"Maudeline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... six months; and one of the Fulneck records runs: "By occasion of the smallpox our Saviour held a rich harvest among the children, many of whom departed in a very blessed manner." As long as such morbid ideas as these were taught, both boys and girls became rather maudlin characters. The case of the boys at Fulneck illustrates the point. They attended services every night in the week; they heard a great deal of the physical sufferings of Christ; they were encouraged to talk about their spiritual experiences; and yet they were often found guilty of lying, of stealing, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... held down. And he was wondering why a girl who had so many of the attributes of a boy should be so much more fascinating than any mere girl. "There are two kinds of girl," he had heard an older officer once say. "There are girls, and then there is Katie Jones." He had condemned that as distinctly maudlin at the time, but recalled it to-night ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... halting, no quiver of maudlin pity, when he slowly rose from his grass-covered lair in the darkness and called ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... joking was carried to the extreme, both by citizens and cowmen. One night a tipsy foreman, who had just arrived over the trail, insisted on going the rounds with a party of us, and in order to shake him we entered a variety theatre, where my maudlin friend soon fell asleep in his seat. The rest of us left the theatre, and after seeing the sights I wandered back to the vaudeville, finding the performance over and my friend still sound asleep. I awoke him, never letting him know that I had been absent for hours, and after rubbing his eyes open, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... for a little. "I may tell you that if you HAD got hold of Tavender," he decided to tell him, "he shouldn't have been of the faintest use to you. I know what it was that he wrote to Gafferson,—I couldn't understand it when he first told me, but afterwards I saw through it,—and it was merely a maudlin misapprehension of his. He'd got three or four things all mixed up together. You've never met your friend Tavender, I believe? You'd enjoy him at Hadlow House. He smells of rum a hundred yards off. What little brain ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... ending by one or other of the delirious disputants getting "chucked" into the sea, and having a swim before recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark triangular objects, moving ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... spread your feet so vulgarly. Mrs. Turkey, I have long sighed for the honour of your patronage: the charming little poults, I hope, will gain new beauties from our exertions. Mrs. Barn-fowl, your chickens are too timid; we shall soon teach them to hop with grace. As for these awkward maudlin rabbits, I fear we cannot do any thing with them; and these ill-bred creatures, Mrs. Sow's progeny, we cannot attempt to teach.' A sturdy mastiff, who had followed the group of gazers, now barked furiously; dispersed the poultry, pushed Mrs. Sow and ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... and the wages taken home are small in proportion to their thirst. And as an evening solace, the father, who had once been footman in a good family, and married the lady's maid (which fact accounted for the unusual quality of Nelly's English), beat them all around, weeping maudlin tears over them in the morning, and returning at night to duplicate the ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... was the objurgation of the tirewoman that she did not hear the approach of her mistress, nor indeed the first words of the Countess, "Hush, Maudlin, the poor child is not to be thus ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men have painted drunken frolics, but never one with such distinct spiritual insight as this. To me the finest product of Jordaens' genius is his Bohnen Koenig in the Belvedere, but there you see only the incidents of the mad revel; every one is shouting or singing or weeping with maudlin glee or tears. But in this scene of the Borrachos there is nothing scenic or forced. These topers have come together to drink, for the love of the wine,—the fun is secondary. This wonderful reserve of Velazquez is clearly seen in his conception of the king of the rouse. He is a young man, with ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... submission to the evils of life, which it catalogues with amazing detail; a book not even conducive to innocent entertainment. It is the revelation of the inner life of a sensualist, an egotist, and a hypocrite, with a maudlin although genuine admiration for Nature and virtue and friendship and love. And the book reveals one of the most miserable and dissatisfied men that ever walked the earth, seeking peace in solitude and virtue, while yielding to unrestrained impulses; a man ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... legacy of annoyance for me; for while I was still searching the horizon for some sign of her continued existence I became aware of certain raucous sounds issuing from the forecastle, which I was quickly able to identify as the maudlin singing which seamen are so prone to indulge in when they are the worse for liquor. Presently Polson, who had gone forward to turn-to the watch after dinner, came aft with an expression of vexation upon his weather-beaten countenance, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... pity for the wounded Boers. Nobody in Ireland cares a pin about the Boers. Why on earth should we? From all I can hear they are a narrow-minded, intolerant set of hypocrites. I'd just as soon read the stuff some fool of an English newspaper man wrote about "our brother the Boer" as listen to the maudlin sentiment our people talk. We don't want to help the Boers. We want to hurt ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... manner so crude, so childish, so incomplete, so deficient in the mere rudiments of scientific analysis, that they do not correspond to anything. Instead of forming any true addition to the data of economic science, they are like images belonging to the dream of a maudlin school-girl. They have only the effect of obscuring, not completing, the facts to which the orthodox economists too closely confined themselves, but which, though incomplete, are so far as they ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... &c. Mr. Addison sent for the young Earl of Warwick, as he was dying, to show him in what peace a Christian could die; unluckily he died of brandy: nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath where you are." Suppose the editor introduced it with this preface: "One circumstance is mentioned by Horace Walpole, which, if true, was indeed flagitious. Walpole informs Montagu that Addison sent for the young ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a clever rascal and might be of use, they called for another bottle of wine. When that was finished Jacquemin Lampourde was indisputably drunk, and having loyally kept his word, retired, somewhat unsteadily, to his own quarters in a high state of maudlin satisfaction, accompanied by his friend Malartic, whom he had invited to spend the night with him. By this time—it was nearly four o'clock in the morning—the Crowned Radish was almost deserted, and the master ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... 293. ACHILLEA Ageratum. MAUDLIN. The Leaves and Flowers.—This has a light agreeable smell; and a roughish, somewhat warm and bitterish taste. These qualities point out its use as a mild corroborant; but it has long been a stranger in practice, and is now omitted both by the London and Edinburgh Colleges. ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... as sentimental as any one a few years ago," said Ann, returning to the dropped subject. "Just after I left college, I was quite maudlin. I dreamed of moons and Junes and loves and doves all the time. Then something happened which made me see what a little fool I was. It wasn't pleasant at the time, but it had a very bracing effect. I have been quite different ever since. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... know anything about being and not-being when he is only a maudlin compromise between them, and all he wants is to be a maudlin compromise? He is neither one nor the other. He has neither being nor riot-being. He is as equivocal as the monks. He was detestable, mouthing Hamlet's sincere words. He has still to let go, to know what not-being is, before he can ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... couldn't. We went into the house; Mrs. Moody and Miss Cobb were sitting on the stairs. Mrs. Moody had been crying, and Miss Cobb was feeding her the whisky I had left, with a teaspoon. She had had a half tumblerful already and was quite maudlin. She ran to me and put her arms ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Suffering had not ennobled her. It is only heroic, large-brained women, with a great natural grasp of charity, that severe pain lifts out of themselves: weak souls, like Grey, who starve without daily food of personal love, contract under God's great judgments, sour into pettish discontent, or grow maudlin as blind devotees, knowing but two things in eternity,—their own idea of God, and their own salvation. Nunneries are full of them. Grey had no vital pith of self-reliance to keep her erect, now that the storm came. What strength she had was outside: her childlike grip on the hand of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was silence, as each man took his turn at the bottle. When they again spoke their voices were thick, which plainly told that the whiskey was having its effect. It was impossible to understand what they were saying. For awhile they conversed in a maudlin, complaining manner, and then knocked over their lantern, ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... his mind—to lift the main struggle into importance in the last Act, but he fails. That which ought to be tragic is merely sentimental. Indeed, sentimentality is the curse of the play. Strafford's love of the king is almost maudlin. The scenes between Strafford and Pym in which their ancient friendship is introduced are over-sentimentalised, not only for their characters, but for the great destinies at stake. Even at the last, when Pym and Strafford forgive each other and speak of meeting ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus." (Discourses, p. 83) The charity which hopes that men may be forgiven the crime of "religions" which, if there be a God at all, must be "abominations," one can understand; but these maudlin apologies for the religions themselves, —as if they were not themselves crimes, and involved crimes in their very practice,—I do not understand. According to this, all that man has to do is to be sincere in any thing, however diabolical, and it is at once transmuted into a virtue ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... a hedge of thick bushes, and, keeping well within the dark fringe of these, Douglas slowly advanced. He could hear the talking more plainly now, and ere long he was able to tell that the men were under the influence of liquor. Their voices were maudlin, and they were wrangling with one another in a somewhat petulant ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... something at once hideous and terrifying to behold. Geoffrey had been lifted bodily on to the table, in his chair, so as to be visible to the whole room. They sang round him, they danced round him, they cheered round him, they swore round him. He was hailed, in maudlin terms of endearment, by grateful giants with tears in their eyes. "Dear old man!" "Glorious, noble, splendid, beautiful fellow!" They hugged him. They patted him on the back. They wrung his hands. They prodded and punched his muscles. They embraced the noble legs that were going to run the unexampled ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... parson, much bemused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk, foredoomed his father's sou to cross, Who pens a stanza, when ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... and after weepe their dust: Our owne loue waking, cries to see what's done, While shamefull hate sleepes out the afternoone. Be this sweet Helens knell, and now forget her. Send forth your amorous token for faire Maudlin, The maine consents are had, and heere wee'l stay To see our widdowers second marriage day: Which better then the first, O deere heauen blesse, Or, ere they meete in me, O ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... plain that the hunchback having failed to drink Peppers maudlin, was now deliberately provoking a fight. The bloated face of the Parson ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... father chatted pleasantly about the remarkable spirit of the poor, and the world's maudlin sentiment towards it and them. The lovely maid professed herself completely puzzled by ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wha'?" he mumbled in a maudlin voice. "Ole Vampire is a villain! Ole John—'member ole John?—well, ole John heard his grandson, the d'ective, say that if you go to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... of everything, Lilly. You've fought for a principle and, with it won, turned maudlin. What is the idea? To drag me back there to join the sewing circle and the local society for the prevention of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... incapacity. Matter it is of mirthful memory To think, when thou wert early in the field, How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, Dulness hath thrown a jerdan ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the past century, far greater than any revelation of science or knowledge of past ages, revealed by modern research is the discovery of a God of Love. Not of that sentimental expression of maudlin emotion that soon evaporates in hypocritical make-believe; but the profound recognition of the rightful consideration of every human being, regardless ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... with embarrassing effusion. This was the late James Collinson, whose principal picture, "St. Elizabeth of Hungary," finished in 1851, produced a sort of crisis in Rossetti's career. This painting out-mystified the mystic himself; it was simply maudlin and hysterical, though drawn with some feeling for grace, and in a very earnest spirit. Rossetti, with his strong good sense, recognized that it would be impossible ever to reach the public with art of this unmanly character, and from this time forth he began to abandon the practice ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... tatters, and some clutching babes in their arms, drinking the heavy English ales and whiskies served to them by women. In the whole scene, not one ray of brightness, not one flash of gaiety, only maudlin joviality or grim despair. And I have thought, if some men and women will drink—and it is certain that some will—is it not better that they do so under the open sky, in the fresh air, than huddled together in some close, smoky room? There is a sort of frankness about the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... necessary. They had started toward Martin's on the way home, when Warrington discovered that he was out of cigars. He ran back three or four doors while John proceeded slowly. Just as he was about to cross the alley-way a man suddenly lurched out into the light. He was drunk, but not the maudlin, helpless intoxication that seeks and invites sociability. He was murderously drunk, strong, nervous, excited. He barred ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... roughly, and with maudlin shoutings, to a small tree that stood by itself, and bound him to it with so many lashings that only his head was free to move. Then they heaped dry wood about him, piling it up until it ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... I thank you, I'l give you another dish of fish one of these dayes, and then beg another Song of you. Come Scholer, let Maudlin alone, do not you offer to spoil her voice. Look, yonder comes my Hostis to cal us to supper. How now? is my brother ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... he has doubled about, or, perhaps more aptly, performed a journalistic somersault—having written a diffuse biography and other works dealing with Rizal. He is strong in unassorted facts, but his comments, when not inane and wearisome, approach a maudlin wail over "spilt milk," so the above is given at ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... he grew maudlin at Mess, used to talk about "my poor dear wife." He always set great store on speaking ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... on literary fellows who will lick his style into shape—it will be an awful exposure!" Benjulia still held out his hand. With over-acted reluctance, Lemuel unbuttoned his coat. The distant dog barked again as he gave the letter back. "Please excuse my dear old dog," he said with maudlin tenderness; "the poor dumb animal seems to know that I'm taking his side in the controversy. Bow-wow means, in his language, Fie upon the cruel hands that bore holes in our head and use saws on our backs. Ah, Nathan, if you have got any dogs in that horrid ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... God requite you, Sir, and we'll eat it cheerfully. And if you come this way a-fishing two months hence, a grace of God! I'll give you a syllabub of new verjuice, in a new-made hay-cock, for it. And my Maudlin shall sing you one of her best ballads; for she and I both love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men. In the meantime will you drink a draught of red cow's milk ? you shall ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... down in the reception room dressed in black velvet and rare old lace, with his glorious sheaf of golden hair which had grown during his illness tortured into ringlets, and an adoring group of ladies gathered about him, as he stood with troubled, almost haughty mien, and gravely regarded their maudlin sentimentalities. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... daughter of a ruined Florentine noble of dissolute character, who gained a bare subsistence by frequenting the gaming-tables. His child had been brought up in a convent renowned for strict discipline—she knew nothing of the world. She was, he assured me, with maudlin tears in his eyes, "as innocent as a flower on the altar of the Madonna." I believed him—for what could this lovely, youthful, low-voiced maiden know of even the shadow of evil? I was eager to gather so fair a lily for my own proud wearing—and her father gladly gave her to me, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... forfeit twelve-pence that shall swear; He that shall any quarrel here begin, Shall give each man a dish t' atone the sin; And so shall he, whose compliments extend So far to drink in coffee to his friend; Let noise of loud disputes be quite forborne, No maudlin lovers here in corners mourn, But all be brisk and talk, but not too much, On sacred things, let none presume to touch. Nor profane Scripture, nor sawcily wrong Affairs of state with an irreverent tongue: Let mirth be innocent, and each man see That all his jests ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the Government for aid" in the way of labor legislation. Without a quiver, a member of the capitalist group will run tens of thousands of pitiful child-laborers through his life-destroying cotton factories, and weep maudlin and constitutional tears over one scab hit in the back with a brick. He will drive a "compulsory" free contract with an unorganized laborer on the basis of a starvation wage, saying, "Take it or leave it," knowing that to leave it means to die of ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... all—at an iron tap set in the wall of a back street or court in some slum. His father and himself had long ago sunk into the world where to wash one's self is not a part of every-day life. They had lived amid dirt and foulness, and when his father had been in a maudlin state, he had sometimes cried and talked of the long-past days when he had shaved every morning and put on ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... next me, and the dwarf and people immediately round both mediums. A female voice tremulously suggested that singing might 'improve the conditions;' on which Mr. C. struck up 'Power of Love Enchanting' in maudlin spiritualistic words. Things looked dull. All at once we were hailed by one of the most tremendous gruff bass voices that ever hailed a man-of-war. John King, the favourite spirit of Mr. A., had appeared with a grumbling announcement of his presence. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... rough-and-tumble wrestle as he and another lumber jack grappled. The Clown had thrown his antagonist fairly, the lumberjack's shoulders striking the rough floor with a whack that made things jingle. The next moment the two had treated one another at the bar, and with a mutual, though maudlin appreciation of each other had gone back to their respective chairs among the line tilted ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... stepped quickly to the other side of Blake, who clasped each about the neck in a maudlin but vice-like embrace. As they moved toward the bedroom, Griffith exclaimed with strategic enthusiasm: "That's it, boys, come right on in. It's so confounded dusty here, let's ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... or known swindler, hunted from the gambling table; probably beginning his career as a frizeur or a footman, and making rapid progress towards the galleys. If she has none, she returns to England, to grumble, for the next fifty years, at the climate, the country, and the people; to drawl out her maudlin regrets for olive groves, and pout for the Bay of Naples; to talk of her loves; exhibit a cameo or a crucifix, (the parting pledge of some inamorato, probably since hanged), prate papistry, and profess liberalism; pronounce the Roman holidays "charming things," and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... postponed a meeting between the two? He remembered suddenly that she had once drawn Molly behind the trees when the old man passed along the road. Poor, defrauded Molly! Forgetting his bitter quarrel with her, he was ready to fall upon her neck in maudlin sympathy. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... hostilities with Russia about Merv, and were actually fighting the Mahdists behind Suakim. The "weary Titan"—to use Matthew Arnold's picturesque phrase—was then overburdened. The motto, "Live and let live," was for the time the most reasonable, provided that it was not interpreted in a weak and maudlin way on essential points. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... bow and air of maudlin humility, "I have to apologise for requiring you to start out on a journey at such a late hour. Duty is often an ungracious master. Luckily, your drive is not to be a very extended one—only to the city; ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... delight in scenes of grotesque and exaggerated terror. No one who has read "Les Miserables" can deny the existence in him of a vein of lovely tenderness that, with a little tiny push over the edge, would degenerate into maudlin sentiment of the most ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... The maudlin scene that met my eyes on deck defies description; some were fighting, others grinning with a hideous laughter, and still others shouting tavern jokes unspeakable. And suddenly, whilst I was observing these things from a niche behind ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... took for Maudlin, And a cruse of cockle pottage, And a thing thus—tall, Sky bless you all, I fell into this dotage. I slept not till the Conquest; Till then I never waked; Till the roguish boy Of love where I lay, Me found, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... that which it was her right to call herself;—of a woman who, though thwarted in her ambition by her own child, and cheated of her triumph at the very moment of her success, had dared rather to face an ignominious death than see all her efforts frustrated by the maudlin fancy of a girl. Yes! She would face it all. Let them do what they would with her. She hardly knew what might be the mode of death adjudged to a Countess who had murdered. Let them kill her as they would, they would kill a Countess;—and the whole ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... deliberate fury, yet this vengeance but more surely would crush Esther's hopes. For her sake he must be patient. Time, property, and every available means will find employment in her vindication. There shall be permitted no maudlin sentiment of pity in this undertaking. Certain retribution shall be whetted ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... car who listened to him that years ago he had quarrelled with his parents in Johnstown and had not seen them since. He was on the way now to see if anything was left of them. One moment he was in maudlin tears and the next he was cracking some miserable joke about the disaster. He went about the car shaking dice with other inebriated passengers, and in the course of half an hour had won $6. Over this he exhibited almost the glee of a maniac, and the fate of his people was lost sight of. Then he ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... he spoke, accompanied by a jutting and hissing and spraying, by outburst of yells, jeers, maudlin laughter, there came sudden vomiting forth of drenched and dripping forms. Over the heads of the throng within, into the hot faces of the throng without the double door, hurling them back from the battered entrance in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... affected her health; but when this delicacy became apparent in palpitations and shortness of breathing, it was treated as affectation—as a phase of imaginary indisposition, which could be dissipated by a good scolding. She had been brought up rather in a school of Spartan endurance than in one of maudlin self-indulgence, and could bear many a pain and relinquish many a ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of Hinduism for absorbing the faiths that come into contact with it, and the maudlin tendency of the people of India to yield to pressure and to sacrifice all in behalf of peace, has been the grave of many a noble endeavour and many an impassioned attempt for ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... if she had given as much as she had demanded. Had she not thought too much of her own rights and wrongs and too little of his hopes and burdens? And perhaps because of this he was to be crushed at a blow, and his enemies laugh at his calamity and give to her their maudlin pity. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the forest, insensible to the beauty of either, sat the man. He was perched perilously on the seat of his wagon and was swaying from side to side, swinging his arms about him and singing in a loud maudlin voice, the fine old psalm that he had learned long, long ago before he became less ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... me chiefly about a wife he was returning to at Bohn. He became almost maudlin in his sentiment, and at intervals he raised his voice sufficiently to allow our traveling companions to overhear ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... he wrote, "there is nobody in the whole of the Roullens aerodrome whom I do not detest with a detestation beside which my hatred for you seems as maudlin adoration. This is notwithstanding the fact that I make the most marvellous progress in the art of flying. It is merely something in their faces which annoys me. Let me therefore see yours again, in the hope that it will make me think more ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... broke down and wept maudlin tears, disgusting to witness. He said he was an old man who had always lived honestly, and it would break his heart if his grey hairs were to be disgraced. As he sat rocking himself with his hands over his face, I saw his wicked little eyes peering through the slits of his fingers to see what ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... bivouacking in the front yard, stared in amazement as she rode past. In a minute, in a second, she alighted and swept into the parlor, where six or eight brawling intruders sat on mahogany chairs and upholstered sofas, drinking wine and singing filthy songs. One fellow, maudlin from liquor, rolled on the Smyrna rug. Another was in the act of firing a bullet at ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... nearly twelve when the party broke up, chiefly because the "Woolpack" was closed and the supply of beer was cut off. Some of the men had reached the disagreeable stage, maudlin drunk or pugnacious, anxious to quarrel, but forgetting the cause of dispute. The police, who had looked on with a tolerant eye, began to clear the footpaths, shaking the drowsy into wakefulness, threatening and coaxing the obstinate till they ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... to put out all Papists in office And a deal of do of which I am weary But do it with mighty vanity and talking Feared she hath from some [one] or other of a present Fell a-crying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another Found to be with child, do never stir out of their beds Had his hand cut off, and was hanged presently! Hates to have any body mention what he had done the day before House of Lords is the last appeal that a man can make I find her painted, which makes ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... were ordered. The dude got seemingly very drunk. He lost his money—some hundreds of dollars, and his watch, and produced a diamond pin which he lost, and then he appeared to drop off in a maudlin slumber. ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... argument he undoubtedly did one great service to the causes for which he stood. Every vulgar anti-humanitarian, every snob who wants monkeys vivisected or beggars flogged has always fallen back upon stereotyped phrases like "maudlin" and "sentimental," which indicated the humanitarian as a man in a weak condition of tears. The mere personality of Shaw has shattered those foolish phrases for ever. Shaw the humanitarian was like Voltaire the humanitarian, a man whose satire was ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Club of New York called a meeting to expel him. He returned a defiant answer: "Gentlemen, I shall not attend your meeting; I have an engagement out of town and I shall keep it. I do not recognize you as capable of judging me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause but don't know how. Your attempt to base a great and enduring party on the hate and wrath engendered by a bloody civil war is as though you should plant a colony ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... naked and without concealment. Here there were rows upon rows of crib-like houses clustered over tortuous, ill-lighted lanes, like blow-flies swarming to an unclean feast. From within came the noise of ribaldry and debauch. Shrill laughter mingled with coarse, maudlin songs, till the clinging night reeked with abominable revelry. The girl saw painted creatures of every nationality leaning from windows or beckoning from doorways, while drunken men collided with her, barred her course, challenged her, and again and again she ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... exception of James McDonald, who had not yet sunken to the sodden level of these brutes in human forms who lay scattered about the two rooms, dead to the world in maudlin sleep, proving themselves to be living models of every stage of the decaying influences of hobo life, from men whose countenances had been turned into bloated visages down to the pale faces of the younger boys who had just commenced to feel the curse of the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... must indeed have been difficult for any Englishman to see the salaried viceroy of France, at the most important crisis of his fate, sauntering through his haram, yawning and talking nonsense over a despatch, or beslobbering his brother and his courtiers in a fit of maudlin affection, without a respectful and tender remembrance of him before whose genius the young pride of Louis and the veteran craft of Mazarine had stood rebuked, who had humbled Spain on the land ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him croak with maudlin accent. "Pink Angel, begorrah! What doin' 'ere, eh? Whoop! Go back to sky, Angel!" and lifting a brutal foot he kicked the image into the street. Then with a shriek of laughter he ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... bright when he comes from hunt—" Here and there in his talk a few words were distinguishable as he stood lurching before them. He reached out in a maudlin effort to touch the maid's white face. She drew in her breath quickly and stepped back; then Menard had sprung forward, and she covered her eyes ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... imbecile Peter, he had enough sense to appreciate the abilities of Catharine; and a sort of maudlin idea of justice, if it were not, perhaps, utter stupidity, dissuaded him from resenting her freedom in the choice of favorites. Upon commencing his reign, he yielded himself to the guidance of her imperial mind, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... and on the contrary, recollect, in our immediate neighborhood, a mournful sense of distress at the scene exhibited, and sufficiently hinted in the few unpleasant words we have italicized. A muster of Englishmen preferred coughing down their favorite bard, to allowing him to mouth out maudlin twaddle, before the Prince, then first formally introduced to the public, and before a meeting whereat "was collected much of the prominent talent of the kingdom." Mr. Irving, himself most deservedly a man of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... other with foreign wines. Merest debauchery. ...Upon my Word,"—Razumov, enraged by a sudden recollection of Ziemianitch, lowered his voice forcibly,—"upon my word, we Russians are a drunken lot. Intoxication of some sort we must have: to get ourselves wild with sorrow or maudlin with resignation; to lie inert like a log or set fire to the house. What is a sober man to do, I should like to know? To cut oneself entirely from one's kind is impossible. To live in a desert one must be a saint. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... any dairy-maid. Tusser frequently speaks of the "dairy-maid Cisley," and in April Husbandry tells Ciss she must carefully keep these ten guests from her cheeses: Gehazi, Lot's wife, Argus, Tom Piper, Crispin, Lazarus, Esau, Mary Maudlin, Gentiles and bishops. (1)Gehazi, because a cheese should never be a dead white, like Gehazi the leper. (2) Lot's wife, because a cheese should not be too salt, like Lot's wife. (3) Argus, because a cheese should not be full of eyes, like Argus. (4) Tom Piper, because a cheese should not ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... writer I know. You're just like her." He was now drunk—maudlin drunk—from the coffee. Sober, he would have known that no human beings could be less alike than Tessie Kearns and the Montague girl. Other walls ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... cried happily. Then, abruptly his manner changed, for he felt himself perilously close to the maudlin in this new yielding to sentimentality. Such kisses of tenderness, however agreeable in themselves, were hardly fitting to one of his dignity. "You clear out of here, boy," he commanded, brusquely. "I'm a working man. But here, wait a ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... that his face was as white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the eyes. Others had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was a drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... his pride, under the thin pretext of trying to "cure" her. She knew that Sally Atherly of Rough and Ready wasn't considered fit company for "Atherly of Atherly" by his fine new friends. This and much more in a voice mingling maudlin sentiment with bitter resentment, and with an ominous glitter in her bloodshot and glairy eyes. Peter winced with a consciousness of the half-truth of her reproaches, but the curiosity and excitement awakened by the revelations of her frenzy were greater than his ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... seductive reveries I have remained mindful of that sobriety of interior life, that asceticism of sentiment, in which alone the naked form of truth, such as one conceives it, such as one feels it, can be rendered without shame. It is but a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine. I have tried to be a sober worker all my life—all my two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive horror of losing my sense ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... go so soft on me as to quit laying it on the line and start sifting out your language...." Garlock paused. For one of the very few times in his life, he was at a loss for words. He thrust his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. "Hell, I don't want to get maudlin, either ... so ... well, how many men, do you think, could have gone the route with me on this hellish job without killing me or me ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a sense of values—you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... far enough. He took up the heavy bird, which made some maudlin objections, and carried it gingerly to the fence. 'Here's the victim, Mr. Humpage,' he said lightly. 'I think it will be itself again in a couple of hours or so. And now, perhaps, we can let the matter drop ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... them, it is true, in their natural language, but the language is subservient to the character; he does not bow the man to the phrase, but the phrase to the man. Neither does he flatter on the one hand, as he does not slight on the other. Unlike the maudlin pastoralists of France he contents himself with the simple truth—he contrasts the dark shadows of Meg Merrilies, or of Edie Ochiltree, with the holy and pure lights that redeem and sanctify them—he gives us the poor, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... for knowing the names of distempers, without the causes of them. Men of sense are professed enemies to all such empty labours: for he who pretends to be sorrowful, and is not, is a wretch yet more contemptible than he who pretends to be merry, and is not. Such a tragedian is only maudlin drunk." The gentleman went on with much warmth; but all he could say had little effect upon me: but when I came hither, I so far observed his counsel, that I looked into Shakespeare. The tragedy I dipped into was, "Harry the Fourth." In the scene where Morton is preparing ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... those convivial associations, which content themselves with an annual exposition of the grievances of Ireland, over the short leg of a turkey, a "bumper of Burgundy," and that roar of lip artillery, against the usurper, which dies away in a few maudlin hiccups, about two o'clock in the morning, to be revived only at the expiration of another twelve months. Under the burden of any commonplace name, such, we say, might have been the fate of the organization ere this; and ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... flashing eyes and raven hair—without which, as everyone knows, no bad fairy can hold up her head and respect herself. But at the time I felt distinctly rebuffed, and only the extreme beauty of my dress as the maudlin "good fairy" Goldenstar consoled me. Milly Smith (afterwards Mrs. Thorn) was Dragonetta, and one of her ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... be moved by strong imaginative work may be abused until it becomes a maudlin and quite disordered sentiment. Keats was too well balanced to be carried into appreciative excesses. He knew that mere yearning could not make a poet of one any more than mere ambition could. He understood the limits of ambition as a force in literature. Keats's ambition trembled in the ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... might express it. They are howls rather than words. That is one of the prerogatives won by drunkenness,—to come down to the beasts' level, and to lose the power of articulate speech. The quarrelsomeness which goes along with certain stages of intoxication, and the unmeaning maudlin misery and whimpering into which it generally passes, are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... maudlin in their—not cups, but jug; but Davy had the sense to imbibe more cautiously, a fact which seemed ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up at length, with a supplicating look, face to ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... courtyard, as if a door had been suddenly opened, came startling sounds—short yells, Indian war-whoops and the maudlin singing of white men. The mournful, prolonged howl of a dog drifted in from somewhere. Down in the direction of the Indian village half a dozen shots were fired in rapid succession. Jean's heart beat oddly. Katleean was beginning to celebrate the Potlatch in the singular way of the male, ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... licence to which they capriciously permit their favourite slaves occasionally to carry their familiarity. They seem to consider it as an undeniable proof of the general kindness with which their dependents are treated. It is as good a proof of it as the maudlin tenderness of a fine lady to her lap-dog is of her humane treatment of animals in general. Servants whose claims to respect are properly understood by themselves and their employers, are not made ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... sure of that," Borrowdean answered, seriously. "Mannering is au fond a man of sentiment. There is no clearer thinker or speaker when his judgment is unbiassed, but on the other hand, the man's nature is sensitive and complex. He has a sort of maudlin self-consciousness which is as dangerous a thing as the nonconformist conscience. Heaven knows into whose hands he may fall ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... proper words for a husband to address to his wife, but the circumstances under which they were uttered made them maudlin sentiment rather than a manly pledge. As spoken, they were so ominous that the loving woman might well have trembled and lost her girlish flush. But even through the lurid hopes and vague prospects created by dangerous stimulants, Mr. Jocelyn saw, dimly, the spectre of coming trouble, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... yourself without using unnecessary violence.' 'The man' was six feet high and as stout as a beer-barrel. I could no more have moved him than Skiddaw, and he knew it. 'I stays here,' he chanted in his maudlin way, 'till I gets my board wages.' Fortunately, two Oxford undergraduates happened to be in the house, to whom I mentioned my difficulty, and I shall not easily forget the delighted promptitude with which they seized upon the offender and 'ran ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... deleteriously as it affects a tragedian, a crossing-sweeper, or an ambassador to the Court of St. James. And once a bottle of Cte Rtie or Scharlachberger is in her, even the least emotional woman shows the same complex of sentimentalities that a man shows, and is as maudlin ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... wanting, and is almost always pre-eminent. If his patriotism, intense as it is, is never grotesque or offensive, as patriotism too often is to readers who do not share it; if his pathos never touches the maudlin; if his romantic sentiment is always saved by the sense of solid fact,—and we may assert these things without hesitation or qualification,—it is due to his humour. For this humour, never merely local, never bases its appeal on small private sympathies ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... the desire to avenge himself for the treachery of which he had been the victim—dictated that epistle, t could not have been indicted in a manner better suited to his ends. It was a maudlin, piteous letter, in which, rather than making his farewells, the Vicomte besought the aid of Suzanne. He was, he wrote, in the hands of men who might be bribed, and since she was rich—for he knew ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... princess out of Burgundy, will she not be queen of France? What more would the perverse girl have? By God, Hymbercourt, it makes my blood boil to hear you, a man of sound reason, talk like a fool. I hear the same maudlin protest from the duchess. She, too, is under the spell of this girl, and mourns over her trumped-up grief like a parish priest ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... it, struck them, half tipsy as they were, so forcibly, that they became sobered down—some of them into a full perception of her firmness and high religious feelings; and those who were more affected by drink into a maudlin gravity of deportment still more honorable to the admirable principles of the ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Farce shall Beauties show, Shall praise thy ribald Mirth, and maudlin Woe; Praise ev'n thy imitating Chaucer's Tales, And call that merry [1] Temple, Fame's Versailles: Thy [2] Shepherd-Song with Rapture they shall see, Which rivals Philips, as Banks rivals Lee; Thy [3] Guernsey and Barbados Wreath shall own, Where Durfey ne'er was read, nor Settle ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... finish. Very suddenly the surrounding group had scattered, and he peered up through maudlin tears to learn the cause. One man alone stood above him. The room had grown still as ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... victim of conflicting thoughts and passionate impulses? How much more tragic the finding of the dead body of Eily, the "pride of Garryowen," since it occurs on the hunting field, surrounded by the half maudlin squires, and before the bloodless face of the horrified murderer? But Griffin deserves mention other than as a dramatist and novelist. It is saddening to know that in an age where so much weak sentiment, scarcely discernible in its wealth ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... myself!" he had on earlier days, half-maudlin from "his drop at the 'Bull and Bush,'" exclaimed to Maggie, "I can't call myself a success! I'm a rotten failure if you want to know, and I had most things in my favour to start with, went to Cambridge, had a good opening ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... said Weston with a trace of impatience, for Grenfell's half-maudlin observations occasionally jarred on him; but the latter still looked at him with ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... themselves to the new purpose. His passages of moral exhortation would not supply the salt of the old cynical brutalities; they had a painful tendency to become insipid and sentimental, if not maudlin; and only illustrated the difficulty of using a literary tradition which developed spontaneously for one purpose to adapt itself to a wholly different aim. He produced at best not a new genus but an awkward hybrid. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... The Foolish Prince, and he knows all the magazine editors personally, and they are probably only too glad to oblige him about anything, and—Oh, may be, it is only a dream, after all." My heart was pounding, but not with sorrow or despair or any other maudlin passion; and Stella was now as remote from my thoughts as was Joan ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... he broke in, half amused, though somehow the words did not seem so full of maudlin pathos to him now. "And there—" he drew her head towards him—"Kiss ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... is a man on board with enough sense left to run the engine, and the captain—look there!" pointing to a maudlin and dishevelled Canadian wearing a captain's cap, and just then trying to preserve his equilibrium on a wooden settle near the railing. "It would be a blessing if the brute tumbled overboard, and we were well rid of him," said the gentleman savagely in a low tone. Then, seeing my consternation, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... thumping heavily at sound of the voice, thick though it was and maudlin. Dade drunk and full of coarse foolery was a sight he had never before looked upon; but Dade's presence, drunk or sober, made his own plight seem a shade less hopeless. He did not dare a second glance, with Davis and the Captain walking at either stirrup; but he listened ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... there were many, many bad ones. Moreover, the sorrow and bitterness that he brought into his father's last days, and the shame that he put upon his mother, who lived to see his end, made it impossible for our paper to say of him any kind thing that would not have seemed maudlin. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... certain of the European Powers stepped in and deprived Japan of the fruits of her victories, the action of those Powers was applauded, and the undoubted sympathy of the English people in England with Japan in the matter was derided by English editors in Japan as mere maudlin sentimentality. Language of this kind occasioned deep resentment among the people of the country. The foreign press is now, I am glad to say, saner, inasmuch as it to some extent recognises facts and the trend of ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... dismal-minded croaker you are this morning!" exclaimed George Sheldon with unmitigated disgust; "a regular raven, by Jove! You come to a fellow's office just as matters are beginning to look like success—after ten years' plodding and ten years' disappointment—and you treat him to maudlin howls about the Court of Chancery. This is a new line you've struck out, Hawkehurst, and I can tell you it isn't ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... speech, that he could not see now as vividly as though she were still standing before him. That was odd, too. He was not ordinarily so impressionable. It occurred to him that he would not like her to know what he was about to do. Bah, he was getting maudlin! ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... thinks—" Moran relapsed into maudlin, hysterical protestations of innocence, calling upon the Deity to bear witness that he was innocent and had no knowledge whatever of how Blake ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... of Felix now, a girl of twenty, maudlin drunk, her hat awry, her hair in a frowse, her dress ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... there was more than two hundred dollars in the till. But now, in the quiet of the early morning, as he sat alone, the reaction had come. He remembered how Rob MacFlynn had had too much, and gone home maudlin to the wife who had toiled all day at the wash-tub. He thought of the fight Joe Frier and Tom Stacey had had. And—he did not drink much himself; he despised a drunkard—and these things disgusted him. There was little Phil, too,—"the saloon-keeper's boy,"—and that cut ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... loving appreciation of the intrinsically "true, good, and beautiful" was part of the homage that his nature rendered to its Creator, and instead of flowering into a morbid and maudlin sentimentality which craves low-browed, long straight-nosed, undraped statuettes in every nook and corner,—or dwarfs the soul and pins it to the surplice of some theologic dogmata claiming infallibility—or coffins the intellect in cramped, shallow, psychological ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... 1846. For, said he, it is a trait of human nature to side with the under-dog. And it is this trait which causes some people to be pleased at the quack's success, for they regard him, in a sporting sense, as a little dog, and demand for him fair play. The maudlin sympathies of such persons are aroused by the sight of an adventurer striving against odds, with one sole end in view, namely, the accumulation of shekels under ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... silence for a moment; maudlin sniffles of self-pity arose from the corner by the fire, alternating with more hysterical and more ominous sounds presaging some ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... weeping, miserably maudlin, almost incoherent, and when she closed and locked the door upon him she dropped into a chair, and for the first time since her husband's death gave way to tears ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Boy! O Innocent of the innocent! Go to, for a bookish fool! Learn that lovely ladies yield themselves but to those who are masterful in their wooing, who have wooed often, and triumphed as often. O Innocent of the innocent! Forget the maudlin sentiment of thy books and old romances—thy pure Sir Galahads, thy "vary parfait gentil knightes," thy meek and lowly lovers serving their ladies on bended knee; open thine eyes, learn that women ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... alone in the country the lad becomes maudlin—a callow lover of nature—and makes feeble attempts at verse. Returning to the city he melts and unbosoms—the tender shaft of the unknowable Eros has penetrated to his heart—Nature's subtle spell is on him, to disappear and reappear. Then follow discussions, more or less didactic, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired state of beatitude—a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana peels—until the middle of the afternoon. So, when he looked up from his hammock at the sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing in the door of the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... her silver beams doth rove; Her crown of stars the pitchy air invades, And with a faint light gilds the silent shades, Whilst her sad thoughts, fix'd on her sleepy lover, To Latmos hill and his retirements move her. A thousand more through the wide, darksome wood Feast on their cares, the maudlin lover's food; For grief and absence do but edge desire, And death is fuel to a lover's fire. To see these trophies of his wanton bow, Cupid comes in, and all in triumph now— Rash unadvised boy!—disperseth round The sleepy mists; his wings and quiver wound With noise the quiet air. This sudden stir ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... show his heart was not of human decency bereft, Peter paid the undertaker. He got drunk on what was left; Then he shed some tears, half-maudlin, on the grave where lay the Co., And he drifted to a township where the city failures go. Where, though haunted by the man he was, the wreck he yet might be, Or the man he might have been, or by each spectre of the three, And the dying words of Joseph, ringing through his own despair, Peter 'pulled ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... declamation that ever fell from that rascal Pitt's lips. Detesting the dog, as I do, I cannot withhold this just tribute to the scoundrel's talents." There follows a lament over Pitt's want of honesty, which betokens the maudlin mood preceding complete intoxication.[656] On the morrow Fox vehemently blamed the Cabinet in a speech which, for width of survey, acuteness of dialectic, wealth of illustration and abhorrence of war, stands unrivalled. Addington's reply exhibited his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Bill?" he demanded again and again; and Jackson, drunk as he, nodded in like maudlin gravity. He himself began to chant. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... packed to hear addresses against the amendment by Miss Emily P. Bissell of Delaware; Mrs. A. J. George of Brookline, Mass.; Judge David Cross of Manchester and Dr. Abbott. The Concord Monitor of that date in a leading editorial said: "Through a maudlin sense of false sentiment the constitutional convention sent this question to the people ... and the people will deal with it as it deserves." On March 5 came the speeches of the suffragists. Representatives' Hall was even more crowded than before ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... intellectual and religious excuses.' A great deal of this, he adds, has been 'knocked out of him'; he cannot call himself a sluggard or a hypocrite, nor has he acted like a coward. 'Indeed,' he says, 'from my very infancy I had an instinctive dislike of the maudlin way of looking at things,' and he remembers how in his fifth year he had declared that guns were not 'dreadful things.' They were good if put to the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real 'effeminacy' ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... nine) but the midnight hour, to that worthy archdeacon, with more of the character of its locality, than the visual aspect of Magdalen represents the beautiful city to one in its entirety. It seems a sort of metonymy; Maudlin put for Oxford. The walk is, after all, but a sober path, worthy by association with one of the walks of Eden. Yet it shows no gay foliage, nor "shade above shade a woody theatre," such as is seen on a mountain declivity. It is a simple ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... brunt and now Captain Farnsworth gets the prize." He twisted his mouth in mock expression of maudlin disappointment. "I'm always cheated out of the sweets. I never get anything for gallant ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson |
