"Sentimental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... science are!" exclaimed Father Brown, "and how much more sentimental must American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs? Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes. That's a test from the circulation of the blood, discovered ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... pleasure I should enjoy, in making a sort of pilgrimage to that of the lovely, gentle, and virtuous Rose, better known by the name of the Sultana Valide: but the ladies out-voted me; and, after expending a vast deal of eloquence in vain endeavours to inspire them with a portion of my sentimental enthusiasm, I was reluctantly compelled to submit to the disappointment; it being impracticable to get admitted any where without the firman. I therefore made my bow, and returned to Terapia, to complete the necessary arrangements for our ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the reader can fill in the essentials of the argument from what has gone before. I want simply to suggest how widely this project of a League of Free Nations swings when once you have let it swing freely in your mind! And if you do not let it swing freely in your mind, it remains nothing—a sentimental gesture. ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... success I seek," he answered. "Women, as a rule, do not understand. You, for instance, Beatrice, are too sentimental. I am very practical. It is money that I want. I want money ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... exceedingly amusing, by reason of a certain simplicity and originality of character, which, however, did not prevent him from being a person of intelligence; and his eccentricities did not displease Madame Bonaparte. A sentimental scene took place when this excellent lady left the springs. Carrat wept, bemoaned himself, and expressed his lasting grief at not being able to see Madame Bonaparte daily, as he had been accustomed; and Madame Bonaparte was so kind-hearted ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... asks for a reason for striking up "A Portugueza," the new patriotic song. Before twenty-four hours had passed I was perfectly familiar with its rather plaintive than martial strains, suited, no doubt, to the sentimental character of the people. An American friend, who arrived a day or two after me, made acquaintance with "A Portugueza" even more immediately than I did. Soon after passing the frontier he fell into conversation with a Portuguese fellow traveler, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Sentimental travelers tell you that the Romans are a temperate people—they have never seen the people. They have never seen the delight that reigns in the heart of the plebs, when they learn that the vintage ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... everywhere where land is placed on the same property footing as other forms of capital. Though small farms are for some purposes still capable of yielding a large net as well as gross product, it is for the most part the legal, customary, and sentimental restrictions on free transfer of land that impede the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the face of a sentimental dream, the garb was the garb of royalty. Somebody's grandmother was on her way to a costume party. She wore the full court costume of the days of Queen Elizabeth I, complete with brocaded velvet gown, wide ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... difference, of course. You attach a sentimental value to her; but that doesn't affect her real value. I really can't allow you any more ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... telling a crowd of men tonight that I'm in love with her—perhaps not exactly telling them that, but giving them to understand it. Why don't I stroll down to the club and deny it? For the same reason that you don't openly denounce her! It's semi- or wholly-sentimental chivalry—rank stupidity, if you like to call it that, but it's national, I'm glad to say, and I'm as proud of it ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... embarrassed. The girl was obviously not indulging a sentimental vein. She felt what she frankly hinted at, and although he generally avoided imaginative talk, her remarks did not ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... sentimental thoughts and so Billy had unconsciously permitted his pony to drop into a lazy walk. There was no need for haste anyhow. No one knew yet that the bank had been robbed, or at least so Billy argued. He might, however, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Stanmore was now smarting. The very comparison of our own sorrows with those of others has a tendency to decrease their proportions and diminish their importance. How can I prate of my cut finger in presence of your broken leg? And how utterly ridiculous would have seemed Mr. Stanmore's sentimental sorrows to one of his own labourers keeping a wife and half-a-dozen children on eleven ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... more exquisitely out of place. In fact, I am not sure that ETHEL would keep her countenance so well as this girl, who is bending forward with parted lips, and that sweet, interested light in her eyes.... I am getting sentimental. Was Romeo ever "delineated"? Professor is summing me up—I may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... man was induced to sing a song which in the present mirthful state of the company ought to have been a humorous song, or a patriotic song, or a good, loud, inspiriting song, or anything, in short, but what it was—a slow, dull, sentimental song, about wasting gradually away in a sort of melancholy decay, on account of disappointed love, or some such trash, which was a false sentiment in itself, and certainly did not derive any additional tinge of truthfulness ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... master at a school in Sandbourne; and how, a year ago, she and her son had got to know Mrs. Pierston and her daughter on their visit to the island, 'to ascertain,' she added, more deliberately, 'not entirely for sentimental reasons, what had become of the man with whom I eloped in the first flush of my young womanhood, and only missed marrying by ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... sentimental nonsense!" muttered Burt, impatiently. "It's confoundedly cold, and they may ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... with a sentimental air, "there is a kind of man who, when he feels that he is in peril of falling in love, will snap his fingers or fling away his cigar (as the case may be) with a 'Pooh! there are other women in the ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... into the restaurant there was a faint murmur of delighted surprise from the tables they passed; and one stout, but sentimental baroness cried, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... something of a counterfeit, and underneath was still the faint echo of that wild heart-beat of her girlhood. Having learned the trick of beating and loving and suffering, the poor faithful heart persisted, although it lived on memories and carried on its sentimental operations mostly ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of that time unconsciously described themselves in a thousand different ways. They were, after all, only a less striking type of the sentimental Englishwomen who read L. E. L. and the earlier novels of Bulwer-Lytton. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a reign of sentiment and a prevalence of what was then called "delicacy." It was a die-away, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... books." He meant the library. I related this experience to the barber at the hotel, and he turned to the porter and said, "You make just such mistakes, porter." The porter replied, "Yes, I knows I makes sentimental mistakes." He supposed a sentimental mistake was one that was made in a sentence. Big words never stumble them. And yet, little by little they are gaining in the use of language, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various
... been entrapped—that impossibility of forgetting his sister's expostulation—that disgust at being conspicuous—that longing for an excuse for flying into a passion—that universal hatred of everything belonging to the Mosses. He could not give a sentimental reason, and rather than let it be conjectured, he adduced every pretext but the true one; professed to hate plays, especially tragedies, and scolded his sister for setting her heart on a French Jewess when there were ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... thought her wonderfully pretty. She had a charming gray eye and a good deal of yellow hair disposed in picturesque disorder; and though her features were meagre and her complexion faded, she gave one a sense of sentimental, artificial gracefulness. She was dressed in white muslin very much puffed and filled, but a trifle the worse for wear, relieved here and there by a pale blue ribbon. I used to flatter myself on guessing at ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... romantic, Bennie," sighed Miss Scobell. She was a confirmed reader of the more sentimental class of fiction, and this business-like treatment of love's young ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... oblivious to sarcasm just then. He was gazing at the daguerreotype in a sentimental sort of way, blowing the dust from the glass, and tilting it up and down so as to bring it ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... gathered the hint from Harriet's letter, which was very sentimental about her own loneliness and lack of opportunity, in contrast with Aurelia, who was seeing the world. That elegant beau, Sir Amyas, had just given a sample to tantalise their rusticity, and then had vanished; and here was that ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as absence of formal ceremony can make one. He's lying out there somewhere in the heart of the Hills he loved. . . . They were a sentimental pair." ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... concerned, the strange conjunction of purity and precaution in Richardson's heroine was a thing unnatural, and a theme for inextinguishable Homeric laughter. That Pamela, through all her trials, could really have cherished any affection for her unscrupulous admirer would seem to him a sentimental absurdity, and the unprecedented success of the book would sharpen his sense of its assailable side. Possibly, too, his acquaintance with Richardson, whom he knew personally, but with whom he could have had no kind of sympathy, disposed him against his work. In any case, the idea ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Before we harshly condemn, let us first bow to that rough honesty that will defend itself, if need be, with a blow. A refined girl would never put herself in a position requiring such drastic measures; but it is, I think, to these reckless young wretches, and a few silly, sentimental simpletons who permit themselves to be drawn into a mawkish correspondence with perfect strangers, that we really owe the continued existence of the stage-door "masher," who wishes to be mistaken for a member of the ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... it would be very hard," said Margaret; but Ethel continued, in a piteous tone, a little sentimental, "From hie haec hoc up to Alcaics and beta Thukididou we have gone on together, and I can't bear to give it up. I'm ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... sprinkling of rising juniors, literary barristers, and fairly prosperous attorneys. Perhaps the ancient aroma of the 'old law quarter'—Mesopotamia, us it is now disrespectfully termed—is still strong and pleasant enough to attract a few lawyers who cherish a sentimental fondness for the past. A survey of the Post Office Directory creates an impression that, compared with other neighborhoods, the district north and northeast of Bloomsbury Square still possesses more than an average number of legal residents; ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... impossibility, and if I did they would think me a lunatic or a snivelling, sentimental humbug. I believe that lots of my old friends would scarcely speak to me again. Why, putting aside the pleasures of sport, if the views you preach were to be accepted, what would become of keepers and beaters and huntsmen ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... themselves for their children's good; but there are very few pet dogs who would not be the better for a month or two spent elsewhere than in a lady's lap or roasting on a drawingroom hearthrug. Besides, to allege that children are better continually away from home is to give up the whole popular sentimental theory of the family; yet the dogs are kept ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... prettily painted plate, and this he filled with green and purple grapes, tucked a sentimental note underneath, and leaving it on her threshold, crept away as stealthily ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... legal, questions in a scientific spirit—but 'scientific' would mean not pure mathematics but pure empiricism. He was quite as far from Paine's abstract methods as from Burke's romantic methods. Both of them, according to him, were sophists: though one might prefer logical and the other sentimental sophistries. Dumont, when he published (1802) his versions of Bentham, insisted upon this point. Nothing, he says, was more opposed to the trenchant dogmatism of the abstract theorists about 'rights of man' and 'equality' than Bentham's thoroughly scientific procedure (Discours ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon! Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) It may be Prester John's balloon Or an old battered lantern hung aloft To light poor travellers to their distress." She then: "How ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... spite of piquet, and caught the new boy's eye, which was large and blue and soft, and very sad and sentimental, and looked as if he were thinking of his mammy, as I did constantly of mine during my first week at Brossard's, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... "'The Crossing' is a thoroughly interesting book, packed with exciting adventure and sentimental incident, yet faithful to historical fact both in detail and ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... turned out to be a soft-hearted and sentimental old lady who was completely won by her young companion's charm and unmistakable air of good breeding. After a short time, she either adopted her, or, on dying, left her ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... veils, under one of which I saw a young, sad, handsome face; it was the only thing in the establishment that was the least romantic or gloomy: and, for the sake of any reader of a sentimental turn, let us hope that the poor soul has been crossed in love, and that over some soul-stirring tragedy that black ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would have been taken of it. Voyages and travels were looked upon as a dull branch of fiction,—not nearly so amusing or improving as cockney excursions from one town of France to another in the neighborhood, described after the manner of Bachaumont and Chapelle: not sentimental journeys, by any means; eating, drinking, and sleeping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... interested. My latch-key opened the Lancasters' door, and I hurried to the parlor, where I heard my friend practising with great diligence. I went up to her, and she turned her head and kissed me solemnly. You need not smile; we are not sentimental girls, and are both much averse to indiscriminate kissing, though I have not the adroit habit of shying in which Kate is proficient. It would sometimes be impolite in any one else, but she ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... accustomed to conquest, was peevish in consequence. Not that Jeff was in the least rude. On the contrary, he was especially polite and charming to all of his sisters' friends, fetching and carrying for them, dancing with them, playing tennis with the athletic, talking sentimental nothings with the romantic, and gravely discussing the Einstein theory with the high-brows. He did everything that was required of him but fall in ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... Alexai Dmitritch," Paklin began, "you are upset, and for a very good reason. But have you forgotten in what times and in what country we are living? Amongst us a drowning man must himself create the straw to clutch at. Why be sentimental over it? One must look the devil straight in the face and not get ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... sprang from the seed of Saxon kings—who, firm in the belief that no young man was her equal in birth or behaviour, had insisted upon her declining into a spinsterhood which increased in refinement as it did in service. Sentimental persons held that she came by that manner from association with Art in her brother's studio. Others, of a more sardonic turn, said that her manner was that of one who continually smelled a bad smell, and that if she got it by looking at her brother's ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... slept on shore at their hide-house; and there, and at the tent in which the Fazio's crew lived, we had some singing almost every evening. The Italians sang a variety of songs,— barcarollas, provincial airs, &c.; in several of which I recognized parts of our favorite operas and sentimental songs. They often joined in a song, taking the different parts, which produced a fine effect, as many of them had good voices, and all sang with spirit. One young man, in particular, had a falsetto as clear ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... sentimental; are you, Abbie?" And at this gravely put question Abbie's laugh rang ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... then bearing this old music-box, and Amelia gave orders that it should be placed in the chamber aforesaid, Dobbin was quite elated. "I'm glad you've kept it," he said in a very sentimental manner. "I was afraid you ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to a collection of the Histories and Novels, published in 1696, 'The Life of Mrs. Behn written by one of the Fair Sex', a frequently reprinted (and even expanded) compilation crowded with romantic incidents that savour all too strongly of the Italian novella, with sentimental epistolography and details which can but be accepted cautiously and in part. On the other there have recently appeared two revolutionary essays by Dr. Ernest Bernbaum of Harvard, 'Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko', first printed in Kittredge Anniversary Papers, 1913; and— what is even more particularly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the struggle, No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you terrible year, Not you as some pale poetling seated at a desk lisping cadenzas piano, But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying rifle on your shoulder, With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands, with ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Slaughter-house Quartette, auntie, because whenever they are sober enough to walk without police assistance, they wander through the streets slaughtering the peace and serenity of the quiet town with their rendition of all the late, disgraceful sentimental ditties. They are in many ways striking characters. I do not wholly misunderstand their attraction for romantic Carol. They are something like the troubadours of old—only ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... influence is rather a motive than a source; we may call it, for want of a better word, the sentimental or the altruistic motive—the moral motive; the forces behind it being mainly of a religious or moral origin, philanthropists, students of ethics, and recently, to a great extent, the women and the women's clubs. The activity of these great forces may be clearly traced ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... not to twine your arms about one another in the corridors and on the stairs; also, not to kiss one another tenderly if you separate for a few moments. Love your friends dearly; but be sensible, not sentimental. ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... me first take a small sentimental disadvantage. We have become more parasitic by far than any other nation. To eat we have to buy with our manufactures an overwhelming proportion of our vital foods. The blood in our veins is sucked from foreign bodies, in return for the clothing we give them—not a very self-respecting thought. ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... found a phrase by which to describe her, a phrase assuredly contemptible, which she had got, I know not whence, upon her lips, invented by I know not what confused and mysterious travail of soul. She said: "That woman is a demoniac." This phrase, culled by that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to me irresistibly comic. I myself, never called her now anything else, but "the demoniac," exercising a singular pleasure in pronouncing aloud this ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of you—and damn it, if you don't cash in on it now, next thing you know you'll be wonderin' where the time's gone, anyway. No sense in robbin' you of the best months of your life, just because you hadn't sense enough to rob yourselves of it—is there? Oh, I suppose I'm a kind of a sentimental cuss, but—must be I like the feelin' of it." He jerked his head toward Henry. "This is April. Take her off somewhere—Italy? South of France?—'till next August. Then you report back here, all fixed and ready to eat crow. Sound ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... latter. At a great supper t'other night at Lord Hertford's, if she was not the best-humoured creature in the world, I should have made her angry: she said in a very vulgar accent, if she drank any more, she should be muckibus. "Lord!" said Lady Mary Coke, "what is that?"-"Oh! it is Irish for sentimental." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... a very high opinion, though in one or two parts he was excellent, and in the majority of the tragical ones he assumed, better than his contemporaries, my father, Charles Young, and Charles Kean. He was disqualified for sentimental tragedy by his appearance, and he was without comic power of any kind. Parts of his Macbeth, Lear, Othello, and King John, were powerful and striking, but his want of musical ear made his delivery of Shakespeare's blank-verse defective, and painful ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... of philanthropists was first directed to the ignorant condition of the freedmen in the South, in nine cases out of ten the practical effort to do something for their improvement was controlled by clergymen, and was largely influenced by sentimental considerations. The chief object seemed to be to grow a great crop of negro preachers, lawyers and doctors. The result was so disheartening that, fifteen years after the war was over, there were grave doubts whether the coloured race in the South was not lapsing into a barbarism worse than that ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... in her estimation than all the gifts of mind and soul which had been lavished upon Rachael Levine, and she was the first to desert her when the final step was taken. But on this evening there was no barrier, and she talked of her future with the man she was to marry. She was happy and somewhat sentimental. Rachael sighed and set her lips. All her girlhood friends were either married or about to be—except Christiana, who had not a care in her little world. Why were sorrow and disgrace for her alone? What have I done, she thought, that I seem to be accursed? I have wronged no one, and I am ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... "You are getting sentimental, Vingo," and an expression of thought stole over Harry's features, and he remained silent, for he could not bring himself to disclose even to Vingo, his knowledge of the mystery in regard to the fair creature who called him brother. He could ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... by a nominal equality of rights in Territories where, in a long contest for supremacy, they were sure to be outnumbered, outvoted, and finally excluded by organic enactment. The political agitation and the sentimental feeling on this question were therefore exposed on both sides,—the North frankly confessing that they did not desire a Congressional restriction against slavery, and the South as frankly conceding that the demand ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... before both for physical and sentimental reasons, this last experience quite demoralized Miss Dwyer, and she sat down and cried. Now, a few tears, regarded from a practical, middle-aged point of view, would not appear to have greatly complicated the situation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the drawing-room lighted like this; he does not believe in shadowy half light—calls it sentimental bosh," ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk that would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practical jokes as kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakespeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... time she would appear to have given him sufficient clothing to equip the entire family, and when in 1832 Clare made his venture as a cottage farmer, his thoughtful friend gave him L10 with which to buy a cow, stipulating only (for the kind-hearted little woman must be sentimental) that it should be christened "May." After that, she strove hard to obtain for one of his boys admission to Christ's Hospital, and in conjunction with Mr. Taylor discharged a heavy account sent in ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... conceive a library to be complete without it. And could one exclude Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, the masterpiece of the greatest physicist that the world has ever seen? The law of gravity ought to have, and does have, a powerful sentimental interest ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... never know when they'll have to pack up and leave, and it's a constant strain on the nerves, I tell you. There seems to be a well-organized movement to interfere with the personal liberty of criminals, Mr. Poppup. These here sentimental reformers take it upon themselves to say whether a feller shall stay in prison or not. First, they come up there and pick out some poor helpless feller and say 'it's a crime to keep a good-lookin', intelligent boy like you in prison, so we're going to get you out on parole and make ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... a smile, "what d'ye think of the latest? How does the Giant Irish Wolf strike you, as an addition to the domestic fireside? Sweet thing, ain't he? Couldn't you make him do some sentimental stunts with the Java ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... back into the cloak-room for his coat and hat, and sighed softly to himself. It was the end of the one sentimental episode of his life! ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had heard the story before, but it had been forgotten. A worldly mind like his is not apt to burden itself with the sentimental details of an antenuptial romance of the woman whom his half-brother ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... profound as Cervantes, yet all masters in their several ways. What English-speaking man, except Boswell, could have arrived at Weimar, as Goethe did, in that absurd Werthermontirung? And where, out of Germany, could he have found a reigning Grand Duke to put his whole court into the same sentimental livery of blue and yellow, leather breeches, boots, and all, excepting only Herder, and that not on account of his clerical profession, but of his age? To be sure, it might be asked also where else in ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... foolhardiness to be arrogant to a cook. Dressmakers and milliners are not humbly seeking for patronage; theirs is the assured position of people who can give the world what the world asks; and as for saleswomen, a class upon whom much sentimental sympathy is lavished year by year, their heart-whole superciliousness to the poor shopper, especially if she chance to be a housewife striving nervously to make a few dollars cover her family needs, is wantonly and detestably unkind. It is not with us as it was in the England of Lamb's ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... comparison a marriage in neutral tint. There is much to be said for that extreme Catholic theory which would make marriage not merely lifelong but eternal. Certainly Mr. Britling would have been a finer if not a happier creature if his sentimental existence could have died with his first wife or continued only in his love for their son. He had married in the glow of youth, he had had two years of clean and simple loving, helping, quarrelling and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... getting rather sentimental, and with that ease which is only acquired in the best society, Pauline turned it to other topics, and soon asked me to allow her to go upstairs. I would have gladly spent the whole day with her, for I have never met a woman whose manners were so distinguished ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of Kincairney, but you are wrong. You have a very warm corner in my memory, and in sign thereof accept my box." And the said minister, trudging home that evening, and being met at a certain turn of the road by his wife—sentimental at fifty, you see, after a quarter of a century's toiling and preaching—would enlarge on Doctor Dowbiggin's cordiality, and the marked courtesy of the clerk, and when they were alone in the manse, his wife would kiss him—incredible to our cynic—and say, "You see, Tom, more people ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... itself, I have but the vaguest recollection, for the programmes are the least interesting part of these performances. The first item, I remember, was a dreadful sentimental song by Private Higgs which accident converted from comparative failure into howling success. Just as he was rendering the most affecting passage, Private Higgs stepped back too far, the cart—of the two-wheeled variety—overbalanced, and ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... her intuitiveness, her magnetism, her fascination, all the qualities in fact which my poetical fancy had assigned to her, they had no existence in reality. She was the most commonplace person I had ever encountered, and I had been but a sentimental lunatic. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... hands with the captain and mates, and wished us a good voyage and speedy return. I watched the boat as it proceeded towards the pilot-cutter with a curious feeling of interest. I was aroused by Gerard, who asked me why I was so sentimental. He saw nothing in a pilot-boat leaving the ship. The last I saw of our native land were the lofty cliffs of Wales. I came on deck early in the morning; and, as I looked out aft, they appeared receding fast on the larboard-quarter, across the bright blue sea. Turning round, my somewhat bewildered ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... alone with Royston did she betray herself. It was sad to see how completely the stronger and worse nature had absorbed the weaker and better one till all power of volition and free agency vanished, and even individuality was lost. She was not sentimental or demonstrative in his presence (on the contrary, at such times, that loveliest face was very apt to put on the delicious mine mutine, which made it perfectly irresistible), but the idea seemed never to enter her mind that it would be possible to ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... for a moment believe that it would be a lasting grief. He knew that sort of girl, he reflected, out of his vast experience of twenty-two. They were sentimental, but they loved and forgot easily. He hoped she would forget him; but even with that, there was a vague resentment that she should ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... singular mixture of sentimental toryism with practical democracy. A romantic glamour was thrown over the fortunes of the exiled Stuarts, and to have been "out" in '45 with the Young Pretender was a popular thing in parts of Scotland. To this purely ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... contented. All I've known. But they may have had bolshevikish notions recently, cud strikes, perhaps. Hence the accent on "contented cows," to reassure us that there is no "Red" propaganda in the milk. Then, there is the parrot; what a long time it takes to teach him to say "Gear-ardelly." And that sentimental touch, "If ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... Poor people have no time to be sentimental. Besides, I don't believe it will grow with them; it is a greenhouse flower, and used ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... degrees a singular change came over her. Rich, famous, and attractive, she began to experience a sentimental and romantic interest in that episode. Once, when reproached by her friends for her indifference to her admirers, she had half laughingly replied that she had once found her "ideal," but never would again. Yet the jest had ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... current beliefs, the former is often the man of action; he sees at a flash to the heart of the matter, and gets things done. His thought, his activity, is vivid; and his words are likely to be so as well. The idealist, if he be broadminded, and not merely sentimental, is indeed likely to be the practical man. And the type of mind that is made manifest to us by these great non-Aryan languages and their forms, is the former. Of course idealism in its decadence becomes negative, inactive, self-consuming and ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... act as I think proper, and without any sentimental advice from you," he declared with a mock bow, but straightening himself instantly when at the door was heard a fumbling, and the gray-bearded man in blue spectacles, his thin white hand groping before him, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... it ran, "as I explained in my telegram, my husband became suddenly ill"—("if she had only put that in the telegram," he groaned)—"and was ordered to Homburg. Of course it was impossible to leave him in this crisis, both for practical and sentimental reasons. You yourself, darling, would not like me to have aggravated his illness by my flight just at this moment, and thus possibly have his death on my conscience." ("Darling, you are always right," he said, kissing the letter.) "Let us ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... relationship to the counterpoint of the low countries. At the time of the full development of the madrigal the serious and humorous elements which dwelt together in the frottola separated completely. The purely sentimental and idealistic frottola became the madrigal; the clearly humorous frottola became the villanelle. When these two clearly differentiated species were firmly established, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... smile assured Mr. Blanchard that he was all wrong. "He was much in our family as a boy. Very sentimental if approached from the right angle! Very! And I think this is a matter to be handled wholly by Stewart's closest friends. Sentiment has led him off on a wrong slant. He'll only fight harder if he's tackled by a man like you, Despeaux. That's ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... sentimental thought. If he only had a couple of blankets, he mused, he could camp out here in Roger's back yard all night. Surely no harm could come to the girl while he kept watch beneath her casement! The idea was just fantastic enough to appeal to him. Then, as he ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... and sentimental character this tale has a fine humour of its own. And there is, in particular, one sketch that is steeped in humour. This is the "Story of the Silver Clasp." Three casual labourers break into an old factory ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... specially, an amiable, affectionate Woman, rather one sentimental than of intellect. Influenced by like suit, if an Ace, she is admired of Many; if a King, she is wedded, betrothed, or beloved by one in especial. By a Knave of like suit, she is beloved by a Male Relative in especial, ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... know that two devoted lovers have ere now found favour with the people of France—a curious remnant of sentimentalism, I suppose—and the popular Citizen-Deputy knows better than anyone else on earth, how to play upon the sentimental feelings of the populace. Now, in the case of a penal offence, mark where the difference would be! The woman Juliette Marny, arraigned for wantonness, for an offence against public morals; the burnt correspondence, admitted to be the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... waiting to be stirred and charmed, and will be very thankful to the singer who shall do it for them. Studied obscurity of thought and language, verbal finicalities and conceits, and mere ingenuities of any kind, rhythmic, mental or sentimental, will not meet the occasion: that sort of thing is overdone already. It is the "swollen imposthume" of refinement, an excrescence on culture, a penalty of which we have suffered enough. The Heliconian streams which are not deep, but only dark, must run dry if they cannot run ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... her soul—I feared it might be this way some night or other: she was a stout woman, was our dear, deceased Bridget—and, though a good kind soul, lived much on meat and beer: ah well, ah well!" And he concealed his sentimental hypocrisy in ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... taken, as she said, before he was old enough even to estimate at its due value the prosperous and happy career he had before him. He tried Laura. Laura, though sincerely sorry for poor little Peter's death, was very sentimental; told Valentine, to his surprise, that it was mainly on her account they had wintered on the Continent, and with downcast eyes and mysterious confusion that made him tremble, at first utterly declined ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... but it is not a good investment. You owe something to young Rollins. Your grateful feeling does you credit. But don't overwork it. Send him three or four hundred, if you like. You'll never hear from it again, except in the letter of thanks. But for Heaven's sake don't be sentimental. Religion is not a matter of sentiment; it's a matter ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... But now he could almost have found it in himself to pity the somewhat singular man—Italian in fact, English in manner, Oriental in looks,—if so were he had built up any little practical dream on the fair widow's acceptance of him. To the possibility of a sentimental dream Gerald did not ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... some of the character drawing, and one or two of the sentimental bits were—actable," Mr. Vandeford ventured, determined to save as much of the hair and hide of Miss Adair's child as possible, enough at least to help her to recognize and ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... instantly that the old fellow was of a romantic turn, from this rodomontade to his lady; nor was she a whit less so; nor was Dorothea less sentimental than her mamma. She knew everything regarding the literature of Albion, as she was pleased to call it; and asked me news of all the famous writers there. I told her that Miss Edgeworth was one of the loveliest young beauties at our court; I described to her Lady Morgan, herself ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Dreadful! If it was Max, who is sentimental, then no, the money is nothing. But all the others—why, you see, they are men, and they know which side to butter their bread. Men are like cats, my dear, they don't like their bread without butter. Why should they? Nor do I, nor ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... much about him as I learned afterwards, I should have looked at him with more interest. He had one of those imaginative natures, tinged by constitutional melancholy and saddened by ill health, which belong to a certain class of poets and sentimental writers, of which Pascal is a good example, and Cowper another. The world must have seemed very cruel to him. I remember that when he was a candidate for the Assembly, one of the popular cries, as reported by the ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... storm, crowded the theaters with fashionable audiences, and formed one of the leading literary topics of the year. Goldsmith's emulation was roused by its success. The comedy was in what he considered the legitimate line, totally different from the sentimental school; it presented pictures of real life, delineations of character and touches of humor, in which he felt himself calculated to excel. The consequence was that in the course of this year (1766), he commenced a comedy of the same class, to be entitled the Good Natured Man, at which ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... himself to a solemn mission, he is lifted far above the ordinary plane, can dispense with sentimental conventionalities, and must learn to regard all human relations as merely means to an end. Want of money has palsied many an arm lifted to advance the good of the Church; and zeal without funds, accomplishes as little ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... going to take a sentimental view of the matter, I have nothing to say. And Willie is a fine fellow; I don't object to Willie, or the new wife either—quite the contrary. But of the two, people generally would prefer to cultivate the acquaintance of Mrs Roxbury and ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... sought eagerly his conversation, which was always instructive and clever, when it was not inspired by a paltry hate, which, alas! happened only too often. But there was never any frank intimacy between as. Our temperaments would not suffer it. He called me a sentimental idealist, and he was right; I called him a vain man, perfidious and crafty, and I also ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... did his best to throw a halo of romance around the highwayman's career. Not satisfied with this, Bulwer next claimed the sympathies of his readers for Eugene Aram, and exalted a very common type of murderer into a nobly minded and highly sentimental scholar. Crime and criminals became the favourite theme of a multitude of novelists of a lower class. They even formed the central interest of the 'Oliver Twist' of Charles Dickens, whose Fagin and his pupil "the Artful Dodger," Bill Sykes and Nancy, were ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... e'e, and he would, as he points his sentences with a movement of his thin white forefinger, when this is not monopolised with the almost incessant cigarette. There is a faint suggestion of a hair-brained sentimental trace on his countenance, but controlled, after all, by good Scotch sense and shrewdness. In conversation he is very animated, and likes to ask questions. A favourite and characteristic attitude with him was to put ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... see her," he answered. "It's probably a woman reporter. They're in our very bread trough. I tell you," he went on to Matt, "there are claims upon you as a citizen, as a social factor, which annul all your sentimental obligations to B as a brother. God bless my soul! Isn't C a brother, too, and all the rest of the alphabet? If A robs the other letters, then let B take a lesson from the wholesome fact that A's little game has ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... a good deal as 'tis. Let's take this end of the room for a stage." And Alan stretched himself out on the floor, prepared to die heroically, and began a sentimental speech of farewell to his distant home ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... only, who can sympathise with the earnest desires of well-disposed and industrious young persons striving after usefulness, honourable independence, and individual and mutual improvement, amidst real, and not imaginary, discouragements, and substantial, not sentimental, difficulties. I proceed at once to ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... enriched, the enrichments must necessarily come from such sources. Moreover it is to be remembered that there is another vice of style to be shunned in liturgical composition quite as carefully as sentimentality, namely, jejuneness. We cannot escape being sentimental simply by being dull. Feeling must not be denied its place in prayer for fear that it may not prove itself a duly chastened feeling. There ought to be a heart of fire underneath the calm surface of every formulary of worship. Flame and smoke are out of place; but a ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... background the artiste had a husband. Little the audience suspected the passion that devoured their grotesque comedian while he cut his capers and turned love to ridicule; little they divined the pathos of a situation which condemned him behind the scenes to whisper the most sentimental assurances of devotion when disfigured by a flaming wig and a nose that was daubed vermilion! How nearly it has been said, One half of the world does not know ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... 1914 estimated the average cost of rearing a boy to the age of sixteen was then $1,325. It must average at least $1,500 now. Well, fellows, that is what you cost; are you worth it? I am talking of actual, not sentimental, values. Father and mother wouldn't take a million dollars for any one of you, I suppose, but that does not mean you are worth it. An investment of $1,500 ordinarily is expected to yield at least six per cent. a ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... least. When you condescend to these antics you force me to despise you. How can a woman who behaves like a spoiled child and talks like a sentimental novel have the audacity to dream of being a companion for a man of any sort of sense or character? (She gives an inarticulate cry and throws herself sobbing on his breast.) Come, don't cry, my dear Julia: you don't look half so beautiful as when you're happy; and ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... surly after the ladies had floated away from the scene, and he drank his liquor doggedly. It was his fancy, I suppose, to revive certain sentimental relations which had, it may be, once existed between him and Miss Lake; and he was a person of that combative temperament that magnifies an object in proportion as ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... decidedly vulgar comparison, and you're not in a spiritual mood at all," he said. "You've snubbed me two or three times to-night, when I've tried to be sentimental. What's amiss with you?" and he bent his eyes, full of a saucy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... we can eat in half a dozen years, and letting you tear your hands shelling it." He stooped and kissed one of her slender hands. She withdrew it quickly; there had never been even a touch of the sentimental between them. ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... out that letters of proposal should be carefully timed to arrive in the evening, that being the sentimental time of the day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... to her brother and put in some rhymes, a fashion quite affected then, for many of the young ladies wrote sentimental and would-be satiric verses. Hannah Griffiths, who was cousin to Deborah Logan, had satirized the famous Mischianza, and there were songs for various occasions such as ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... well in its place, and doubtless does credit to the sentimental qualities of the speaker. But it is not evidence. It is an unsupported statement, part of which is admittedly conjecture. Allowing the alleged facts to be true, are we to hold a citizen of Dr. Surtaine's standing and repute ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the town folks are not right, but Helen Pendennis was a country-bred woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told her a different story to that page which is read in cities. Like most soft and sentimental women, matchmaking, in general, formed a great part of her thoughts, and I daresay she had begun to speculate about her son's falling in love and marrying long before the subject had ever entered into the brains of the young gentleman. It pleased her (with that ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of humor in ridiculing the foibles of their own sex, as Miss Carlotta Perry seeing the danger of "higher education," and Helen Gray Cone laughing over the exaggerated ravings and moanings of a stage-struck girl, or the very one-sided sermon of a sentimental goose. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... slowly folding the advertisement sheet of the Times, "is only what has been foreseen for a long time. The world has been degenerating into a maudlin state of sentiment for some years. The East End began it; a thousand sentimental charities have fostered the movement. Now, I am a plain man—a City man, Tony, to the tips of my toes." And he stuck out a large square-toed foot and looked contemplatively at it. "Half of your precious charities—the societies ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... unconsciously; but they are pleased by it finally, and seem to enjoy being surrounded, as it were, by a circle of young incense-bearers, and they seem to see no harm in, to say the least, passively permitting this excessive, sentimental, and unnatural admiration. No harm is done? But harm is done, and that of the most insidious character. There is a time in the life of a majority of girls and boys when the half-conscious and just awakening spirit is, as it were, casting around in every ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the Special Messenger thoughtfully. "I like men.... A man—the right one—could easily make me love him. And I am afraid there are more than one 'right one.' I have often been on the sentimental border.... But they died, or went away—or I did.... The trouble with me is, as you say, that I am emotional, and very, very tender-hearted.... It is sometimes difficult to be loyal—to care for duty—to care ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... her head. "I'm not a sentimental mother," she observed. "You won't punish me in that way. I object ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... imperceptibly, the gist of the songs changed to the sentimental, and before very long the heat and fatigue gradually overcame the men, and songs ceased altogether. As a general rule, after two o'clock the mental attitude of the troops might be described ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... that there was a very small attendance at the "cave" that night, and we were all more sociable and friendly because the company was select. The songs were chiefly of the sentimental class; such ditties were much in vogue at the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Athos had said respecting Mme. Bonacieux recurred to the mind of the young man. Although d'Artagnan was not of a very sentimental character, the mercer's pretty wife had made a real impression upon his heart. As he said, he was ready to go to the end of the world to seek her; but the world, being round, has many ends, so that he did not know which way to turn. Meantime, he was going to try to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... paddle back," I replied. "It would be a pity to break up our party immediately. I don't want to be sentimental, or anything of that sort, but you chaps will agree that we have had some very jolly times together in the past, and if we are all going to take out our naturalisation papers in the Atkins family, it is just ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... sleep at rest poor Paul and his devoted Virginia," said I, with a sigh; for I was beginning to feel sentimental. ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... sacristan is the hemp-dresser gifted solely with the desire of frightening; he loves to make people laugh; he is sarcastic and sentimental at need, when love and marriage are to be sung. It is he who collects and keeps stored in his memory the oldest songs, and who transmits them to posterity. And so it is he who acts at weddings the part we shall see him play at the presentation of ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... raised her rosy face and said, "No—better die than speak untruths—I was rather in love with our pastor who confirmed me. He was thin and pale with long hair, much longer than yours. And he spoke very beautifully and powerfully—I felt sentimental when I thought of him. But I soon got to know his wife, who was as pointed and hard as a knitting needle, and his children, whose number I never could count exactly, and my youthful feelings received a severe chill." She laughed, and ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Eighteenth Century Essays might be regarded as a protest against the necessity and the submission. It proves that 'tis possible to be eloquent without adjectives and elegant without affectation; that to be brilliant you need not necessarily be extravagant and conceited; that without being maudlin and sentimental it is not beyond mortal capacity to be pathetic; and that once upon a time a writer could prove himself a humourist without feeling it incumbent upon him to ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... We do not find in his piano-forte pieces any of that subtile soul-searching force which penetrates to the deepest roots of thought and feeling. Sundry musical cynics were wont to crush Gottschalk's individuality into the coffin of a single epigram. "A musical bonbon to tickle the palates of sentimental women." But this falls as far short of justice as the enthusiasm of many of his admirers overreaches it. The easy and genial temperament of the man, his ability to seize the things of life on their bright side, and a naive indolence ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... sport page are the favorite newspaper reading of the Muscular. He does not take to sentimental stories so much as the Alimentive, nor to adventure so much as the Thoracic but sticks to ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... governments, most especially in those which care little for literature in general, of considering some professions of respect for it necessary to their own characters. Andrea Barrofaldi had been inducted into his present office without even the sentimental profession of never having asked for it. The situation had been given to him by the Fossombrone of his day, without a word having been said in the journals of Tuscany of his doubts about accepting ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... this period is the sleeping Ariadne of the Vatican. This represents a woman reclining in a studied sentimental attitude, her arms thrown about her head, her body swathed in its protecting drapery. To the same period also belongs almost the last notable work of Greek art, the degenerate and sensuous conception of the Venus de Medici. In this statue the goddess stands as if rising from the sea, her ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... uncle!" she exclaimed; and Miss Osla, behind the teapot, began to sniff preparatory to a sentimental effusion, which was fortunately checked by Yaspard exclaiming, "Then that makes an end of our ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... particularly unfortunate that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had no co-religionists except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they had more conflict than community of economic and sentimental interest. On the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsible religious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroes everywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired by consistent self-control ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... letters from strangers who had read my poems. But they were mostly letters from cranks ... or from girls very, very young and sentimental, or on the verge of old-maidhood, who were casting about for some escape from the narrow daily life ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Fayette's own marriage had been not at all delicious and not even good. "Gratitude in the majority of men is simply a strong and secret wish to receive still greater benefits." Terrifying this must have been to a sentimental and exalted bosom, and exclusive of all hope until the little word "majority" was observed, a loophole offered for scared ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse |
