"Comfortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by Suez is made in the Peninsular and Oriental line of steamers. The passage is proverbially comfortless,—through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, across the Bay of Bengal, through the Straits of Malacca, and up the Chinese coast, under a tropical sun. Bayard Taylor thus describes the trip ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and I went to the theater to rehearse "Romeo and Juliet." In the evening the house was very fair, considering how much the hot weather is against us; but of all the comfortless people to act to, commend me to an Edinburgh audience. Their undemonstrativeness, too, is something more than mere critical difficulty to be pleased; there is a want of kindliness in the cold, discourteous ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon the reader's mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,—such is the comfortless doctrine of the book. The apples are the apples of Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no virtue anywhere, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, there ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... cold; by "hard" is meant that no change can be expected till it dies naturally away. Another child is dead of the measles. Mr. Grindrod and I engaged in reading together "The Refugee." No fish to be seen. The day has been very cold and comfortless, very unfavourable for the poor ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... right way. For a time, during the first ecstasy of grief at her loss, she still sustained him. After a while, he tells us, his mind, which was endeavoring to heal itself, sought for comfort in the mode which other comfortless ones had accepted for their consolation. He read Boethius on the 'Consolations of Philosophy,' and the words of comfort in Cicero's 'Treatise on Friendship.' By these he was led to further studies of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... altogether. He went farther up towards the higher mountains, in rather a slanting direction, but not immediately into their darkest recesses, and after a walk of about two miles more, he stopped at the scattered turf walls of what must once have been a cold, damp, and most comfortless cabin. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... crushed through Cigarette's tight-pressed, bright-red lips, with an irony sadder than tears. She was sitting on the edge of a grabat, hard as wood, comfortless as a truss of straw, and looking down the long hospital room, with its endless rows of beds and its hot sun shining blindingly on its glaring, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of terrible agony God did not leave the widow utterly comfortless, for even in the first keen glance at her dead husband she had noted the Bethel-Flag, which he had shown to her with such pride on his last holiday. Afterwards she found in his pocket the Testament which she had given to him that year, and thus was reminded that the parting ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... between those days when she lived happy and envied in that beautiful Chateau de Sairmeuse, of which she believed herself the mistress, and at the present time, when she found herself lying in the comfortless room of a miserable country inn, attended by an old woman whom she did not know, and with no other protection than that of an old soldier—a deserter, whose life was in constant danger—and that of her ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... and shelterless, How little cheer in health we know! When wounds and illness lay us low, How comfortless our sore distress! ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... good taste—except for ladies—to make a display of wealth upon the person. In those days, however, the reverse was the case. The knights and barons lived in the rudest stone castles, dark and frowning without, and meagerly furnished and comfortless within, while all the means of display which the owners possessed were lavished in arming and decorating themselves and their horses magnificently for the ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... One is her father's daughter, and one hot To bear her mother's part. I blame thee not.... Yet think not I am happy, child; nor flown With pride now, in the deeds my hand hath done.... [Seeing ELECTRA unsympathetic, she checks herself. But thou art all untended, comfortless Of body and wild of raiment; and thy stress Of travail scarce yet ended!... Woe is me! 'Tis all as I have willed it. Bitterly I wrought against him, to the last blind deep Of ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... the usual sense. What are you to live upon? What would you do with your children? You would not wish to see your wife distressed and comfortless." ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... focus. This hearth was made sometimes of stone or brick, and sometimes of bronze. The smoke escaped above, through openings in the roof. This would seem, according to the ideas of the present day, a very comfortless arrangement; but it must be remembered that the climate in those countries was mild, and there was accordingly but little occasion for fire; and then, besides, such were the habits of the people at this period of the world, that ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... stay a couple of nights in Rouen, he cordially invited him to spend that time at his house,—but the invitation had been gratefully yet firmly refused, much to the Archbishop's amazement. This amazement increased considerably when he learned that the dingy, comfortless, little Hotel Poitiers had been selected by the Cardinal as his temporary lodging,—and it was not without a pious murmur concerning "the pride which apes humility" that he betook himself to that ancient and despised hostelry, which had nothing ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... a comfortless meal, for the cook, terrified lest he and his galley should be washed overboard together, had not furnished a very appetising spread; while the wild movements of the vessel, the harsh and dismal creaking of ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... dog? He had left her! he was nowhere near her! She tried to call him, but the storm choked every sound in her very throat. He would never have left her to save himself! He who makes the dogs must be at least as faithful as they! So she was not left comfortless! ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... be pleased,'" she said; "'the old lady and gentleman will not object, I think; you will escape from a disorderly, comfortless home into a wealthy, respectable one; and you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... surprise: for my breakfast was set on a narrow corner of the kitchen table (and had turned cold); and the whole house was in an amazing state of dust and litter and unseasonable confusion—the rugs lifted, the tables and chairs awry, the maids wielding brooms with utmost vigour: a comfortless prospect, indeed, but not foreign to my sister's way at troublous times, as I knew. So I ate my breakfast, and that heartily (being a boy); and then sought my sister, whom I found tenderly dusting in my ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... in a cart to carry them to their house in the country. The old woman at once prepared baths for the girls and then supplied them with a meal, after which they lay down on couches and were soon fast asleep; for the excitement of the preceding evening and the strangeness of their position in the comfortless stone chamber had prevented their closing an eye during the night, and they had spent the hours in talking over the terrible loss Mysa had sustained, and the journey ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... is most anxious to reach the top of Mount St. Elias. He will have many hardships to endure before he can hope to reach his goal. His party will have to cross the glaciers and ice-clad mountains which lie in his path, and will have to camp many days on the ice, a cold and comfortless proceeding. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 33, June 24, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and collected, the fire lit, the meal prepared, often its very materials must be sought in pool and thicket, before the wanderer can be at rest, and the cravings of appetite appeased. The hardly-won repast concluded, the ground offers a comfortless couch to his stiffened and jaded limbs, where to snatch such sleep as the necessity of strict guard, and the ominous and mysterious noises of a night in the desert, allow to descend upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... half-past nine; and there, as we have seen, they were found, two hours later, by Mr. Fenwick, waiting patiently while the great preliminary affair of the dealer in meat was being settled. At that hour Sam had not made his appearance; but between twelve and one he sauntered into the comfortless room in which Carry was still sitting with her father. The sight of him was a joy to poor Carry, as he would speak to her, and tell her something of what was going on. "I'm about in time for the play, father," he said, coming up to them. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... from this very year of misfortune that the power of modern England must take its date. "Adversity," said El Hakim to the Knight of the Leopard, "is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate." In the summer of 1757 was formed that ministry which succeeded in carrying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of Europe. But it is already crawling through the mountains: hundreds of Italian laborers are putting down the shining rails in woods and glens where no sounds save the song of birds or the carol of the infrequent passer-by have heretofore been heard. For the present, however, the old-fashioned, comfortless diligence keeps the roads: the beribboned postilion winds his merry horn, and as the afternoon sun is getting low the dusty, antique vehicle rattles up to the court of the inn, the guard gets down, dusts the leather casing of the gun which now-a-days he is never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Brocklehurst himself (his real name was Carus-Wilson), so sternly, and I expect unjustly, gibbetted in the book. That was a very sacred hour for me. I thought of Miss Temple and Helen Burns; I thought of the cold, the privation, the rigour of that comfortless place. But I felt that it was good to be there. I drew nearer in that hour to the unquenched spirit that battled so gloriously with life and with its worst terrors and sorrows, and that wrote so firmly and truly its pure hopes and immortal ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... oneself whereto things are tending. Full of life and restless impulses to activity, all that could properly be required of him as yet was that the action into which he rushed should be innocent, and if conventionally mischievous, yet actually harmless. Annie, comfortless at home, gazing all about her to see if there was a rest anywhere for her, had been driven by the outward desolation away from the window of the world to that other window that opens on the regions of silent being where God is, and into which when his creatures ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... not being his true son and the proper heir to the peerage, let any one see him walk twice, and then have a shadow of a doubt about it! This logic pleased but convinced me not, and I had to go to bed in a very unhappy, restless, and comfortless state of mind. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... and the gloomy words of the priest who leant over his bedside, had found their way in between the joints of the dying man's armour of secrecy. Word by word, the story had been wrested from him. In the cold and comfortless hour of death, the strong, worldly man felt his physical weakness loosen the iron bands of his will, and he became for a time almost like a child in the hands of the keen, swiftly-questioning priest. He had not found ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Prescott sat watching him for a minute or two. Man and horse were sharply outlined against the moonlit grass. Jernyngham looked very lonely as he rode out into the wilderness. He could hardly have been happy, Prescott thought, in his untidy and comfortless house at the farm; but, after all, it had been a home, and now he was rudely flung adrift. It was true that the man was largely responsible for the troubles that had fallen upon him, but this was no reason for refusing him pity, and Cyril had ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... from several of the Western Lochs, laden with hundreds of passengers sailed direct for the far west. In that day this was a great undertaking, fraught with perils of the sea, and a long, comfortless voyage. Yet all this was preferable than the homes they loved so well; but no longer homes to them! They carried with them their language, their religion, their manners, their customs and costumes. In short, it was a Highland community transplanted ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... wrinkled face, which lay upon the small, scanty pillow. John thought "how small and scanty they were," while he almost shuddered at the sound of his footsteps upon the uncarpeted floor. Everything was dreary and comfortless, and his conscience reproached him that his old father should die so poor, when he counted his ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... people the wild with dreadful shapes of menace. The heat, the cold, the wind and the rain work as much against us as for us. We endow them with minds like our own, but magnified by our dismay to be the minds of gods maleficent. Without shelter of our own provision we are comfortless, and without comfort our souls perish, then our bodies. Salisbury Plain, swooning in the heat, is a paradise for insects. In those desolate dwellings both flies and (I am sure) fleas abounded, dreadfully healthy and alive. I ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... very deep, without any appearance of vegetation, strewn with masses of rock, paved with lava, and varied with great blocks of mineral. This region required a long and careful exploration. It contained a thousand cavities, comfortless no doubt, but perfectly concealed ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... pecuniary losses, sad damage of character, and comfortless, the unhappy claimant and his witnesses were compelled to return to Maryland, wiser if not better men. The account of this interesting trial, we have condensed from a very careful and elaborate report of it published in the "Pennsylvania ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... there a man of soul so dead, Who would not to himself have said, This is—a confounded comfortless dwelling. ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... now, as I have heard others argue, that what I have told you are tricks of jugglery? Let me answer by recalling greater things which I have seen him do. Look first to that curse of God—comfortless, as you all ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... thee, turn aside from this comfortless road leading, thou knowest whither, but not I. Let us turn our backs upon duty and abandon ourselves to the delights and advantages which beckon from every grove and call to us from every shining hill. Let us, if so thou wilt, follow ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... it begin?—It began with the first men of the East, who were before the first men of the West, and coming with it, it hath brought all comforts to the wild and comfortless. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... make any reply, but took my Cremona, and sought to lift up all my soul to a level with hers, to that lofty realm where her spirit ever wandered, that so I might not be comfortless. She started at the first tone that I struck forth, and looked at me with her large, earnest eyes. I found my own gaze fixed on hers, rapt and entranced. Now there came at last the inspiration so longed for, so sought ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... into which he looked was rough and comfortless in the extreme. There were the bare accessories of a moorland cottage; rough chairs and tables, plastered walls, a fishing rod or two piled in a corner; some food set out on a side table. At the table in the ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... the town, stood the Poor House. It was a crazy old building of extreme antiquity, which, being no longer considered fit for an ordinary dwelling-house, had been selected as a suitable residence for the town's poor. It was bleak and comfortless to be sure, but on that very account had been purchased at a trifling expense, and that was, of course, a primary consideration. Connected with the house were some dozen acres of rough-looking land, plentifully overspread with stones, which might have filled with despair the most enterprising ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... had become singularly bound together has been told elsewhere. But there had been close bonds,—so close that when the Duchess on their return from the Continent had passed through London on her way to Matching, ill at the time and very comfortless, it had been almost a thing of course, that Mrs. Finn should go with her. And as she had sunk, and then despaired, and then died, it was this woman who had always been at her side, who had ministered to her, and had listened to the fears and the wishes ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... hands of men, though their wives usually act as assistants and determine the quality of a garment till the masculine sense has been educated up to the proper point. Any very small, very old, and very dirty street at any point has its proportion of street-sellers, whose dark, grimy, comfortless rooms are their refuge at night. Other rooms of a better order are occupied, it may be, by some relative or child to be supported; and higher still rank those that are counted homes, where husband and wife meet when the day's ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... without once letting through the light of day; its pastures and arable land are divided on the same scale; there are no fences; we can hardly place ourselves in any spot where we shall not see for leagues around; and there is a kind of comfortless sublimity in the size of every scene. The French cottage, therefore, is on the same scale, equally large and desolate looking; but we shall see, presently, that it can arouse feelings which, though they cannot be said to give it sublimity, yet are of a higher ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... or preacher of September or of October may think of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating example. Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and the completest triumph of the completest villainy, that ever vexed and disgraced mankind! The example is ruinous ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... order to oversee its management to any advantage, I resolved to transfer my business in the mission to an agent, and move on the place with my wife. Then came a fatal hour for me. Into my darkened soul, into the comfortless, emptiness of my life, entered the power of ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... half who never stood By the grave of one held dear, And out of the deep, dark loneliness Of a heart bereaved and comfortless, From sorrow's crystal plentitude, Feeling his loss ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... days of the Shogun three-quarters of the 300 houses were inns. Now two-thirds of the houses have become uninhabitable, or have been sold, taken down and rebuilt elsewhere. The Shinto shrines are neglected and some are unroofed, the Zen temple is impoverished, the school is comfortless and a thousand tombstones in the ancient burying ground among the trees are half hidden in moss ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... were not numerous nor were they well qualified for their work. School houses were at a great distance from most of the homes. They were both comfortless and cheerless. The snows were deep in winter and the weather was inclement. In summer, even little ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... river's bank and lay down. Here, during the whole of the succeeding day, the troops were kept shivering in the cold frosty air, without fires, without provisions, and exhausted with fatigue; nor was it till the return of night that any attempt to extricate them from their comfortless situation could ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... simple but capable gentlewoman and the sense of home and intimacy in her little parlour no bigger than the never-entered and nerve-destroying salon of his parents at Aigues Mortes, but smiling with the grace of old oak and faded chintz. At Aigues Mortes the salon was a comfortless, tasteless convention, set apart for the celebrations of baptisms and marriages and deaths, a pride and a terror to the inhabitants. But here everything seemed to be as much a warm bit of Anne Honeywood as the tortoise-shell comb ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the passions also resemble fires, which are friendly and beneficial when under proper direction, but if suffered to blaze without restraint, they carry devastation along with them, and, if totally extinguished, leave the benighted mind in a state of cold and comfortless inanity. ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... that night at the Tin Road-house, a comfortless shack sheathed with flattened kerosene cans, and Folsom's irritation at his new partner increased, for Harkness was loud, boastful, and blatantly egotistical, with the egotism that ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... personality. In wonder-words we are told the apostle purposely wrought deeds of mercy upon the poor. Yet through his shadow falling on the weak and sick as he passed by, he unconsciously wrought health and hope in men. In like manner it is said that while Jesus Christ was seeking to comfort the comfortless, involuntarily virtue went out of him to strengthen one who did but touch the hem of his garment. Character works with or without consent. The selfish man fills his office with a malign atmosphere; his very presence chills like a cold, clammy day. Suspicious people fill all the ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... soul to the exhilaration of the moment, as if conscious that it was all too good to be true; that her surroundings might any moment fade; that her gay clothes would disappear, and that she would again find herself, heartsick and weary, in her comfortless little combined room at Mrs Bilkins's. At the same time, her natural alertness took in everything going on ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... government loans, which are judiciously brought out in very small shares, so as to draw forth his little hoard, and thus bind him as a creditor to the interest of the Empire. The cottage of the peasant which I entered on my way to Ducie was very mean and comfortless, and the food which his hospitality offered me was of the coarsest kind. But he had a valuable mare and foal; his yard was full of poultry; and his orchard showed, for a bad season, a fair crop of apples. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... an angel once, and it was a drunkard's child. On every side wherever she moved she saw only misery and degradation, and yet she did not fall. Her father was brutal, and her mother discouraged, and her home thoroughly comfortless. But she struggled along with angel endurance, bearing with an almost saintly patience the infirmities of him who gave her existence, and then hourly embittered it. Night after night, at the hours of ten, twelve, and even one, barefoot, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... canvas habitation of the digger is desolate enough; a box on a block of wood forms a table, and this is the only furniture; many dispense with that. The bedding, which is laid on the ground, serves to sit upon. Diogenes in his tub would not have looked more comfortless than any one else. Tin plates and pannicans, the same as are used for camping up, compose the breakfast, dinner, and tea service, which meals usually consist of the same dishes—mutton, damper, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... attic beyond. Also, there was a hole in the wall immediately beneath the eaves of the house that served the purpose of a window, over which a sack was nailed. "We are poor folk," said the landlord as they glanced round this comfortless garret, "but many great people have slept well here, as doubtless you will also," and he turned to ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... and the brakeman both were wrong. The freed man did live to get there. And it was an emotion which the warden had never suspected that held life in him all that afternoon and through the comfortless night in the packed and noisome day coach, while the fussy, self-sufficient little train went looping, like an overgrown measuring worm, up through the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of the foothills, on and on ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good government ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... the bedside of her beloved doll family. They were lying serene and placid, exactly as she had placed and tucked them in at bedtime, with her own motherly hand, and the memory of Dick lying racked with pain on the comfortless bed where she had first seen him, almost decided her at once. But a doll that could walk and ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... less added to substantives, makes adjectives signifying want; as, worthless, witless, heartless, joyless, careless, helpless. Thus comfort, comfortless; sap, sapless. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... concern. No Roman was ever more grieved at the thought of his unburied friend wandering a hundred years along the banks of the Styx than were the Samoans while they thought of the spirit of one who had been drowned, or of another who had fallen in war, wandering about neglected and comfortless. They supposed the spirit haunted them everywhere, night and day, and imagined they heard it calling upon them in a most pitiful tone, and saying, "Oh, how cold! oh, how cold!" Nor were the Samoans, ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... eccentric mansion, to which allusion has before been made, as possessing in the place of cellars, an ingenious system of small rivers to thoroughly irrigate its foundation - a hydropathic treatment which may (or may not) be agreeable in Venice, but strikes one as being decidedly cold and comfortless when applied to Oxford, - at any rate, in the month of November. Walking on the lawn which stretched from this house towards the river, our hero espied two extremely pretty young ladies, whose hearts he endeavoured at once ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... two ago in a remote corner of the eastern counties. I had received, through a friend, an invitation to visit an old mansion before the inmates (descendants of the owners in Elizabethan times) left and the contents were dispersed. On a comfortless January morning, while rain and sleet descended in torrents to the accompaniment of a biting wind, I detrained at a small out-of-the-way station in ——folk. A weather-beaten old man in a patched great-coat, with the oldest and shaggiest of ponies and the ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... life in those days, and the Poes were no exception. They died comfortless in Richmond; their three children were separated; and Edgar was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant. It was in the luxurious Allan home that the boy began the drinking habits which were his ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... took up the other half of the paper to try and distract her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change. The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and depressing to her. She felt something akin to the vague, apprehensive misery—beyond reason or common sense—which people feel during the rumble ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... perambulating the streets, and selecting the house where Abigail might, perhaps, have resided, and where she could have had her cup of young hyson after the fatigue of the day, instead of eating her dry lunch of cheese and fried cakes in the rather comfortless depot, while waiting for the train. Richard's long-continued bachelorhood had given her peculiar pleasure, inasmuch as it betokened a continual remembrance of her daughter; and as her youngest child, the blooming Melinda, who was as like the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... ripe, a committee of men in the village would propose the holding of the ceremony to the bridegroom; the elderly members of his family would also exert their influence upon him, because it was believed that if they died prior to its performance their disembodied spirits would continue a comfortless existence about the scene of their mortal habitation, but if afterwards that they would go straight to heaven. When the rite was to be held a feast was given, the villagers sitting round a lighted lamp placed on a water-pot in the centre of the sacred chauk or square made with lines of wheat-flour; ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... knowest thou, that has not tried, What hell it is, in suing long to bide: To lose good days, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; * * * * * To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a room, empty and comfortless, which was built on to the end of the oblong which comprised the store. Its walls were damp, and the news-papers, with which they had been covered, sagged down from the boards like monstrous goitres. It had one window, which looked riverwards, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... "Blue Lion" collecting partisans. And Johnnie, getting out through the back door, then by the untidy garden, and over the wall of the empty pig-stye, cut out into a stubble field. He was not afraid of his mother missing him till bedtime, as it was the wont of the youths—especially of those who had comfortless homes—to wander about in parties in the evening, bat-fowling sometimes, but often in an aimless sort of way, doing little bits of mischief, and seeking diversion, which they seldom found, unless there was any solitary figure to be shouted at and startled. ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the way to the apartment that Mrs. Mumpson had occupied and said regretfully, "I'm sorry the room looks so bare and comfortless, but that will all be mended in time. When you come down, we'll have some ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... hardships of camp life that caused them. But as yet he had not received a single letter from his friends, and his longing to get news from them was such as only those boys can understand who have never been away from home until they have suddenly gone upon a long and comfortless journey, and who then begin to realize, as never before, all the loving care of their parents, the kindness of brothers and sisters, and the blessedness of the dear old nest from which they ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... are about the worst in the world. We have sampled rough dens in Spain, in Tetuan, and in Corsica—especially in Corsica, but then they are unpretentious inns in unfrequented villages, whereas in India you find in world-famous cities such as Agra or Delhi the most comfortless dens calling themselves hotels—hotels where you hardly dare eat half the food for fear of typhoid, and will not eat the rest because it is ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to them." It was this rage for fresh air and fields which made him such a bad stay-at-home bird, whether he was sheltered amid the palatial surroundings of some princely patron, or whether sojourning in the less luxurious and comfortless atmosphere of some one of his frequently changed lodgings. He disliked any control, and truly meant it when, at intervals, growing impatient with the constant requests for his company, he complained outright that he was forced too much ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... my heart! dear Poet that feelest and thinkest! 15 Dorothy, eager of soul, my most affectionate sister! Many a mile, O! many a wearisome mile are ye distant, Long, long comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know us. O! it is all too far to send you mockeries idle: Yea, and I feel it not right! But O! my friends, my beloved! 20 Feverish and wakeful I lie,—I am weary of feeling and thinking. Every thought is worn down, I am weary yet cannot be vacant. Five ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... lifeless corpse of my beloved; and, while looking on her uncovered face, the features already contracted by the rigidity of death, I felt as if all the visible universe had grown as soulless, inane, and comfortless as the clay-cold image beneath me. I felt for a moment the intolerable sense of struggle with, and detestation for, the laws which govern the world; till the calm still visible on the face of my dead love recalled me to a more soothing tone ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... is salt without meat; and that is but a comfortless dish to set a hungry man down ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... mountain peak that could remind us of habitable lands. Yet before us lay the unknown. What fascination lies in that word! Could anyone wonder that we determined to push on, be the outlook ever so comfortless?' ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... daughter Susan had come up, the girl who was supposed to be a sort of spider, with no capacities beyond her web. Nor did Rachel think Lovedy capable of walking down to Mackarel Lane, nor well enough for the comfortless chairs and the third part of a bed. No, Mr. Grey's words that Rachel was accountable for the children's sufferings had gone to her heart. Pity was there and indignation, but these had brought such an anguish of self-accusation as she could only appease by ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intrusted to Phranza; [31] and, after a diligent addition, he informed his master, with grief and surprise, that the national defence was reduced to four thousand nine hundred and seventy Romans. Between Constantine and his faithful minister this comfortless secret was preserved; and a sufficient proportion of shields, cross-bows, and muskets, were distributed from the arsenal to the city bands. They derived some accession from a body of two thousand strangers, under the command of John Justiniani, a noble Genoese; a liberal donative ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... song I heard but once, on a morning when a squad of men came in from picket duty, and chanted it in the most rousing way. It had been a stormy and comfortless night, and the picket station was very exposed. It still rained in the morning when I strolled to the edge of the camp, looking out for the men, and wondering how they had stood it. Presently they came striding along the road, at a great ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... large and very handsomely furnished room, where Brussels carpeting and softly cushioned sofas contrasted strangely with the meagre and comfortless chambers of the doctor, sat a young man at a small breakfast-table beside the fire. He was attired in a silk dressing-gown and black velvet slippers, and supported his forehead upon a hand of most lady-like ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... roots. In the winter they hunt the deer on snow shoes over the plains, and towards spring cross the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of trafficking for buffaloe robes. The inconveniences of that comfortless life are increased by frequent encounters with their enemies from the west, who drive them over the mountains with the loss of their horses, and sometimes the lives of many of the nation. Though originally ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... comfortless,' Hazel said to Reddin when Vessons had retired. Her voice had a sound of tears in it, like a dark tide broken on rocks. 'And when I was comfortless at the Mountain Ed'ard was used to read "Comfort ye, my people," as ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... encumbering the passages of the dear old Dean Street lodging, which I shall love as long as I shall remember at all—one day, almost the last of his stay, when the good man (his Excellency we called him now) came home to his dinner—a comfortless meal enough it was in the present condition of the family—he looked round the table at the place where I had used to sit in happy old days, and sighed out: "I ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reach Moussy, where the vineyards, spite of their long pedigree and southern aspect, also rank as a second cr. Still skirting the vine-clad slopes we come to Vinay, noted for an ancient grotto—the comfortless abode of some rheumatic anchorite—and a pretended miraculous spring to which fever-stricken pilgrims to-day credulously resort. The water may possibly merit its renown, but the wine here produced ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... Before her new-made tomb at last arrived, The woful prison of his living sprite, Pale, cold, sad, comfortless, of sense deprived, Upon the marble gray he fixed his sight, Two streams of tears were from his eyes derived: Thus with a sad "Alas!" began the knight, "0 marble dear on my dear mistress placed! My flames within, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... silent bosom of the billow, Borne on the breeze and modulated sweetly, Plaintive as music, rose the mother's tones of Comfortless anguish. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... heads and shoulders, gossiping gloomily against barn walls, and ill-conditioned pigs grunting for admission at closed kitchen doors, all looked soaked through and through together. Nothing, in short, could be more dreary and comfortless than our walk for the first two hours. But, after that, as we approached "Lizard Town," the clouds began to part to seaward; layer after layer of mist drove past us, rolling before the wind; peeps of faint greenish-blue sky appeared and enlarged apace. By the time we had arrived at our ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... exactions, and all that is allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious ones,—and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in the house. Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their domestics with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent; but there is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the position. That they treat ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pondered and considered, we would believe in him. Satan knows this, and therefore his great sleight and cunning is to hold our minds fixed on the consideration of our misery and desperate estate. He keeps the awakened conscience still upon that comfortless sight, and he labours to represent God by halves, and that it is a false representation of God. He represents him as clothed with justice and vengeance,—as a consuming fire, in which light a soul can see nothing but desperation ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... heart frozen. Her emotion was too deep for tears, it paralyzed her for the time being; she merely stood staring, her dark eyes glazed, her ashen lips apart. Finally something snapped, and she knew nothing more until hours afterward, when she found herself upon her comfortless bed with Evangelina bending over her. All night she had lain inert, in a merciful stupor; it was not until the next morning that she gradually came ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... last night's long hours, Poor Midge, alone and comfortless, wept out Her heart, believing all that you had said. And when I spoke to her, she cried: "Go, go! I am lost where none can help me; all my dreams Shudder and perish, even as he has perished; Yet they shall live again—but he will die!" ... Thus ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... in the midst," for there were no chimneys, or at best but a hole in the roof to serve as one. The doors stood open, even though "the storms of snow and rain prevailed abroad," and in spite of the good fire, it must have been comfortless enough. Yet many a stray bird might well be drawn thither by the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold The end of all thy offspring, end so sad, Depopulation! Thee another flood, Of tears and sorrow a flood, thee also drowned, And sunk thee as thy sons; till, gently reared By the Angel, on thy feet thou stoodest at last, Though comfortless; as when a father mourns His children, all in view destroyed at once; And scarce to the Angel utter'dst thus thy plaint. O visions ill foreseen! Better had I Lived ignorant of future! so had borne My part of evil only, each day's lot Enough to bear; those now, that were dispensed ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... allurements combine to bring the workers to drunkenness. Liquor is almost their only source of pleasure, and all things conspire to make it accessible to them. The working-man comes from his work tired, exhausted, finds his home comfortless, damp, dirty, repulsive; he has urgent need of recreation, he must have something to make work worth his trouble, to make the prospect of the next day endurable. His unnerved, uncomfortable, hypochondriac state ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... had at least done him this service, that the formless misery of the past weeks, the monstrous, wordless sense of desolation, now resolved itself into a grief for which inner words, however comfortless, sprang into being. Below him Verona, proud sentinel between the North and Rome, offered herself to the embrace of the wild, tawny river, as if seeking to retard its ominous journey from Rhaetia's barbarous ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell, and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat, and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener and greener—reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and cities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill, with their straw-bound sickles hanging idle across their shoulders, and with unhired-looking faces, as ragged a company as if you were to dream of a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmed imagination beheld harvest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... throughout the country were merciless in their criticisms of the President and Mrs. Lincoln for giving this reception when the soldiers of the Union were in cheerless bivouacs or comfortless hospitals, and a Philadelphia poet wrote a scandalous ode on the occasion, entitled ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... gilt, for birds in one corner.'[889] In Ripon Cathedral, some of the old tabernacle work of the stalls was converted into pews.[890] Everywhere the pew system remained uncontrolled, pampering self-indulgence, fostering jealousies, and too often thrusting back the poor into mean, comfortless sittings, in whatever part of the church was coldest, darkest, and most distant from sight and hearing. Towards the end of the century its evils began to be here and there acknowledged. The population was rapidly increasing in the larger towns; and the new proprietary chapels erected to ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... was right in his conjecture, for the doctor had persuaded the polite conductor, whom he knew personally, to stop the train at Snowdon; and while Adah, shivering with cold, found her way up the narrow stairs into the rather comfortless quarters where she must spend the night, the doctor was kicking the snow from his feet and talking to Jim, the ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... give up all the advantages which they enjoyed at Allington,—advantages which had come to them from so legitimate a source,—because her own feelings had been wounded? In all their future want of comfort, in the comfortless dowdiness of the new home to which she would remove them, would she not always blame herself for having brought them to that by her own false pride? And yet it seemed to her that she now had no alternative. She could not now teach her daughters ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... they build temporary huts of the branches of the trees, plastered with clay and banked up with snow, leaving a hole at the top as a chimney for the smoke, the fire being always built upon a broad, flat stone in the centre of the hut. In these rude, and, according to our estimate, comfortless cabins, they hibernate, rather than live the life of civilized human beings, for eight ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... have passed through a similar experience, who have been driven from the comparatively comfortable middle-class life to the precarious and comfortless existence of the vast majority of the toiling masses, will readily realise that under such circumstances Winstanley's mind would naturally be full of questionings such as might not have forced themselves on his attention under more prosperous conditions. ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... upon which taste was exhausted, and which cost a fortune to realize. The villa of Blennerhasset was really a beacon-light in the wilderness, that seemed created to invite the approach of the stranger to enjoy that repose which the sluggish and comfortless mode of travelling of that day, rendered so gratifying. The only sounds now heard, are the sighing of the wind through the lofty cotton wood, or the puffing of steam, as some boat rushes rapidly past the prosperous settlement ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... mill, his ass, and his cat. The partition was soon made. Neither scrivener nor attorney was sent for. They would soon have eaten up all the poor patrimony. The eldest had the mill, the second the ass, and the youngest nothing but the cat. The poor young fellow was quite comfortless at having so ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... cholic, was obliged to set forth, at once upon what he felt would be a bootless journey. At his return—which was upon the 22nd of July (N.S.)the shrewd old gentleman had nearly arrived at the opinion that her Majesty might as well break off the negotiations. He had a "comfortless voyage and a ticklish message;" found all along the road signs of an approaching enterprise, difficult to be mistaken; reported 10,000 veteran Spaniards, to which force Stanley's regiment was united; 6000 Italians, 3000 Germans, all with pikes, corselets, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Jefferson's Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. "Dreary, solitary, comfortless—it was no longer home." ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... thus, he could feel an unsteady quivering of the trunk, a trembling, wrenching motion, that told, but too plainly, of the powerful force of the flood, and of the uncertain tenure which he possessed on even this comfortless refuge. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... horn, hoof, nor tail, that he could bear the sign of the cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, and at length commenced her story, which, weary and comfortless as Stanton was, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of the cars, it is to be said, that for the same price you can get far more comfortable riding in America. Their first class cars are beyond all praise, but also beyond all price; their second class are comfortless, cushionless, and uninviting. Agreeably with our theory of democratic equality, we have a general car, not so complete as the one, nor so bare as the other, where all ride together; and if the traveller in thus riding sees things that occasionally annoy him, when he ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... worth, be valuable, be responsible for; mas vale incomodo que ninguno, better comfortless quarters than, none at all; refl., to avail oneself (of), ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... myself for so often losing the sweet perfume of the morning air. When I arrived the babe was born. So another immortal spirit is added to my family. Praise God, the promise reaches to them all.—Collecting for the missions in one of the poorest districts, we peeped into a comfortless spot, where lived a poor widow with five children. We did not wish to ask for anything, but were obliged to give a reason for our stepping in. The woman said however, that it was a good cause, and she would give us something. This ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... New Zealand, taken in a crowded and comfortless steamer, was a severe testing time for her. It lasted for several days, and she could not be kept from the influence of the drinking customs of those on board. But she never quitted the side either of her husband or Ann Holland. In New Zealand, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... fate has not yet received that public sanction which can alone put the finishing stroke to my felicity. I cannot suspect, even in my most lawless flights, the most innocent and artless of her sex of inconstancy. But how many unexpected accidents may come between me and my happiness? How comfortless is the thought that I can at no time say, "Now the amiable Matilda is in health; now she dwells in peace and safety?" I receive an account of her health, a paquet reaches me from Cosenza. Alas, it is two tedious days ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin |
