a romantic vein of maudlin sentiment that seduces him from time to time into the gin-and-water corner of an Indian newspaper. Under the heading of "The Forest Ranger's Lament," or "The Old Shikarry's Tale of Woe," he hiccoughs ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Nothing could be said or done without eliciting a spark from him; and I solemnly declare I have heard much worse wit even from noblemen. His jokes, it must be confessed, were rather wet, but they suited the circle in which he presided. The company were in that maudlin mood when a little wit goes a great way. Every time he opened his lips there was sure to be a roar, and sometimes before ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... roared Dak Kova. "By the dead hands at my throat but he shall die, Bar Comas. No maudlin weakness on your part shall save him. O, would that Warhoon were ruled by a real jeddak rather than by a water-hearted weakling from whom even old Dak Kova could tear the ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... very well without sacrificing any of our dependents; in fact, it would seem like murder to slaughter the animals about us. And it's such a little world it seems a pity to kill off any of its inhabitants. To tell the truth, I hope the bear got away all right. This is maudlin, I know, but I don't want my hand first to bring death on all there is left of earth. Incidentally,—there are ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... I thank you, I'l give you another dish of fish one of these dayes, and then beg another Song of you. Come Scholer, let Maudlin alone, do not you offer to spoil her voice. Look, yonder comes my Hostis to cal us to supper. How now? is ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... the serpent, and sly as the fox. They were hard to catch, being in one place to-day, and miles away the next. When food was plentiful they were gluttons, but when it was scarce they starved for days. They had a craze for rum, and when drunk they were ugly, maudlin brutes. They were fond of a fight, and fought like demons on the ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... it's nothing but your wanting to be loved which does it. A maudlin crying to be loved, which makes your knees all ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... he had a good idea. The hero of our tale displays all that careless jollity, which copious draughts of maddening wine are calculated to inspire; he laughs the world away, and bids it pass. The poor dupe, without his periwig, in the back-ground, forms a good contrast of character: he is maudlin drunk, and sadly sick. To keep up the spirit of unity throughout the society, and not leave the poor African girl entirely neglected, she is making signs to her friend the porter, who perceives, and slightly returns, her love-inspiring glance. This print is rather crowded,—the subject demanded ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Grace tasted nothing, but mournfully looked on: once only she attempted to expostulate, but was met—not with fierce oaths, nor coarse chidings, nor even with idiotic drivelling—oh no! worse than that she felt: he replied to her with the maudlin drunken promise, "If she'd only be a good girl, and let him bide, he'd give her a big Church-bible, bound in solid gold—that 'ud make the book o' some real value, Grace." Poor broken-hearted daughter—she rushed to her closet ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... foreign wines. Merest debauchery. ...Upon my Word,"—Razumov, enraged by a sudden recollection of Ziemianitch, lowered his voice forcibly,—"upon my word, we Russians are a drunken lot. Intoxication of some sort we must have: to get ourselves wild with sorrow or maudlin with resignation; to lie inert like a log or set fire to the house. What is a sober man to do, I should like to know? To cut oneself entirely from one's kind is impossible. To live in a desert one must be a saint. But if a drunken man runs out of the grog-shop, falls on your ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... conscience-stricken victim of conflicting thoughts and passionate impulses? How much more tragic the finding of the dead body of Eily, the "pride of Garryowen," since it occurs on the hunting field, surrounded by the half maudlin squires, and before the bloodless face of the horrified murderer? But Griffin deserves mention other than as a dramatist and novelist. It is saddening to know that in an age where so much weak sentiment, scarcely ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... he been so disposed. Upon his right was seated no less a personage that "Sow Nance," the hideous girl who had that day entrapped poor Fanny Aubry into the power of Mr. Tickels; she was much intoxicated, and by the maudlin fondness which she displayed for Jew Mike, it was easy to surmise the nature of the relation existing between her and him. Included in the company were several other "apple girls," whose proficiency ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Joseph's brethren had their pilgrimage chanced to lead them in this direction. The floor was of cement, and great patches of damp displayed themselves on the walls. Over the bed hung a peaceful picture of a chubby boy clasping a crook to his breast, and exchanging glances of maudlin sentimentality with a sheep that skipped at his side. The damp had eaten up one of the legs of mutton, and the sheep went on three legs. But nothing could exceed the more than human tenderness with which it regarded the chubby boy ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... way to the lower end of the room. Ellis was sitting in a chair, stupid and maudlin, and two or three thoughtless girls were around his chair laughing at his drunken efforts to be witty. The shocked mother did not speak to him, but shrunk away and went gliding from the room. At the door she said to the waiter who ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... about her marriage lines; and the register confirmed it, with the right spelling—the marriage and, ten months later, the boy's christening. Arthur Miles was the name. That is all, or almost all. It seems that towards the end of his time there her father became maudlin in his wits; and the woman—her maiden name had been Reynolds, Helen Reynolds—relied for help and advice upon an old shipmate of his, also a coast-guard, called Ned Commins. It was Ned Commins they followed when he was moved to the east coast, the father being by this time ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... distinguished himself by rolling the round stove through the door into the snow. He was badly burned in accomplishing this delicate jest, but minded the smart no more then he did the admiring cheers of his maudlin but emulative mates. FitzPatrick extinguished a dozen little fires that the coals had started, shifted the intoxicated Mallan's leg out of the danger of someone's falling on it, and departed from that roaring ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... general rule, people who flagrantly pretend to anything are the reverse of that which they pretend to. A man who sets up for a saint is sure to be a sinner, and a man who boasts that he is a sinner is sure to have some feeble, maudlin, sniveling bit of saintship about him which is enough to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... howls rather than words. That is one of the prerogatives won by drunkenness,—to come down to the beasts' level, and to lose the power of articulate speech. The quarrelsomeness which goes along with certain stages of intoxication, and the unmeaning maudlin misery and whimpering into which it generally ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... advance—whereas men, for the most part, are content with abstract reasoning and supply their own incidents if they feel inclined. Also that a finely bred fragile type of woman such as Beatrice inspires both fear and a maudlin sort of sympathy, and that man is prevented from crossing such a one to any great extent since men are as easily conquered by maudlin sympathy ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... to my father as any man in the kingdom," said the Duke in maudlin confidence. "But you know ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... what he could do to set matters right. The conviction in which he always landed was that there was nothing to be done, and that he was a desolate and blighted being, deserted of gods and men. Hardy's presence and company soon shook him out of this maudlin nightmare state, and he began to recover as soon as he had his old sheet-anchor friend to hold on to and consult with. Their consultations were held chiefly in the intervals of woodcraft, in which they spent most of their hours between breakfast ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... hunchback having failed to drink Peppers maudlin, was now deliberately provoking a fight. The bloated face of the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Day, and so came, with her little white face and solemn eyes, into her pale mother's life. She was worse than fatherless. The beast of a man she might have come to call by that sacred name, would now be beside the snowy cot, weeping in maudlin rejoicing over his new treasure, if the mother had not resolutely put him ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... at a cost terrible enough, had reached Mrs. Tregenza after all. She had been drinking brown sherry as well as tea, and was in a condition of renewed tears approaching to maudlin, when the announcement reached her. It steadied the woman. Then the thought that this wealth would have been her son's made her weep again, until the fact that it was now her own became grasped in her mind. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
