"Lamentable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unfortunate disposition, the First Consul felt very kindly to him. When the Emperor went to camp at Boulogne, Hambard refused to accompany him; and the Emperor gave him, as a place of retreat, the charge of the palace of Meudon. There he showed unmistakable symptoms of insanity, and his end was lamentable. During the Hundred Days, after a conversation with the Emperor, he threw himself against a carving-knife with such violence that the blade came out two inches behind his back. As it was believed at this time that I had incurred the anger of the Emperor, the rumor went abroad that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... from shore without waiting to take their comrades on board. These last now turned around upon their pursuers, and, furiously charging them, a small number broke through their ranks and escaped to Harrodsburg. The loss in this most lamentable affair was about sixty men, very nearly equal to that at ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... learn that a Biography of Hon. Adin Thayer is in process of preparation, and that the work is in such competent hands. I reckoned him among my highly esteemed personal friends, and was painfully shocked by the news of his lamentable death. I knew his grandfather before him, his father and mother, and the whole family connexion more or less intimately. They were often attendant on my public ministrations, and I have been with them, during my long life, on many occasions ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the most sympathetic recognition. Some have come to me, and from many I have had letters that warmed my heart, and cheered my mind. Beside the name of Mr. Lowell, I mention two New England names, to spare me the fate of the prophet of the Gospel, the late Maria Louise Pool, whose lamentable death came far too early, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived to read "The Morgesons" only, and to write me a characteristic letter. With some slight criticism, he wrote, "Pray pardon my frankness, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... short-comings, over-shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise: if indeed they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humour of looking at all Matter and Material things as Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... It is lamentable to see a country split into factions, each following this or that great or brazen-fronted leader with a blind, unreasoning, unquestioning hero-worship; it is contemptible to see it divided into ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... look. He had been wondering in his darker moments what Sally would say about that project when she heard of it, and he had hoped that she would not hear of it until all the preparations were so complete that interference would be impossible. He was extremely fond of Sally, but there was, he knew, a lamentable vein of caution in her make-up which might lead her to criticize. And how can your man of affairs carry on if women are buzzing round criticizing all the time? He picked up a pen and put it down; buttoned his waistcoat and unbuttoned it; and scratched his ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Rose he had so much adored before she began to weigh what he did with her idea of right, and the balance went against him, and she had turned strange, and stony, and more and more shocked, and oh, so lamentable. He couldn't get at her in those days at all; she wouldn't, she couldn't understand. She kept on referring everything to what she called God's eyes—in God's eyes it couldn't be right, it wasn't right. Her miserable ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... by virtue of your failure I should be powerless to intervene." He paused for some moments, staring directly at the surgeon. "There are those within sound of my voice," he added sibilantly, "who would flay you alive in the lamentable event of your failure, who would cast your flayed body"—he paused, waving one quivering fist above his head, ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Napoleon was right in recognizing, in his declaration to the Senate, that it was lamentable, after so many years of civilization, to recur to the principles, the barbarism, of the first ages of nations; and the pretexts which he adduced for this necessity were as insufficient as the consequences that ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... it into the society of flesh and blood an object of scorn and derision. You may sweat and reduce it to a thing of skin and bone, and then place the ominous skeleton beside the ruddy and healthful members of the Union, that it may have leisure to mourn the lamentable difference between itself and its companions, to brood over its disastrous promotion, and to seek in justifiable discontent an opportunity for separation, and insurrection, and rebellion. What may you not do by dexterity and perseverance with this terrific power? You may give to a new State, in ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... opulent and great, who hold in subjection such numbers of your fellow-creatures, and suffer these things to happen—beware! Reflect on this lamentable change, that may, at a future period, take place against you. Arraigned before the almighty Sovereign of the universe, how will you answer the charge of such complicated enormity? The presence of these slaves, who have been lost, for want of your ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... close to us, regardless of the danger they ran of destruction, for had we opened our broadsides, we might have played sad havoc among them. They were not quite so fantastically dressed as my friends at Cape Henlopen, but still there was a very great variety of costume, and a lamentable want of discipline among them. If the front rank did not advance fast enough, the rear would give them a shove or a kick to urge them on, all the time making significant and not very complimentary signs to us to come on ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... saw her husband, and sprang on her feet, her eyes flashing, her hands stretched out, while she screamed out, "You here? You dare to come here? You, who killed him!" Fulk caught her arm, saying, "Hush! Hester; come away. It was a lamentable accident, but—" ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Here, to this day, notwithstanding some lamentable and perfectly unnecessary 'restorations' of recent years, may be seen some portions of the Muro Torto, a twisted, bulging, overhanging ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... turn Makyne is no longer willing; she laughs now, and he weeps, and she leaves him in solitude under a rock, with his sheep. This is a lamentable ending; but let us not sorrow overmuch; on these pathless moors people are sure to meet, and since they quarrelled and parted for ever, in the fifteenth century, Robin and Makyne ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... conversion to God had been set like bait on hook to hide the deed which she purposed, and were troubling him with the suggestion of the enemy, that, for the salvation of a soul, it was not sin for once to lie with a woman, then in the agony of his soul he drew a deep and lamentable groan, and nerved himself to pray, and, with streams of tears running down his cheeks, he cried aloud to him that is able to save them that trust in him, saying, "On thee, O Lord, have I set my trust: let me not be confounded ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... grievance of which to complain, and it might have been thought very unlikely that any troubles would arise in connection with them; but circumstances seemingly trivial threw the whole community into commotion, and led on to disasters of a very lamentable character. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... be done. We had to get him aft. A rope was tied slack under his armpits, and, reaching up at the risk of our lives, we hung him on the fore-sheet cleet. He emitted no sound; he looked as ridiculously lamentable as a doll that had lost half its sawdust, and we started on our perilous journey over the main deck, dragging along with care that pitiful, that limp, that hateful burden. He was not very heavy, but had he weighed ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... period, Diderot compared his favorite painter to the Jupiter of Lucian, who, tired of listening to the lamentable cries of mankind, rose from table and exclaimed: 'Let it hail in Thrace!' and the trees were immediately stripped of their leaves, the heaviest cut to pieces, and the thatch of the houses scattered before the wind: then he said, "Let the plague fall on ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... fertile, and certainly with the finest climate. Whether her children are worthy of their mother, is another question, which I shall not attempt to answer; but content myself with observing, that, amongst much that is lamentable and reprehensible, I have found much that is noble and to be admired; much stern heroic virtue; much savage and horrible crime; of low vulgar vice very little, at least amongst the great body of the Spanish nation, with which my mission ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... unspeakably lamentable loss of opportunity! This is the more remarkable and lamentable because the President is a charming personality, an uncommonly good talker, a man who could easily make personal friends of all the world. He does his ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... time they got down to the bottom of the terrace as the tales that might be circulated by the wretched individuals who had the misfortune to live at the two ends of it, so that I should be certain to have twice as good a character in the neighbourhood as they had. For instance, I was informed of a lamentable case that actually occurred a short time since. The servant of No. 1 told the servant of No. 2 that her master expected his old friends, the Bayleys, to pay him a visit shortly; and No. 2 told No. 3 that No. 1 expected to have the Bayleys in the house every day; and No. 3 told No. 4 that it ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... of Guatemala—I am deeply grieved by the catastrophe at San Francisco. The president of Guatemala sends to the people of the United States through your eminence his expression of the most sincere grief, with the confidence that in such a lamentable misfortune the indomitable spirit of your people will newly manifest itself—that spirit which, if great in prosperity, is equally great in ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... have continued to be harassed by the same vision every Friday night; no acts of penitence and devotion have been able to relieve me from it; and it is only a lingering hope in divine mercy, that sustains me, and enables me to support so lamentable a visitation." ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... divined the fact that in thousands of cases the American mother was not the confidante of her daughter, and reasoned if an inviting human personality could be created on the printed page that would supply this lamentable lack of American family life, girls would flock to such a figure. But all depended on the confidence which the written word could inspire. He tried several writers, but in each case the particular touch that he sought for was lacking. It seemed so simple to him, and yet he could not translate ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... hearts polluted with materialistic desires, and uplifts us above the plain of sensualism; on the other hand, it destroys superstitions which as a rule arise from ignorance and want of the idealistic conception of things. It is a lamentable fact that every country is full of such superstitions people as described by one of the New Thought writers: 'Tens of thousands of women in this country believe that if two people look in a mirror at the same time, or if one thanks the other ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... principles discoverable in the discipline, as hitherto explained—these applicable to the discipline of larger societies, or to the criminal codes of states—lamentable, that as Christian principles, they have not been admitted into our own—Quakers, as far as they have had influence in legislation, have adopted them—exertions of William Penn—Legislature of Pennsylvania as example to other ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... back to Walter again; and to his needs as a fugitive—she had meant to repair his underwear, but had postponed doing so, and her neglect now appeared to be a detail as lamentable as the calamity itself. She could neither be stilled upon it, nor herself exhaust its urgings to self-reproach, though she finally took up another theme temporarily. Upon an unusually violent outbreak ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... believe; but he, the Native, knew. But alas for us! On the 2d, he puts it down as "sloppy and raw cold." Now it so chances that W. S. has kept his MS. notes against this day, and he has it "Very fine and pleasant," and the next day, "Dry and dusty." Lamentable indeed for the Native! But he is not to be shaken for all that; he prognosticates through all the year just as if all was to come exactly right. One would like to know what W. S. thought of his prognosticator, and if he kept on studying and believing just the same ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... fact that, as he had said bitterly to Chloe Carstairs, he had failed a child in her need, would have been sufficient to fill Anstice with a very real and deep regret for his own most lamentable failure; but added to that was the other and still more deplorable fact that it had been Iris Wayne who had seen his condition; and although she had uttered no word of reproach he told himself hopelessly that now he must have fallen very low in her estimation. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... mean the fat Jew whom I've met with Mr Melmotte;—a man old enough to be your father!' The poor girl's condition now was certainly lamentable. The fat Jew, old enough to be her father, was the very man she did mean. She thought that she would try to brazen it out with her father. But at the present moment she had been so cowed by the manner in which the subject had ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... which might have helped to make a man of Feeble- mind, saw a laughable, if it had not been such a lamentable, spectacle. For it saw this poor creature hanging as limp as wet linen on the back of one of the Interpreter's sweating servants. Your little boy will explain the parable to you. Shall I do this? or, shall I rather do that? asks Feeble-mind at every stop. Would it be right? ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... however, maintain that Mr. Gladstone's and Lord Granville's diplomatic dealings with Germany in the years 1884 and 1885 displayed most lamentable weakness, even when Dr. Peters and others were known to be working hard at the back of Zanzibar, with the results that have been noted. In April 1885 the Cabinet ordered Sir John Kirk, British representative ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Revolution, was fortunate enough to be out of France, and wise enough to remain away from that country, though he persisted, long after the old regime was as dead as the Ptolemies, in believing it merely suspended, and the Revolution a lamentable accident of vulgar complexion, but happily temporary duration. The Marquis de Senanges, who affected the style regence, and was the politest of infidels and the most refined of voluptuaries, got on indifferently ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... will hear the widow, if she cries at all, how much more if she cries most grievously? (Exo 22:22,23). It is not the number, but the true sense of the abominable nature of sin, that makes the cry for pardon lamentable. 30 He, as I said, that has many sins, may not cry so loud in the ears of God as he that has far fewer; he, in our present sense, that is in his own eyes the biggest sinner, is he that soonest findeth mercy. The offer, then, is to the biggest sinner; to the biggest sinner first, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... resolve—and to point out in the most decisive tone the grievances under which they supposed the country laboured. Their remonstrances were carried even to the foot of the throne, and the father of his people, uninfluenced by that romantic sense of dignity, which has since produced such lamentable effects in Irish Parliaments—graciously received, and wisely attended to their remonstrances.—The jesuitical or Machiavelian distinction between citizens in red clothes and in coloured ones, had not yet been thought of—it was considered sufficient to entitle an address or petition to a ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... Benares? I would have gone there again this year, but my daughter—we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the effect of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would ask thy Holy One—stand aside, rogue—a charm against most lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter's eldest. Two years back he gave me a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... men to repaire my Barke, and to make her in a readinesse. [Sidenote: An Armenian sent to M. Ienkinson from the king of Georgia] And during my abode in Shammachi, there came vnto me an Armenian sent from the king of Georgia, who declared the lamentable estate of the same king, that being enclosed betwixt those two cruell tyrants and mightie princes, the said great Turke and the Sophie, hee had continuall warres with them, requiring for the loue of Christ and as I was a Christian, that I would send him comfort ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... were but one; Iwill sett downe two auctoryties out of Mathewe Paris and Walsinghame, whereof the fyrste wryteth, that in the yere of Christe 1255, beinge the 39. of Henrye the 3, achilde called Hughe was sleyne by the Jewes at Lyncolne, whose lamentable historye he delyvereth at large; and further, in the yere 1256, being 40. Hen. 3, he sayeth, Dimissi sunt quieti 24 Judei Turri London, qui ibidem infames tenebantur compediti pro crucifixione sancti Hugonis Lincolni: All whiche Thomas Walsingham, in Hypodigma Neustri, confirmeth; ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... violent that whole districts have been depopulated by it. He commences his career of destruction at dawn every morning, and till his victim is ready he continues to ravage the land. When he has swallowed his lamentable repast he remains asleep till next morning, and ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... return of their ambassadors, concluded a peace with Scipio, on the terms he himself had prescribed. They then delivered up to him more than five hundred ships, all which he burnt in sight of Carthage; a lamentable spectacle to the inhabitants of that ill-fated city! He struck off the heads of the allies of the Latin name, and hanged all the Roman citizens who were surrendered up to him, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy hand as nature made it! A great, and famous, and noble handiwork I have seen here. Not the greatest picture in the world—not a work of the highest genius—but a performance so great, various, and admirable, so shrewd of humour, so wise of observation, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... watch in her stead; but she only shook her head, and said she could not. She had not seen, and had scarcely thought of, the elder children all day; but at about eleven o'clock at night she was startled by a sound of lamentable crying,—Johnnie's voice in the nursery. The poor little boy's nerves had been so much shaken by the fire at Martindale, that he had become subject to night alarms, which sometimes showed their effect for the whole subsequent day; and his mother stole away on hearing his cry, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Burgundy, called Mascon, was famous in the annals of witchcraft. In a work called "The Theatre of God's Judgments," published, in London, by Thomas Beard in 1612, there is the following passage: "It was a very lamentable spectacle that chanced to the Governor of Mascon, a magician, whom the Devil snatched up in dinner-while, and hoisted aloft, carrying him three times about the town of Mascon, in the presence of many beholders, to whom he cried in this manner, 'Help, help, my friends!' so that the whole town ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... it but weakness, miserable, lamentable weakness, that is spread out before us in the bitter invective speeches against Life by those who are called pessimists, by Schopenhauer, Wagner, Ibsen, dragged along as they were in the ebb of life toward the middle of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... been practised in every instance. The sums advanced had been pitiful in amount, and the rates of interest charged exorbitant beyond belief. O how does avarice harden the heart, and dry up the current of human sympathy! How lamentable this accursed ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... granted. The emissary went over the ground thoroughly. He declared that Platt would never yield. He explained that he was certain to win the fight, and that he wished to save Roosevelt from such a lamentable disaster as the end of his political career. Roosevelt again explained at length his position. After half an hour he rose to go. The "subsequent proceedings" he described ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... of all this is a part of the same lamentable illusion," said John Effingham, as the carriages made their way slowly through the encumbered streets. "The man who sells his inland lots at a profit, secured by credit, fancies himself enriched, and he extends ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... for me to refer to the lofty expression of the poet's feelings on such his inheritance, nor to the necessity of his parting from the estate, which appears now to be happily restored to its former splendour; but possessing some knowledge of a lamentable fact, that neither Mr. Pettigrew nor Mr. Ashpitel appears to be aware of, I feel inclined to soften the asperity of the reflections quoted; and palliate, although I may not justify, the apparently reckless proceedings of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... purse, for it to fill, and we have seen with what harm to individuals, to the communes, and to itself, with what a lamentable series ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise, a highly humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself by any stretch of my professional caution?" said Mr. Kenge, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... foreseen or avoided by human prudence, by which a character may be injured, wealth dissipated, or a constitution impaired: but I think I may reasonably despise the understanding of one who conducts himself in such a manner as naturally produces such lamentable consequences, and continues in the same destructive paths to the end of a long life, ostentatiously boasting of morals and philosophy in print, and with equal ostentation bragging of the scenes of low debauchery in public conversation, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... serious periodical of satisfying quality. In the "Introductory," Mr. George Schilling discusses in lively fashion the latest topics of the day, thereby atoning for our own tedious "Finale." "Ready Made," by Samuel J. Schilling, is a thoughtful presentation of a lamentable fact. The evil which he portrays is one that has rendered the masses of America almost wholly subservient to the vulgar press; to be led astray into every sort of radicalism through low tricks of sensationalism. Our own poetical attempt, entitled "Quinsnicket Park," contains 112 lines, and spoils ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... much attention to this lamentable state of public morals, and seems to have concurred with his great predecessor, Sully, that nothing but the most rigorous severity could put a stop to the evil. The subject indeed was painfully forced upon him by his enemies. The Marquis de Themines, to whom Richelieu, then Bishop of Lucon, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... perseverance, here as in other human affairs, has its reward, and presently you develop for it a liking which time increases to enthusiasm. In Spain, the land of custom and usage, everything is done in a certain way; and there is a proper manner to drink aguardiente. To sip it would show a lamentable want of decorum. A Spaniard lifts the little glass to his lips, and with a comic, abrupt motion tosses the contents into his mouth, immediately afterwards drinking water, a tumbler of which is always given with the spirit. It ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... of manliness, of thrift? The condition of the farmers is the postulate by which the sagacious economist will foretell the future prosperity of the nation they represent. This is what the American farmer should have presented to him from every stand-point. It is lamentable that this vocation should be so sadly represented by the most of those who are engaged ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Volunteers did, no troops could have beaten them—well that is a wild statement, the heavy guns could always beat them—but from whatever angle Irish people consider this affair it must appear to them tragic and lamentable beyond expression, but ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... enough, that on that Sunday, of all the Sundays in the year, the widow should call in to rest a little at Samuel Price's, to tell over again the lamentable story of the apples, and to consult with him how the thief might be brought to justice. But O, reader, guess, if you can, for I am sure I cannot tell you, what was her surprise, when, on going into Samuel Price's kitchen, ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... Why, I sat down and reflected. I had a good classical education, and a positive distaste for business of any kind; that was the capital with which I faced the world. Do you know, I have heard people describe olives as nasty! What lamentable philistinism! I have often thought, Salisbury, that I could write genuine poetry under the influence of olives and red wine. Let us have Chianti; it may not be very good, but the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... But yet more lamentable food for thought was reserved for me: the spectacle of a ruin yet more profound than those which my eyes could scarce endure, was to appear before me in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... means of watching me in my moments of Art-study, I know not: but that some one betrayed me, and that the discovery of my illicit manufacture of caricatures was actually communicated even to the grandmotherly head and fount of the family honor, is a most certain and lamentable matter of fact. One morning my father received a letter from Lady Malkinshaw herself, informing him, in a handwriting crooked with poignant grief, and blotted at every third word by the violence of virtuous indignation, that "Thersites Junior" was his own son, and that, in one ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... republic we called ourselves even then old and stable. Yet was ever any country riper for misrule than ours? Forgetting now what is buried, the old arguments all forgot, that most bloody and most lamentable war all forgot, could any mind, any imagination, depict a situation more rife with tumult, more ripe for war than this? And was it not perforce an issue, of compromise or war; of compromise, or a union never to ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... will have it, at the same moment passes 415, our poor relative, who, seeing our distress, stops and promises to help us out of our difficulty; as soon as he has deposited on the quay an Englishman he is conveying, he will come to our aid and bring all that is necessary to relieve us from our lamentable situation. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... spoken of the different voices, of their power, of their effects, let us bestow a compassionate remembrance upon the lost voices, on those who were or who are still, in the most lamentable sense of that word, voices in the wilderness.—To be a man, a soul, to have felt the lighting of a holy flame within oneself; to love truth and justice; to feel the pain of contact with a life ruled over by falsehood and violence; at the heart of this poignant contrast ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... had any fears; and though the night came on, there was a bright moon, and the water was calm. Every sail was set; the rowers plied their utmost strength, and thus it was with great violence that the ship ran foul of the rocks called the Ras de Catte. A lamentable cry reached the ships of the King's fleet; but no one guessed the cause. A boat was lowered; Fitzstephen handed in the prince and a few rowers, and bade them make for the shore; but just as they had pushed off, William heard the agonized ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Her fun and frolic were quite gone! Even her songs ceased. She was silent with her sister, and loved solitude better. She said she was well, and quite happy, and could in no wise be got to account for the lamentable change that had stolen over her. She had grown odd too, and obstinate in trifles; ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... dead all his former merits and his valiant acts were remembered. Nothing now remained for his successor but to put the utmost censure of the law in force against Iago, who was executed with strict tortures; and to send word to the state of Venice of the lamentable death ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... dear; it is all very lamentable and laughable, but we must submit till the world learns better. There are often excellent young persons among the 'grasshoppers,' and if you cared to look you might find a pleasant friend here and there," said Mr. Yule, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... Point now agreed to cut the colored boy. No one was to say a single word to him, or even answer yes or no. At the same time they would abuse him and swear at him in their own conversation loud enough for him to hear. It is a lamentable fact that every white cadet at the Point swears and chews tobacco ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... over the ground; how daringly they showed off the strength and dexterity that almost seemed their birthright! This reminded him that, prematurely aged as he was by the wild excesses of his younger years, with his ill-set broken leg and his thin locks, he must make a lamentable contrast to these others of his own age; and he said to himself that perhaps the whistle had come from the lips of one of the strongest and handsomest, who had not considered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... same office as Barber, and notwithstanding the disparity of age and position, had always shown a kindly interest in him and befriended him when he could. Accordingly, when I received a letter from Barber begging in very lamentable terms to visit him at an address in Kent, I thought it prudent to consult this gentleman before sending any reply. He proposed very amiably that we should meet at Charing Cross Station on the following Saturday afternoon and travel in to Kent together. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dear Sir, you certainly did not use to be stupid, and till you give me more substantial proof that you are so, I shall not believe it. As for your temperate diet and milk bringing about such a metamorphosis, I hold it impossible. I have such lamentable proofs every day before my eyes of the stupefying qualities of beef, ale, and wine, that I have contracted a most religious veneration for your spiritual nouriture. Only imagine that I here every day ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the old lady, raising one chiding finger, "it is really lamentable, Loris, that your sentimental tendencies have grown ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a little, simple, trivial incident, but it led with other things to the most lamentable fact of my life, and when I think of it I sometimes wonder how it comes to pass that He who numbers the flowers of the field and counts the sparrows as they fall has no handwriting with which to warn His children that ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... madame, are too good a mother not to love all your children alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a family trying to disinherit her husband's children ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... accordingly read over, and the householders of County Leitrim are summoned to appear and answer to their names under a penalty of two pounds. A lamentable deficiency, however, is apparent; one only here and there answers to his name as it is called out in the sonorous and practised voice of the clerk of the crown. A notice is then given that they will be again invoked under a penalty ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... as we lay listening to these lamentable roarings and grunts, and quite unable to sleep for heat and noise, came the blessed express, and presently we were away out of all the din, with the fresh air of the prairie blowing in; and in no time ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... answer to an excited message, and found him in the depths of despair. It was the old story, human weakness, combined with lamentable lack of the most ordinary precautions against being found out. He gave me details, interspersed with exuberant denunciations of himself, and I undertook ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... It is a lamentable fact that the wholesome and normal tendency towards organization which is now increasingly noticeable among working-women has so far remained unrelated to that equally normal and far more deeply rooted and ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... better to be THAT than to go about with one's head meekly hanging on one side, and talking always of altruism and self-sacrifice, while in reality one's heart was entirely occupied with the question of one's own salvation. There is besides a lamentable want of grit and substance about the Christian doctrines and ceremonials. Somehow under the sex-taboo they became spiritualized and etherealized out of all human use. Study the initiation-rites of any savage tribe—with their strict discipline of the young braves in fortitude, and the overcoming ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... open, and impulsive, she was ever on the watch for sympathy, and no sooner did she have a secret than she longed to share it with some one. She had divulged her secret to the Earl, with results that were lamentable. She had partially disclosed it to Mrs. Hart, with results equally lamentable. The sickness of the Earl and of Mrs. Hart was now added to her troubles; and the time would soon come when, from the necessities of her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Wilbur followed. Charlie was left on board, with directions to lay the schooner to. The dory flew over the water, Wilbur setting the stroke. In a few moments she was well up with the bark. Though a larger boat than the "Bertha Millner," she was rolling in lamentable fashion, and every laboring heave showed her bottom incrusted with barnacles ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... have told you the truth. You will hear it sooner or later if you remain on Blue. It is the one great piece of neighborhood history since the Indians left. It is nothing to boast of. I simply state it as a fact,—a lamentable fact, I suppose I should say. But I don't feel that way about it ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... lips began to scorch, That juice was wormwood to her tongue, She loathed the feast: Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung, Rent all her robe, and wrung Her hands in lamentable haste, And beat her breast. Her locks streamed like the torch Borne by a racer at full speed, Or like the mane of horses in their flight, Or like an eagle when she stems the light Straight toward the sun, Or like a caged thing freed, Or like a ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... that we are not going too far if we affirm, that both dramatic poetry and the histrionic art are in a lamentable state of decline in Italy, that not even the first foundations of a true national theatre have yet been laid, and that there is no prospect of it, till the prevailing ideas on the subject shall have ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... apostrophe was not limited to any particular season, as now to the morning alone; indeed they used it on gloomy, nay, on the most lamentable occasions; in Euripides, Polynices ends his life with ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... affectionately known, was apt to be somewhat confused, as is natural, before an extraordinary crisis, and had made one or two lamentable blunders. In the present case, after immediately sending in a hurry call for the plumber, he departed in a panic for Foundation House, holding before him on a pair of tongs a pair of reeking football ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... well knowne, and have bene so much inlarged upon in treatises peculiarly applyed to that purpose, that the farther mentioninge it in this place, would but afflicte and grieve the reader, and make the relation itselfe odious; and therfore no more shall be sayd heare of that lamentable Tragedy, so much to the dishonour of the Nation, and the religion professed by it; but it will not be unnecessary to add the shorte character of his person, that posterity may know the inestimable losse which the nation ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... a lamentable fact, that pure and uncorrupt justice has never existed in Spain, as far at least as record will allow us to judge; not that the principles of justice have been less understood there than in other countries, but because the entire system of justiciary administration has ever been shamelessly ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Bondhu, climbed on board, sounded the tank, filled it up, and started out across the Loch. I can only plead my anxiety to get well out of sight and hearing before Hilderman should think of leaving the house, as an excuse for my lamentable thoughtlessness on this occasion. Indeed, it was not till long afterwards that I realised I had forgotten to anchor the dinghy, and I left it, just as it was, to drift out ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... quarrelled with his father. By way of counsel she advised strongly that the engagement be kept as much in the background as possible. She did not, she said, want Millicent to be a sort of red rag to Sir John, and there was no necessity to publish abroad the lamentable fact that a quarrel had resulted from a very natural and convenient attachment. Sir John was a faddist, and, like the rest of his kind, eminently pig-headed. It was more than likely that in a few months he would recall his son, and, in the meantime, it never did a girl any ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... to attack. Indeed, he was regarded by many people as the greatest failure of all the Union commanders, for he had lost more men in sixty days than McClellan had lost in all his campaigns without getting any nearer to Richmond, and by the end of July another lamentable failure ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... camp-chest and we used his forks, spoons, plates, etc., while his camp-stools supplied the deficiency in seats. He often teased my sisters about their experiments in cookery and household arts, encouraging them to renewed efforts after lamentable failures. When they succeeded in a dish for the table, or completed any garment with their own hands, he was lavish with his praise. He ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... by the pleasure she found in these promenades, and secure in the consciousness of blameless conduct, the Queen would not see the lamentable results which must necessarily follow. This was very unfortunate; for besides the mortifications they brought upon her, it is highly probable that they prompted the vile plot which gave rise to the Cardinal de Rohan's ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... that issues from this Spirit is that Vox Populi which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory out-cry—transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in the clamour of that small though loud portion of the community, ever governed by factitious influence, which, under the name of the PUBLIC, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to the wear-and-tear of the Readings in England and America, the nervous shock of that terrible railway accident at Staplehurst, on the 9th of June, 1865, the lamentable catastrophe of exactly five years afterwards to the very day, that of the 9th of June, 1870, becomes readily comprehensible. Because of his absorption in his task, however, all through, he was unconscious ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... felt that if he could expect no firm support from the Melbourne government, his usefulness was gone, and resignation was the only course open to him. He wrote, however, that he intended to remain in Canada until he had completed the inquiries he had instituted. In view of the 'lamentable want of information' with regard to Canada which existed in the Imperial parliament, he confessed that he 'would take shame to himself if he left his ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... declined in tears. I returned to the city with the intention to repeat the offer the next time we met. Not many weeks elapsed before her aged mother was consigned to the tomb. Poor Juliet's condition was now immeasurably lamentable. She had neither friend nor protector. I again urged my suit, and was successful. But she required of me a promise to retire from the world for ever. I cheerfully agreed, for I was disgusted with the vanity and wickedness of my species. We came hither. You ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... prefer shooting to voting and the bullet to the ballot." Should civil war break out in Ulster, the issue would not be confined to Ireland: the issue would be whether civil and parliamentary government in these realms was to be beaten down by the menace of armed force. Bloodshed was lamentable, but there were worse things. If the law could not prevail, if the veto of violence was to replace the veto of privilege, then, said the orator, "let us go forward and put these grave matters ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... winds which are wholly crazy, and blow from all points of the compass at once and also perpendicularly. If the boats tried for Acapulco they would get out of the doldrums when half-way there—in case they ever got half-way—and then they would be in lamentable case, for there they would meet the north-east trades coming down in their teeth, and these boats were so rigged that they could not sail within eight points of the wind. So they wisely started northward, with a slight ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seem able to attack the real inner man. If there is a lamentable increase of vulgarity, superficiality, and restlessness in our epoch, there is also an inspiring development of certain qualities. Those who were watching human nature before the war were pretty well aware of how, under the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... homosexuals there are two lamentable shadows, which are largely due to the severity with which most legislations track and condemn ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... commonly attributed to Yankees, that is New Englanders, though there is reason to believe that some other parts of the country are quite as liberally gifted with the qualities of "Yorkshire." It affords a striking instance of shrewdness on the one side, and of lamentable deficiency of it on the other. This was before the town had exchanged its original simpler mode of regulating its municipal affairs for the form of a city government. On a certain occasion the School Committee became dissatisfied with the master of one of ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... bad grammar," said Cobbett, "to say of the House of Commons, 'It is a sink of iniquity, and they are a set of rascally swindlers.'" Of course, the bad grammar is almost immaterial. The expression is either a gross libel or a lamentable fact. "If a man," said Sydney Smith, "were to kill the minister and churchwardens of his parish nobody would accuse him of want of taste. The Scythians always ate their grandfathers; they behaved very respectfully to them for a long time, but as soon as their grandfathers became old and troublesome, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... of experience. The craving of the soul is not satisfied by the discovery that "matter" resolves itself into "energy," nor is the misery of the heart assuaged by the theory that time is an attribute of fourth-dimensional space. The lamentable beating of blood-stained hands upon the ultimate walls does not cease when we learn that two straight lines can or cannot meet in infinity; nor does the knowledge that history is an "ideal evolution" heal the aching of ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... faithful soul, hast thou left us, and art thou gone?' At the same time he took him by the right hand, and the hand of the deceased came away, for it had been cut off with a sword by the Egyptians. He, at the sight of this, became yet much more concerned than before. The woman shrieked out in a lamentable manner, and, taking the hand from Cyrus, kissed it, fitted it to its proper place again, as well as she could, and said: 'The rest, Cyrus, is in the same condition, but what need you see it? And I know that I was not one of the least concerned in these his sufferings, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... moral unsteadiness diminished his power. The miseries of his childhood had left their trace in a querulous, lamentable, helpless tone of feeling, into which he fell upon any little misfortune or disappointment; and as he grew older ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... 5:19). Ah, friends, let me tell you, though you may be ignorant of your state and condition, yet the poor, groaning, hungering saints of God do see what a sad, woeful, miserable state you are in, which sometimes makes them tremble to think of your most lamentable latter end, your dying so, and also to fly the faster to their Lord Jesus, for very fear that they also should be partakers of that most doleful doom. [Like as the children of Israel, who fled for fear when the ground opened its mouth to swallow up Korah and his company]. And this it hath ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lamentable manner the history of Russia's internal misrule and disorder has continued to repeat itself for the last sixty years, revolving in the same vicious circle of fierce repression and persecution and utter ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... said she had a headache and that she would not take dinner. She locked herself in her room and drew from her jewel casket the lamentable letter. She read over ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the mode of execution is but of secondary importance; arrange it how you will, it is a lamentable business. Like all other punishments, and still more than all other punishments, the actual infliction of it is an evil to society. When the law passes from the threat to the execution, it is a social disaster. The main point is, that we present ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... The lamentable divisions that existed in the royal family formed a topic of common conversation, and deeply disturbed the tranquillity of His Majesty's mind. The Prince of Wales and the Duke of York took industrious advantage of all available ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... indeed, of all the features of that miserable seventeenth century, surely nothing is more extraordinary than this insatiate taste of men of all parties for Jewish precedents. Never was the enslavement of the human mind to authority carried to more absurd lengths with more lamentable results; never was manifested a greater waste, or a greater wealth, of ability. For that reason, though Rutherford may claim a place on our shelves, he is little likely ever to be taken down ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... His fear was shown by the convulsive trembling which agitated his wretched body, by his ghastly pallor, by the cold drops of sweat rolling down his forehead.... He was no longer a man: it was a lamentable bit of human wreckage the hooligans had before them!... And the more lamentable this wreck showed itself to be, the less worthy of their ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... and lamentable history of Jack Bull, son of the late John Bull, India Merchant, wherein it will be seen how this prosperous merchant left an heir that ran riot with 'Squires, trainbands, Black men, and Soldiers, and squandered ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... was at that moment in possession of the pontifical throne, and celebrating the jubilee, the periodical recurrence of which at the end of every fifty years had been decreed by Clement VI. in 1350; but Rome was even then in a lamentable state, and presages were not wanting of still more disastrous times. The wars for the succession of the kingdom of Naples, between Louis of Anjou and Ladislas Durazzo, were agitating the whole of Italy; and the capital of ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... cole o' fyre.[269] Wherfore she stepped backe quickely, and though she was right thyrsty, yet she sette the potte a syde; and as [if] her husbande had than fallen downe deed, she beganne to wepe, and with many lamentable wordes to bewayle his dethe; which wepynge and walyng and sodaine dethe of her husbande caused all the neyghbours to come thyther. The man laye stylle in the floore, and so helde his brethe, and closed his eies, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... is the friend of dreams. Fallen, as we have said, their lamentable hearts have no other ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the difference between the fine strongly-built men and the ugly disgusting women and neglected children. In general the latter present a most lamentable appearance, with faces covered with scabs and sores, on which a quantity of flies are continually settling. Frequently also they have inflamed eyes. In spite of the oppressive heat, I remained nearly the whole day seated on the roof of ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... supposition, that a self-announced genius of any sort in their midst was inevitably suspect. On the other hand, there was the ever-imminent danger of entertaining, and snubbing, an angel unawares. There had been the lamentable case of Sledonti, the dramatic poet, who had been belittled and cold-shouldered in the Owl Street hall of judgment, and had been afterwards hailed as a master singer by the Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovitch—"the most educated of the Romanoffs," according to Sylvia Strubble, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... uncovenanted, and now he felt himself called upon, by the most powerful motive conceivable, to authorise his daughter's giving testimony in a court of justice, which all who have been since called Cameronians accounted a step of lamentable and direct defection. The voice of nature, however, exclaimed loud in his bosom against the dictates of fanaticism; and his imagination, fertile in the solution of polemical difficulties, devised an expedient for ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... summoned a number of his most trusted and most sagacious councillors together—the Intendant was not one of those summoned—to consider what steps it behooved them to take to provide for the public safety and to ensure the ends of justice in this lamentable tragedy. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... "mystery and horror" tales to become popular.] at Nohant, with terror and delight. My companions had many another Scotch and Irish legend in their heads, all fit to set one's hair on end. The convent too had innumerable stories of its own lamentable events,—about ghosts, dungeons, inexplicable apparitions, and mysterious noises. All this, and the thought of finally discovering the tremendous secret of the victim, so kindled our imaginations that we were sure we heard sighs and groans start from under the stones, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... to boiling, and the chicken was put in. For three hours we boiled the chicken, but each hour made it tougher. I told Jim he might be a success as a horse-thief, but when it come to stealing tender poultry he was a lamentable failure, but he said it was the only hen on the place, and if I didn't want to eat it I could retire to my couch and he would set up with the hen. I was so hungry, and the smell of the boiling hen was so Savory, that I remained awake, and at about midnight Jim announced that he had succeeded ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... way the Manly boat was filling slowly with mothers and children and stray couples. A lamentable band on the upper deck mixed popular airs with the rattle of winches. The Quay was alive with ferry-boats, blunt-nosed and squat like a flat-iron, churning the water with invisible screws. A string of lascars from the P. & O. boat caught his eye with a patch of colour, the white calico trousers, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... "You are idolaters, why do you pray to images?" "The English people do not pray to images," I rejoined. As he doubted my word, I was obliged to enter into explanations of the customs of Romanists and Protestants. It is amusing or lamentable to think, as we may sneer at or regret the matter, that these rude children of The Desert should have ground for charging upon the high-bred and transcendantally-polished nations of Europe, idolatry. But, if ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... only observations to be completed later with the aid of descriptions of ancient date, but they offer sure information of the lamentable losses suffered by our unfortunate city during the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... being sent in to exile, and even to submit to the discipline, provided they would insure him his repasts. His next was more reasonable. He would go to the Corne d'Abondance, send for Chicot, explain to him the lamentable situation into which he had helped to bring him, and obtain aid from this generous friend. He was sitting absorbed in these reflections, when he heard the sound of a horse's feet approaching. In great fear, he hid behind a tree until the traveler should have passed; but a new idea ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... book, apologized, and retired. In eight days more the night of performance would arrive; a phalanx of social martyrs two hundred strong had been convened to witness it; three full rehearsals were absolutely necessary; and two characters in the play were not filled yet. With this lamentable story, and with the humblest apologies for presuming on a slight acquaintance, the Marrables appeared at Combe-Raven, to appeal to the young ladies for a "Lucy," and to the universe for a "Falkland," with the mendicant pertinacity of a family ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... days in punts and their evenings in the old oak parlour, where a picture in boxing costume of Mr Joe Bevan, whose brother was the landlord of the inn, gazed austerely down on them, as if he disapproved of the lamentable want of truth displayed by the majority of their number. Artists also congregated there to paint the ivy-covered porch. At the back of the house were bedrooms, to which the fishermen would make their way in the small hours of a summer morning, arguing to the last as they stumbled upstairs. One of ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... excited great interest in France. The outcome of the Seven Years' War had been most lamentable for that country, and any trouble which came to her old enemy England could not but be a source of congratulation to the French. The United States regarded France as her natural ally and immediately sent Benjamin Franklin to Versailles with the hope of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... unhinges it: poor creatures that we are! Perhaps a dinner, Mr. Fish. Perhaps the conduct of his son, who, I have heard, ran very wild, and was in the habit of drawing bills upon him without the least authority! A most respectable man. One of the most respectable men I ever knew! A lamentable instance, Mr. Fish. A public calamity! I shall make a point of wearing the deepest mourning. A most respectable man! But there is One above. We must submit, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... which, but for such means of publicity, might have remained unnoticed. In the case of Salome it is hard to guess to which of these two motives one ought to ascribe the choice of treatment made by the lamentable man of genius who illustrated the truth of the theory advocated by the late dramatic critic of The Times in his work "The ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... so used to the story of my lamentable pursuit of the eumoirous that I rattled it off mechanically after the manner of the sturdy beggar telling his mendacious tale of undeserved misfortune. To Dale, however, it was fresh. He listened to it open-eyed. When I had concluded, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the beginning stages were treated with fair prospects of success, and it is a lamentable fact that in many cases the import of these seemingly trivial symptoms ...
— Prof. Koch's Method to Cure Tuberculosis Popularly Treated • Max Birnbaum
... murdered in Vryheid by Kaffirs who came from the English lines. All the Kaffirs in the South-eastern portion of the Republic were more or less under arms, and this had an unfavourable influence on the spirit of the burghers. Furthermore they had a considerable number of families who were in a most lamentable condition. The entire High Veld was divided up by the lines of blockhouses, and the commandos were so cornered that they had continually to cross these lines of the railway, and then a fortnight often passed before ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... I think you might feel "unthankful" is your lamentable lack of near relations. It is hard to be quite alone in the world; for, I agree, aunts don't count for much. Weighed in the balance they are generally found ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Hudelist, in dismay, "I made a mistake. In place of the receipt, I handed to your majesty the draft of the proclamation to your subjects, which your majesty ordered me to write. Oh, I humbly beg your majesty's pardon for having made so lamentable a ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general felling of the woods in the Old World, I believe it does not appear that any species of native forest tree has yet been extirpated by man on the Eastern continent. The roots, stumps, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... clad in purple and fine linen and driving his own blood horses, talked and laughed with a one-legged mariner, and sought the companionship of his own valet; which irregularity must be excused by his youth and inexperience, and the lamentable fact that, despite his purple and fine linen, he was, as yet, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... when he had managed to shoot a bird of this bad and mischievous family. However, in 1813, on my return from the wilds of Guiana, having suffered myself, and learned mercy, I broke in pieces the code of penal laws which the knavery of the gamekeeper and the lamentable ignorance of the other servants had hitherto put in force, far too successfully, to thin the numbers of this poor, harmless, unsuspecting tribe. On the ruin of the old gateway, against which, tradition says, the waves of the lake have dashed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... from a table top, those interviews with reporters, those flushed and eager councils of war and all the rest of that good old crisis feeling that had previously ended so happily. Mr. Graper came to his proprietor headlong, Mrs. Pembrose was summoned and together they contemplated the lamentable possibility of this great social benefit they had done the world being discredited at the outset by a strike of the proposed beneficiaries. Sir Isaac fell into a state of vindictiveness and was with difficulty restrained ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... dole and wail; re-echoed by patriot France; and the Convention, "Chabot pale with terror, declaring that they are to be all assassinated," may decree him Pantheon Honors, Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to One, whom they think it honor to call "the good Sans-culotte,"—whom we name not here; also a Chapel may be made, for the urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-born children be named ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... other hand, as Ali Baba and his wife were often seen to go between Cassim's and their own house all that day, and to seem melancholy, nobody was surprised in the evening to hear the lamentable shrieks and cries of Cassim's wife and Morgiana, who gave out every where ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Jablunka must never hear any language but German, and the [German] wave must spread thence towards the south until nothing remains of all the lamentable nationalities of the Imperial State [Austria].—P. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... be concealed. For proceeding from him it drew after him many who had been evil-disposed; and for the odor of his ointments many followed him, so by the grace thereof the friends of the departed woman, being attracted, brought her lifeless body unto the saint, and entreated with lamentable entreaties that he would show now on her the power which erewhile he had shown on others. And forthwith the man full of God betook himself unto prayer; and he restored the dead woman unto life; and afterwards ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... Mr Neeld's state was lamentable. He had not spoken a word throughout the interview. He had taken refuge in nodding, exhausting the significance of nods in reply to the various appeals that the other three addressed to him. If their meaning ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... abject, lamentable, paltry, sorrowful, base, miserable, pathetic, touching, contemptible, mournful, piteous, woful, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... teachers for their children, and educate them at home. The large schools in the towns are patronized by the upper and middle classes, and sometimes pupils come from long distances. There are schools for the peasant children, but not sufficiently numerous to make education general. It is a lamentable fact that the peasants as a class do not appreciate the importance of knowledge. Hitherto all these peasant schools have been controlled by the church, the subordinate priests being appointed ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the parties was already intense. There were hot-heads on both sides eager to open the lamentable conflict, but were it done, there was no saying where it would end. It was wise, therefore, that the leaders forbore from active hostilities at this early stage of ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... nervous system. It is true that at a later stage of evolution psychic sensitiveness reappears, but it is then developed in connection with the cerebro-spinal centres, and is brought under the control of the will. But the hysterical and ill-regulated psychism of which we see so many lamentable examples is due to the small development of the brain and the dominance ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... of turtle on the south-western coast of Ceylon is avoided as poisonous, and some lamentable instances are recorded of deaths ascribed to its use. At Pantura, to the south of Colombo, twenty-eight persons who had partaken of turtle in October, 1840, were immediately seized with sickness, after which coma supervened, and eighteen ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... them. The symptoms, which last some twelve hours, are violent sickness, cold perspiration, and the formation of some detestable mucus in the stomach. You may infer that partridges have been banished from our bill of fare. The appearance of our sufferers was lamentable in the extreme. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they come now with an odd notion of pouring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... It was lamentable to watch the inroad which each successive shock was making on Forbes's physical resources, but Theydon affected to ignore the new fright in his eyes, and told him what had happened. Although he could see that Furneaux was in a fever of impatience ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... be, it is a lamentable situation that our high-salaried Board of Education, composed of the best trained intelligence of the country, should not be allowed to exercise its discretion efficiently. The people, no doubt, cannot be agreed as to the principles on which they desire to be educated, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... say that he had been visiting among his neighbours; this to Pryer would have been like a red rag to a bull. He only talked in much his usual vein about the proposed College, the lamentable want of interest in spiritual things which was characteristic of modern society, and other kindred matters; he concluded by saying that for the present he feared Pryer was indeed right, and that nothing could ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... same power which enables them to commit the crime will secure them from reproach. The dread of posthumous infamy, therefore, being the only restraint, their consciences excepted, upon the passions of such persons, it is lamentable that this last defence (feeble enough at best) should in any degree be impaired; and impaired it must be, if not totally destroyed, when tyrants can hope to find in a man like Hume, no less eminent for the integrity and benevolence of his heart than for the depth and ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... unequalled among the compositions of any of the national bards. Than "The Mitherless Bairn," it may be questioned whether there is to be found in the language any lyrical composition more delicately plaintive. It is lamentable to think that one who could write so tenderly should, by a dissolute life, have been the author of many of his own misfortunes, and a constant barrier to every attempt for his permanent elevation in the social circle. In person, he was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that outbreak of slaughter. It was not confined to Paris, but spread through France. Thousands are said to have been killed in the city. In the kingdom the number slain has been variously estimated at from ten to one hundred thousand. Such was the frightful result of a lamentable event in which religious animosity was taken advantage of to intensify the political enmity of the warring parties ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... up the situation with lamentable accuracy. No option of a fine was given, and during the brief space that the prison doors closed upon him, Sara saw to the welfare of his invalid wife, thereby winning the undying devotion of Black Brady's ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... evidently absorbed. We had a little chat together about the Thrales. In mentioning our former intimacy with them, "Ah, those," she cried, "were happy times!" and her eyes glistened. poor thing! hers has been a lamentable story!—-Imprudence and vanity have rarely been mixed with so much sweetness, and good-humour, and candour, and followed with more reproach and ill success. We agreed to renew acquaintance next winter; at present she will be little more ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... But their churches were comparatively deserted, and infidel opinions had been long undermining respect for the institutions and ministers of religion. Swearing and drunkenness were fashionable vices among the higher classes, while low pleasures and lamentable ignorance characterized the people. The dissenting sects were more religious, but were formal and cold. Their ministers preached, too often, a mere technical divinity, or a lax system of ethics. The Independents were inclined ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord |
