"Pitiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curiosity he looked at the new-comer, and a smile curled his lips as he observed that the lean old man, exhausted by his long and hurried ride, could scarcely hold himself on his beast, and at the same time it struck him that this pitiable old man was the husband of the blooming and youthful Sirona. Far from feeling any remorse for his intrusion into this man's house, he yielded entirely to the audacious humor with which his aspect filled him, and when Phoebicius himself asked ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... position, and guard the best interests of her sex. It is more than thirty years since Fanny Wright wrote her Views of Society and Manners in America. The brilliant woman who lectured to crowds in the old Park Theatre, against decency, is old now, and an atheist old woman, desolate, is rather a pitiable object. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... upon and worried. If they were things of flesh and blood, and could feel the gripe, be conscious of the teeth, and appreciate the fangs of these rapid-devouring 'virtuosi,' concertos, sonatas, trios, etc., would indeed be in a pitiable condition. Happily, being of the spirit, they ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... folks, did you ever hear of such a pitiable case in all your lives? Here was literally the richest breakfast that could be set before a king, and its very richness made it absolutely good for nothing. The poorest labourer, sitting down to his crust of ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... "It was a pitiable spectacle, as you may suppose, to see reasonable beings constrained against their inclinations to sit quietly while they ate their hearty morning meal, which really, perhaps, they might have enjoyed, had they been allowed to amuse themselves ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... for we all need help. There are too many people in the world—too many, perhaps, among us here—who are not what they ought to be, and what they really wish to be, because they are weak. They see what is right, and admire it; but they have not courage or determination to do it. Most sad and pitiable it is to see how much weakness of heart there is in the world—how little true moral courage. I suppose that the reason is, that there is so little faith; that people do not believe heartily and deeply enough in the absolute ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the same quarter, and so that he could, at need, take himself off at the slightest disquietude which should assail him, and in short, so that he might not again be caught unprovided as on the night when he had so miraculously escaped from Javert. These two apartments were very pitiable, poor in appearance, and in two quarters which were far remote from each other, the one in the Rue de l'Ouest, the other in ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... depend on comfortable surroundings. The hut, which was of his own manufacture, was of the most miserable description. Inside there was literally only just space enough for himself and his little girl to creep in and lie down. In the monsoon it was reduced to a pitiable condition, the rain coming through like a sieve. The floor having become mud, the old man was at last obliged to invest in a native bedstead, which only costs about 8d. Having secured this luxury he was quite ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... been a born nurse. Without any training or experience she could have surpassed Florence Nightingale, but, alas! she was merely an everyday girl in real life, and this being her first actual experience of the tragedy of birth, and the terror of it being intensified and aggravated by the pitiable surrounding circumstances, she was beside herself. She clung to me, choked with a flood of tears, and palpitating in ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... himself or his country. His hand shook so, that if he had been perishing with thirst, he could not have carried a glass to his lips, till after various attempts in all manner of curves and zigzags, spilling half of it by the way. It was really pitiable to see him—when he was to sign his name I always went out of the room, and left Gascoigne to guide his hand. More helpless still his mind than his body. If his own or England's salvation had depended upon ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... peccant, foul, fulsome; rotten, rotten at the core. vile, base, villainous; mean &c. (paltry) 643; injured &c. deteriorated &c. 659; unsatisfactory, exceptionable, indifferent; below par &c. (imperfect) 651; illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c. 945; shocking; reprehensible &c. (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c. (malevolent) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... arrest for the pompous paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake, or profligate debauchee. Here her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... were too thoroughly vanquished. Their plight was laughable, and yet pitiable. They were coated with mud from head to foot, and their pretty hats, with their polka-dot bands, were gone too far down the ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... "AEsthetik"—I was anything but elated or vain in consequence. I had read in Sartor Resartus, "If a man reads, shall he not be learned?" and I knew too well that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, incurable mania-amusement, which might ruin me for life, and which, as it was, was a daily source of apprehension between me and my good true friends, who ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... the smoking-room more than once that day, as I passed it, and half an hour before this I had observed, through the open door, that he was there. He had been with her so much that without him she had a bereaved, forsaken air. It was better, no doubt, but superficially it made her rather pitiable. Mrs. Peck would have told me that their separation was gammon; they didn't show together on deck and in the saloon, but they made it up elsewhere. The secret places on shipboard are not numerous; Mrs. Peck's 'elsewhere' ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... "The Abbot," there is an interesting contrast drawn between the ceremonies attending an abbot's installation, when the monasteries were in their glory, and the pitiable scenes in the days of their decline, when Mary Stuart was a prisoner in Lochleven. In the monastery of Kennaquhair, which had been despoiled by the fury of the times, a few monks were left to mourn the mutilated statues and weep over the fragments of richly-carved Gothic pillars. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... infancy has been pitiable. A purer or milder spirit than hers, one that more sensitively shrinks from rude collision, does not exist, and yet, on whichever side she turns her eyes, she meets with appalling prejudices or opinions ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... a most pitiable condition, calling upon his mother, while the wounded boy on the other side joined in the concert ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... genius. At one of the Presidio hops she spent the evening—it was moonlight—in a boat on the bay with an officer who was as accomplished a flirt as herself. The appearance of Rush, Fort, Howard, and Webster upon this occasion was pitiable. On her evening, if she tired of her admirers before they could reasonably be expected to leave, she walked out of the room without excuse and went to bed. She not only ran to fires when the humour ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... reached the Carolinas, it was December, and he found the army in a pitiable condition. There was but a single blanket for the use of every three soldiers, and there was not food enough in camp to last three days. The soldiers had lost heart because of defeat, they were ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... swiftly but with effort. Its breath comes in agony, its eyes are staring from its sockets. It is a pitiable spectacle. But the struggle for life continues. In its flight the deer had described a circle. Once more the forest becomes less dense, the clearing with the farm-house is reached again. With a last desperate effort the deer vaults over the brushwood fence. ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... a half of College progress since, he had been astonishing us with similar terrible application and results. Professors encouraged, friends applauded, we wondered at and admired him. We did not envy him, however, for he became, as I commenced by saying, a pitiable wreck. Look at him as ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... which solitude and grief had gradually produced upon her mind, subdued her spirits; she rushed forward into the chamber, and sunk almost senseless into a chair. Returning reason soon overcame the dreadful, but pitiable attack of imagination, and she turned to the papers, though still with so little recollection, that her eyes involuntarily settled on the writing of some loose sheets, which lay open; and she was unconscious, that she was transgressing her father's strict injunction, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... misshapen calico dress caught over the saddle-horn in a manner that exposed the girl's bare legs to the knees, and the thick bare feet pressed uncomfortably into the chafing rope stirrups—truly, a grotesque, and yet, Patty frowned—a pitiable figure, too. The pony halted before the door, and Patty greeted the girl who scrambled clumsily ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... deeper her cry, the more dead his silence. The fault may be none of his; he cannot give her what never lived within his soul. But the wretchedness on her side, and the moral deterioration attendant on a false and shallow life, without strength enough to keep itself sweet, are among the most pitiable wrongs ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is at once a joy and a disappointment. Such marvellous angles and stop volleys off difficult drives! Yet immediately on top of a dazzling display Alonzo will throw away the easiest sort of a high volley by a pitiable fluke. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... heard pacing up and down there in a tempest of perplexity. He came forth only to order his horse, and desire M. de Sauve and a few grooms to be ready instantly to ride with him. His face was full of pitiable perplexity—the smallest obstacle was met with a savage oath; and he was evidently in all the misery of a weak yet passionate nature, struggling with impotent violence against a yoke that evidently ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how a twitch can be applied without this drawback, they should consult my husband's book, Illustrated Horse Breaking. Of all horses, a good hunter which passes into the hands of an incompetent master, is most to be pitied. The wretched condition of many hunters is truly pitiable. Their skins, instead of showing the glow of health, present a dried-up, kippered-herring appearance, and some of the poor things have the miserable half-starved look of Berlin cab horses, chiefly because they live as a rule ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... decay with no more of pity than is consistent with a smile. The mad tailor, the poor driveller that has gone out of his wits (and truly he appears to have had no great journey to go to get past their confines) for the love of Charming Betty Careless,—. these half-laughable, scarce-pitiable objects, take off from the horror which the principal figure would of itself raise, at the same time that they assist the feeling of the scene by contributing to the general notion of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... and a few others now gathered around and interfered in the interest of peace. They saw that Fred had won the fight and was master of the situation. Each contestant was covered with blood, and presented a pitiable sight. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... of small states in all such conflicts was actually pitiable. The poor little trembling King Charles dog in the cage of the lion, and who felt that he only lived on sufferance, was the type of them. I remember an incident which occurred some years ago at the Bagni di Lucca, which will illustrate what I mean. An English ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... causing us all to start in alarm. I knew that it could only proceed from Catherine's room, for the servants were all assembled at the window beneath us, listening, like ourselves, for the chimes. Thither therefore I flew, followed by Ella, and we found poor Catherine in a truly pitiable state. ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... with the cries of leopards and bears in large numbers that ran hither and thither in fear. Other forests on it rang with the cries of hundreds upon hundreds of animals. Sharabhas and lions suddenly ran out. In consequence of all this that mountain, though it was reduced to a very pitiable plight, still assumed a very beautiful aspect. The vidyadharas dwelling on its summits soared into the air. The kinnaras also became very anxious, distracted by the fear caused by the fall of Skanda's dart. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... saw the pitiable penury of his own scanty wardrobe that he could persuade himself ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... earth. Every sheep that bleats, every ox that lows, every ass that brays, every bird that sings, and every goose that gabbles, is more of a sage, if not more of a saint, than the great preachers! The things so-called by a certain class of simpletons, are about the most pitiable, if not the most blameable creatures, in all God's universe. What then is the upshot of what I am saying? It is this. Whether I sing, or pray, or talk, I will make myself understood. I thank my God, I can speak with tongues more than you all; ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... every spot of wet, and all suffused and splashed and strangely fresh with the low, red, radiant sunlight. There was splendor in the place, and the air dripped with glorious life, and through it all went the lovers, silent, estranged, pitiable. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... incidents, utterly inconsistent, we should suppose, with the purpose for which they were designed. Nuptials, bacchanalian fetes, games, and dances, are crowded upon their sculptured sides, in seeming mockery of the pitiable relics of humanity within. They treated death lightly and playfully, these ancient Romans, and tried to hide his terror with a mask of smiles, and to cover his dart ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... been harsh, Bob, not to say uncivil: I have gone through a good deal, until I hardly know myself. It is base enough for a man to be thus at the mercy of mere externals—and I used to think I could practice the Stoic doctrine! But to be human is to be a pitiable, and, if you like, a despicable creature. I knew a case that may serve in a way to explain—not to justify—my treatment of you. Say it was years ago; the man met, in a friend's house, a lady who showed him the utmost kindness. She was used to all deference, till she and every ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... cold-hearted, could help feeling deep pity at the sight of those poor, weak and inoffensive creatures fleeing before invasion? There were pitiable sights on every hand. A mother pushing a perambulator containing several small children, whilst five or six others were hanging on to her dress or trotting along around her. Poor invalids, dragged, pushed, ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... point, I must say a few words about the strangest, the most interesting, the most pitiable human being that I have ever come across. I speak of him now—at this particular point in these memoirs—for the reason that hitherto I had paid him no attention whatever, and began to do so now only because everything connected with Pokrovski had suddenly become ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with delicate leafage. How, then, can the contrast be otherwise than painful, between this perfect loveliness, and the dead, raw, lifeless surface of the deal boards of the cottage. Its weakness is pitiable; for, though there is always evidence of considerable strength on close examination, there is no effect of strength: the real thickness of the logs is concealed by the cutting and carving of their exposed surfaces; and even what is seen is ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... the art having been once laid, it is pitiable to see how it slumbered without improvement for ages. In fact, I shall now be obliged to leap over all murders, sacred and profane, as utterly unworthy of notice, until long after the Christian era. Greece, even in the age of Pericles, produced no murder of the slightest merit; and ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... laughed bitterly, and rubbed his hand up and down his empty pocket. It was a pitiable action. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... owe a good deal of their interest and romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that of a blind fiddler who has but one sense left (if we except the sense of snuff-taking(1)) and who has that stunned or deafened by his ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... life, she occasionally spoke as if she expected it. This was however only at intervals; the thought did not seem to dwell upon her mind. Mr. Carlisle rejoiced in this. He observed, and there is great force in the suggestion, that there is no more pitiable object, than a sick man, that knows he is dying. The thought must be expected to destroy his courage, to co-operate with the disease, and to counteract every favourable effort ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... silence, for they were worn out and despondent; they suffered dreadfully from thirst, and it was pitiable to see the tongues of the poor horses hanging out of their mouths. Day dawned, and there were no signs of the caravan. A thick vapor was rising from every quarter, and they hoped that when it cleared up they would be more fortunate; ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... filled with the sweetest orphans—flowers destined to be immortal; angels in form, that might be angels in spirit—that must be, whether for good or evil—whom we never cultivate—whom we suffer to escape our tendance, and leave to the most pitiable ignorance, and the most wretched emergencies of want. The life that is wasted upon dahlias, must, prima facie, be the life of one heartless and insensible, and most probably, brutish ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... servant, Pietro. 'Is that you, Pietro?' I said; 'you begging here in the streets! what has brought you to this wretched trade?' He gave me, however, no very clear account of himself, but evidently desired to avoid me when he recognized who I was. But, shocked to find him in so pitiable a condition, I pressed my questions, and finally told him I could not bear to see any one who had been in my service reduced to beggary; and though I had no actual need of his services, yet, rather than see him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a very pitiable state. (I learned some months later that he was come down expressly to dissuade Rumbald from any attempt at that time; but I did not know that then.) Here, only, thought I, is one of the chicken-hearted ones. ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... and the youth thought it would be easy enough to do it. So he set himself to work to catch three hares alive, put them in a bag, clad himself in some old rags so that he looked so poor and wretched that it was quite pitiable to see him, and in this guise on Sunday forenoon he sneaked into the passage with his bag, like any beggar boy. The Governor himself and every one in the house was in the kitchen, keeping watch over the joint. While they were doing this the youth ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... requests that the interview be deferred till night-fall; the wife might see through his disguise. The time for this recognition has not yet come. She wishes to hear of her husband, thinks of him in some such pitiable plight as this beggar is in; she shows sympathy. A charitable disposition is indeed a characteristic of the whole household, nurses and all; misfortune has brought its blessing. Herein the contrast with the Suitors is emphatic, they are a stony-hearted ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... the servant-girl in curl-papers, who has just brought me my newly-hemmed black necktie, and asks what further orders I have ... and could you but see the highly respectable, fog-enveloped street, and hear the pitiable voice with which a beggar down there pours forth his ditty (he will soon be outscreamed by the street-sellers), and could you picture to yourselves that from here to the City is three-quarters of ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the state of the pavement. A salary was attached to the post, but she very rarely received it, although she was expected to dress like everybody else, that is to say, like very few indeed. In society she played the most pitiable role. Everybody knew her, and nobody paid her any attention. At balls she danced only when a partner was wanted, and ladies would only take hold of her arm when it was necessary to lead her out of the room to attend to their ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... collective dulness of our community, the crying need for a strenuous intellectual renewal than the consideration of that vast mass of useless, uncomfortable, under-educated, under-trained and altogether pitiable people we contemplate when we use that inaccurate and misleading term, the Lower Middle Class. A great proportion of the lower middle class should properly be assigned to the unemployed and the unemployable. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... with Sidney Meeks, who was afraid of nothing. "If anything happens to your money, Albion," said Sidney, "I'll make it good, even if I have to sell my wine-cellar." Albion was afraid even to keep a revolver. His state of terror was pitiable, and the more so because he had a fear of betraying it, which was to some extent the most cruel fear of all. Sidney Meeks was probably the only person in East Westland who understood how it was with him, and he kept his knowledge to himself. Sidney was astute on a diagnosis ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sun had real warmth in it. This had induced some of the miserable creatures to crawl out to the daylight, who perhaps had not been outside the holes for weeks. There was quite a crowd of children visible, and Katherine, whose heart always warmed to the pitiable little objects, with their mournful black eyes, produced a packet of sweets, which speedily brought a swarm ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... America. England was torn by internal faction and would not prepare to face her menacing enemy. Always the English have disliked a great standing army. Now, despite the entreaties of a king who knew the real danger, they reduced the army to the pitiable number of seven thousand men. Louis XIV grew ever more confident. In 1700 he was able to put his own grandson on the throne of Spain and to dominate Europe from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Netherlands. Another event showing his resolve soon startled the world. ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... wood and a long, intermittent roar came over the water. The brig had taken advantage of her falling off the wind to deliver a broadside in her own turn. Stede Bonnet's voice, cool as ever, gave the order and four guns answered the brig's discharge. The crew of the middle cannon lay on the deck in a pitiable state, two killed outright and the gunner bleeding from a great splinter wound in the head. A shot had entered to one side of the port, tearing the planking to bits and after striking down the two gun-servers, had passed into the fo'c's'le. Jeremy jumped forward with ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... chenar-trees of great age, a recognised resting-place for dervishes, close to the summer-quarters of the English Legation at Gulhek, in the vicinity of Tehran. One day he sat outside the gate and poured forth a pitiable tale of the death of his wife from cholera during the night, and begged for money to pay for her burial. Having made his collection, he disappeared at nightfall, leaving his dead partner under the chenar-trees, ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... perhaps never before or since presented the spectacle of a man of such transcendent powers as Swift involved in such a pitiable labyrinth of the affections as marked his whole life. Pride or ambition led him to postpone indefinitely his marriage with Stella, to whom he was early attached. Though he said he "loved her better than his life a thousand millions of times," he kept her always hanging on in ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the cage, and the birds scrambled out. One ran one way, and another another; but the Khoja contrived to keep up with the cock, which he drove before him with his stick, the poor bird waddling hither and thither, and fluttering from side to side with distress and indecision pitiable to behold. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... party left in the mountains, with Mr. Fitzpatrick, were to be attended to; and the next morning, supplied with fresh horses and provisions, I hurried off to meet them. On the second day we met, a few miles below the forks of the Rio de los Americanos; and a more forlorn and pitiable sight than they presented, cannot well be imagined. They were all on foot—each man, weak and emaciated, leading a horse or mule as weak and emaciated as themselves. They had experienced great difficulty in descending ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... happiness and salvation, is a chained enemy, and a captive to Him who triumphed in his resurrection and ascension to glory, and under the control and permissive will of Him, whom they denominate Keetchee Manitou, or Great Spirit; and, consequently they are enslaved to all that is pitiable in ignorance and superstition. Acknowledging the being of a God, the uncultivated minds of these savages have led them to shrink from the thoughts of annihilation, and to look forward with hope to a future life. They have no idea however of intellectual enjoyments; but a notion ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... good a man as your father was, my boy," he said, and Dan rode back the pitiable way through the rear of that noble army of Virginia—through ranks of tattered, worn, hungry soldiers, among the broken debris of wagons and abandoned guns, past skeleton horses and ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... from this contact with the public; a few of them are young, and would be pretty but for the lascivious glare now lighting their faces and the smears of paint which overlay their skins; all of them are poisonous, pitiable creatures, suffering now with the only kind of delirium which their lives afford, rancorous, obscene, filthy beauties, out of the gutter of civilization, gone mad with the licence of music and the contact of men, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... men with it. Four cooks inside, and four maids and six footmen on the roof, with a butler driving, come down from London in a trap, and wait the month. And as the last carriage of the company drives away, the servants' coach is packed, and they all bowl back to town again. It's pitiable, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it is a miserable and pitiable thing for a reasonable man to let himself be overcome by the evil spirit, and in consequence of his attacks to fall voluntarily into grievous and deadly sin, whereby man loses the grace of God. A reasonable ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... different way, is the same truth, a life entirely real; and, on the smaller scale, Uncle Venner is also to be reckoned a character perfectly done. Clifford is necessarily faint, and does not interest one on his own account; he is pitiable, but his love of the beautiful is too much sentimentalized to engage sympathy in the special way that Hawthorne attempts, and one sees in him only the victim of life, the prisoner whom the law mistook and outraged and left ruined; and Holgrave is no more than a spectator, mechanically ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... armour, this woman without her ermine, these in the crowd without their motley and the merry, merry jangling of the bells, and you will find how slender are the muscles that the armour lays bare, how shrivelled the breast that the ermine strips, how dragged and weary is that pitiable, naked figure which a few moments before was dancing fantastically, grimacing with ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... souls or substantial forms, M. Bayle is right in adding: 'that there is nothing more inconvenient for those who admit substantial forms than the objection which is made that they could not be produced save by an actual creation, and that the Schoolmen are pitiable in their endeavours to answer this.' But there is nothing more convenient for me and for my system than this same objection. For I maintain that all the Souls, Entelechies or primitive forces, substantial forms, simple substances, or Monads, whatever name one may apply ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... turns the pages of that most depressing of all books ever compiled by the groaning creature, Julian's hymn-dictionary, and sees the thousands of carefully tabulated English hymns, by far the greater number of them not only pitiable as efforts of human intelligence, but absolutely worthless as vocal material for melodic treatment, one wishes that all this effort had been directed to supply a real want. E. g. the two Wesleys between them wrote thirteen ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... an uproar throughout the house, and on regaining our seats, "the King-maker" had crept from beneath the mass, leaving Edward IV. still struggling under it: the former, with his moustache, ermine cloak, and other appendages, in pitiable disorder, was now haranguing the audience in the tone of a deeply-injured man. By what means I never could divine, or even suspect, but Mr. Betty arrived at the originator of the deed, and, to avoid more disastrous ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... base, villainous; mean &c (paltry) 643; injured &c; deteriorated &c 659; unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent; below par &c (imperfect) 651; illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c 945; shocking; reprehensible &c (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c (malevolent) 907. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... droning,—I recalled what Marjorie had said of her experiences of the night before, it was like the droning of a beetle. The instant the Apostle heard it, the fashion of his countenance began to change,—it was pitiable to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... above his previous sorrow. How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew. He turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher. How could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could hardly refrain from tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known than the condition of this poor young thing, now as heretofore the victim of her father's ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... absolutely wild and have no manners at all. Lucky old ogre, to possess twelve such princesses, I thought; but as I looked at the gleam of their limbs as they mocked, and heard their hard laughter, I found him to be but a pitiable old greybeard, for he looked at beauty that he could scarce comprehend and never possess. The beauty of life has power greater than the beauty ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting that desecrated land through ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... down this calamity on his own head. He was in no state to be left alone; and even the bereaved father found pity in his desolate heart for one who loved his lost child so well; and the two old men took him home between them, in a helpless and pitiable condition. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... in his blood, and the laurels of victory were within his reach. Graham forgot his bitter disappointments and cowardly friends, the weary journeys and worse anxieties of the past weeks, the cunning cautiousness of the chiefs and their maddening jealousies. Even the pitiable scene at Glenogilvie and his gnawing vain regret faded for the moment from his memory and from his heart. If the Lowlands had been cold as death to the good cause, the Highlands had at last taken fire; if he had ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... entered and ransacked the store whose awning now afforded him a comfortable refuge? And how was he to know that Ernie had glared out upon their tender love scene with eyes in which there was the most pitiable jealousy, the most implacable hatred? Dick Cronk, however, knew that his brother was over there and that he must have seen these two together in the flashes. Moreover, he knew that Ernie had been carrying a small ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... sofa, and was now in the act of entering the other room, by the joint aid of her brother and sister, Mr Arabin, and two servants in livery. She was all in her glory, and looked so pathetically happy, so full of affliction and grace, was so beautiful, so pitiable, and so charming, that it was almost impossible not to be ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... skillful kind usually) hired for the occasion were bribed to reveal the "menu." Dining room windows had to be located conveniently to allow free inspection from the street of the dainties served; the passing Imperial food inspector did not like to intrude upon the sanctity of the host's home. The pitiable host of those days, his unenviable guests and the bewildered cooks, however, contrived and conspired somehow to get up a banquet that was a trifle better ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... not console us, we are capable of dying of ennui at the politeness which people show us. We are lodged like princes. But what hosts, what conversations, what dinners! We laugh at them when we are by ourselves, but when we are before the enemy, what a pitiable figure we selves, make! I am no longer desirous to see you come; but I aspire to depart very quickly, and I understand why you do not wish to give concerts. It is not unlikely that Pauline Viardot may not sing the day after to-morrow, for want of a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... enthusiastic boy all one's life, in this practical world of dollars and cents, where other boys are men, and men forget that they ever were young! But this, you say, is all sentimental nonsense. Of course it is. I admit the full folly of such thoughts. It would be a pitiable spectacle indeed to see every body inspired by the vagabond spirit of Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering off the croppings and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Austria has furnished for centuries a screen to the Italian Peninsula. Yet, in that case, the want of unity amongst so many subdivisions that were independent states, might be pleaded as an excuse. Pitiable weakness there was in both cases; and "to be weak is to be miserable;" but degradation by degradation, universal abasement of the national energies, as an effect through wilful abasement as a cause; this miserable spectacle has been exhibited in mellow maturity by no Christian nations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... he moaned. "If you are not there I shall burst into tears and run away." Then he laughed. "I am always like this. You should see me in Paris on the eve of the opening of the Salon. A pitiable wreck! I had no angel ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... one hand by the cape of his coat, with the other by the waistband of his breeches, and bearing him to the door, as he would any other noxious animal, fairly pitched him head foremost into the street, to the manifest surprise and dismay of the passengers, to whom he told a "pitiable tale," when one of the crowd pronounced him to be a notorious dog-stealer, and the fellow, immediately on this recognition, made a precipitate retreat. 328 "I am glad," said Dashall to his friends, who had witnessed ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in the hall. The poor nobleman was reduced to a most pitiable state of mind by the excitement of the day and the sense of his own uselessness at a time when he felt action the rightful privilege of his station. In his earlier years he had ever met personal danger in the most intrepid manner. How much his strength was broken now plainly appeared in his unsuccessful ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... they found that he was an Indian, and, from the blood that bespattered his dress and hand, it was evident that he had been wounded. He was a pitiable object, in the last stage of exhaustion. When the party ran towards him, he looked up in their faces with lustreless eyes, and then ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... surgeon, declined the experiment, on which the criminal, whose life had been conditionally spared, was set free. For his generosity of mind, for shrinking from an experiment on another human being, Cheselden lost caste at Court, and was considered pitiable by those ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... down to the shore of the pond, found an Indian canoe, and crept into it. The wind blew it out into the lake, and he was wafted to the southern shore. The sun went down, and the Indians stole away. Pitiable the condition of the settlers. Lovewell was dead, and also their beloved chaplain, Jonathan Frye, who with his dying breath prayed aloud for victory; Jacob Farrar was dying; Lieutenant Rollins and Robert Usher could not last long; eleven others were badly wounded. There were only eighteen ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... better be careful, constable," he said; but in the act of uttering these words he thought how pitiable they sounded. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... publicly, at night-fall, and went to the vampire's grave. The gentleman could not tell me the time when those who had died had been sucked, nor the particulars of the subject. The persons whose blood had been sucked found themselves in a pitiable state of languor, weakness, and lassitude, so violent is the torment. He had been interred three years, and they saw on this grave a light resembling that of a ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... this pitiable case may prove a warning to inconsiderate youth; by showing them what dreadful effects may follow ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... sounds an incongruous, jarring note in a rollicking high-spirited farce. The plights into which Cherubina is plunged are so needlessly cruel, that, while only intending to make her ridiculous, Barrett succeeds rather in making her pitiable. But many of her adventures are only a shade more absurd than those in the romances at which he tilts. Regina Maria Roche's Children of the Abbey (1798) would take the wind from the sails of any parodist. In protracting The Heroine almost to wearisome length, Barrett probably acted deliberately ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... ever put into the field; tens of thousands were ill with it, and these, with the hosts of wounded accumulated more rapidly than the transports, numerous as they were, could carry them away. Their condition at Harrison's Landing was pitiable; the medical bureau seemed to have shared in the general demoralization. The proper diet, the necessary hospital arrangements, everything required for the soldiers' restoration to health, was wanting; the pasty, adhesive mud was everywhere, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... those competent to judge, the state of Alleghenia was going to the dogs. A press distinguished alike for the amplitude of its headlines and the pitiable paucity of its principles; a legislature of which practically every member had, not only a price, but such a price as the advertisements describe as being "within the reach of all;" a Governor who avowedly stood ready to sanction the most extreme pretensions of the notoriously ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... You have mistaken my purpose, seh. I had no intention of drawing," he stammered with a pitiable attempt at dignity. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... cruiser was it that they saw, no ship of war with a hostile flag and hostile arms, no sight of fear; but a sight full of infinite pathos and sadness—a pitiable, a melancholy sight. It was about half a mile behind them, for that was about the distance which they had traversed since the wind had changed and the schooner's direction had ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... tail-feather of them. No more eagles—the rest is well known. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles—ah, 'tis pitiable! They seized Napoleon by treachery; the English nailed him on a desert island in mid-ocean on a rock raised ten thousand feet above the earth; and there he is, and will be, till the Red Man gives him back his power for the happiness ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... and second verdicts were recorded without the necessity for withdrawal, and Mr. Bosengate was already sleepy when the third case was called. The sight of khaki revived his drooping attention. But what a weedy-looking specimen! This prisoner had a truly nerveless pitiable dejected air. If he had ever had a military bearing it had shrunk into him during his confinement. His ill-shaped brown tunic, whose little brass buttons seemed trying to keep smiling, struck Mr. Bosengate as ridiculously short, used though he was to such things. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a pitiable state, for the Germans as they retired carried off everything—livestock, vehicles, all food, and most of the male population. The civilians that were left behind took refuge in the cellars during the fighting, coming out as soon as the Boche had gone, and ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... describes the decay of instruction in Popery, he speaks from personal experience. About the middle of January, 1529, he wrote to Spalatin: "Moreover, conditions in the congregations everywhere are pitiable, inasmuch as the peasants learn nothing, know nothing, never pray, do nothing but abuse their liberty, make no confession, receive no communion, as if they had been altogether emancipated from religion. They have neglected their ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... itself, but for the satisfaction of thinking, and having others think, how fine we look. Worse still, we are tempted to try to look not as well as we can, but better than somebody else; and by this combination of rivalry with vanity we get the most contemptible and pitiable level to which perversity in dress can bring us. There is no end to the ridiculous and injurious absurdities to which this hollow vanity will lead those who are silly enough to ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... was now truly pitiable. She found herself entangled in a net, and each movement far from freeing her, tightened ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... indeed well known to us as belonging to the senior partner in the second largest private banking concern in the City of London. What could have happened, then, to bring one of the foremost citizens of London to this most pitiable pass? We waited, all curiosity, until with another effort he braced himself to ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... seem, therefore, that the Irish Roman Catholic was in a situation which his English and Scottish brethren in the faith might well envy. In fact, however, his condition was more pitiable and irritating than theirs. For, though not persecuted as a Roman Catholic, he was oppressed as an Irishman. In his country the same line of demarcation which separated religions separated races; and he was of the conquered, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I find a marvellous great company, newly flocked in, mothers and men, a people gathered for exile, [799-804]a pitiable crowd. From all quarters they are assembled, ready in heart and fortune, to whatsoever land I will conduct them overseas. And now the morning star rose over the high ridges of Ida, and led on the day; and the Grecians held the gateways in leaguer, nor was any hope of help given. I withdrew, and raising ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... after the inauguration of General Jackson, hundreds of them found themselves decapitated by the Democratic guillotine, without qualifications for any other employment had the limited trade of Washington afforded any. Many of them were left in a pitiable condition, but when the Telegraph was asked what these men could do to ward off starvation, the insolent reply was, "Root, hog, or die!" Some of the new political brooms swept clean, and made a great ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... daughter. But to this Hester would make no reply, and Mrs. Bolton simply declared her purpose of remaining. To her mind there was present an idea that she would, at any rate, endure as much actual suffering as her daughter. There they both sat, and in the morning they were objects pitiable to be seen. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... preparations. My little knowledge of a vessel was all at fault. Unintelligible orders were so rapidly given and so immediately executed; there was such a hurrying about, and such an intermingling of strange cries and stranger actions, that I was completely bewildered. There is not so helpless and pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor's life. At length those peculiar, long-drawn sounds, which denote that the crew are heaving the windlass, began, and in a few moments we were under weigh. The noise of the water thrown from the bows began to be heard, the vessel ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... comforts they complain, The poor will grieve, the poor will weep and sigh, Both when they know, and when they know not why; But we our bounty with such care bestow, That cause for grieving they shall seldom know. Your Plan I love not; with a number you Have placed your poor, your pitiable few: There, in one house, throughout their lives to be, The pauper-palace which they hate to see: That giant-building, that high-bounding wall, Those bare-worn walks, that lofty thund'ring hall, That large loud clock, which tolls each dreaded hour, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... he was jeering—then realized as vividly that he was not. And the full danger to her, perhaps to Mark himself, of shrinking from this man, striking her with all its pitiable force, she made a painful effort, slipped her hand under his arm, and said: "I'm very tired. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of rancid pork, and a very small flapjack—burnt at that! To think that human intelligence and man's force of will should be powerless without a sufficiency of such pitiable ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss |
