"Loneliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thrace, making her way among equally passionate worshipers, to the foot of the rude altar, and there casting herself into the arms of the man she was to marry.(6) So did thousands of forest women in those seasons when their communion with a mystic loneliness was confessed, when they gave tongue as simply as wild creatures to the nameless stirrings and promptings of that secret woodland where Pan was still the lord. And the day following the revival, they were again the silent, expressionless, much enduring, long-suffering forest ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... was a lump in her throat. Across a bright, familiar veranda she could hear a clear, sharp voice answer, "American goose!" She saw a lean tanned face burn red with anger. A wave of loneliness went through her. The irony of it was pitiless. How right ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... he had made to shield him, this was Lionel's return. Were all the world against him he still must have believed Lionel true to him, and in that belief must have been enheartened a little. And now...His sense of loneliness, of utter destitution overwhelmed him. Then slowly of his sorrow resentment was begotten, and being begotten it grew rapidly until it filled his mind and whelmed in its turn all else. He threw back his great head, and his bloodshot, gleaming ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... her most violent storms in its well-established houses, to bridle her torrents and make them light its streets, to tunnel her mountains and plough her seas, the inhabitants of St. Faith's will not willingly venture into the forest after dark. For in spite of the silence and loneliness of the hooded night it seems that a man is not sure in what company he may suddenly find himself, and though it is difficult to get from these villagers any very clear story of occult appearances, the feeling is widespread. One story indeed I have heard with some definiteness, the tale ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... time, being free from the body, she knew no physical pain, and she shrank from returning before she need, knowing well the anguish of suffering that awaited her. The desolation and loneliness made her unhappy in a vague and not very comprehensible fashion, but she did not suffer actively. That would come later when return became imperative. Till then she flitted to and fro, intangible as gossamer, elusive as the snow. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... circumstances. Nor even, in the case of exemption from the worst ills of life, can we be happy without some positive agreeables—family, general society, amusements, and gratifications. There is a certain degree of loneliness, seclusion, dulness, that destroys happiness without sapping health, or miming us into ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... arms looked up in his face and smiled, stretching out its rosy hands to grasp at the winged circle of gold on his breast. His heart warmed to the touch. It seemed like a greeting of love and trust to one who had journeyed long in loneliness and perplexity, fighting with his own doubts and fears, and following a light that ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... from Stanley Pool and far away beyond, draws with it, like a moving dream, the pictures of the roaring rapids and the silent pools, the swamps filled with darkness of vegetation and murderous life; the unutterable loneliness of vast forests. The water brook of the hartbeest and antelope, it brings with it their quiet reflections, just as it brings the awful horn and the pig-like face of the rhinoceros. What things have not slaked their thirst in this quiet water ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... friendly light gleamed at night from the lattice, a beacon to the wayfarer or a message of cheer to the disheartened, since the little house was alone. The secret spinners had hung a drapery of cobwebs before the desolate windows, as though to veil the loneliness from passers-by. No fire warmed the solitary hearth, no gay and careless laughter betrayed the sleeping echoes into answer. Within the house were only dreams, which never ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of my ministry I spent hours by the cliffs and shores, or out on the heaving waters. Then the loneliness of the desert and barren wastes repelled me, and I had begun to loathe it. Altogether I was soured and discontented, and I had a dread consciousness that my life was a failure. All its possibilities had passed without being seized and utilized. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... leverage of pushing only wedged it faster in the orifice. The inconstant ladder swayed from it as a fulcrum. Again and again by art and endeavor and angle of push he essayed, and the ladder made sport of it. It was deadly sport, that swing and seesaw on the slippery rungs in the immeasurable loneliness of the silent, shrouded cabin. It was no rush of air, sending life tingling in the blood made brilliant with carmine of oxidation, but the dense, mephitic sough of the thick wool of water. He descended ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... happy at whiles with the thought, accounted providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his precious hours. He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre. He had not felt the need, which others confessed, of some one with whom to share griefs, debate enigmas and communicate projects. Since he saw Rebecca, he had, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... voice, wherein we fain Wouldst have Thee hear no lightest sob of pain— No murmur of distress, Nor moan of loneliness, Nor drip of tears, ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... convent, abode by her thenceforth. Should she ever find herself atoning in like wise for her sorceries,—harmless as they had been; for her ambitions,—just as they had been; for her crimes? But she had committed none. No, she had sinned in many things: but she was not as Richilda. And yet in the loneliness and sadness of the forest, she could not put Richilda from before the eyes of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... escape out of a fifty-mile prairie, and days bring death. Hunger and thirst soon gain strength and agony—the sooner that you know you have not the wherewith to satisfy the one, nor quench the other. Besides, there is in your very loneliness a feeling of bewilderment, painful to an extreme degree, and from which only the oldest prairie-men are free. Your senses lose half their power, your energy is diminished, and your resolves become weak and vacillating. You feel ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the yards, dipping, crutching and such like, or going off on jaunts to neighbouring stations or distant townships. It was a life where there was opportunity for the whole of a man's skill and wit, and where monotony and loneliness were not. After the day's work he and Charley took turns in cooking the dinner, while the other went for the mail. The several-day-old paper lost nothing by its age. The meal finished, they smoked and read the news, had a game of cards, perhaps, with some one who had ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... of sorrow and the water of affliction, the visions and the Voices soon returned. It was quite natural that they should do so, for that kind of disease is much aggravated by fasting, loneliness, and anxiety of mind. It was not only got out of Joan that she considered herself inspired again, but, she was taken in a man's dress, which had been left—to entrap her—in her prison, and which she put on, in her solitude; perhaps, in remembrance ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... loneliness of this desolate land of giants, lit fiercely now by the lurid glow of sunset, I searched the distance for some towering hill crowned by a castle which might be Hrvoya. But there were no castles, even ruined castles, in this region of high rocks and lonely huts, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... married woman who comes to New York, or any other large city, often passes years of loneliness before she has made her acquaintances. She is properly introduced, we will say by her mother-in-law or some other friend, and then, after a round of visits in which she has but, perhaps, imperfectly apprehended the positions and names of her new acquaintances, she has a long ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... story badly, Paul," she said, in a bitter tone. "You forgot me, forgot my affliction, my loneliness, my wrongs, and the natural desire of a child to clear her mother's honor and claim her father's name. I am Sir Richard's eldest daughter. I can prove my birth, and I demand my right with his own ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... were weary of the circumstances surrounding him. David thought him cool and cross, and was pained by the mood; but Maggie knew the meaning of the worried, slightly haughty manner; for in one quick glance, he had made her understand how bitter it was to leave her in her worse than loneliness; and how painful in his present temper was the vulgar effusiveness of Janet Caird's ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... to his friend's invitation. A heavy mood had come over him; he was standing by the outer wall, looking out. Jim went and stood beside him, his hand on his shoulder, and together they gazed through the cherry-crystal wall of their prison ship out on the loneliness of the immeasurable miles outside. For them, space was red, instead of the deep black they knew they would see through colorless glass. Brilliant pinpoints of light, millions of them, in all sizes, made up the infinite space that was the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... long Her absent Lord to see; And still in loneliness she waits, A friendless stranger she. Age after age has gone, Sun after sun has set, And still, in weeds of widowhood, She weeps, a ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... vicinity. Until the evening of the first day I was not sensible of her absence. It was then, and at the customary hour of our reunion, that, for the first time, I experienced, with alarm, a sense of loneliness and desertion—that I became tremblingly conscious of the secret growth of an affection that had waited only for the time and circumstance to make its presence and its power known and dreaded. In the daily enjoyment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... rock, from which a wild, wooded ravine of the hills stretched out before her eyes. The sides were so bold, the sweep of them so extended, the woods so luxuriantly rich, the scene so desolate in its loneliness and wildness, that she sat down to dream in a trance of enjoyment. Not a sound now but the plash of the water, the scream of a wild bird, and the rustle of leaves. Not a human creature in sight, or the trace of one. Wych might imagine the times ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... now he is dead, the worst of him seemeth to come out of him, and he is not easily dealt with, save by one who hath some share of his wisdom. Thou thyself couldst see by my kinsman, the Sea- eagle, how much of ill blood and churlish malice there may be in our kindred when they wax old, and loneliness and dreariness taketh hold of them. For I must tell thee that I have oft heard my father say that his father the Sea-eagle was in his youth and his prime blithe and buxom, a great lover of women, and a very friendly ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... indulge itself in some sentimental compassion for the poor orphan, had the boy shown any disposition to accept these advances kindly and with proper gratitude; but for years Jim had been reasoning things out in a direct, childish way, and in his loneliness he was filled with an inveterate hatred. He chose to live on as he had lived, accepting no concessions, disguising nothing, and Chisley quite conscientiously discovered in his sullen exclusiveness and his vicious dislike of worthy men the workings of homicidal ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... screws. With a good wrench it gave way, and I found myself in a dark side-hall between two rooms. Three steps brought me to the main hall, and I recognized it for the same through which I had felt my way in the darkness of the night. It was not improved by the daylight, and a strange loneliness about it was an oppression to the spirits. There were six or eight rooms on the floor, and the doors glowered threateningly on me, as though they were conscious that I was an intruder ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the blessings which my life has known, I value most, and most praise God for three: Want, Loneliness, ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to hear again the rich and playful tones of the voice of the old hospitality. Yet a moment more, and all the scene took on the aspect of one great monument, inscribed with his name, and sacred to his memory. And such it shall be in all the future of America! The sensation of desolateness, and loneliness, and darkness, with which you see it now, will pass away; the sharp grief of love and friendship will become soothed; men will repair thither as they are wont to commemorate the great days of history; the same glance shall take in, and same emotions shall greet and bless, the Harbor of the Pilgrims ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... sooner gone than loneliness began to fill Slimakowa's heart. She went outside the gate and watched them; her husband, with his hands in his pockets, was strolling along the road, Jendrek on his right and Stasiek on his left. Presently Jendrek boxed Stasiek's ears and as a result he was walking on the left and Stasiek on ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... eyes, as she thought of the nights she had wept herself to sleep from sheer homesickness and a feeling of utter desolation. "But," she continued more brightly, and winking rapidly to keep the tell-tale drops from falling. "I can bear loneliness, or almost anything else, for ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... suppose you'd like them much. They are nothing like Rose. I married an Australian, you know, and the girls are like her. They have had very little schooling. They are good girls, very good girls, but just a little hard," he sighed a little, and Marcella felt a quick pang of regret for his loneliness. Obvious though it was that he did not want her, she wished, for a moment, she could have gone with him ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... great owl cried his loneliness and sorrows to the night. It was a tremendous note, mournful, uncanny and ferocious, and it seemed to Henry that it must go miles through the clear air, until it came back in a dying echo, more sinister than its full strength had been. The Indian cast was bringing into the net more than Wyatt ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... conditions ever so just, reasonable, and adequate, and she consents by giving up those undue privileges which marriage, as the basis of civil society, alone can bestow, she must to a certain extent lose her honour and lead a life of loneliness; since human nature makes us dependent on the opinion of others in a way that is completely out of proportion to its value. While, if the woman does not consent, she runs the risk of being compelled to marry a man she dislikes, or of shrivelling up into an old ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... dead mother's estate, had fallen all that they deemed of value—the mocking-bird. They could be divided, but it could not, so it was carried away into the strange country, and the world of William knew it no more forever. Yet still through the aftertime of his loneliness its song filled all the dream, and seemed always sounding in his ear and in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... journey—terrible in its loneliness as well as in its real and imaginary dangers; for there was a good deal of fancied dread towards the latter part of the time, when Bart had reached a point where the Apaches gave up their chase, civilisation being too near at hand for them ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... torrent foam. Sounds, too, beneath the mist are more strange. The torrent seems to have a hoarser voice and grinds the stones more passionately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds through the fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills. The bleating of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of the cowbells, are mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then, again, how immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and peaks of snow revealed through chasms ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... lines shall be mouldering in dust, and the friends of thy youth who journeyed with thee along the pathway of life, and who cheered thee with the music of their voices and the light of their smiles have, perchance, one by one passed away, and left thee to journey on in loneliness of heart, when the light of thine own eye shall have become dimmed, and thy sunny hair whitened by the frosts of age—when thy voice, which was wont to gush forth in melody and song, entrancing the ear and cheering the heart of the listener, has become ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... everybody, must have been thinking much of our poor desolate Queen. Her anguish, her loneliness of heart on that pinnacle of human greatness, must weigh on all who have known how happy she was; but to us who have often seen that lost happiness, it is almost like a grief of our own. I don't believe I have ever seen her take his arm without the thought crossing my mind: "There is the real ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... time between the tops of the trees I saw the figure of the grey stone woman who sits on the top of Ghost Mountain, and shaped my course towards her knees. My heart beat as I travelled through the forest in dark and loneliness like that of the night, and ever I looked round searching for the eyes of the Amatongo. But I saw no spirits, though at times great spotted snakes crept from before my feet, and perhaps these were the Amatongo. At times, also, I caught glimpses ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... touch cold. From the grasses to the branches there is nothing any one would like to handle, and I stand apart even from the bush that keeps away the rain. The green plovers are the only things of life that save the earth from utter loneliness. Heavily as the rain may fall, cold as the saturated wind may blow, the plovers remind us of the beauty of shape, colour, and animation. They seem too slender to withstand the blast—they should have gone with the swallows—too delicate ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... as she read that something gripped at her heart. It was Anne's presence which had kept her from the black despair of loneliness. Sulie was good and true, but she had no power to fill the void made by Richard's absence. If Anne went away, they would be two old women, gazing blankly into ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... Wonderful, isn't it? Sometimes I'm almost glad I went through it all. After—after—years of darkness and loneliness, to emerge suddenly into the light! To have a mother, and ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... I sat consuming with little appetite my solitary supper, there fell on me a sudden sense of loneliness. The desire that I had hitherto felt to be alone with my own miserable reflections gave place to a yearning for human companionship. That, indeed, which I craved for most was forbidden, and I must abide by my lady's ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... they see the sail Increase upon the sunset, hasten down, Hands out and eyes elated; for they see Head over head, crowding from bow to stern, Repeopling their long loneliness with smiles, The faces of their friends; and such go forth Content upon the ebb ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... brighter. Then it seemed that he had lost a wife to whom he was attached, and the child who remained to him, although he loved her and clung to her, he did not altogether understand. So it came about, perhaps, that he had fallen under the curses of loneliness and continual apprehension; and in this shadow where he was doomed to walk, flourished forebodings and regrets, drawing their strength from his starved nature like fungi from a tree outgrown ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... time, with few friends, in poor health, out of favour with the Queen, who had disregarded his existence; and now his afflictions were rendered more heavy than ever by the blindness that was creeping over him. The Archbishop, too, in his loneliness and sorrow, was drawn closer to his young officer than ever before; and gradually got to rely upon him in many little ways. He would often walk with Anthony in the gardens at Lambeth, leaning upon his arm, talking to him of his beloved ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... open sky with its mysterious interstellar spaces, the flow of the black devouring clouds, the reemergence of the immortal Pleiades, remote, inhuman, unaware, brought no tranquillity but only a forlorn human loneliness. ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... after twenty years of most intimate and most brotherly friendship with him, I little knew how much I loved him, until I found that I had lost him." As he spoke the concluding words, which plaintively told his sense of loneliness, the tears that can become a manly man came thick and fast, and all who were in the House wept with him. There have been cases in which the House of Commons has adjourned in honor of deceased members; but perhaps never before has it showed its emotions in generous tears. Did I say ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... and the young lord did naught save talk with his betrothed bride both in the vulgar and in the Latin tongue, I did better—namely, went up the mountain to pray, wherein, moreover, I followed my child's example, and clomb up upon the pile, there in loneliness to offer up my whole heart to the Lord as an offering of thanksgiving, seeing that with this sacrifice He is well pleased, as in Ps. li. 19, "The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... only too glad of the opportunity. She did want to see what the bush was like, for she has never been out of Auckland yet, except a trip to the hot lakes, or so. In fact, her school-days are scarcely over yet. And then she is so sorry for her friend's loneliness. It must be dreadful to be isolated in the bush like that. She will certainly come and ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... nodded wearily and went on. "For all of ten days I had been alone, except for the cattlemen camping a mile away and an old Indian helper who slept in his tepee within call. Loneliness makes you weak when there's something tearing at the heart. So I let M'sieu' Marchand talk to me. At last he told me that there was a woman at Yargo—that Dennis did not go there for business, but to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... she came, and, counting the days and weeks, the children had made themselves ready for the third great Saturday. Carefully washed and brushed, they sat in their separate day-rooms, and waited. Two o'clock struck, but no message came. All the afternoon they waited, sick with disappointment and loneliness. At last, seeing the matron go by, Alfred said: "Please, mum, my ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... love; it has grown in favor with God and man, and answered to its half doubting, half hoping parents of the church and state, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" and now is it driven away into the wilderness of poverty and hard toil, of loneliness and mortification, to ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... existence there had become boring. His one attempt to leave Spaceman's Row had nearly met with disaster. Running into a squad of Solar Guard MP's, he had made a hurried escape into a near-by jet taxi. Back on the Row, Roger had lounged around the cafes, feeling the loneliness that haunts men wanted by the law. And only because he was so lonely he had agreed to talk to the little man who sat and stared at him from across ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... women. These marriages were entered on the books of the Company, and were considered as valid as if bound by clergy. Sometimes they led to unhappy results. When men returned from the service, the Indian wife, transplanted to England, lived in wretched loneliness; and the children—'les petits,' as they are entered in the books—were still less at home amid English civilization. Gradually it became customary to leave the Indian women in their native land and to support them with a pension deducted from the wages ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... Shirley had brushed past her in their mad rush. Standing motionless and speechless, a slender hand on either side of the doorframe, she watched her sisters claim the mother's first kiss. Then, as the beautiful eyes were raised to hers, she made an effort to speak. All the love and longing and loneliness of the past year, not fully felt till now, rushed to her voice. She took ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... a shiver as she glanced around the gloomy room. The bare loneliness of the place was accentuated by the depressing furniture, which belonged to the black walnut and haircloth period. On the marble-topped table, in the exact centre of the room, was a red plush album, flanked on one side by a hideous china vase, and on the other by ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... my story. For half an hour after that last good-bye Charlie leaned back in the corner of his carriage and gave himself up to his loneliness, and I could feel his chest heaving to keep down the tears that would every now and then rise ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... and on, gray-green with sagebrush, the gaunt mountain spurs, the far-away real mountains, blue and snow-furrowed, the great, clear sky over all! It must be wonderful at night with countless stars and a moon looking down upon the loneliness of everything. There was something about it all that, in some strange way, pulled out one's very soul—that made one want to be big in thought, ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... attempted even the most timid suggestions as to her conduct. Once or twice he mentioned health-food and dieting, and was pooh-poohed into a corner. As for the women attendants, who had been sent along that they might be the companions of the Princess during the long hours of loneliness and seclusion, they were trained to act as hair-dressers and French maids ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... Father Francis gave her a kindly, approving glance, even for this. She turned away from him with a weary sigh. Oh, what trouble and mockery everything was? What a dreary, wretched piece of business life was altogether! The sense of loneliness and desolation weighed on her heart, this dull December ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... was heart-broken at this bitter separation. She felt the loneliness of the castle deeply, she longed for his happy presence and the sound of his voice. She could never speak to Golo as to the friend to whose care her husband had recommended her. Her pure eyes shrank from ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... Loneliness and desolation descended like a cloud over Julian when he had gone, for the frank belief of the boy, who cared nothing, struck like an arrow of truth to his heart, who cared everything. Was Valentine indeed dead? He would not believe ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... his head, perhaps one would carry his arm in a sling; perhaps one—maybe more than one—would be left behind, never to return again, and soon forgotten by all excepting some poor woman who would weep silently in the loneliness of her daily work. ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... noteworthy. Accustomed hitherto to a domestic circle, at Kingsmill he found himself isolated, and it was not easy for him to surrender all at once the comforts of home. For a time he felt as though his ambition were a delinquency which entailed the punishment of loneliness. Nor did his relations with Sir Job Whitelaw tend to mitigate this feeling. In his first interview with the Baronet, Godwin showed to little advantage. A deadly bashfulness forbade him to be natural either in attitude or speech. He felt his dependence in a way he had not foreseen; the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... of the colony required it and there was the threat of punishment if absence from church was reported to the grand jury. But there was another reason also, even though men and women were compelled to walk five or six miles to attend. That other reason was the loneliness of farm life in the early days of colonial Virginia. The churchyard on a Sunday morning was then the meeting-place of the whole community, and the only place where all could meet on the same level. The only other meetings were when elections ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... phases of the soul,—the shock and surprise of grief in the face of the world made desolate. Loneliness and despair for a space, and then, like stars in the night, the new births of the spirit, the wonderful outcoming from sorrow: the mild light of patience at first; hope and faith kindled afresh in the very jaws of evil; the new meaning and worth of life beyond sorrow, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Those things we shall ask of her and she, in her wonderful tenderness, will give them to us again—in dreams, waking or sleeping, in the sunlit silence of lonely places, in soft nights when the southern sea is still, in the greater loneliness of the storm, when brave faces are set as stone and freezing hands grasp frozen ropes, and the shadow of death rises from the waves and stands between every man and his fellows. We shall ask, and we shall receive. Out of noon-day shadow, out of the starlit dusk, out of the driving spray of the ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... before, taking up a claim of land left by a near relative who had died. Both were young, and the husband had thought to improve his condition by turning farmer rather than by remaining a clerk in one of the Philadelphia shops. But the loneliness of the life was something neither had counted on, and both were glad enough to talk to a ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... people, the dogs drawing little carts of merchandise, the river with its bridges, the floating basin with many tall ships, the quays thronged with sailors and lightermen, filled me not only with wonder, but with a sense of loneliness and insignificance. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... when he reached a small building by the side of the road that he stopped. Pushing open the door, he entered. All was dark and silent within. The strange loneliness of the place would have smitten any one else with the feeling of dread. But the old man never seemed to mind it. Fumbling in his vest pocket, he found a match. This he struck and lighted a tallow dip which was stuck into a rude candle-stick upon a bare wooden table. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... thoughts of marriage to distract him from his chosen work. And since that fatal day, although his old enthusiasm, his old belief in himself and his capabilities, had long ago receded into the dim background, he had never consciously thought of any amelioration of the loneliness, the bitter, regretful solitude in which he ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... newspapers. "And thus, somehow or other, my views toward newspapers were entirely recast," while he held loyal to his profession as a newspaper man. This is the critical sentence in Stanley's telling of the story: "As seen in my loneliness, there was this difference between the Bible and the newspapers. The one reminded me that apart from God my life was but a bubble of air, and it made me remember my Creator; the other fostered arrogance and worldliness."[1] ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... JOSEPHINE is leaning forward intently for the music has begun again. This time the figure is doing a strange dance of loneliness and search for his departed partner, his mask lies upon the ground, but he shields himself with his cloak. Occasionally in the wildness of his dance it slips a little, permitting glimpses ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... concluded, she began to play and sing softly. As the sweet melody flowed out through the room the little group became silent and thoughtful. Again it was that same weird lament which the girl had sung long before in the Elwin school to voice the emotions which surged up in her during her loneliness in the great city. In it her auditors heard again that night the echoing sighs of the passive Indians, enslaved by the Christian Spaniards. Hitt's head sank upon his breast as he listened. Haynerd tried to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... he could not sleep long at night. His sense of loneliness penetrated his dreams. Sometimes he would chuckle and gurgle in an ecstacy, as he had done when riding on his father's back, romping through the stately rooms. He would throw his arm about the neck of the doorkeeper or lifeguard ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... said Dr. May. "She has been used to loneliness; and to thrust companionship on her would be ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... reduced by the buzz of insect life upon the night air. The steady hum of the mosquito—the night song of the grasshoppers and frogs—the ticking, spasmodic call of the invisible beetles—all these things help to intensify the loneliness and magnitude of the wild surroundings. Nor does the smoldering camp-fire lessen the loneliness. Its very light deepens the surrounding dark, and its only use, after the evening meal is cooked, is merely to dispel the savage attack of the voracious mosquito and put the fear of man into the ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... been jilted "three or four times." What a quaint notion by the way that of his: "I think an Inn is a good sort of place to propose to a single woman in, Mr. Pickwick. She is more likely to feel the loneliness of her situation in travelling, perhaps than ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... be very economical, even about candle ends, and almost liked such economy for a change; but he got sick of his loneliness, beyond expression—he was a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... answer to every step, until at length Diamond thought he should like to say something out loud, and see what the church would answer. But he found he was afraid to speak. He could not utter a word for fear of the loneliness. Perhaps it was as well that he did not, for the sound of a spoken word would have made him feel the place yet more deserted and empty. But he thought he could sing. He was fond of singing, and at home he used ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... between L200 and L300 a year, which she had tied up so that nobody can touch it. That was about a year ago. I wrote to tell my father of her death, and received a pitiful letter; indeed, I have had several of them. He implored me to come out to him and not to leave him to die in his loneliness, as he soon would do of a broken heart, if I did not. He said that he had long ago given up drinking, which was the cause of the ruin of his life, and sent a certificate signed by a magistrate and a doctor to that effect. Well, in the end, although all my cousins ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... of the Slav soul: we are neither alone in this world nor destined for it. Whether I wander in the streets of London or stand in the green fields outside, I have always the same feeling of human loneliness and helplessness on one side, and the company of some overwhelming and invisible powers on the other. I say the feeling and not thought, because I feel they touch me and I am unhappy because I cannot touch them. They seem to be like shadows, and still I am sure they ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... you take pity on me and relieve my loneliness? Here I am, in a house that would make the ordinary hotel look like a bandbox, and since Sherry has gone to France with the Engineers it's simply ghastly. For various reasons I do not wish to leave the house, but I shall surely go into a decline if I have to stay here ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... there was not even enough liquor on the Ella to revive poor Burns. He spent his days devising, with bits of wire, a ring puzzle that he intended should make his fortune. And I believe he contrived, finally, a clever enough bit of foolery. He was anxious to talk, and complained bitterly of loneliness, using every excuse to hold Tom, the cook, when he carried him his meals. He had asked for a Bible, too, and read it now ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a Canadian village that I parted with this gentlemanly and generous New-Englander. When I left him, I was not penniless, but a bitter sense of my loneliness was upon me, and a consciousness of the uncandid and cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of the Prodigal Son. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... common with those who lived in the other countries of Great Britain and in Europe, dreaded the coming of winter not only on account of the cold and loneliness, but because they believed that at this time the powers of evil were abroad and ascendant. This belief harked back to the old idea that the sun had been vanquished by his enemies in the late autumn. It was to forget the fearful influences ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... sunset the gloom quickly deepened. The sun sank early into banks of leaden clouds, and the Karluk slid on through the seething seas in a scene of strange loneliness, save for the suspended albatross that never varied its position by an inch or by a flirt ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... fears and woes, and win their way back again into the bosom of God. He was the simple, heart-whole believer, the poor little man lost in the shambles, shaken and wounded by the "terrible doubt of appearances" and by the cruelty of things, yearning to cry his despair and loneliness and grief to the ears of the God of his childhood, and battling through long vigils for trust and belief and reconciliation. Again and again his music re-echoes the cry, "I will not let Thee go unless Thou bless me." Of modern composers Bruckner alone had affair so steadily with the heights, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... The loneliness of the gloomy cavern became frightful to him. "Where are you, my brave lads," cried he, "old companions of my watchings, inroads, and labour? What can I do without you? Did I collect you only to lose you by so base a fate, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... Thomas Grayson lay on his bunk and sobbed in an agony of loneliness. The letter from his mother was crumpled in his hand: "—prouder than words can tell of your appointment to the Academy. Darling, I hardly knew my grandfather but I know that you will serve as brilliantly as he did, to the eternal credit ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... out melodiously or melted to a mellow music that woke a sympathetic thrill in those who listened. Rose glowed with pride as she accompanied her friend, for Phebe was in her own world now a lovely world where no depressing memory of poorhouse or kitchen, ignorance or loneliness, came to trouble her, a happy world where she could be herself and rule others by the magic of ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... aware of some new movement within him. Loneliness comes with it, for he would share his mind with his friend, and he cannot; he is ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... shut out All but the distant sky,— I've felt the loneliness of night, When the dark winds pass'd by. My pulse has quicken'd with its awe, My lip has gasp'd for breath; But what were they to such as ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... commonplace story imaginable; but to me it meant the most terrible pain. For some years I had thought of nothing but my child, and how to make a man of him; then, when my son was growing up and about to leave me, I grew afraid of my loneliness. Love was a necessity of my existence; this need for affection had never been satisfied, and only grew stronger with years. I was in every way capable of a real attachment; I had been tried and proved. I knew all that a steadfast love means, the love that delights to find a pleasure in self-sacrifice; ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Italy offered. Standing alone in a field by the roadside was a small, dark grey donkey, tethered to a stone; and no other living being was in sight. The creature was not eating; it was only thinking; and it looked at us with an eye that seemed to speak of loneliness and the desire for human fellowship. "The very thing for you!" cried Molly; and the long-sought-for treasure, finding itself observed, flicked one ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Loneliness and terror closed in on him, a terrible agony of fear. In four hours his air would be gone and then he would die! His body would swirl and eddy through this great cosmic ocean. It would never be found. It would remain here, embalmed ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... judge it so entirely as a work of art that I should not take note of its deep gloom, of its hopeless melancholy. But nothing was lost upon me now. I read it in every line,—he suffered; something failed him,—perhaps he knew not what, perhaps he knew. A terrible loneliness was in his heart,—and I had given him all I ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... the dark of the cave, saying to herself, "Presently he will come, my husband, he will surely come; the Slayers are slain—he does not but tarry to bind his wounds; a scratch, perchance, here and there. Yes, he will come, and it is well, for I am weary of my loneliness, and this place is ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... I would just arrive about nine, allowing myself to saunter on at the rate of two miles and half per hour. My sensations, indeed, as I went along, were singular; and as I took a solitary road that went across the mountains, the loneliness of the walk, the deep gloom of the valleys, the towering height of the dark hills, and the pale silvery-light of a sleeping lake, shining dimly in the distance below, gave me such a distinct notion of the sublime and beautiful, as I have seldom since ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... downcast and desperate. Since the capture of Lew Flapp, he had been without a companion in whom to confide, and the peculiar loneliness among utter strangers was beginning to tell on him. This was one reason why he had told Sack Todd so much of ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... their safe arrival if before three. I read your poetry[5] all over, but did I begin to remark on it here I would exceed the limits which a narration of facts has left me. It has afforded me much pleasure in the loneliness, which, of course, I feel a little at first. However, I cannot say it makes me at all sad. There is something independent and free in the idea that none of the vast multitude you are among cares more for your life or welfare than the breeze that passes. I begin my studies to-morrow, and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... and the pink and white chestnut blossoms, dashed to pieces by the rain but yielding up their lives with sweetness. The streets, in that single hour between the hurrying homewards of the belated reveller and the stolid tramp of the early worker, were curiously empty and seemed to gain in their loneliness a new dignity. Trafalgar Square, with the National Gallery in the background, became almost classical; Whitehall ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had been the least part of what he owed. There were other long-standing accounts which he had paid in full during these three years, paid in the restless weariness and disappointment that underlay his life, in the loneliness in which he lived, in his contempt for all his former pursuits, which had left him at first devoid of any pursuits ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... house and grounds like a bright bird, whose nest is high up in some sheltered spot where the storms never come, was some compensation for what he had done; but when she was gone there came over him such a sense of loneliness and desolation that at times he feared lest he should become crazier than his brother, who really appeared to be improving, although the strange forgetfulness of past events still clung to and increased upon him. He did not now remember ever to have ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... dwelling-house and the chapel are situated on a high promontory, almost surrounded by the sea. A range of tall hills in the rear cuts off the view of the island, giving to the missionary station an air of loneliness and seclusion truly impressive. In this sequestered spot, the found Mr. and Mrs. M. living alone. They informed us that they rarely have white visiters, but their house is the constant resort of the negroes, who gather there after the toil of the day to 'speak' about their souls. Mr. and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... her religious promptings, Dot had lately developed a great sympathy for her father. Standing a little aside from the conflict between him and Henry, she was able to divine something of the feelings of both; and she had now and again caught a look of loneliness on her father's face that made her ready to do almost ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... will think they lead it. They will be self-deceived. Moving picture nausea is already taking hold of numberless people, even when they are in the purely pagan mood. Forced by their limited purses, their inability to buy a Ford car, and the like, they go in their loneliness to film after film till the whole world seems to turn on a reel. When they are again at home, they see in the dark an imaginary screen with tremendous pictures, whirling by at a horribly accelerated pace, a photoplay ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... profoundest desolation of mind and soul, in forced companionship with all that is unlovely and uncongenial—men, persevering nobly, live on, and live through all. The mind, like water, passes through all states, till it shall be united to what it is ever seeking. The very loneliness of man here is the greatest proof, to my mind, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... among them she found the satisfactions of her life. He had long ceased to be her companion. As an associate, friend, lover, she had given him up, and, burying in her heart all her griefs and all her loneliness, had determined to make the best of her life, and to bring her children to believe that their father was a man of honor, of whom they had no reason to be ashamed. If she was proud, hers was an amiable pride, and to Mr. Belcher's credit let it ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... oppressive nor his sense of loneliness greater. Yet the boom of the ocean was distinct to the ear, and human presence no farther away than the terrace where Arthur Strange could be seen smoking out his cigar in solitude. The silence and the loneliness were in Roger's own soul; and, in face of ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... the same all the following morning; and the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at Hartfield—but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was summer again. With all the eagerness which such a transition gives, Emma resolved ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... went home, lapsed into a solitude relieved only by the daily letters that Suzette sent him. He shrank from the offers of friendly kindness on the part of people at the hotel, who pitied his loneliness; and he began to live in a dream of his home again. He had relinquished that notion of attempting a new business life, which had briefly revived in his mind; the same causes that had operated against it in the beginning, controlled and defeated it now. He felt himself too old to begin life ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... had like thoughts! One of the many sad things about being the "last leaf upon the tree" is having to watch the other leaves shrivel and drop off and to be left at last in utter loneliness. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... fence-rails. Yes, the winter was over, and Ivory was glad, for it had meant no coasting and skating and sleighing for him, but long walks in deep snow or slush; long evenings, good for study, but short days, and greater loneliness for his mother. He could see her now as he neared the house, standing in the open doorway, her hand shading her eyes, watching, always watching, for some one ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... resentment, of opposition to unjust social conditions which had made my other books an offense to my readers were almost entirely absent in my studies of the mountaineers. My pity was less challenged in their case. Lonely as their lives were, it was not a sordid loneliness. The cattle rancher was at least not a drudge. Careless, slovenly and wasteful as I knew him to be, he was not mean. He had something of the Centaur in his bearing. Marvelous horsemanship dignified his lean figure and lent a notable ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... expect you to comprehend my exceeding loneliness at that time, because your life has never been empty, and you have now your beautiful child. When first I met you I had nothing. When I say nothing, I do not mean to infer that I was destitute of worldly means. I had ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... began to understand that this was but an intimate and solitary joy. She had grown so used to spreading her banquets for one alone that she was frightened at the sight of other cups upon the board; for although loneliness begins in pain, by and by, perhaps, it creates its own species of sad ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... enough, but Annie discovered that she too missed her. Now loneliness had her fairly in its grip. She had a telephone installed, and gave her orders over that. Sometimes the sound of a human voice made her emotional to tears. Besides the voices over the telephone, Annie had nobody, for Benny returned to college ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... realized that it was the Colonel. He was standing with folded arms before the picture, his eyes, gleaming from under beetling brows, were devouring it hungrily, line by line. His face was set rigidly with a look—whether of sorrow or loneliness or remorse, I do not know; but I do know that it was the saddest expression I have ever seen on any human face. It was as if, in a single illuminating flash, he had looked into his own soul, and seen the ruin that his ungoverned pride and passion ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... loneliness caused me to become restless. I could not entirely throw off the sense of being buried alive in this dismal hole. I wondered if there was any way of escape, if that secret door was not locked and unlocked ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... way through the thick fringe of trees beyond. Behind these ran a wire fence, guarding a stretch of meadow, the high, uncut grass waving in the wind. Nothing was in sight except this ripening field of clover sweeping upward to the summit of an encircling ridge. The silence was profound; the loneliness absolute. ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... Another and magical land awakes in the dark, full of a living restlessness; sleepless as the ever-moving sea. Everywhere through the night-shrouded woods, the shadowy trees seem to interrupt their secret whispers till you are gone past. There is no sense of loneliness anywhere, but rather a host of teeming lives on every hand, palpable though hidden, remote from us though touching our lives, calling to us through the gloom with wordless voices, inviting us to enter and share with them the mystical ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Simon was removed the poor young Prince's condition became even worse. His horrible loneliness induced an apathetic stupor to which any suffering would have been preferable. "He passed his days without any kind of occupation; they did not allow him light in the evening. His keepers never approached him but to give ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Around it, in the distance, rise silver crested peaks whose melting snow descends to it in ice-cold streams. Still nearer, we behold a girdle of gigantic forests, rarely, if ever, trodden by the foot of man. Oh, the loneliness of this great lake! For eight long months scarcely a human eye beholds it. The wintry storms that sweep its surface find no boats on which to vent their fury. Lake Yellowstone has never mirrored in itself even the frail canoes of painted savages. The only keels ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... phantom. When I had well lost the last gleam of the high road a curious and definite feeling came upon me. Now I suddenly felt something much more practical and extraordinary—the absence of humanity: inhuman loneliness. Of course, there was nothing really lost in my state; but the mood may hit one anywhere. I wanted men—any men; and I felt our awful alliance over all the globe. And at last, when I had walked for what seemed a long time, I saw a ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... WILDERNESS. Loneliness; doubt; darkness. Spon- taneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a 597:18 material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the conversation, and seemed determined to drive the malady that was devouring her to a head. He continued to speak of the motive of the love call, how it is interwoven with the hunting fanfare; when the fanfare dies in the twilight, how it is then heard in the dark loneliness of the garden. She heard him speak of the handkerchief motive, of thirty violins playing three notes in ever precipitated rhythm, until we feel that the world reels behind the woman, that only one thing exists for her—Tristan. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Sunnyside, Georgia, amid the loneliness of abandoned farms, the glory of cornfields, and the mysterious beauty of forest, he wrote "Corn," the first of his poems to attract the attention of the country. It was published in Lippincott's in 1875. Charlotte Cushman was so charmed by it that she sought out the author ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... still more a long martyrdom was the necessity for bearing his cross in utter loneliness. He could not tell his griefs. He could not talk of them even with those who knew their secret spring. His minister had the unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort of devotees,—persons ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thinks only of the day; which, looking out on nature, is blind to the pain and agony, the horror and the death, which are as real parts of it as brightness and beauty, love and life. Every little valley that lies in lovely loneliness has its scenes of desolation, and tempest has broken over the fairest scenes. Every river has drowned its man. Over every inch of blue sky the thunder cloud has rolled. Every summer has its winter, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... twelve-thirty, taking with her a replenished purse, and a stock of tremluous emotions. One was of dreadful solitude, a fear of loneliness, spineless and enervating; another of defiance; another of excitement; another of bravado; another almost ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... on Death's fingers flash up from the tomb And rays o'er its loneliness shed; As flowerets in early Spring tremblingly bloom Ere Winter's cold ice-breath has fled; So Love, rainbow-like, smiles through sadness and tears, Bridging up from the earth to the sky; The grave 'neath its glance a bright blossom-robe wears, As the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning |
