"Moroseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of recognition as he caught up with him. Failing to hail a taxi, they boarded a bus. Tabs paid the fares. Adair sat like Napoleon after Waterloo, taking no notice of anything. It was the intensity of his thoughts that kept him silent—not moroseness. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... fond of this colossal old "bourru bienfaisant," as he was called in La Tremblaye, and believe that all his moroseness and brutality were put on, to hide one of the warmest, simplest, and tenderest hearts in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... to his son- in-law the respect due to the brother of the King, yet Clarendon found in him a perpetual obstacle to his plans, an intriguer whose selfish aims and jealous temper ever engendered fresh dissensions at Court, and a sullen bigot whose moroseness was redeemed by none of his brother's easy suavity of manner. The Duke's pride did not permit him openly to desert the interests of his father-in-law or to range himself with Clarendon's enemies. But his blundering tactlessness, his easily wounded ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... protection, and thus became a guardian to the family. When his nephew was six years of age he sent him to school at Kilkenny, and about eight years afterward he entered him a student of Trinity College in Dublin, where Swift lived in perfect regularity and in an entire obedience to the statutes; but the moroseness of his temper often rendered him unacceptable to his companions, so that he was little regarded and less beloved; nor were the academical exercises ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... mistaken sobriety for dullness, equanimity for moroseness, disinclination to bad company for aversion to society, abhorrence of vice for uncharitableness, and piety ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... his heart—the promotion of learning, which, it cannot be denied, was at that time in danger of being overthrown by bigotry and fanaticism: for this reason it was that he opportunely interposed to shelter Oxford from the moroseness of Owen and Godwin. Well might his eye look dreamy. How could that of the author of a "Discovery of a New World" look otherwise? He openly maintained that, not only was the moon habitable, but that it was possible for a man to go there. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... kindly, seemed more so than ever to-night, evidently trying to make up for his roommate's moroseness by his own geniality. He showed Shag his treasures, his collection of curiosities, his two lynx-skin rugs—animals shot by his father years before—his pet books, and finally ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... here who has almost floored me; but I WILL NOT acknowledge myself beaten by a child of five. He alternates between sullen moroseness, when he won't speak a word, and the most violent outbursts of temper, when he smashes everything within reach. He has been here only three months, and in that time he has destroyed nearly every ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... those joined in marriage, should be somewhat near each other. How else can there be true sympathy between them? One shall charge the other with levity, and that allegation be retorted by the charges of moroseness, and insensibility to enjoyment. It is well, perhaps, that there be that difference of age, which nature indicates in the sexes. It is not of two, or four, years we speak. The great poet of humanity writes, and perhaps wisely,—if ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... shutters and the words died on her lips, while the maid, almost as frightened as the youngest child, howled and screamed out, "The good God is angry!" When it was dark again in the room she added with pedagogical moroseness, "You're all of you good for nothing, anyhow!" These words, no matter how odious the mouth from which they fell, made a deep impression on me; they forced me to look upward, above myself and above everything which ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... from hence imagine that Castor was a coward, or was in the least afraid of the strength of his brother; for he had lately given sufficient proof of his courage and resolution, in a battle he had been drawn into by Pollux, whose intolerable moroseness had brought on him the vengeance of a neighbouring dog. Pollux, after engaging his antagonist only a few minutes, though he had provoked the dog to try his strength, ran away like a coward; but Castor, in order to cover the retreat of his brother, and without any one to take his part, fought ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... brought home and put to bed, and next day was seized with a severe fit of epilepsy. For weeks his life was in danger, and when at last he recovered strength of body, his mind remained in a state of moroseness that at times bordered on insanity. He became a fierce hater of women, and the chief victim of his frenzy ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... believed it to be the root of the latter,—a faith which those who have watched the course of politics in a democracy, as he had, will be inclined to share. His gentleness is all the more striking by contrast, like that silken compensation which blooms out of the thorny stem of the cactus. His moroseness,[80] his party spirit, and his personal vindictiveness are all predicated upon the Inferno, and upon a misapprehension or careless reading even of that. Dante's zeal was not of that sentimental kind, quickly kindled and as soon quenched, that hovers ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... others as constantly see only the dark side of life. Some are always serious and solemn, others always gay, even giddy. These permanent emotional attitudes constitute temperament, and are due to fundamental differences within the body that are in some cases hereditary. Crossness and moroseness, for example, may be due to a dyspeptic condition and a chronically bad liver. The happy dispositions belong to bodies whose organs are functioning properly, in which assimilation is good—all the parts of the body ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... for the real respect and good will that he fancied was his due, though to say truth he took no other means of obtaining them. When his fortune was gone, his pretended friends soon followed; and that occasioned the reserve and moroseness with which you must have observed his temper was tinctured. Inexperienced as you are in the world, wealth may prove but a treacherous snare; and as the fairy wisely says, you will probably fall a prey to wicked designers." "A truce, ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... with which Catherine extricated herself from the snare in which her own religious zeal, the moroseness of the king, and the enmity of Gardiner had conspired to entangle her, has often been celebrated. May it not be conjectured, that such an example, given by one of whom she entertained a high opinion, might exert no inconsiderable influence on the opening mind of Elizabeth, whose conduct ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... her head upon her clenched hands. How empty, empty her hopes had been! Even his boyhood had disappointed her, in spite of his cleverness at his books. The irritability of his childhood had become moroseness, and he had alienated more often than he had attached his friends. A certain passionate sincerity, however, had never been lacking in his worst moods; and toward her he had been a loyal, if often heedless, son. ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... sweeping denunciations of amusements which we now justly deem innocent, and without which or something equivalent to them, the wrinkles on the brow of care could not be smoothed, nor life preserved from dulness and moroseness. There is fanaticism in this no doubt: but in justice to the Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be remembered that the stage, card parties, and even dancing once had in them something from which even the ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... stands facing the investigating magistrate. His face overgrown with hair and pitted with smallpox, and his eyes scarcely visible under thick, overhanging eyebrows have an expression of sullen moroseness. On his head there is a perfect mop of tangled, unkempt hair, which gives him an even more spider-like air ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to have been a little man, of a contemptible presence; but the goodness of his humor, and his constant cheerfulness and playfulness of temper, always free from anything of moroseness or haughtiness, made him more attractive, even to his old age, than the most beautiful and youthful men of the nation. Theophrastus writes, that the Ephors laid a fine upon Archidamus for marrying a little wife, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Silver Tongue had a fault it was a certain moroseness and fierceness of temper, a readiness and even an apparent pleasure in taking offense, that made him somewhat of a solitary in our midst and threw him more than ever on the companionship of his own Kanakas; so that at night, when one had occasion to seek him out, he was usually to be found on the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... than revile him—since one's own mood will reflect itself like an image in clear water upon the minds of those around one—that Nicanor was surprised into smiling back, uncertainly, it is true, but still smiling. Then it was as though a bit of that outer crust of moroseness melted, and left something of his old boyish shyness in its place. Without stopping in the least to think why he did it, he broke the bread and meat into two portions, and held out one, in silence, awkwardly, as a child who does not know whether his gift will be accepted ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... in it for me," she complained with pouting-lipped moroseness. Her venality, he began to see, was merely the instinctive acquisitiveness of the savage, the greed ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... which it would have been folly totally to disregard. Yet it has been apparent that the British ministers have borne us no good-will. Whatever justice has been done us has been done grudgingly,—with the moroseness of an enemy who is compelled to yield. While Lord Russell has been cautious how he offended our Government in acts, his repeated sneers in Parliament, at dinners, and on the hustings have exhibited the rancor of a jealous ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he have been content? Not he. It was her love he wanted, and not her pity; it was to conquer her and possess her, and inform himself with her image, and her with his own; though as yet he did not know it; though the moment that she turned away he cursed himself for selfish vanity, and moroseness and conceit. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... slight changes in Charlie's appearance, they nevertheless possessed a strangely brutalizing effect upon the refinement of his handsome face. And, added to them was an air of moroseness, of cold reserve, that suggested nothing so much as impotent resentment at the conditions under ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... know why no wandering tourist could persuade her to receive him as a lodger; why no tired traveller could melt her heart to afford him rest and refreshment; why long habits of seclusion had given her a moroseness of manner, and how care for the interests of another had rendered ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... obliged to keep up a system of severity amidst all this affliction,—in short, it was impossible for them to be witnesses, and this for successive voyages, to the complicated mass of misery passing in a slave-ship, without losing their finer feelings, or without contracting those habits of moroseness and cruelty which would brutalize their nature. Now, if we consider that persons could not easily become captains (and to these the barbarities were generally chargeable by actual perpetration, or by consent) till they had been two or three voyages in this employ, we ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... Massy's savage moroseness was too disconcerting. It was an incalculable factor of the situation. You could not tell what there was behind that insulting ferocity. How could one trust such a temper; it did not put Sterne in bodily fear for himself, but it frightened ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... life, Tiberius seems to have conducted himself with a uniform repugnance to nature. Affable on a few occasions, but in general averse to society, he indulged, from his earliest years, a moroseness of disposition, which counterfeited the appearance of austere virtue; and in the decline of life, when it is common to reform from juvenile indiscretions, he launched forth into excesses, of a kind the most unnatural and most detestable. Considering the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... same, Nov. 15.-Separation of old friends in old age. Moroseness of retirement. Evils of solitude. Death of the Duke of Newcastle, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... brought the dray from its miry adherence to a position on the bank. It was then reladen with the goods; while the men, barely recovered from the chagrin caused by the misadventure, performed their work with a sullen moroseness, enlivening their gloom by animadversions on the river, the country, and ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the effects of success and failure upon the mind and the power of the mind over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent moroseness, of permanent timidity, and even ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... known in France as a great painter and a great sculptor, and because the artists and critics of France never seriously recognized his claims to this glory, he seems to have become a victim of the mania of persecution, and his naturally sunny nature was over-clouded with moroseness and suspicion. Hailed by some as the emulator and equal of the great names of the Italian Renaissance, and considered a great moral force—a "preacher painter"—by others he has been denounced as "designer in chief to the devil," and described as a man wallowing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... to Sir Roger, father is still the manly, debonair youth that he remembers thirty years ago. In happy ignorance he slurs over the thirty intervening years of moroseness, and goes back to that blest epoch in which I have so much difficulty in believing, and about which he, walking beside me now and again through the tender, springing grass of the meadows, has told me many a tale. For our promised walk has come off, and so has ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Mr. Thornton; but won by his addresses, she consented to become his wife. They came to this country, among strangers, to an humble home, where she suffered many privations, which she bore with woman's fortitude. But when her husband became an inebriate, and treated her with moroseness and brutality, reason forsook its throne, and she became a maniac. Hannah Pease was an intimate friend of hers, who seems to be ever in her mind, perhaps because she used her influence to prevent the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... some sort of article in a progressive Petersburg magazine. Virginsky had introduced me casually to him in the street. I had never in my life seen in a man's face so much despondency, gloom, and moroseness. He looked as though he were expecting the destruction of the world, and not at some indefinite time in accordance with prophecies, which might never be fulfilled, but quite definitely, as though it were to be the day after to-morrow at twenty-five ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and mental disturbances which frequently precede and succeed the final cessation of ovulation and menstruation respond readily to the anti-spasmodic and tranquilizing action of Dr. Martel's Pills. Where hysteria, melancholia, moroseness and despondency are conspicuous factors, the preparation can be used to great advantage. The improvement in the mental state of the patient after the administration of this product ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... certain, though he was seen to keep clear of the established religion. It was not that he hid, so much as that the world did not care to know, what he believed. In that day there were many rites and worships which kept to themselves—many forms of moroseness or misanthropy, as they were considered, which withdrew their votaries from the public ceremonial. The Catholic faith seemed to the multitude to be one of these; it was only in critical times, when some idolatrous act was insisted on by ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... immense benefits spoil them by their silence or slowness of speech, which gives them an air of moroseness, as they say "yes" with a face which seems to say "no." How much better is it to join kind words to kind actions, and to enhance the value of our gifts by a civil and gracious commendation of them! ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture. Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched off, leaving us ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and beloved in his family as were Mr. Hamilton and the Marquis of Malvern in theirs; but now neither respect nor affection was extended towards him, except, perhaps, by Lilla, and unconsciously by Lady Helen. Severity constantly indulged, was degenerating into moroseness; and feelings continually controlled, giving place to coldness and distrust. It was fortunate for Lilla's happiness and, as it afterwards proved, for her father's, that she was now under the kindly care of Mrs. ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of moroseness would seize on him, during which he was not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... strange, but from the very evidences of his carelessness, as they seemed to others, I gathered, after a time, the blissful conviction that Claude Bainrothe was not indifferent to me. His reserve, his moroseness almost, the despairing way in which he spoke sometimes of his future life, his want of purpose, of interest in what was passing around him, his entire self-possession with Evelyn, so different from his embarrassment with me; his manner of pursuing me with his ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was that, after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cozy and hilarious as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... usually bears the appellation of pleasure. His features were scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, nor did that air which spoke the unhappiness of his mind at any time forsake them: yet his manners were by no means such as denoted moroseness and misanthropy. He was compassionate and considerate for others, though the stateliness of his carriage and the reserve of his temper were at no time interrupted. His appearance and general behaviour might have strongly interested all persons in his favour; but the coldness of his ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the night on account of fright or sorrow, the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, irritability and moroseness caused by disordered organs of digestion, change of acumen or morals due to injury of the brain or nervous system, and insanity produced by bodily diseases, are also accepted proofs of the effect of the body on ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... temple, about to take part in a great religious ceremony to be held therein. The seriousness of worship blended delightfully with the glee of the festival, and Eubulides, who at first regarded the gathering with bitter scorn, found his moroseness insensibly yielding to the poetic charm of the scene. He could not but acknowledge that the imposture he panted to expose was at least the source of much innocent happiness, and almost wished that the importance of religion, considered as an engine of policy, had ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... when John Barleycorn had his will of me. And Larry, under the bridge, had no delirium like mine. I am confident that his sleep was stupefied and dreamless, and that he awoke next day merely to heaviness and moroseness, and that if he lives to-day he does not remember that night, so passing was it as an incident. But my brain was seared for ever by that experience. Writing now, thirty years afterward, every vision is as distinct, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... direct imputation of indolence, heartlessness, and moroseness, Mr. Froude appends the following remarks on other moral characteristics of certain sable peasants at [203] Mandeville, Jamaica, given on the authority of a police official, who, our author says, described ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... other injured. Whoever has marked the effects of success and failure upon the mind, and the power of the mind over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent moroseness, or permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional depression. There remains yet another indirect result of no small moment. The relationship between teachers and their pupils is, other things equal, rendered friendly and influential, or antagonistic and powerless, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... existed, and what was wanting in the sad second half of his career was not resolution, but conscience, pride, an ideal, anything which might beget the desire of reform. The curious mixture of brow-beating moroseness with a brazen readiness to accept and even extort favours, he would appear, as he ceased to be young, to have gradually inherited from his father; he was ready to live on the alms of the French Court, while never losing an opportunity of declaiming ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... to her brain: it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence: for Rowland to be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang; but such conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul excused moroseness in him, whom she loved more than life itself, more than honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more righteous world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her—when the cold finger of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, and her altered form—now, when indulgence ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... excite a rebellion by a public execution. I had determined to murder the younger prince likewise; but postponed it. His youth procured for him the safety, which neither my justice nor humanity would have granted him. Having once imbued my hands in innocent blood, my cruelty and moroseness knew no bounds. I doomed to death several whole families, whose loyalty I merely suspected. Not a day passed without bloodshed. I defiled my soul with the blood of innocence, virtue and nobleness. All these things hastened a rebellion, excited by the nobles, who had been long disgusted ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... later in the evening. She was touched by the figure, the shabby black frock, the white tired face. She had been honestly disappointed in her niece, disappointed in her plainness, in her apparent want of heart, in her silence and moroseness. Mathew had told her of the girl's outburst to him against her father, and this had seemed to her shocking upon the very day after that father's death. Now when she saw the photograph clenched in Maggie's hand tears came into her eyes. She said, "Maggie! dear ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... correct. The packer was a taciturn inhabitant of the wilds who seldom indulged in an unnecessary remark. There was, however, no moroseness about him; the man was good-humored in his quiet way, and his usual ruminative calm was no deterrent from apparently tireless action. For the most part, he lived alone in the impressive stillness of the bush, where he had a few ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness and severity. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Johnny reminded her. He had lost all his moroseness in the interest of the conversation. He had forgotten what a tonic his word-battles with Mary V could furnish. "You better stick to it, because it will sure pan out that way. You'll hate to admit, five years from now, that ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... on whom he kept his eyes constantly. It was evident that more than the usual interest was displayed in watching his movements. From the first there was no sulkiness in the chief, nor did he exhibit any moroseness, or anything which ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... certain relative who opposed her religion began finding fault with her and kept doing so at every opportunity. The result was that that young life was beclouded and a deep melancholy settled down over her. Her cheerfulness gave way to sadness and moroseness. The song of joy, once so often upon her lips, was stilled. Some one had put a cloud over her sun, and her life was never what it otherwise might ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... could not escape the suspicion of being accessory to a deed from whence he derived the principal advantage. He enjoyed, at least, before his elevation, an acknowledged character of virtue and abilities; [65] but his austere temper insensibly degenerated into moroseness and cruelty; and the imperfect writers of his life almost hesitate whether they shall not rank him in the number of Roman tyrants. [66] When Carus assumed the purple, he was about sixty years of age, and his two sons, Carinus ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... melancholy and disgust, Huerlin would have grasped as for dear life at the first comer, if only to get rid now and then of the wretched feeling of loneliness and emptiness. The manager, who was displeased by the manufacturer's silent moroseness, did what he could also to bring his two charges together. But finally a sort of salvation, if a dubious one, came to all three. During the month of September there came to the house at short intervals two new inmates—two ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... time. From the evening on which he had shown me the terrible discovery in the Via del Giardino he seemed to have laid aside something of his care and depression. He now exhibited little trace of the moroseness and selfishness which had of late so marred his character; and though he naturally felt severely at times the fatigue of travel, yet we had no longer to dread any relapse into that state of lethargy or stupor which had so often baffled every effort to counteract ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... had become extraordinarily variable. There were moments when his moroseness became threatening. The canker at his heart was communicating itself to his whole outlook, and herein lay the ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... little thinking should be necessary to show the absurdity of the belief that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument for a purpose. The mass of matter constituting ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... That Moroseness of humour, which Some in great good manners have of late been pleased to fix upon the English as their peculiar Character, might possibly be thought to dispose us to a blameable Extreme of Rigor in these matters. And therefore a Forreign ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... Black Fox's protracted recovery, his lately developed moroseness. He knew whenever a council of chiefs took place, and much of what passed on these occasions. The presence of Nevil Steyne at such meetings was a matter which never failed to interest him. He was rarely seen in ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that exchequer bills[33] would not circulate under nine per cent, below par; that ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... his work discontentedly. His mother's moroseness annoyed him. His father's hard face had never looked so forbidding to him as it did that morning. Mrs. Slater's hearty welcome, her good-natured motherly smiles, Mr. Slater's genial and kindly ways, contrasted ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... leads to moroseness.—Like milk which is allowed to stand, the spirit of man or woman, if left unoccupied, turns sour. One secret of sourness and moroseness is the sense that some side of our nature has been repressed; and this inward indignation at our own wrongs we vent ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... I attributed the unusual moroseness to London in vile weather. At the best of times Jaffery grew impatient of the narrow conditions of town; yet there he was week after week, staying in a poky set of furnished chambers in Victoria Street, and doing nothing in particular, as far as ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... straight. But the basest disowning of flattery is to be disagreeable without any purpose in view, and it shows an altogether inelegant and clumsy unfitness for social intercourse to shun by unpleasing moroseness the suspicion of being mean and servile in friendship; like the freedman in the comedy who thought railing only enjoying freedom of speech. Seeing then, that it is equally disgraceful to become a flatterer through trying only to please, as in avoiding flattery to destroy ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... rashness, his constancy into obstinacy, his benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, his dignity from pride and presumption, his affability from undue familiarity, his self-denial from moroseness, his temperance from austerity. He combined child-like innocence with manly strength, all-absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... her again until dinner time. She was as silent then as she had been the night before when Howells had sat with them, his moroseness veiling a sharp interest in the plan that was to lead to his death. Robinson's mood was very different. He talked a great deal, making no effort to hide his irritation. His failure to find any clue in the private staircase ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... with Miss Groom it is unnecessary to explain. During the last three years of her life I was fortunate to be her guest in the Wiltshire retreat for an aggregate of many months. She took a fancy to me—to my solitariness and moroseness, perhaps—and she not only liked to have me with her, but, after a time, she fell into something of a habit of recalling for my benefit certain passages and experiences of her past life. In doing this, there was no suggestion of confidence; and I am breaking no ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... confirms, from his own experience, the opinion already expressed by many others upon the policy of solitary confinement. For a short period the effect is good; but, if prolonged, it leads either to stupid indifference or moroseness of temper, if it does not conduct even to insanity. It is, manifestly, an expedient to be cautiously used. We should, before any appeal to experience, and judging only from the nature of the human mind, have confidently predicted this result. And, indeed, has not the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... taciturnity, bordering on moroseness, of a talker usually so brilliant led his host to surmise that Lightmark had ruined a picture, his hostess to conclude that he had quarrelled with his wife. He came home early, and occupied the small hours of the morning in forming an amended plan of campaign, of which the first move took ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... chosen in all countries pure hearts for its depositaries; and I would rather take it from a friend and neighbour, intelligent and righteous, and rejecting lucre, than from some foreigner educated in the pride of cities or in the moroseness of monasteries, who sells me what Christ gave me,—his own flesh ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Wraxall, 'the Duchess of Devonshire, then in the first bloom of youth, hanging on the sentences that fell from Johnson's lips, and contending for the nearest place to his chair. All the cynic moroseness of the philosopher and the moralist seemed to dissolve under so flattering an approach.' Wraxall's Memoirs, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Lordship; nothing is in this respect so fallible as the parish register. Why should any man retire from society whilst he is capable of contributing to the pleasures of it? Wit, vivacity, good-nature, and politeness, give an eternal youth, as stupidity and moroseness a premature old age. Without a thousandth part of your Lordship's shining qualities, I think myself much younger than half the boys about me, meerly because I have more good-nature, and a ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... he was an anchoret. Theona was silent for thirty years together. Johannes, surnamed Silentarius, was silent for forty-seven years. I do not mention these as examples for your imitation, and would not have you become such a recluse. These are cases of an extreme kind,—cases of moroseness and sullenness which neither reason nor Scripture justify. "This was," as Taylor observes, "to make amends for committing many sins by omitting many duties; and, instead of digging out the offending eye, to pluck out both, that they might ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... thoughts and fearful anticipations of early dissolution; and even while he suffered himself to be amused by the hawking, dancing, and feasting so lavishly provided for his entertainment, he was never at fault, during his frequent fits of moroseness and ill-humour, for subjects of complaint. His brother, Gaston d'Anjou, whom he at once feared and hated, was a constant theme of distrust; while the Comte de Soissons, the Duc de Montmorency, and the Prince de Chalais, his sworn adherents, were at times equally ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... pictures is the power to move finely-touched and gifted men. Not only are such by very much the minority, but the more part of them being, by their capacity to be moved and touched, easily wounded, have developed a natural armour of reserve, of moroseness, of prejudice, of combativeness, of pedantry, which makes them as difficult to address as wombats, or bears, or tortoises, or porcupines, or polecats, or elephants. It is interesting to witness how Duerer's self-contradictions show him to be aware ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... lighted up with the old smile; and that smile revealed a gentle, noble spirit, still retaining its freshness unchafed by the carking cares and vexatious trials to which he had been daily subject. While to some men association with so peculiar and trying a nature as Rusha Thornton's might have brought moroseness and all unloveliness, Duncan Lisle, like the philosopher of hemlock fame, had turned his wife's shrewishness into a coat of armor, within which he preserved his soul serene, contemplative, and peaceful. This is saying ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... to that of Marlborough, found himself a disappointed man. 'I have brought an abortion into the world,' he would say, and he took so violent a dislike to his son that the boy dared scarcely come into his presence. His temper, which had been serene, was turned by disappointment to moroseness and savagery. He avoided all company (being, as he said, ashamed to show himself, the father of a lusus naturae, among normal, healthy human beings), and took to solitary drinking, which carried him very rapidly to his grave; for the year before ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... either side, the chief one being Sally, who had actually spoken with him whilst still Harrisson—although it must be admitted she had not kissed him—and the one next in importance, the cabman. The pawnbroker made a very bad third—in fact, scarcely counted, owing to his own moroseness or reserve. But the cabman! Why, Fenwick had it all now at his fingers' ends. He could recall the start from New York, the wish to keep the secret of his gold-mining success to himself on the ship, and his satisfaction when he found his name printed ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... on deck several patriotic songs were sung, and choruses repeated; but not a word was intentionally spoken to give offence to our guards. They were, nevertheless, evidently dissatisfied with our proceedings, as will soon appear. Their moroseness was a prelude to what was to follow. We were, in a short time, forbidden to pass along the common gangway, and every attempt to do so was repelled by the bayonet. Although thus incommoded our mirth ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... 46. Surliness or moroseness is incompatible also with politeness. Such as, should any one say "he was desired to present Mr. such-a-one's respects to you," to reply, "What the devil have I to do with his respects?"—"My Lord enquired after you lately, and asked how you did," to answer, "if he wishes to know, let him come and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... astounding communication gave to Mrs Rimbolt can be more easily imagined than described. It explained everything—her instinctive dislike of the man from the first, his moroseness and insolence, and the cunning with which he had insinuated himself first into her husband's and then into Percy's confidence! How blind she had been not to see it all before! She might have known that he was a villain! Now, however, her duty was clear, and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... her corner of the baignoire and gave her conductor the best pretext he could have desired for asking Basil Dashwood to be so good as to escort her back. When the young actor, of whose personal preference Peter was quite aware, had led Mrs. Rooth away with an absence of moroseness which showed that his striking resemblance to a gentleman was not kept for the footlights, the two others sat on a divan in the part of the room furthest from the entrance, so that it gave them a degree of privacy, and Miriam watched ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... supportable which at first would seem beyond our powers of endurance. Mr. and Mrs. B., and, indeed, all the other B.'s, male and female, had got so used to the tyranny of this ill-tempered animal, that they put up with his moroseness almost without a growl; but there is a limit to sufferance, beyond which neither men nor bears can travel, and that boundary was at last attained with the B.'s. As what I am now about to relate is, however, ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... melancholy are very opposite in nature; and melancholy is more nearly related to happiness than to moroseness. Melancholy attracts; moroseness repels. Hypochondria not only makes us unreasonably cross and angry over things concerning the present; not only fills us with groundless fears of imaginative mishaps for the future; but also causes us to unjustly reproach ourselves concerning our ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... since, even where you might imagine the claims upon the body to be slightest—in the act of reasoning—who does not know the terrible stumbles which are made through being out of health? It suffices to say that forgetfulness, and despondency, and moroseness, and madness take occasion often of ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel all knowledge (8) from the brain. But he who is in good bodily plight has large security. He runs no risk of ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... graybeard suddenly and out of the fullness of his manly strength. The change is so great, the difference so significant and painful, that the consequence must be a series of unpleasant properties,—egoism, excitability, moroseness, cruelty, etc. It is significant that the very old man assumes all those unpleasant characteristics we note in eunuchs—they result from the consciousness ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of their poise and their silence in the presence of strangers is not due to moroseness or the absence of active thought. They have learned in the woods, if they are to be successful in their hunts, to be personally as unobtrusive as possible, often to remain motionless, and all the while to watch and listen alertly. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... he talks of big events, mostly; all the while suffers from fits of depression and exhibits a growing moroseness, a peculiar characteristic of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Hesa, although younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness among the charcoal burners that could only have come from the association of the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of Myrtle Forge with the founderman's daughter. Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive in character, often escaped from terms ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mistress, and, like the Rhodian sculptor, he clasped it to his soul night and day, until it grew warm and life-like, and became to him in the stead of every human tie. Thus Michael Vanbrugh had lived, for fifty years, a life solitary even to moroseness; emulating the great Florentine master, whose Christian name it was his glory to bear. He painted grand pictures, which nobody bought, but which he and his faithful little sister Meliora thought the greater for that. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... wrote: "I hate false words, and seek with care, difficulty, and moroseness those that fit the thing." So did Sentimental Tommy, as related by James M. Barrie in his novel bearing his hero's name as a title. No wonder T. Sandys became ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... nothing with much zeal but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away without benefit from books or anything else. He had, however, excellent spirits, which never seemed much affected by his wife's occasional moroseness; and he bore with her unreasonableness sometimes to Anne's admiration. As for the Miss Musgroves, Henrietta and Louisa, young ladies of nineteen and twenty, they were living to be fashionable, happy and merry. Their dress had every ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... undermining the strength of nerve, the mind begins to anticipate by dark forebodings the fall of her companion. This is a main element in that condition which a great physician described in a masterly manner under the name of "Horrores." Hence their moroseness of disposition, which none can account for, their wavering fancies and inclinations, their disgust at what used to give them pleasure. The amiable man grows quarrelsome, the merry man cross, and he who used ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... degree so eminent. This first interchange of thought upon a topic of literature did not tend to slacken my previous disposition to retreat into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no time was tainted with either the moroseness or the pride of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey |
