"Pitiful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pipes and sat down to smoke. Whilst they were binding us, the chief came in, and taking his station in front of us, made a speech, during which he frequently pointed to his mouth, with the intention probably of intimating to us, that at present they had no intention of starving us. In this pitiful and agonizing position we remained for an hour, not knowing what was to be our fate. When I saw them put the ropes over the rafters, I concluded, of course, that their intention was to hang us, and never have ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... letter is chosen. Some common names are those of the hundred titles of God combined with the prefix abd or servant. Such are Abdul Aziz, servant of the all-honoured; Ghani, the everlasting; Karim, the gracious; Rahim, the pitiful; Rahman, the merciful; Razzak, the bread-giver; Sattar, the concealer; and so on, with the prefix Abdul, or servant of, in each case. Similarly Abdullah, or servant of God, was the name of Muhammad's father, and is a very favourite one. Other names end with Baksh or 'given by,' ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... the girl saw the two nearing each other. The former swore softly beneath his breath while he nervously fingered the pitiful weapon at his hip. The girl pressed her open palms to her cheeks as she leaned forward in stony-eyed, horror-stricken silence. While she had every confidence in the prowess of the godlike creature who thus dared brazenly to face the king of beasts, she had no false conception of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beasts, rose above every other sound. Polycarp did not heed it; a voice came to him from heaven, 'Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man;' and, nerved by what other Christians had also heard, he stood at last before Statius. Words, at first pitiful, greeted him: 'Have respect to thine age!—Swear by the genius of Caesar! Say, "Away with the atheists."' The Saint caught up the last word. He 'looked with solemn countenance upon that vast multitude of lawless heathen; and groaning and looking up to heaven, he said, 'Away ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... just time to re-load his revolvers before the surrounding bush burst into a perfect tempest of flame and lead, indicating that the Government troops must be present in force. One of the Sam-riek men, right at his elbow, uttered a pitiful cry, clutched frenziedly at his breast, from which the blood was spouting, and dropped to the ground, his chest torn to pieces by five charges of pot-leg, or stout nails, which had struck him at the same moment; while groans and screams from various parts of the ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... Pietro Varano—who was on his way to join his brother in Camerino in view of the revolt there—he had him strangled in the market-place. There is a story that, with life not yet extinct, the poor youth was carried into church by the pitiful crowd. But here a friar, discovering that he still lived, called in the soldiers and bade them finish him. This friar, going later through Cagli, was recognized, set upon by a mob, and torn to pieces—in ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... he arose and clothed himself; and looking out of the window he saw the streets filled with a great host of people in black, and the weeping and the mourning were pitiful to hear. Knights, with their armour craped, rode in great companies before; then came the men-at-arms with weapons reversed; then the ladies of the household, and after these the priests came, and in their midst was ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... surprising, seeing that the family lives in a single room, with only a screen to divide it for decency's sake. Already the coffin was standing in their midst—a plain but decent shell which had been bought ready-made. The child, they told me, had been a boy of nine, and full of promise. What a pitiful spectacle! Though not weeping, the mother, poor woman, looked broken with grief. After all, to have one burden the less on their shoulders may prove a relief, though there are still two children left—a babe at the breast and a little girl ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... countenance an expression mixed of astonishment, gratification, and confusion, very natural to a poor bhearer who had never before been taken by a Sahib in the very bosom of his family. There was something at once pitiful and comical in the subdued "fidget" with which, applying his joined palms to his forehead, and lowly louting, he made his most obsequious salaam ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... were laying in St. Mary's river when a cunna (canoe) came along side, and three or four black men crawled upon our deck and hid themselves down behind the boat's waist. They wanted to go away with us, telling a pitiful tale of oppression, but slavery was yet in vogue there, and so we forced them to go ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... and her hand went to her throat, as though she were choking, then she looked away, staring into the fire, whilst he watched her, waiting for her answer with almost pitiful anxiety. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... appear to like having to give pain to the young girl, but he frankly told her of the wound of the young man, who could be no other than Bernard Brandon, and the pitiful result. ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... the entire literary output of the classic civilization was contained in these collections. Unfortunately no traces of them remain. Accident and conquest caused their entire destruction. The earlier historians told a pitiful tale of the wanton destruction of the library by the Mohammedan conquerors who in their fanaticism destroyed as useless or harmful all works not devoted to the dissemination of their own doctrines. While it is probably true that the Mohammedans were responsible for a ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... pains to hide or to soften what repelled me in her. I had seen it before, and yet loved; to her it would seem strange that because a man saw, he should not love. I found myself sorry for her, with a new and pitiful grief, but passion did not rise in me. And concerning my pity I held my tongue; she would have only wonder and mockery for it. But I think she was vexed to see me so unmoved; it irks a woman to lose a man, however little she may have prized him when he was her own. Nor ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... (10)Take, my brethren, the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, for an example of affliction, and of patience. (11)Behold, we count those happy who endure. Ye heard of the patience of Job, and saw the end of the Lord[5:11]; that the Lord is very pitiful, and ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... these landlords, our rulers, talk, that the glorious green fields, the deep woods the everlasting hills, and the rivers that run among them, were made for the sole purpose of ministering to their greedy lusts and mean ambitions; that they may roll out amongst unrealities their pitiful mock lives, from their silk and lace cradles to their spangled coffins, studded with silver knobs, and lying coats of arms, reaping where they have not sown, and gathering where they have not strewed, making the omer small and the ephah great, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... was really pitiful," said Lucile, "and it made me so desperate to see all those thoughtless cruel boys following him, hooting at him, and laughing at him and calling poor old battered Bull all sorts of names. So I turned around ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... wits that came after him, wanted either the talents, the malignity, or the courage to follow his example, to imitate him in his daring personalities, or to adopt his merciless satyrical style. They followed his steps, only in his feeble, pitiful paths, and contented themselves with writing contemptible buffoon caricature parodies of the writings of the greatest men. The new comedy never could have raised its head, had the middle comedy continued to be supported by ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... swore softly, but sincerely. Somehow, the pitiful case of the girl who had written that letter with which he had fallen in love, had less and less of appeal to him as the days drifted by. And now, while the duty of which he had assured himself still impelled ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... And the pitiful face is shewn again For an instant ere they close; But it is not discovered to living men— Only to God and ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... immediately designated three young persons whose conduct had been irreproachable to an exceptional degree. He then applied a more delicate test. "Point out to me," said he, "the worst boy." All the children remained motionless, and made no sign; but one little urchin came forward, with a pitiful air, and said, in a very low tone, "It is me." Such were the public sentiment and sense of honor, even in a reform school. This frankness in the lad was followed by reformation; and he became ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... rope for belts, and raw-hide moccasins of their own manufacture in lieu of boots; covered with vermin, and carrying their whole kit in Federal haversacks, the ragged scarecrows who swarmed through the streets of Frederick presented a pitiful contrast to the trim battalions which had hitherto held the Potomac. Their conduct indeed was exemplary. They had been warned that pillage and depredations would be severely dealt with, and all requisitions, even of fence-rails, were paid for on the spot. Still recruits were few. The warworn ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... but I have no idea that the Sophias and Carolines of any man breathing are to eat national veal, to drink public tea, to wear Treasury ribands, and then that we are to be told that it is coarse to animadvert upon this pitiful and eleemosynary splendour. If this is right, why not mention it? If it is wrong, why should not he who enjoys the ease of supporting his sisters in this manner bear the shame of it? Everybody seems hitherto to have spared a man who ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... from them that we first learned the real horrors of war. Some had only one arm; others had lost a leg; still others were suffering from shell shock. Those who were suffering from shell shock were the most pitiful, as the least ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... straight love-making chapters made her sleepy, they bored her so. She had tried one or two, and she had found it impossible to concentrate her mind upon them. Instead, she had sat and planned what she would do with the money that was steadily accumulating in the bank; a pitiful little sum, to be sure, to those who count by the thousands, but cheering enough to Jean, who had never before had any ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... poetry of the Sicilian Court became Italian literature in Dante and Boccaccio. Freedom, slow as it seemed in awakening, nowhere awakened so grandly, nowhere fought so long and stubbornly for life. Dino Compagni sets us face to face with this awakening, with this patient pitiful struggle. His 'Chronicle' indeed has been roughly attacked of late by the sweeping scepticism of German critics, but the attack has proved an unsuccessful one. The strongest evidence of its genuineness indeed lies in the impression of a distinct ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... help her, then!" she said, scarcely controlling the alarm that brought a pitiful break ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... somebody posts back his Election Address with 'This is pitiful balderdash and most ungrammatical' written plainly at the bottom of it. What would be your feelings if you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... whispered Mark, excitedly. "The beasts! the wretches! the unmanly brutes! Oh, how can those poor blacks be such pitiful, miserable cowards, and not rise up and kill the villains who seize them and treat them ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... dived under the wheel. It was nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so; but everybody went on just the same, making a wonderful to do over that ass, as if he had done something great. That girl couldn't seem to have enough of that pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... boats are dangerous on their feast days, and no one can tell when they may go juramentadoing to celebrate the occasion. That is the only custom they could celebrate to-day. Look! [He pointed at the pitiful banana-trees.] There are no gifts to adorn them with, no turkeys to kill; and the soldiers' hearts are sad. But the Sabah evidently appreciated her capabilities, and doubtless before night she would again honor her country ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... telling him at the same time, that as these people had great power and authority, it might be of service to us hereafter. This Campbell very unwillingly did, and received from the father, not long after, a pitiful present, not a quarter part of the value of the rim of the watch. We understood afterwards that this had come to the governor's ears, who was highly offended at it, as thinking that if any thing of that sort had been to be had, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... regret that my Baptist brethren, Drs. Hayden and Cranfill, Burleson and Carroll, should have gotten into a spiteful and un-Christian snarl over so pitiful a thing as Baylor's $2,000 presidency—that they should give to the world such a flagrant imitation of a lot of cut-throat unregenerates out for the long green. If one-half that Hayden and Cranfill are saying about each other in ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... which Mirth can afford, The revel, the laugh and the jeer? Ah! here is a plentiful board, But the guests are all mute as their pitiful cheer, And none but the worm is a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to ponder on! He would have been such a good man—so true to her in all those years! But they were gone, and he had not found her until his foot was on the edge of the grave—until he could hardly count on one year more of a pitiful artificial life, painted, bewigged, stuffed to the semblance of a man by a clever tailor—and she in the bloom of her glory beside him! What he would have given to have old Saracinesca's strength and fresh vitality—old Saracinesca whom ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... town singly and by twos and threes, until hundreds were there to await the morrow. Some few were very pitiful to behold, being feeble and infirm from age and disease, dressed in rags and tags, and presenting an appearance of great distress. But there were many more who were seemingly hearty and vigorous; and these were the lazy ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... great hall of the castle, before her judges. They read to her the articles which had been founded on her answers, and the Bishop previously represented to her "that these doctors were all churchmen, clerks, and well read in law, divine and human; that they were all tender and pitiful, and desired to proceed mildly, seeking neither vengeance nor corporal punishment, but solely wishing to enlighten her, and put her in the way of truth and of salvation; and that, as she was not sufficiently informed in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of a governor's playing such pitiful tricks, and imposing so grossly on a poor ignorant boy! It was a habit he had acquired. He wish'd to please everybody; and, having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... impossible to have told his mother that he had been with Kirsty Barclay, that he had run a race with her, and that she had left him alone at the foot of the Horn. That he could not be open with his mother, no one that knew her unreasoning and stormy temper would have wondered; but the pitiful boy, who did not like lying, actually congratulated himself that he had got through without telling a downright falsehood. It would not have bettered matters in the least had he disclosed to her the good ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... the reciprocal influence of the naval and merchant services. There was then nothing, in the economical conditions of the United States, to forbid a navy stronger than the Portuguese; yet the consul, in his pitiful appeal to the Portuguese Court, had to write: "My countrymen have been led into their present embarrassment by confiding in the friendship, power, and protection of her Most Faithful Majesty," ... ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Mr. Lascelles' plantation?" asked he, lifting his eyes up with an expression so pitiful that Dan could ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... of the sorrows of the children of the mines and mills in those dismal days, and it must be said for the great heart of England that its beat was still true. The coal- owners made the pitiful plea in extenuation of all the misery and indecency of the mines that without the labor of women and children the collieries must shut down, not only for lack of profit, but for the cogent reason that the flexible vertebra of childhood were especially adapted ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... man in America begins to compare with him," Francesca confessed sadly. "Isn't it pitiful that out of the millions of our own countrypeople we couldn't have found somebody that would do? What do you think now, Lord Ronald Macdonald, of these dangerous ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... touch of your old-time sarcasm in that remark," she said. "Yes, I am willing to continue the comedy. It seems the safest way to protect you—especially from General Marlanx. No one must ever know, Baldos; it would be absolutely pitiful. I am glad, oh, so glad, that you have known all the time. It relieves my ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... in a pitiful plight. I was weak from the effects of a fever, Gahra lame from the effects of an accident. My money was nearly all gone, my baggage had been lost by the upsetting of a canoe, and our worldly goods consisted of two sorry mules, our arms, the ragged clothes on our backs, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... his loss; for his beautiful schooner was pierced in the middle by a sharp rock, and she hung, shaken by the waves that broke over her decks and gurgled in the hold. The rigging was torn, the cabin washed away, and the shore strewn with her doors, planks, beams and trade goods. It was a pitiful sight to see the handsome ship bending over like a fallen warrior, while the company's old yacht had weathered the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... it not thus—not as you mean it. I knew not what I said. But it will indeed change all things for me if you do but come. Then I shall have some one to speak with—some one with whom to laugh at their pitiful Court mummery, their fiasco of dignity. You are not like these other beggarly Scots, my Lord ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... sordid, worn-out, again sat upon the throne, while the Great Man languished on a rock in the Atlantic. Fools that they had been, not to have hidden the little king of Rome as against this very dog! It was pitiful. He never saw a shower in June that he did not hail curses upon it. To have lost Waterloo for a bucketful of water! Thousand thunders! could he ever forget that terrible race back to Paris? Could he ever ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... the Greek Church as [Greek: Pantelee/mon], that is, the "all-pitiful;" and in Latin his name is spelled Pantaleymon and Pantaleemon. Hagiologists seem to have been puzzled, but the compiler of the Acta Sanctorum, for July 27, St. Pantaleon's Day in the Roman calendar (xxxiii. 397-426), ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... he's took up with that motto of his, he's settled down in the harness as steady as a ten-year-old horse. Now I notice if there's anything specially important to be done, Chicky's the one they pick out. There's something almost pitiful in the way he's been trying, when you recollect he has never had any raising, and has shifted for himself all his life. I don't really believe that it's to get the wheel that has made such a change in him ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... began to consume those mountains with their trees and creepers and little plants, as also with their birds and deer and beasts of prey and reptiles. Soon the summit of that mountain presented a distressing and pitiful appearance, Inhabited by animals of diverse kinds which began to utter cries of woe and pain, the summit soon became bereft of every living creature. That fire of mighty flames, having consumed everything without leaving ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the blind, who cannot read the face; pitiful that of the deaf who cannot follow the changes of the voice. And there are others also to be pitied; for there are some of an inert, uneloquent nature, who have been denied all the symbols of communication, who have neither a lively play of facial expression, nor speaking gestures, nor a responsive ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... book. It is not often that a reviewer has the chance of checking local colour with so little pains. And in the third place Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY informs me, on page 101, that his hero will "gaze one day upon rivers to which the Thames should seem little better than a pitiful rivulet." As Henry never gets further from his native Devon than London in the course of this novel I take it that this is a delicate allusion to the possibility of a sequel. I hope it is so, and that I shall hear of Henry in days to come, after a trip or two with RALEIGH or DRAKE, rebuilding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... Dick nodded Graham up beside him. At first bewilderment was all she betrayed, then her eyes focused first on Dick's face, then on Graham's, and, with recognition, her lips parted in a pitiful smile. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... forlornly out to sea and answered with a brief nod. Seemingly she had long since ceased to be tragic over her pitiful tragedy. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... was washing linen at the well-head, and Mme. Willemsens and the children sat in the summer-house, and there was not the faintest sound in those gardens gay with flowers. Unknown to Mme. Willemsens, all eyes grew pitiful at the sight of her, she was so good, so thoughtful, so dignified with those with whom she came ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... her mother heard her cries and moans—more pitiful, by far, than those wrung from her by bodily pain a year before; and, night after night, if her mother spoke to soothe, she proudly denied the existence of any pain but what was physical, and consequent upon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... was easier for men to find a place for themselves in the world than for women, and the army or the Church rarely failed to furnish some sort of career for all those who were denied the rights and privileges of the firstborn. The lot of the sister, however, was pitiful in the extreme (unless it happened that the older brother was kind and considerate), for if she were in the way she could be bundled off to a cloister, there to spend her days in solitude, or she could be married against ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Mary, and thinking about her as I walked home, I perceived that her ability to be quiet, to subdue herself, to resist the temptation for a whole evening of drawing attention to herself by telling us what she was enduring, was heroism, and that my contrary tendency was pitiful vanity. I perceived that such virtues as patience and self-denial—which, clad in russet dress, I had often passed by unnoticed when I had found them amongst the poor or the humble—were more precious and more ennobling to their possessor than poetic yearnings, or the power to ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... the whole night around his quarters. All this was done by the advice of his officers, who were anxious to get under cover, and who alleged it was absurd to suppose that Cortes would venture to attack them with so pitiful a handful of men, and that he only advanced from ostentation, or to induce them to come to an agreement. On returning to quarters, Narvaez publickly offered a reward of two thousand crowns to whoever should kill Cortes or Sandoval; and he stationed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... of household, the duties to parents, visitors, children, and the rest; it is part of the education of life to fulfil all these duties well, delightfully, brilliantly, joyously, enthusiastically; these things are not interruptions to life, they are life itself. There was a pitiful magazine article written the other day by some lady complaining that social duties, the having to see her friends, her cook, her gardener, her dress-maker, etc., prevented her from reading Herbert Spencer, and developing her small fragment of soul. Social duties, rightly done, are one ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... return again to that soul depends upon His mere sovereign volition. He has bound himself by no promise to do so. He has established no uniform law of operation, in the case. It is true that He is very pitiful and of tender mercy, and waits and bears long with the sinner; and it is also true, that He is terribly severe and just, when He thinks it proper to be so, and says to those who have despised His Spirit: "Because I have called and ye refused, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... a pretty little Miss Chanced to be walking by; She stopp'd, and looking pitiful, She begg'd me not ...
— Phebe, the Blackberry Girl - Uncle Thomas's Stories for Good Children • Anonymous
... for you to come along," said the Arkansan, and we went two and two, he and Gholson, Harry and I. We reached camp at sundown, and stopped to feed and rest our horses and to catch an hour's sleep. Gholson's fatigue was pitiful, but he ate like a wolf, slept, and awoke with but little fever. The Colonel kept him under his eye, forcing on him the honors of his own board, bed and bottle, and ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... his predecessors, or to tradition. In his hands, at least, it has ceased to be tragedy, but is lowered into "a family picture," in the modern signification of the word. The effect attempted to be produced by the poverty of Electra is pitiful in the extreme; the poet has betrayed his secret in the complacent display which she makes of her misery. All the preparations for the crowning act are marked by levity, and a want of internal conviction: ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Presently the drama, always pitiful, increased in intensity. The old leech who had been her stay and helper died, and left her to face the danger alone. A month later Basterga discovered the secret and henceforth held it over her. From this time ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... left to your female subjects except tobacco? Nothing, except embroidery, knitting, and sewing, pitiful resources, which are more and more restricted by that barbarous ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... slowly raised her head and looked at me long and earnestly. She was very beautiful, like the Virgin of Beltraffio in the National Gallery,—more beautiful than I had supposed possible, her deep, passionate eyes very tender and pitiful in their pleading, beseeching glance. I hardly think I was frightened, or even startled, but lay looking steadily at her as she stood in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... of Blood River Jack, he had seen no human being since the drive, and his frenzied desire for companionship would have been pitiful, ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... different. That was his salvation. He blurted out the whole pitiful story and threw himself on the mercy of Jesus. And what happened? That which always happens when men thus pray. "Immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him." And Peter, who had walked and had sunk, rose and walked again. And so ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... to you," said Naggeneen; "it was you that spoke to me. You called me, and here I am to the fore, though I don't belong to your pitiful little thribe, and I needn't come when you call, if I ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... fire. It was the moment when Abel Newt was stealing through his rooms, fastening doors and windows. Hope Wayne was pale and cold like a statue as she listened to the voice of Mrs. Simcoe, which had a wailing tone pitiful to hear. After a long silence she ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... A very paltry and pitiful intrigue at length settled the question between Townshend and Carteret. A marriage had been arranged between a niece, or so-called niece, of one of George's mistresses and the son of La Vrilliere, the French Secretary ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... on the depot platform of a tiny town farther down the line. He had been shabbier after three weeks in Johnny's camp, working on the airplane in hope of a free trip to the Coast. But his shabbiness now surpassed anything Johnny had known, because Bland had evidently made pitiful attempts to hide it. That, Johnny guessed, was because of ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... amused him. He had a passion for cruelty. I never knew it till I married him. I found out afterwards he had been the same even as a child. He loved torturing things." She paused, then added with a simplicity that was infinitely pitiful: "So you see, I had ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... had a brother that liked me." went on the pitiful little voice. "Tom Benson likes Charlie. He likes him an awful lot. And Charlie doesn't do nearly so many things as I do. I guess I oughtn't to tell, Tiger, but you and Tops wouldn't tell tales, so 'tisn't the same as tellin' father, or mother, or Auntie ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... scene had never before been witnessed in the Senate. Exclamations of mock surprise followed by fun-making questions and loud laughter added to the grotesque exhibition. It was so ludicrous as to become pitiful and painful. Although no particular harm was done to anybody, the Government for the moment ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was open and the doctor, coming out on his front porch to look at the sky before retiring, heard Zip howling somewhere across the street. He was crying in such a pitiful, frightened manner that the doctor knew he must be fast somewhere or hurt so he could not get home. Consequently he hurried across the street to see where his pet was, with the worried ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... you turned furniture remover? Are you proposing to pack me with the rest of our belongings?" she cried, lifting her chin about a quarter of an inch in feeble imitation of her old scornful tilt. It was very pitiful to see her do it, and Mr Carstairs' lip twitched again, and he turned and began talking to mother, leaving the coast clear for Will Dudley. He looked flushed, but his eyes were curiously ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I should play a very noble part in such a scheme as that. Dearly as I love you, Beatrice, I do not think I could consent to steal you away in such a pitiful and cowardly manner." ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... be led one day to the house where he had met with this sad mischance, and spoke to the master of the house, to whom he related his pitiful case, demanding, as was his right, that there should be granted to him such amends as his condition deserved, in order that ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... What a pitiful, what a sorry thing to have said that animals are machines bereft of understanding and feeling, which perform their operations always in the same way, which learn ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... his club fee—to buy a draught of Forgetfulness—I said, 'Brother, take!' Did brawl break out in your jollities—were knives drawn—a throat in danger—this right band struck down the uproar, crushed back the coward murder. If I did not join in your rogueries, it was because they were sneaking and pitiful. I came as your Patron, not as your Pal; I did not meddle with your secrets—did not touch your plunder. I owed you nothing. Offal that you are! to me you owed drink, and meat, and good fellowship. I gave you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The prudence of the old commander having been evidently overruled by his ignorant coadjutors, the infantry were put in motion, flanked on one side by the cavalry and on the other by the artillery. It was indeed a pitiful movement, for which they paid dearly. I despatched the Arrapahoes to out-flank and charge the cavalry of the enemy when a signal should be made; the Apaches slowly descended the hill in face of the infantry, upon which we opened a destructive fire ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... strange and pitiful in the hazy moonlight. It was badly tended, and most of the headstones were only of painted wood, warped and buckled by the weather. But in the dimness the rows of crosses and slabs seemed to extend into the far distance, and the moon gave them a cold, eerie whiteness ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... arrested at their homes and sent back as deserters, when they would produce a furlough written by Burnside on a leaf of his pocket memorandum-book, which, as they said, had been given by him after hearing a pitiful story which moved his sympathies. Such inventions were a kind of popular recognition of his well-known neglect of forms, as well as of his kind heart. There was an older story about him, to the effect that, when a lieutenant in the army, he ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... He, Samarc, would continue the search for his battery. As a rule Mowbray was the last to continue in the presence of a man who wanted him to go; and yet, he knew that Samarc hated the field pieces as much as he, and that he did not mean to live through the day. He hesitated. The final urging was pitiful—a sort of tumult ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... darned! It's not the stomach, it's the heart as wants nourishment with yon poor lad. He looketh that pitiful at you sometimes, my faith, I can hardly tell whether to laugh at his newings or cry at the lean face ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... up in wonder and slight concern, "how could I remember? Some letter that somebody had dropped, perhaps, in taking the rest out of the box. It could not matter—certainly not now. You would not bring my youthful misdeeds up against me, would you?" And he turned up a half-comical, half-pitiful face. ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... fainted three times at the heat caused by the throng of his admirers. So long as his fate hung in the balance, Walpole could not take up his pen without a compliment to the man, who claimed to have robbed him near Hyde Park. Yet a more pitiful rascal never showed the white feather. Not once was he known to take a purse with his own hand, the summit of his achievement being to hold the horses' heads while his accomplice spoke with the passengers. A poltroon ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... relations of different races to each other,—for instance, of the wolf to the goat, of the goat to man, of man to God, much less of God to man. The attribution of justice, equity, and love to the Supreme Being is pure anthropomorphism; and the adjectives just, merciful, pitiful, and the like, should be stricken from our litanies. God can be regarded as just, equitable, and good, only to another God. Now, God has no associate; consequently, he cannot experience social affections,—such ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... get something for nothing; no teacher can instruct others in anything. He can only awaken thought and arouse impulses. The law of life is harmony. An individual who wastes God's precious time in grumbling and fretting is the most pitiful object in the universe. Try to appreciate that you are part of the divine problem, regarding the conduct of which certain implacable laws have been formulated. To obey these laws means continued life, health, strength, power and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... into a cold, unfeelin' world where we got to either steal or starve to death? There wouldn't be one tenth as much stealin' and murderin' as there is if they didn't force us into it. Why, doggone it, I've seen some of the most cruel and pitiful sights you ever heard of up there at Sing Sing. Fellers leadin' a perfectly honest life suddenly chucked out into a world full of vice and iniquity and forced—absolutely forced,—into a life of crime. There they were, livin' a quiet, peaceful life, harmin' ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... long. He felt numb. He realized himself to be in a gulf of misunderstanding, from which he could not be extricated, even for the sake of Clemency. It seemed to him again that he must go away, but he remembered Gordon's pitiful plea to him to remain. Finally he went into his room, to find that Emma, in her absurd malice, had left only the coverlid on the bed. She had stripped it of the sheets and blankets. He lay down with his clothes on and ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... a sad time for Leo. He was growing thinner and thinner. His mane was rough and tangled because he had no heart to keep it smooth. And there were several white hairs in his beautiful whiskers. He was fast becoming melancholy; and the most pitiful beast in all the world is a melancholy lion. He had been hoping that something would happen to show that it was all a mistake; but it seemed as though the world was against ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... unromantic, it took some little time to convince them that there had been no choice in the matter, and that the large family had a right to their luxuries which was not to be gainsaid. They had not seen the pitiful emptiness of the Christmas table; they had not seen the chair set ready for the Christ Child. The girls realised as much and dealt gently with them, and in the outcome no one felt the poorer; for the welcome bestowed upon the surprise party was untinged by any shadow of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... little conversational notes, dated the 11th of April; "my spirits have been harassed. Mary will tell you about the state of the sink, etc. Do you know you plague me—a little—by not speaking more determinately to the landlord, of whom I have a mean opinion. He tires me by his pitiful way of doing everything. I like a man who will say yes ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... taker alike; and, what's more, does not attain it's object, as it only increases poverty. Fathers who don't want to work crowd round the charitable like gamblers round the gambling-table, hoping for gain, while the pitiful farthings that are flung them are a hundred times too little. Have you given away much in your life? Less than a rouble, if you try and think. Try to remember when last you gave away anything; it'll be two years ago, maybe four. You make an outcry and only ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... impossible, and to increase our troubles our stay in a warm climate had made us less capable of standing the exposure to cold and wet, and there were many cases of trench fever, trench foot, and some pneumonia, while the health of all was considerably impaired. One of the most pitiful sights of the war was to see 20 of our men crawling on hands and knees to the Aid Post—their feet so bad that they could ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... but I fear I have nothing to add to what has been said already," he replied, with smiling firmness. "Although in a pitiful minority, I shall have to stand or fall ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... down the candlestick on the altar step, walked distractedly to the end of the low vaulted room, then back to where she stood gazing at him with a pitiful ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... in a day, the scoundrel! And if you would have left the matter to me, Mr. Titmarsh, I would have had you reconciled completely to Mrs. Hoggarty; I would have removed all your difficulties; I would have lent you the pitiful ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Rick said, unperturbed. His sister, even more than Jan Miller, was an incurable romantic. If the ghost turned out to be something other than the pitiful shade of Captain Costin, she would be bitterly disappointed, ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... she ain't crazy. I 've seen that woman as sensible and as shrewd as any sane woman who ever drew breath. Then again, I 've seen her when I would n't get within fifty miles of her. Sometimes she 's pitiful to me; and then again I 've got to remember the fact that she 's a dangerous woman. Goodness only knows what would happen to a person who fell into her clutches when she 's got one of ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper |
