"Lachrymose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tolstoy will do enough for all. His work is the justification of the enthusiasms and expectations built upon literature. Thirdly, Tolstoy takes a firm stand, he has an immense authority, and so long as he is alive, bad tastes in literature, vulgarity of every kind, insolent and lachrymose, all the bristling, exasperated vanities will be in the far background, in the shade. Nothing but his moral authority is capable of maintaining a certain elevation in the moods and tendencies of literature so called. Without him ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... early promise. In fact, it was slipping back and down the hill with a run. Already five out of its seven big saw-mills were idle and rotting. Its original architect had sunk to a blue-faced and lachrymose bar-loafer, and the roll of plans which he carried about with him—with their unrealised boulevards, churches, municipal buildings, and band-kiosks—had passed into a dismal standing joke. Hewson was even now deliberating whether to throw up the game or toss good ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... songs that night,—no love-sick adieux, no effusions of lachrymose sentimentality,—only sweet old Scotch and English ballads, favourites of Charlie's; then grander melodies, 'Let the bright seraphim,' and 'Waft her, angels, through the air.' As I finished the last I was conscious that Mr. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the dullest Saturday that has befallen me in many a year. John and his bride are over at Hooley's Theatre watching that lachrymose melodrama, "Alone in London." There is nothing worth seeing at any other house. There is nobody for me to visit with, so here I sit in this box trying to kill the time. I see very little of Cowen. A disreputable looking friend of his from the West is here dead-broke ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... back of the range, a scoured empty milk-pan awaited the milk-man. Susan contrasted her bright prospects with her cousin's dull lot, even while she cheerfully scolded Georgie for being so depressed and lachrymose. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... woman who have lived with her,—I mean we three friends who have put ourselves on record. Her talk, I must confess, is a little diffuse and not always absolutely correct, according to the standard of the great Worcester; she is subject to lachrymose cataclysms and semiconvulsive upheavals when she reverts in memory to her past trials, and especially when she recalls the virtues of her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct such as one finds not rarely annexed to a capable matron in charge of an establishment like hers; that is to ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the turning-point. The comic and humorous were put to flight, and nothing but fierce, furious savagery remained behind. Many men in their cups become lachrymose, others silly, and some combative. The fiery liquor had the latter effect on Kajo. Issuing from his place of retirement with a fiendish yell and glaring eyes, he made an insane attack on Angut. That Eskimo, having no desire to hurt the man, ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... She spoke soothingly, still smiling at him, for that barely checked ferocity of his sent rapture through her soul. "Do you suppose I'd be such an idiot as to go and die just when I'm beginning to enjoy life? I'm not the puny heroine of a lachrymose novel. I hope I've got more sense. No, dear, what I really meant was—was—am I ever going to be strong enough—woman enough—to give you—what you want ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... under the spell of her careless charm, and many, because she had much impulse, swore that she had a large heart. Only to her husband, and occasionally, in a fit of passion, to someone who she thought had treated her badly, did she show a lachrymose side of her nature. She was noted for her gaiety and joie de vivre and for the energy with which she pursued enjoyment. Her cynicism did not cut deep, her irony was seldom poisoned. She spoke well of people, and was generous with her money. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... 'Cherry-Tree Walk' here suddenly appeared and warned her that Maryllia and the Reverend John were returning from their inspection of the rose-garden. She cheeked herself in an outburst of speech and silently watched them approaching. Adderley watched them too with a kind of lachrymose interest. They were deep in conversation, and Maryllia carried a bunch of white and blush roses which she had evidently just gathered. She looked charmingly animated, and now and then a light ripple of her laughter floated out on the air as ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... tearless aspect of the community, conscientiously attempted to weep, but being entirely out of tears, at her time of life, she only succeeded in screwing her face up into what, in earlier years, might have appeared as a lachrymose expression, but now took the shape of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... recollected it was the identical face of the highwayman who had beaten an inglorious retreat from him and Count L'Estrange, that very night. This ducat robber drew forth a roll of parchment, and began reading, in lachrymose tones, a select litany of defunct gentlemen, with hifalutin titles who had departed this life during the present week. Most of them had gone with the plague, but a few had died from natural causes, and among these were the ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... quips and cranks uttered at my expense by my brother and sister on the refusal of that last-first manuscript. To them it had been a fund of joy. In fear and trembling I wrote this second effusion, finished it, wept over it (it was the most lachrymose of tales), and finally, under cover of night, induced the housemaid to carry it to the post. To that first unsympathetic editor I sent it (which argues a distant lack of malice in my disposition), and oh, joy! it was actually accepted. I have written ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... tauntingly; "you once had the advantage of being less delicate. I do not think this lachrymose mood is suitable for you; you will ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... somewhat injudiciously. You are not to stretch the phrase; he was merely prepared to accord the universe his approval, to pat Destiny upon the head, and his thoughts ran clear enough, but with Aprilian counter-changes of the jovial and the lachrymose. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... am sure that the two stories are good. Perhaps the first is somewhat the better, as being the less lachrymose. They were both written very quickly, but with a considerable amount of labour; and both were written immediately after visits to the towns in which the scenes are laid,—Prague, mainly, and Nuremberg. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... clay feet, and the little stone that rolled down the hill—tired of the mud man and the rib woman—tired of the flood of Noah, of the astronomy of Joshua, the geology of Moses—tired of Kings and Chronicles and Lamentations—tired of the lachrymose Jeremiah—tired of the monstrous, the malicious, and the miraculous. In short, they are beginning to think. They have bowed their necks to the yoke of ignorance and fear and impudence and superstition, until they are weary. They long to be free. They ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... said this the corners of her mouth, which usually drooped in somewhat lachrymose lines, went up in a whimsical smile. And feeling that she had launched a shaft of witticism which could not fail to reach its mark, she trotted off on further gossiping ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... spirits; ill at ease, low spirited, in low spirits, a cup too low; weary &c. 841; discouraged, disheartened; desponding; chapfallen[obs3], chopfallen[obs3], jaw fallen, crest fallen. sad, pensive, penseroso[It], tristful[obs3]; dolesome[obs3], doleful; woebegone; lacrymose, lachrymose, in tears, melancholic, hypped[obs3], hypochondriacal, bilious, jaundiced, atrabilious[obs3], saturnine, splenetic; lackadaisical. serious, sedate, staid, stayed; grave as a judge, grave as an undertaker, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... teasing with rifle-grenades failed to make him retaliate with anything larger than "pineapples" (light trench-mortars). In desperation, I sent to the brigade bombing officer for some smoke and gas-bombs. Even these failed to rouse his anger sufficiently when—Eureka!—we discovered some "lachrymose" or "tear" bombs. These did the trick and over came a "rum-jar" as the "minnie" shells are generally called. I had eight batteries on the wire, and we gave that "minnie" position a pretty warm time. By the same methods I located nine of these German trench-mortars on that ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... Fanny, you have absolutely no heart at all," sobbed that lachrymose lady, as she mingled tears and sniffles with fruitless ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... rid of her tears before she came down to dinner, but still she was melancholy and almost lachrymose. This was the last night, and she felt that something special ought to be said; but she did not know what she expected, or what it was that she herself wished to say. I think that she was longing for an opportunity to forgive him—only that he would not ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... he beheld the quaint figure standing before him in Smatt's office, while Smatt and Dr. Ichi held conference behind closed doors. But it seemed preposterous to identify that friendly, glib little deformed man as the missing Little Billy, as the bosom friend of this lachrymose viking. And what could this rough seaman know of the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Canon for the first time does not necessarily produce the startling and lachrymose effects that have been described by some emotional writers, but the first sight never disappoints and always leaves a deep and ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... his wife there lives the wife's brother, a lachrymose young man who at one time steals, at another tells lies, at another attempts suicide; N. and his wife do not know what to do, they are afraid to turn him out because he might kill himself; they would like to turn him out, but they do not know how to manage it. For forging a bill ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... without survivors, ("The Masque of the Red Death") we can afford to applaud without reservation. The complete absence of slang and of doubtful grammar recommends this tale as a model to other amateur fiction-writers. "Respite" is a lachrymose lament in five stanzas by the present critic. The metre is regular, which is perhaps some excuse for its creation and publication. "By the Waters of the Brook," by Rev. Eugene B. Kuntz, D. D., is one of the noblest amateur poems of the year. While the casual reader may find in the long ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... hope that the news was "exclusive", the Despatch had thrown the name of Stephen Hallowell, his portrait, a picture of his house, and the words, "At Point of Death!" across three columns. The announcement was heavy, lachrymose, bristling with the melancholy self-importance of the man who "saw the deceased, just two minutes before the ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... voice in the old dirge: "Aren't you glad you're a Navy man? Oh, mother!" and had not intoned the first lachrymose verse through to the end before Ikey ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... melons of the season. You may remember, too, how perplexing, how fantastic, many of those cries were, making it impossible for you to understand what they meant, or why a wood-huckster, for example, should give vent to such lachrymose sentimentality in vending his fagots. But quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the cockney's, what he says is yet perfectly clear, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... commented upon, you may be sure the real power is not in them,—as, for instance, people who become vegetarians because they imagine that by so doing they will see spirits— people who adopt a singular mode of dress in order to appear different from their fellow-creatures—people who are lachrymose, dissatisfied, or in any way morbid. Never forget that TRUE Spiritualism engenders HEALTH OF BODY AND MIND, serenity and brightness of aspect, cheerfulness and perfect contentment,—and that its influence ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... him returning with Kolory, who bears the god Moa Artua in his arms, and carries in one hand a small trough, hollowed out in the likeness of a canoe. The priest comes along dandling his charge as if it were a lachrymose infant he was endeavouring to put into a good humour. Presently entering the Ti, he seats himself on the mats as composedly as a juggler about to perform his sleight-of-hand tricks; and with the chiefs disposed in a circle around him, commences his ceremony. In the first ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... inferred from these comments that our "Bachelor" is always in the lachrymose vein. Far from it. We have alluded to his mastery in the pathetic, because this is one of the most unerring tests of the sanity and truth of genius. But his "Reveries" also abound in touches of light and graceful humor; they show a quick perception ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Schmick," I made haste to exclaim, seeing lachrymose symptoms in his blear old eyes. Then I became firm once more. This knavery must cease, or I'd know the reason why. "The next man who comes here to cart away so much as a single piece is to be kicked out. Do you understand? These ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... charming imitation of Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis, employs fewer of the epyllionic conventions than Philos and Licia, and uses them less imaginatively. Though it never achieves a style of its own, it is quite successful in recapturing the lachrymose artificiality that ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... foolish waste of golden opportunities in the course I was pursuing. This disturbed me greatly, for my attachment to her was very strong, and I knew she would have cut off her right hand to serve me. Our interviews were largely lachrymose on her part and morose on mine, after argument proved futile. She had none of Aunt Agnes's downrightness, but a no less degree of persistence. After many efforts, I succeeded in convincing her that ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... want you to be lachrymose and whining with them, they like you to be fresh and active and interested, but they cannot bear absence of mind, and they are so tired of the advice and preaching they receive from every body, no matter ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... he done say," Townley was becoming lachrymose, "that women got mighty nigh to God when they reached up to Him in their trial and offered life for a life. He done say if God didn't forgive a woman every earthly thing for such suffering, he was no good God. He done ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... it, however, which the author imparted to his son, may here be faintly indicated. Let the sympathising reader recognise all that is dramatic in the conflict between hunger and affection; let him recall to mind the lachrymose loving-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions after blissfully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolonged, we will hope, than that of these besieged banqueters, and then, though unaided by the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... preached over the coffin in the presence of a full assemblage of mourners and lachrymose friends. An ancient gentleman who was then and there in the church, a Mr Bligh of Botathen, was much affected by my discourse, and he was heard to repeat to himself certain parentheses therefrom, especially a phrase from Maro Virgilius, which I had applied to the deceased youth, 'Et puer ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Napoleon himself in Lowe's personal interviews with him, and more particularly by his letters to the Governor—to say nothing of the substantial backing he gets from Las Cases, Montholon, Marchand, and Gourgaud—that shameless, jealous, lachrymose traitor ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... gentleman, either from a charitable motive, or to put an end to his lachrymose oration, bought the volume for $1.25. Mr. Algrieve received the money with many expressions of gratitude, and, gathering up his stock, moped off into the drinking room, and invested a dime in a gin cocktail, and five cents in a cigar, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seated at his godfather's table, he surprised the poet exchanging glances over his head with the housekeeper, and began to suspect that possibly Dona Pepa might be the inspiration of so much lachrymose and enthusiastic verse. But his great loyalty rebelled before such a supposition. No, no, it could not be possible; ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... which time her dissolute husband constantly demanded money for drink and kept her perpetually worried and intimidated. One Saturday, before the "blessed Easter," he came back from a long debauch, ragged and filthy, but in a state of lachrymose repentance. The poor wife received him as a returned prodigal, believed that his remorse would prove lasting, and felt sure that if she and the children went to church with him on Easter Sunday and he could be induced ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... expressed Queen Anne's day. "Sensibility," as it was called, was a favorite idea in letters, much affected, and later a kind of cult. A generation after Pamela, in Mackenzie's "Man of Feeling," weeping is unrestrained in English fiction; the hero of that lachrymose tale incurred all the dangers of influenza because of his inveterate tendency toward damp emotional effects; he was perpetually dissolving in "showers of tears." In fact, our novelists down to the memory of living man gave way to their ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Well, I hope that by now she knows the difference between a gentleman and a half-Christianised, money-hunting, wine-bibbing Jew. However, she's got the fortune, which was what she wanted, although she forgets it now, and he's got a lachrymose, stout, old party. But how beautiful she used to be! My word, how beautiful she used to be! To go to see her now is better than any sermon; it ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... away into those big woods belonging to the Duke,—where, as the Brake sportsmen now believed, they would almost surely come to an untimely end. "If we draw this blank I don't know what we are to do," said Mr. Spooner, addressing himself to Madame Goesler with lachrymose anxiety. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... One thing we ought to gain from our reading is a larger vocabulary. In this story there are a number of words worth adding to our stock. Define these exactly: inquisitorial; lachrymose; laconic; ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... desk ransacked; and his honor the admiral's private letters broke open. Burglary! Burglary! Come and be locked up!" He slowly recovered an upright position, with the assistance of his hands, backed by the solid resisting power of the bureau; and lapsed into lachrymose soliloquy. "Who'd have thought it?" said old Mazey, paternally watering at the eyes. "Take the outside of her, and she's as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and she's as crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... as heavy on its feet as the Jumping Frog of Calaveras, but when they laughed at its labored leaps and sallies his confidence grew. With the regularity of a clock he planted cigars and ordered "a little more hard stuff," while his roving eye rejoiced in lachrymose profusion, its over-burden losing itself in the tangle of his careless beard. By-and-by he wandered through the town, trailed by a troop of tenderfeet, till the women marked him, whereupon he fled back to the post and hugged the bar, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... positively assured that some time ago a friendly offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between W. H. Seward and Edwin Stanton. The high powers were represented by Thurlow Weed and Morgan for Seward, and the virtuous, lachrymose, white-cravated Whiting acted for Stanton. I was told that this alliance drove Watson, (Assistant Secretary,) from the War Department. This would be infernal, if true. I know that no Weed whatever could approach such a man as Watson; but Watson assured me that he returns back, and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... work, Mr. Leland has aimed at the defence of that view of life which combines a cheerful earnestness of purpose with manly energy of action, as opposed to the melancholic, whining, lachrymose spirit, which has been affected by certain popular modern poets, and, through their vicious example, has been cherished as one of the essential qualities of genius. Of this style of character Mr. Leland has not the slightest degree of tolerance. Its manifestations ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and all his saints!" cried Brand, weeping abundantly for joy; for he had acquired, by long devotion, the donum lachrymarum,—that lachrymose and somewhat hysterical temperament common among pious monks, and held to be a ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... would come, and he felt that, upon the whole, this was the worst part of the performance. He could bear her anger or her sullenness with fortitude, but her lachrymose caresses were insupportable. He held her, however, in his arms, and gazed at himself in the pier glass most uncomfortably over her shoulder. "Oh, Jack," she said, "oh, Jack,—what is to come next?" ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... just have and I will. And Carl's mysteriously disappeared—Heaven knows where! I've not seen him for weeks. Nor did he condescend to write me—as I must say you did—and very good of you too!" Whether Aunt Agatha was crying because her mother was stout and eruptively lachrymose, or because Diane's hair was still where it belonged, or because Carl was missing, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... after that, he was wroth at being caught in such a lachrymose condition, and sung out to me: 'Go away—go away!' 'But, sir.—' 'Go away, I tell you!' 'There are some clients in the office, with whom you have made an appointment, sir, and—' 'I haven't the time ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... tinklings of the lute In orthodox decorous fashion, But altogether destitute Of "elemental" passion; And illustrations which refrain From all that verges on the shady, But glorify the whiskered swain, The lachrymose young lady. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... requirements), gave orders for the drozhki to be got ready. Ilinka was a good-natured, extremely moral, and far from stupid young fellow; yet, for all that, what people call a person of moods. That is to say, for no apparent reason he was for ever in some PRONOUNCED frame of mind—now lachrymose, now frivolous, now touchy on the very smallest point. At the present moment he appeared to be in the last-named mood. He kept looking from his father to myself without speaking, except when directly addressed, at which times he smiled the self-deprecatory, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... for her lodgings in Little Queen Street in a flutter of excitement. Otway's "Orphan" might be dull and lachrymose, the part of Serina might be insignificant, but to Lavinia the play was the most wonderful thing. It meant a beginning. She had got the chance she had longed for. She saw herself in imagination ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... published his "Improvisatore," which slowly won its way. It was the reputation this novel gained abroad which changed public opinion in Denmark in its favor. A second novel, "Only a Fiddler" (1837), is a fresh variation of his autobiography, and the lachrymose and a trifle chaotic story, "O. T." (being the brand of the Odense penitentiary) scarcely deserved any better reception than ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to foreigners. This is seen in the pronunciation of names such as Cholmondeley and Marjoribanks. Bethlehem hospital, for lunatics, becomes bedlam; Mary Magdalene, taken as a type of tearful repentance, gives us maudlin, now generally used of the lachrymose stage of intoxication. Sacristan is contracted into sexton. Fr. paralysie becomes palsy, and hydropisie becomes dropsy. The fuller form of the word usually persists in the literary language, or is artificially ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... talked enough yet, Misses Brown?' returned the Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn't you ask if ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... for, mourn, grieve; nos amanecia llorando, dawn found us weeping lloron, tearful, whimpering, lachrymose, given to ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... mistake!" says Kozyavkin in a lachrymose voice. "There are a lot of hens here. . . . I must have mistaken the house. Confound you, you are all over the place, you ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and pale-eyed widower grasped at an occasion for pouring out his griefs, for he made a display of his bereavement as, at one time, he had made a display of his wife's beauty. He stammered and grew lachrymose and his colourless eyes ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... deputy in the same group, a man of fifty or thereabouts, of slovenly aspect and lachrymose mien, lanky, too, like a maypole, and somewhat bent by the weight of his head, which was long and suggestive of a horse's. His scanty, straight, yellowish hair, his drooping moustaches, in fact the whole of his distracted countenance, expressed ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... felt such undescribable emotions within me as, I am sure, could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion." The reader of this may well ask himself in wonderment whether he is really expected to make a third in the lachrymose group. We look at the passage again, and more carefully, to see if, after all, we may not be intended to laugh, and not to cry at it; but on finding, as clearly appears, that we actually are intended to cry at it the temptation to laugh becomes almost irresistible. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill |
