"Dejection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she had recourse to her accustomed lures. She would sit quiet, dejected, almost broken-hearted in the corner of a sofa; but when he spoke to her she would come to life and raise her eyes,—not ignoring the recognised dejection of her jilted position, not pretending to this minor stag of six tines that she was a sprightly unwooed young fawn, fresh out of the forest,— almost asking him to weep with her, and playing her accustomed lures, though in a part which ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... reputation, and to laugh the story out of countenance. But by the circumstances thereof, and the cheerful disposition of Mrs. Bargrave, notwithstanding the ill-usage of a very wicked husband, there is not yet the least sign of dejection in her face; nor did I ever hear her let fall a desponding or murmuring expression; nay, not when actually under her husband's barbarity; which I have been witness to, and several other ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... this occasion was drawn mainly from these cottages, and the neighbouring village of Helmsdale. It consisted of from six to eight hundred Highlanders, all devoted adherents of the Free Church. We have rarely seen a more deeply serious assemblage; never certainly one that bore an air of such deep dejection. The people were wonderfully clean and decent; for it is ill with Highlanders when they neglect their personal appearance, especially on a Sabbath; but it was all too evident that the heavy hand of poverty rested upon them, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the sudden mischance hath so wrought in him, who by nature is allied to nothing less than a self-debasing humor of dejection, that I have never seen anything more changed and spirit-broken. He hath, with a peremptory resolution, dismissed the partners of his riots and late hours, denied his house and person to their most earnest ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... leaves of strawberries, old England's grace and glory, Emblazoned o'er the castle-keeps that moulder nigh and hoary, What comfort for your drooping days, what balm in dire dejection, That yonder orchid spruce ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... and impressive spectacle, each day repeated, as it seemed, with deepening gloom. The first transient glow of cheerfulness which had welcomed my arrival had passed away, and been succeeded by an air of languor and dejection which sank to deepest sadness when his eye rested for a moment on his once darling grandson, the child of so much pride and promise, now, alas! how changed. It was most touching to look upon one ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... went. In the end she received the King's commission to undertake the relief of Orleans. Her coming was fresh blood to the defence; a new spirit seemed to be poured out on all her followers, and in like manner a deep dejection settled down on the English. The blockade was forced, and, in eight days the besiegers raised the siege and marched away. They withdrew to Jargeau, where they were attacked and routed with great loss. A little later ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... friend and companion, was his aunt Platosha, with whom he exchanged barely a dozen words in the day, but without whom he could not stir hand or foot. She was a long-faced, long-toothed creature, with pale eyes, and a pale face, with an invariable expression, half of dejection, half of anxious dismay. For ever garbed in a grey dress and a grey shawl, she wandered about the house like a spirit, with noiseless steps, sighed, murmured prayers—especially one favourite one, consisting of three words only, 'Lord, succour us!'—and looked after the house with much ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... After all, he did not understand anything about real love, not as much as this chit of an American girl. He bowed his head for a moment in deep dejection, and then, shrugging his shoulders, he smiled into her stern eyes a ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... exclaimed; "is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! thy father, if he had been alive, durst not have used that word." Then, as her anger spent itself, she sank into her old dejection. "Thou art so presumptuous," she said, "because thou knowest I shall die." She rallied once more when the ministers beside her bed named Lord Beauchamp, the heir to the Suffolk claim, as a possible successor. "I will have ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... he lost his speech, and falling into a swoon, had scarcely any sense or pulse left. However, in a very short time, by Philip's means, his health and strength returned, and he showed himself in public to the Macedonians, who were in continual fear and dejection until ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... blue roan, that Fogg rides," said the quartermaster, to the great dejection of Fogg, a short stout youth, who was posting accounts. I was glad to see, however, that Fogg was not disposed to be angry, and when informed that a certain iron-gray nag was at his disposal, he was in a perfect glow ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... to do is to describe a series of social spheres, all exercising a somewhat sluggish pressure upon each other, a general state of inactive dejection, a limitation which recognizes itself as much as it misunderstands itself, squeezed within the framework of a governmental system, which, living on the conservation of all meannesses, is itself nothing less ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... had we continued for some time, sitting side by side in a state of extreme dejection. Neither of us said a word. We had nothing to say—no counsel to offer to ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... most intrepid courage can rescue us from contempt and disgrace, sorry am I to say it, many of those who were foremost in noise, shrink coward-like from the danger, and are begging pardon without striking a blow. This, however, is not general, but dejection of spirits is an epidemical disease, and unless some fortunate event or other gives a turn to the disorder, in time it may prevail throughout the community. No event would give that turn so soon, as a declaration of war on the part of France ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... down and shook hands with them, they could not contain their delight; they endeavored to scramble upon their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands, and we understood they knew we had come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads in apparently hopeless dejection: some were greatly emaciated; and some, particularly children, seemed dying. The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odor so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them, even ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... were scribbled in pencil. Someone expected me at once outside the castle. The note was signed "Friar Ange, unworthy Capuchin." I went as quickly as I could, and found the little friar seated on the bank of a ditch in a state of pitiable dejection. Wanting strength to get up, he looked at me with his big dog's eyes, nearly human and full of tears; his sighs moved his beard and chest. In a tone which really ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... which the Proclamation respects will lose somewhat of the dejection sculptured for ages in their bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of their plaintive music,—a race naturally benevolent, joyous, docile, industrious, and whose very miseries sprang from their great talent for usefulness, which, in a more moral age, will not only defend their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... be a library in the formation of which the Kings and Princes and Ambassadors of Europe were all helpers. Naude in another place called it "the work of my hands and the miracle of my life." Great therefore was his dejection when the library was dispersed. Of this he said, "Beleeve, if you please, that the ruine of this Library will be more carefully marked in all Histories and Calendars, than the taking and sacking of Constantinople." Naude's letter on the destruction ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... of the Virgin and Child. He heard the singing of the people outside, but it brought him neither inspiration nor comfort. Nature could no longer withstand the strain he had put upon it, and he was in deep dejection. It was one of those moments of revulsion which comes to the strongest soul when at the crown or near the crown of his expectations he asks himself, "What is the good?" A flood of tender recollections was coming over him. He was thinking of the past, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... with the primitive American need to do so much with her own hands, she had not even had the time to know the stupid, tragic thing that was happening to her . . . that she was turning into a slow, vegetating plant instead of a human being. And now she understood the meaning of the strange dejection she had felt the day when little Mark went off to school with the others. How curiously jaded and apprehensive she had felt that morning, and when she had gone downstairs to see the callers who arrived that day. That was the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the pit encompass us;(41) we are overwhelmed with sadness and plunged in darkness. We think of God, we remember Him, but He seems afar off. The evil which weighs us down—the pain of body, the agony of soul, the sadness and dejection of heart and mind, "the madness that worketh in the brain," muffle the voice and all but still the trembling pulse, and we are not able so much as to lift our drooping heads and tear-dimmed eyes to see the gentle Shepherd standing faithfully at our ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... intended so manifestly to wear a look of cheerful self-esteem that his dejection, honest as it was, produced an effect of insincerity, and it seemed to Laura that his other and more natural expression was still lying somewhere beneath this superficial remorse. Considered as physical bulk he was impressive, she admitted, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... ache, smart &c. (physical pain) 378; passion. displeasure, dissatisfaction, discomfort, discomposure, disquiet; malaise; inquietude, uneasiness, vexation of spirit; taking; discontent &c. 832. dejection &c. 837; weariness &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the door when there is a sound of voices on the path outside. Joe has just time to put himself in the posture in which the pirates left him. The pirates and Darlin' enter in dejection. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... the vision is a "star" fallen to the earth. Our translation conveys the idea that this star was in the act of falling; but in the original it is different, being there represented as having fallen, its dejection from heaven to earth being complete. The only place that it appeared in view was on the earth, and there it is described as fallen. A star is a symbol either of a civil ruler or of a religious teacher, the symbols ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... growth. While this is going on the birds are less in evidence than at other times. They keep out of sight and few song notes are heard. Perhaps there is some irritation and unpleasantness connected with moulting which causes a dejection of spirit. ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... centaur-like,—both of a piece. At other times, and in other moods, when his spirits were above the temptation of false wit,—he would say, he found himself going off fast in a consumption; and, with great gravity, would pretend, he could not bear the sight of a fat horse, without a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in his pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not only to keep himself in countenance, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... difficulty of voiding them. The influence of constipation upon the functions of the liver, is indicated by the sympathy displayed between that organ and the mind. The patient manifests apprehension, mental depression, taciturnity, and melancholy, all indicative of hypochondriac dejection, induced by constipation. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... clapped your handcuffs on me?" he inquired. "I suppose my conduct did seem rather suspicious. I was in the deepest depths of dejection. One must give some ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... still said; 'I do not know whether Mervyn will come home, and there must not be too many empty chairs. Good-bye!' and he walked off with long strides, but with stooping shoulders, and an air of dejection almost amounting to discontent. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should have expected from our old ideas even of the faults and vices of the English character. The disastrous events which have followed one upon another in a long, unbroken, funereal train, moving in a procession that seemed to have no end,—these were not the principal causes of our dejection. We feared more from what threatened to fail within than what menaced to oppress us from abroad. To a people who have once been proud and great, and great because they were proud, a change in the national spirit is the most terrible of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... extreme dejection: "Yes, I think I really had, Willis. I'm not fit to be Edward's wife, if I behave that ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... which he had felt our rudeness, and the excitement of recital were, all together, too much for our good old castellan. The erectness of his figure gave way as he concluded, the enthusiasm in his features faded into dejection, and, as he turned from the table to leave the room, I saw a big drop, that had trickled down his wrinkled face, fall ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... luxury; and as soon as we entered a light supper was served. He invited me to partake, and within the space of half an hour I had told him all my history—my ambition—my strivings after the perfection of colour—my disappointment, dejection, and despair—and, finally, the fearful dread of coming madness that had driven me to attempt my own life. He listened patiently and with unbroken attention. When I had finished, he laid one hand on my ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... and finished at the cook. And now he was sent forth to seek for adventures. He had no money; so that when out of Paris and he heard eleven o'clock (the time for dinner at the convent) strike, he sat down in dejection. His first idea was to return to the convent, and ask to be put in confinement, instead of being sent in to exile, and even to submit to the discipline, provided they would insure him his repasts. His next was more reasonable. He would go to the Corne d'Abondance, send ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... fatal intelligence proved true. The drum was no longer heard rolling the men to the tub, and deep gloom and dejection fell like a cloud. The ship was like a great city, when some terrible calamity has overtaken it. The men stood apart, in groups, discussing their woes, and mutually condoling. No longer, of still moonlight nights, was the song heard from the giddy tops; and few and far ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... no difference," said the Carlist chief, who saw his dejection, "as you will all be taken to the ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... chair. Sam sat down; and leaning back he nursed his cheek with his hand in an attitude of utter dejection. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... other! The night's coming on, When friend and when brother Perchance may be gone! Then 'midst our dejection, How sweet to have earned The blest recollection, ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... features, if we may be allowed the comparison, were like the noon-day heavens, when filled with the broken clouds of a passing storm. Now all would be bright and cheerful, and the sun of mirth would sparkle in her eyes; and anon some dark cloud of dejection would sweep along, shut out the merry light, and cast its shadow drearily over the whole countenance,—or, to use language without simile, she would one moment be merry and another sad. Toward the last, however, the latter feeling ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... were unhappy days for him, and for at least one other. That other was Leandre, who was cast into the profoundest dejection by M. de La Tour d'Azyr's assiduous attendance upon Climene. The Marquis was to be seen at every performance; a box was perpetually reserved for him, and invariably he came either alone or else with his cousin ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... back unconsciously into Swedish pronunciation. He had begun his announcement with pleased animation, but now that it was out, and she was sorry, the going did not seem so pleasing. "I wisht I wasn't!" he added with quick dejection. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... novelty of the secular life, and temptations of all kinds, dread of ridicule, and the flood of excitements which came with reviving health, that very sensitiveness led him astray; and the elevated aims fell with a heavier fall when diverted from heavenly palaces to earthly ones. Self-reproach and dejection drove him further from the right course, and in proportion to the greater amount of conscience he had by nature, his character was the more deteriorating. His deeds were far less evil in themselves than those of many of his companions, but inasmuch as they were not thoughtless ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visited but by the despairing poet who lies down to die. We find here, instead of sympathy with ordinary and universal feelings, warmth for the abstract and unreal, or, when the poet's own unrest prompts, as in the "Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples," a strain of lamentation which sounds like a passionate sigh. Instead of clearness of thinking, we find an indistinctness which sometimes amounts to the unintelligible. In the "Revolt of Islam," his most ambitious poem, it is often difficult to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... torture and captivity in the circus. The pack advanced at a foot-pace now, and with the extreme of caution. A few minutes more brought them within full view of a camp-fire, beside which there were stretched, in attitudes eloquent of both dejection and fatigue, two men and a dog; the latter a large, gaunt fox-terrier. For the last ten miles of their trailing the pack had been passing through country which supported a certain amount of timber, and of the curious ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... excitement of his temporary return to the stage; but before that, his condition was by all accounts very unsatisfactory; and I am afraid that when the effect of the impulse his physical powers received from the pleasurable exertion of acting subsides, he may again relapse into feebleness, dejection, and general disorder of the system, from which he appeared to be suffering before he made this last professional effort. I must see him once more, and he has written to me to say that as soon as he knows when we are coming to England, he will meet us there. He will, I am pretty ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... their chisels on this group, and there are dozens of them. The wise and foolish virgins also stand at the church doors in time-stained stone,—the one with a perked-up air of conscious virtue, and the other with a penitent dejection that seems to merit better treatment. Over the great portal of St. Lawrence—a magnificent structure, with lofty twin spires and glorious rosewindow is carved "The Last Judgment." Underneath, the dead are climbing out of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... noticed her dejection. Amidst the general happiness she seemed to herself forgotten, almost shunned. "And I had hoped," she thought, "to make this such ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... in the Day; and to avoid all violent Exercise in the Heat of the Sun.—3. Such Means as tend to support the Spirits; for Chearfulness has been observed to contribute as much to the Preservation of Health, as Fear and Dejection of Spirits to the Production of Diseases.—4. Keeping the Body clean, and bathing frequently in the Sea, or in ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... and he would not have his subjects overpressed; for he knew an Englishman would do as much as any man upon hopeful terms; but where he sees he is overpressed, he despairs soon as any other; and, besides that, they have already such a load of dejection upon them, that they will not be in temper a good while again. He heard my Lord Chancellor say to the King, "Sir," says he, "the whole world do complain publickly of treachery, that things have been managed falsely ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... proof how little this state of mind was natural to him, it stirred up all the bile in his body, and brought on a severe attack of yellow jaundice, accompanied by the settled dejection that marks ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... soil! welcome to your friends, thrice welcome to me! whether returned in glory, blessed with court-interest, the love and familiarity of the great, and filled with agreeable hopes; or melancholy with dejection, contemplative of the changes of fortune, and doubtful for the future. Whether returned a triumphant Whig, or a desponding Tory, equally all hail! equally beloved and welcome to me! If happy, I am to share in your elevation; if unhappy, you have still a warm corner in my ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... feeble train of emaciated men, who had nothing to relate but sickness, hardship, and disappointment. The sovereigns, however, received him kindly; but he was depressed and sad, and clothed himself with the habit of a Franciscan friar, to denote his humility and dejection. He displayed a few golden collars and bracelets as trophies, with some Indians; but these no ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... and dejection of the people of Lexington hastened my departure, but before returning to the army I spent two weeks most delightfully at "Oakland," the hospitable home of Mrs. Cocke, in Cumberland County, Virginia. This was the last opportunity I had of enjoying ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... were subjected to the usual questioning in the various branches of their very elementary erudition. Some of the queries proved beyond the powers of the generality of the children; but this led to no expression of dejection or awkwardness. They evidently all endeavoured to do their very best. It was interesting to observe, that so far from pining to see a cleverer neighbour answer what they had failed in, they seemed to feel a triumph when, after a general difficulty, it was at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... color had been rising at the alluring forecast. Patricia made a despairing little gesture. "I can't think of anything that will fit poor me," she confessed with mock dejection. "I'm so everlastingly commonplace that ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... that after full living, the stomach becomes particularly affected, and the patient is troubled with flatulency, indigestion, loss of appetite, eructations, nausea, and vomiting, with great dejection of spirits, pain and giddiness of the head, disturbed recollection, or muddiness of intellect, as it is termed, with all the symptoms, which usually precede a regular fit of the gout, yet no inflammatory affection of the joints is produced. This state has been absurdly enough called ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... activity. Medoro was a mere youth, his cheeks yet fair and blooming. Of all the Saracens, no one united so much grace and beauty. His light hair was set off by his black and sparkling eyes. The two friends were together on guard at the rampart. About midnight they gazed on the scene in deep dejection. Medoro, with tears in his eyes, spoke of the good prince Dardinel, and could not endure the thought that his body should be cast out on the plain, deprived of funeral honors. "O my friend," said he, "must then the body of our prince be the prey of wolves and ravens? ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... now augmented every moment, and the difficulty to conceal it grew every hour more painful; she felt herself the cause of the dejection of the son, and that thought made her feel guilty in the presence of the mother; the explanation she expected threatened her with new misery, and the courage to endure it she tried in vain to acquire; her heart was most cruelly oppressed, apprehension and suspence never left it ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... not the horsemen moving cautiously among the closely-set trees on either side of the road. It was growing prematurely dark, and objects were none too distinct. And thus it befell that when from the reverie of dejection into which he had fallen he was suddenly aroused by the thud of hoofs, he looked up to find two mounted men barring the road some ten yards in front of him. Their attitude was unmistakable, and it crossed poor Kenneth's mind that ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... which she had inherited from two long lines of confirmed optimists—her ancestors on the paternal and maternal sides. She did not know how to brood, but, if she had, she might well have been led to do so. And even as it was she had been reduced to so unusual a condition of dejection that, a week before the evening we are describing, she had been obliged to order a box at the Gaiety Theatre, she, who, like all optimists, habitually frequented those playhouses where she could behold gloomy tragedies, awful melodramas, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... to be reaching a climax; he has nosed about the floor like a dog; he has tried to leap over the roof in order to discover his lost sweetheart, and now he turns facing the audience, his arms outstretched in pitiful dejection. There is an instant's deep silence, and then a great laugh rings out from the audience. The QUEEN herself rocks to and fro, backward and forward behind her fan. JOSEPHINE starts forward, in her face a mixture of amusement, giving ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... he roused himself and descended to the room now occupied by the remnant of the band. Jonas and ten others, alone, were gathered there. Some had thrown themselves down on the ground. Some sat in attitudes of utter dejection. Several were bleeding from wounds received in the desperate fight of the morning. Others were badly burned in the desperate efforts they had made to extinguish the flames. Exhausted by want of food, worn out by their ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... publisher, having once advised him to write in a more popular style, or he could not continue to purchase his compositions, he answered with unusual bitterness, 'Then I can make no more by my pen, and I had better starve, and go to destruction at once.' The fits of dejection which he experienced were partly the effect of bodily ailments, but more of a weariness with the perplexity of affairs, and of a prospect which afforded him but one object on which he could gaze with certainty of relief, and that was—death. Constant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... admirers of this great poet have never less reason to indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. He no sooner begins to move, than ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... if conducted in accordance with reason, is called caution; and this the wise man alone is supposed to have: but that caution which is not under the guidance of reason, but is attended with a base and low dejection, is called fear.—Fear is, therefore, caution destitute of reason. But a wise man is not affected by any present evil; while the grief of a fool proceeds from being affected with an imaginary evil, by which his mind is contracted and sunk, since it is not under the dominion of ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... any legitimate means to help me," said Hubert. "You cannot resent that. Ah, Hadria, why will you not listen to me?" He bent forward, covering his face with his hands in deep dejection. His hope had begun ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the slow Hearse, where nod the sable plumes, The Parian Statue, bending o'er the Urn, The dark robe floating, the dejection worn On the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes; Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes It pays Affection's debt, is due concern To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... thought so myself, after a time, when the journal which published the libel sank under the public neglect; but this was an after consideration; and, at the moment, how heavy an aggravation was given to the stings of the malice, by the deep dejection, from embarrassed circumstances and from disordered health, which then possessed me; aggravations, perhaps, known to the libellers as encouragements for proceeding at the time, and often enough ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... which I now imagine must have been about due north, without detecting a single familiar object. In a dense wood I suddenly stumbled upon a thing which at first filled me with hope and later with the most utter despair and dejection. It was a little mound of new-turned earth sprinkled with flowers long since withered, and at one end was a flat slab of sandstone stuck in the ground. It was a grave, and it meant for me that I had at last stumbled ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dejection by intense work, but he could not forget the tragic suffering he had undergone. The experience he had recently passed through he disclosed in one of his most noted stories, La Duchesse de Langeais, which he wrote largely in 1834 at the same fatal city of Geneva, but this time, while enjoying ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... not dejection on thy heart take hold That nature hath in thee her sure effects, And beauty wakes desire. Should Daphne's eyes, Leucothea's arms, and clinging white caress, The arch of Thetis' brows, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... her imagination to play. She watched him now with the pity that was woven into her love for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; the round felt hat that crowned his thick, close-cut hair, the dejection that seemed expressed in so many trifles at such moments,—as in his manner of dropping his hands loosely into the pockets of his corduroy coat, and standing immovable. Without taking his eyes from the fire he sat down presently on a log and she saw him fumbling for his ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... sitting alone on a balk of timber by the sea. Her hands lay loose in her lap; her neck was bent; her whole attitude indicated dejection, loneliness, sadness. She was thinking about him. She was thinking, "How cruel of him not to answer my sad little letter. He can't be so busy but what he could have found time to send me a few lines ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... touring the country all by himself in a mood of great dejection and happened to see us in the dining-room at Toledo. He followed so he could be near her. His big goggles and the mustache he had grown during the summer were an effectual disguise. He had kept a respectful distance, afraid to make himself known, ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... are bloodshot till the whites are scarlet, the iris is purpled. These red, bloody eyes with their stained pupils, glancing awfully at all who enter the shrine, looking as if to see through the blood of the late brutal death, are terrible. The naked, strong body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished, hulked, a weight of shame. And what remains of life is in the face, whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting criminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred on the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... leisurely placing it between the pages as a marker—it, so brittle! so yellow! so typical of decay and mortality! The book comprised the writings of Sir Cornelius Agrippa. Having tossed the old alchemist from him with an air of overwhelming dejection, the student abandoned himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... again distinguished Richard's voice in the workshops, and the cheery tone of it was a positive affront to Mr. Slocum. Looking back to the week prior to the tragedy in Welch's Court, he recollected Richard's unaccountable dejection; he had had the air of a person meditating some momentous step,—the pallor, the set face, and the introspective eyes. Then came the murder, and Richard's complete prostration. Mr. Slocum in his own excitement had noted it superficially at the time, but now he recalled ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... I am sure he wished—no matter; it is too delicate." He kissed her hand and went out, a picture of dejection. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... meanest soldier in that little band of famished patriots? Where is the man? There he stands; and whether the heart of an American beats in his bosom, you gentlemen are to judge." He then painted the surrender of the British troops, their humiliation and dejection, the triumph of the patriot band, the shouts of victory, the cry of "Washington and liberty," as it rang and echoed through the American ranks, and was reverberated from vale to hill, and then to heaven. "But hark! ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... new artistic scheme. Only recently I had had proofs of the impossibility of making my art intelligible to the public, and all this deterred me from beginning new dramatic works. Indeed, I thought everything was at an end with my artistic creativeness. From this state of mental dejection I was raised by a friend. By the most evident and undeniable proofs he made me feel that I was not deserted, but, on the contrary, understood deeply by those even who were otherwise most distant from me; in this way he gave me ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair, the hopeless mouth with a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget that the features themselves were well modelled, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... bidden with their wives and daughters. Still unsatisfied, he demanded and obtained the ceremony of a solemn coronation, and seven crowns were placed successively upon his head as emblems of the seven spiritual gifts. Before him stood the great Barons in attitudes of humility and dejection; for a moment the great actor had forgotten himself in the excitement of his part, and Rienzi again enjoyed ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and the more hideous imitation marble mantel were the two objects that held her glance. There was no change in her calm demeanor. But Stephen, who knew his mother, felt that her little elation over her arrival had ebbed, Neither would confess dejection ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in silence; his eyes are fixed on his daughter, his hands are folded, and his whole appearance expresses the utmost dejection.] ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... was drawn by an elderly horse devoid of ambition or ideals. His head was sunk in dejection. He was gray at the temples, and slouched in the shafts in a loafing attitude, one forefoot negligently crossed in front of the other. He aroused himself reluctantly and with apparent difficulty when Merton ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... gloves, and white rosettes in her hair, she melted into tears, to the amazement of her companions. It was the reverse of the scene of Jephtha on the mountain. The courtesan was afraid of being understood; she ascribed this dreadful dejection to the joy with which she looked forward to the function. As there is certainly as wide a gulf between the habits she had given up and the habits she was acquiring as there is between the savage state and civilization, she had the grace and simplicity and depth which ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... of scarcity. Canoes were sent at a great expense to New Grenada, by the Meta and the Vichada, in search of flour. The provision arrived too late, and many Spaniards and Indians perished of those diseases which are produced in every climate by want and moral dejection. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and filling the tank and tightly screwing down the nuts of the covering, I wheeled the car into the open road. There I saw Forrest leaning against the wall of the coach-house, a figure of inexpressible dejection. ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... all his fortitude, the spirits of the youth were depressed, and his faculties chilled by such humiliating neglect, and such reiterated disappointments. Who is he that would not, under such circumstances, sink into languor? It cannot be doubted that dejection every day detracted from his powers, and that by a kind of irresistible gravitation, he descended like a falling body in the physical world, with accelerated velocity, till at last he reached the very ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... until he had disappeared among the trees; and tears started in her eyes. Would he always be riding away from her, behind the hills, the woods, a turn of the road? She sat a while in deep dejection; but not for long. Her spirit was too resilient for futile moping, and her purpose too firmly held to be abandoned on one reverse. She reflected that if he had gone he must as certainly return; and so, with a toss of her head, she presently arose, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... this stimulating variety of objects, the melancholy which he had brought from home still lingered around his mind. To Mr. Adair and Mr. Bruce, as I have before mentioned, he gave the idea of a person labouring under deep dejection; and Colonel Leake, who was, at that time, resident at Ioannina, conceived very much the same impression of the state of his mind.[4] But, assuredly, even this melancholy, habitually as it still clung ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... think!" said the old man; and, Helwyse drawing back, there ensued a silence, varied only by a long and tremulous sigh from his companion; whether of relief or dejection, the visitor could not decide. But when Mr. MacGentle spoke, it was with more assurance. Either from mortification at his illusion, or more probably from imperfect perception of it, he made no reference to what had passed. Old age ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... endeavoring to dissipate the dejection of her friend by rallying her, as the young officer came to the door, on the evidently new conquest she had made. The Indian turned to look at the intruder upon his pleasant musings, when a "wah!" expressive of deep satisfaction escaped him, and at the same ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... few days Bob Loveday had considerably improved in tone and vigour. One other obvious remedy for his dejection was to indulge in the society of Miss Garland, love being so much more effectually got rid of by displacement than by attempted annihilation. But Loveday's belief that he had offended her beyond forgiveness, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... the house at an early hour to get me hot water and procure me medicine. I could not leave my bed till past six Monday evening, when I crawled out in order to see Charles Lamb, and to afford him such poor comfort as my society might perhaps do in the present dejection of his spirits ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Convention; yelled for by hired shouters; supposed to be more moderate than Seward; his own statement of principles; votes secured for, by bargains; nominated on third ballot; accepts nomination in dejection; his nomination a result of "availability"; little known in country at large; anxious to avoid discussion of side issues; opposed by Abolitionists; supported by Giddings; elected; the choice ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... met you, I thought I was alone in the world; shunned by most around me as a man of mystery. Because I could not join in their rude sports and boisterous merriment, they attributed my reserve and visible dejection to sinister causes—possibly to some horrible and undiscovered crime." A blush here flitted across my countenance; but Douglas did not remark it. "Young, and warm, and enthusiastic, you sought me out ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... evidently in a state of high nervous excitement, for the pupils of her eyes were so dilated that they flashed black as night instead of gray; and a bright red spot burned in either cheek. In the corner, in an attitude of anxious dejection, sat a small dog. He had tried following his mistress at first, when she began her walk, and finding that the promenade took them nowhere and was very monotonous, had tried to vary the monotony by worrying her heels in a playful manner; whereupon he ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... ill: there could be no doubt of that. His face was haggard and unshaven, his clothing was soiled, his attitude one of utter dejection. He crouched in the chair breathing hurriedly, with one hand pressed to his right side, as though in pain. Occasionally he coughed: a short, high-pitched ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... gliding sweep that had carried her before Yellow Rufe; it was a characteristic movement with her—a compound of the gliding dart of the tiger-shark and the silent-footed pounce of its jungle brother. Milo roused from his dejection and sprang from his knees with amazing promptitude, but he had yet to round the bed-foot when the splendid fury stood panting ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... interest. Old age, Cardan declares to be the most cruel and irreparable evil with which man is cursed, and to talk of old age is to talk of the crowning misfortune of humanity. Old men are made wretched by avarice, by dejection, and by terror. He bids men not to be deceived by the flowery words of Cicero,[293] when he describes Cato as an old man, like to a fair statue of Polycleitus, with faculties unimpaired and memory fresh and green. He next goes on to catalogue the numerous vices and deformities of old ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... stood one whose appearance had something of superior dignity. Her face, though pale and wasted, was less squalid than those of the others, and showed a dejection of that decent kind, which moves our pity unmixed with horror: upon her, therefore, the eyes of all were immediately turned. The keeper who accompanied them observed it: "This," said he, "is a young lady who was born to ride ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... comrade to us, she confided to us her adverse opinions of other people, laughed with us, and often at us (when it was like as not that she herself had made us ridiculous), told us her little secrets, let us share her gaiety and her dejection alike, teased us, soothed us, made us serve her, and played the spoiled beauty with us to the full of the part. And a beauty she was, indeed; ten times more than in her childhood. The bud was approaching its full bloom. She was of the average tallness; slender ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the second part; only I wished to stand firm and unshaken—as firm when asleep as when awake, as firm when elated with wine as in despondency and dejection." ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... Buckingham and Monmouth. And with the King's consent they leave for a hunting bout and they ride hither. It says that the former in masque saw my meeting this morning with Lady Constance, and he followed and made love to her." The Abbes stood in utter dismay and dejection. At last, Dempsy of the Cow and Horn began in deep, full tones the first movement of the "Kyrie eleison, Christe Eleison, Kyrie eleison," and one by one every voice leapt up in a God-have-mercy, and the walls echoed and without the birds seemed to take it ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... after their figures are swallowed up in the fast growing darkness. CRICHTON stands motionless, the lid in his hand, though he has forgotten it, and his reason for taking it off the pot. He is deeply stirred, but presently is ashamed of his dejection, for it is as if he doubted his principles. Bravely true to his faith that nature will decide now as ever before, he proceeds manfully with his preparations for the night. He lights a ship's lantern, one of several treasures ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... but little of Zee, save at meals, when the family assembled, and she was then reserved and silent. My apprehensions of danger from an affection I had so little encouraged or deserved, therefore, now faded away, but my dejection continued to increase. I pined for escape to the upper world, but I racked my brains in vain for any means to effect it. I was never permitted to wander forth alone, so that I could not even visit the spot on which I had alighted, and see if it were possible ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... answered, that it was the business of the senate and people of Carthage to know what satisfaction was due to the Romans. A second deputation bringing them no clearer answer, they fell into the greatest dejection; and being seized with the strongest terrors, from the recollection of their past sufferings, they fancied the enemy was already at their gates, and imagined to themselves all the dismal consequences of a long siege, and of a city ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... of pain, of hope, of spite, of anger, etc., it accompanies all the phases or turns of creation. The creator may, haphazard, go through the most diverse forms of exaltation and depression; may feel in turn the dejection of repulse and the joy of success; finally the satisfaction of being freed from a heavy burden. I challenge anyone to produce a solitary example of invention wrought out in abstracto, and free from any factors of feeling. Human nature does not allow ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... to the dining-table, he felt that he creaked from weariness and dejection. Babs looked at him solicitously, and then jumped up to get him something to eat. Everybody else was again watching out the ship's ports at the new, strange world of which they could ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... with famished eagerness to the trap. They found in it the forepaw of a beaver, the sight of which tantalized their hunger, and added to their dejection. They resumed their journey with flagging spirits, but had not gone far when they perceived Le Clerc approaching at a distance. They hastened to meet him, in hopes of tidings of good cheer. He had none to give them; but news of that strange wanderer, M'Lellan. The smoke ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... not understand why he did this, asked him the reason of his dejection, and the King ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... wanted a sling on his arm or a bandage on his finger to complete the impression of a man with a painful abscess or a broken arm. The pale, sombre face lighted up for a moment when his mother and sister entered, but this only gave it a look of more intense suffering, in place of its listless dejection. The light soon died away, but the look of suffering remained, and Zossimov, watching and studying his patient with all the zest of a young doctor beginning to practise, noticed in him no joy at the arrival of his mother and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... God!" cried the Prince, swinging round and presenting his pistol at the head of the Governor, who stood there like a statue of dejection, and made no sign. ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... arose from the bench, and marched off in the direction of Montmartre, shaking his head and swinging his cane with a most furious air; while his companion remained where he was, in an attitude of great dejection. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... adding a much more common character—but more complete in its kind than any of the foregoing, the Mar'echale de Luxembourg.(939) She has been very handsome, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty is gone, her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming. This dejection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for she has wit and good-breeding; but you would swear, by the restlessness of her person and the horrors she cannot conceal, that she had signed the compact, and expected to be called upon in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... a desolate look, and answered in a tone of utter dejection, "Oh, I didn't know, but perhaps you might not want me. All the rest are so glad to sell me to anybody that will take me. But you really do love me, don't you?" she added, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... by a look expressive of dejection. "Well, then, tell me all about it, Porthos, my friend, unless it ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... would have slain these praetors in a fury, for their bold language to Sylla; contenting themselves, however, with breaking their rods, and tearing off their purple-edged robes, after much contumelious usage they sent them back, to the sad dejection of the citizens, who beheld their magistrates despoiled of their badges of office, and announcing to them, that things were now manifestly come to a rupture past all cure. Marius put himself in readiness, and Sylla ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... nor the other; and as pain has been truly said to be 'the deepest thing in our nature,' so is it fear that will bring the depths of our nature within our knowledge. A great capacity of suffering belongs to genius; and it has been observed that an alternation of joyfulness and dejection is quite as characteristic of the man of genius as intensity in either kind." In his Notes from Books, p. 216, he recurs to it:—"'Pain,' says a writer whose early death will not prevent his being long remembered, 'pain is the deepest thing that we have in our nature, and union ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... violently agitated. Throwing down his racket, he exclaimed: "Am I, then, never to have peace? What! always new troubles?" and retired to his room in the Louvre, with a countenance expressive of great dejection.[952] And when, later in the day, the King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, and La Rochefoucauld, after seeing Coligny's wounds dressed, came to the palace and begged him for permission to leave a city in which there was no security for their lives, Charles swore to them, with his accustomed profanity, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... but his astonishment still further increased when the interpreter explained to him how powerful were the kings and how wealthy, and all about the Spanish nation, the manner of fighting, and how great were the cities and how strong the fortresses. In great dejection the man, together with his wife and sons, threw themselves at the feet of Columbus, with their eyes full of tears, repeatedly asking if the country which produced such men and in such numbers ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... road in front of the chateau was filled with Belgian troops, bedraggled with mud, trying to regain order. And there they halted for hours and hours in the rain—an absolute picture of dejection. Even the horses imbibed the general despair as they stood there, heads drooping, their manes stirring in the wind. That must be the hard part of it—waiting for orders; but they did it well, no impatience nor ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... examples, when the opening of the door caused her to look up, and, to her dismay, Arthur entered. He did not, however, as she feared, begin his customary course of teasing and tormenting, but seated himself at his desk, leaning his head upon his hand in an attitude of dejection. ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... very pretty dinner, no matter at what trouble, and made me feel quite easy about her wounded feelings. One of the best features of Throckmorton was, she hadn't any feelings; you might treat her like a galley-slave, and she would show the least dejection. It was a temptation to have such a ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... you how your hang-dog look betrays you at brag—And then, when you would fain brush up your courage, and put a good face on a bad game, your bold looks always remind me of a standard hoisted only half-mast high, and betraying melancholy and dejection, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Ambrose says on Luke 4:13, the devil departed from Christ "for a time, because, later on, he returned, not to tempt Him, but to assail Him openly"—namely, at the time of His Passion. Nevertheless, He seemed in this later assault to tempt Christ to dejection and hatred of His neighbor; just as in the desert he had tempted Him to gluttonous pleasure and idolatrous ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Thalassa sat alone by the table in a drooping attitude of dejection or stupor. Her head was bent over her crossed hands, which rested on the table, and her grey hair, escaping from the back comb which fastened it, fell on both sides of her face. An oil lamp smoked on the table beside her, sending forth a cloud of black vapour like an unbottled genie, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... that same hour my deep dejection left me, and I smiled again. I often smile—why? I read it thus: He in whose hands are the issues of life and death gave me that minute the great summons; 'twas some cord of life snapped in me. He is very pitiful. I should have lived unhappy; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... uniting, in appearance, with a liberal ministry, he let the cardinals betray it, and defeat the hopes of Italy. He cried peace, peace! but had not a word of blame for the sanguinary acts of the King of Naples, a word of sympathy for the victims of Lombardy. Seizing the moment of dejection in the nation, he put in this retrograde ministry; sanctioned their acts, daily more impudent: let them neutralize the constitution he himself had given; and when the people slew his minister, and assaulted him in his own palace, he yielded anew; he dared ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... pale-faced young man I retired to a desk in the corner, where a few seconds sufficed for the completion of the business. Leaving, I sought to catch the eye of my melancholy friend, but he appeared too sunk in dejection to notice anything. The restless-eyed comedian, looking at the author of the English version and addressing me as Boanerges, wished me good morning, at which the everybody laughed; and, informed as to the way out by the pale-faced Mr. Catchpole, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... freezes. Never shall you hear anything wintry from his warm breast; no pinched cheeping, no wavering notes between sorrow and joy; his mellow, fluty voice is ever tuned to downright gladness, as free from dejection as cock-crowing. ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... awake; The fox caught his tail, and the Caiman a snake, Which was wriggling along to a lark's low-built nest, To tear the soft young from the mother's warm breast. The sheep and the cow, in apparent dejection, Were quietly chewing the cud of reflection. The cavies and ermines were running a race, Armadillo was off to a grasshopper chace. The cat was surprised to see animals roam, And she purr'd when she thought ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... seriously. Their pessimism is a mere pose, either intellectual or sentimental; but life itself is optimistic: it wants to go on. Pessimism is a form of mental dipsomania, it disdains healthy nourishment, indulges in the strong drink of denunciation, and creates an artificial dejection which thirsts for a stronger draught. If existence were an evil, it would wait for no philosopher to prove it. It is like convicting a man of suicide, while all the time he stands before you in the flesh. Existence itself is here to prove that it cannot ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... dripped over the smooth olive cheeks, but no sound escaped the trembling mouth, once so red and riotous, now drawn into curves of passionate sorrow; and the topaz gleams that formerly flickered in her sullen hazel eyes were drowned in the gloom of dejection. For her, memory was an angel of wrath, driving her into the hideous Golgotha of the past, where bloody spectres gibbered; the present was a loathsome death in life, the future a nameless torturing horror. Helpless victim of her own outraged conscience, she seemed at times sinking into ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... We found that sixty or sixty-five had perished during the night. A fourth part at least, we supposed, had drowned themselves in despair. We only lost two of our own numbers, neither of whom were officers. The deepest dejection was painted on every face; each, having recovered himself, could now feel the horrors of his situation; and some of us, shedding tears of despair, bitterly deplored the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous |
