"Deplorable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sun and moon) in the tenth month, On the first day of the moon, which was hsin-mao, The sun was eclipsed, A thing of very evil omen. Before, the moon became small, And now the sun became small. Henceforth the lower people Will be in a very deplorable case. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... had lost no fewer than fourteen, including my messmate, poor Jack Keene, and Tasker, the gunner's mate, all of whom must have gone overboard when the vessel was thrown down on her beam-ends! It was a most deplorable affair, and I was especially grieved at the loss of my light-hearted chum; but that was not the moment for indulgence in useless lamentation, and I busied myself in doing what might be possible to provide for ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the bows, or, as sailors say, in the very eyes of the ship, this delightful apartment is of a triangular shape, and is generally fitted with two tiers of rude bunks. Those of the Julia were in a most deplorable condition, mere wrecks, some having been torn down altogether to patch up others; and on one side there were but two standing. But with most of the men it made little difference whether they had a bunk or not, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... statement that women have no sense of honour. But have they? Helen clearly saw that he had hauled down his flag. Yet did she cease firing? Not a bit. She gave him a shattering broadside, well knowing that he had surrendered. Her disregard of the ethics of warfare was deplorable. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... boards of supervisors of counties, to the municipal councils of cities, to the boards of education, charity, and the like, indeed, to the whole system throughout the Commonwealth, and to the modes of conducting public and private business, my ignorance was deplorable. Many a time have I envied some plain farmer his term in a board of supervisors, or some country schoolmaster his relations to a board of education, or some alderman his experience in a common council, or some pettifogger his acquaintance ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... system of translations to which it had given birth. The poorer bishoprics would hardly have been accepted at all had they not been regarded as stepping-stones to others of greater value; and the hope of such promotion had in some cases the not unnatural, however deplorable, effect of making the bishop anxious to please the minister of the day, to whom alone he could look for translation, by parliamentary subservience; and the still more mischievous result (if possible) of rendering the whole Bench liable to the same degrading suspicion; while the canonries ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... should not use the force in his hands, which sent him against the enemy with the foreordained purpose of receiving rather than making the attack, a system which sapped moral power to save material resources, must have unhappy results.... It is certain that this deplorable system was one of the causes of the lack of discipline and startling defections which marked the periods of Louis XVI., of the [first] Republic, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... surprised when he saw the deplorable condition of the young man. "That which you show me," said he, "while it fills me with horror, excites my curiosity, so that I am impatient to hear your history, which, no doubt, must be extraordinary, and I am persuaded that the lake and the fish make some part of it; therefore I conjure ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... Dr. Lambert, who was desired to visit two children at Newburn, in Scotland, who the preceding day had swallowed some of the berries of the deadly nightshade. He found them in a deplorable situation. The eldest (ten years of age) was delirious in bed, and affected with convulsive spasms: the younger was not in a much better condition in his mother's arms. The eyes of both the children were particularly affected. The whole circle of the cornea appeared black, the iris being ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... his damp "smoking," his soaking gloves and deplorable expression, and could not repress a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... is full of troops and police. Any attempt to hold the meeting can only result in bloodshed, deplorable bloodshed, the lives of men and ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... derived from her dead father and with little true sympathy with Mrs. Merrick's unscrupulous schemes. But at that age a girl is easily influenced, so it is little wonder that under such tuition Louise became calculating, sly and deceitful, to a most deplorable degree. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... who has the shameful distinction of having lent his name to the idea of which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... mind, if he invented it. At the same time, I do not think the events it relates played the important part which Mr. Gosse assigns to them in Donne's spiritual biography. It is impossible to read Mr. Gosse's two volumes without getting the impression that "the deplorable but eventful liaison," as he calls it, was the most fruitful occurrence in Donne's life as a poet. He discovers traces of it in one great poem after another—even in the Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, which is commonly supposed to relate to the Countess ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... well knows that during the past eight years or more, the work of game protection in California has been in a state of frequent turmoil. At times the lack of harmony between the State Fish and Game Commission and the sportsmen of the state has been damaging to the interests of wild life, and deplorable. In the case of Warden Welch, in Santa Cruz County, pernicious politics came near robbing the state of a splendid warden, but the courts finally overthrew the overthrowers of Mr. Welch, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... strapping youth of nineteen—was a good representative of the "steady set" at Saint George's College. Indeed, as he was intending to become a clergyman in due time, it would have been a deplorable thing if this had not been the case. He worked hard, and though not a clever fellow, had already taken a good position in the examination lists of his college. He was also an ardent superintendent at a certain ragged-school ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... thought no child would have asked that question," replied Hunsden, who never at any time gave information without reproving for stupidity those who asked it of him. "If you had been my pupil, as I suppose you once had the misfortune to be that of a deplorable character not a hundred miles off, I would have put you in the corner for such a confession of ignorance. Why, mademoiselle, can't you see that it is our GOLD which buys us French politeness, German good-will, and Swiss ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... of destination, the condition of the slave is scarcely less deplorable. They are advertised with cattle; chained in droves, and driven to market with a whip; and sold at auction, with the beasts of the field. They are treated like brutes, and all the influences around them conspire ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... contrary, The greater the evil the more it would seem to be deplored. But seemingly the sins of those who are in the state of holiness and perfection are the most deplorable, for it is written (Jer. 23:9): "My heart is broken within me," and afterwards (Jer. 23:11): "For the prophet and the priest are defiled; and in My house I have found their wickedness." Therefore religious and others who ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... through the period of boyhood, and had in time grown to be a man, he left those who had done him the service of bringing him up, and turned from an almost hopeless youth to the practice of unhoped-for virtue; being deplorable for this reason only, that he passed from life to death without the tokens of the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... no further remarks to make of immediate interest, and Mr. Peters was struggling with a return of the deplorable shyness which so handicapped him in his dealings with the other sex. After a few moments, he pulled himself together again, and, as his first act was to replace the pistol in the pocket of his coat, Billie became conscious of a faint stirring ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... had all crossed with Waters as often as I have you would know that he is subject to attacks like that. He means well, but occasionally he gives way in the deplorable manner you have just witnessed. Now all there is of it consists in this—a basket of flowers has been sent (no doubt by mistake) to our state-room. There is nothing but a card on it which says 'Room 27.' Steward," he cried, "would you go to room 27, bring that basket of flowers, ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana—a rotten trunk giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe—if I dared swing one—would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anxiety. Between my cousin's deplorable attitude and my wife's justifiable irritation, I was extremely perplexed. If I had had a dozen cousins, the solution of the difficulty would have been simple. But to close our door on our only kinsman was an ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... uninspired by religious motives. I need only mention Charles Darwin, and when we remember that not even sectarianism ventured to dispute his right to rest within the hallowed precincts of an abbey-cathedral, ecclesiastics themselves must be fast forgetting the deplorable narrowness of old views which made morality and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... him, that Fielding owed his connection with that extraordinary popular excitement of 1753, the mysterious case of the servant girl Elizabeth Canning. On the 29th of January 'Betty Canning' presented herself, after a month's disappearance, at the door of her mother's house in London, in a deplorable state of weakness and distress, and declared that she had been kidnapped by two men on New Year's night, taken to a house on the Hertford road, and there confined by an old gipsy woman for twenty-eight days, in a hay loft, with a pitcher of water and a few pieces ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Voyage to people the Countrey. From this year to the present, viz. 1542. the Injustice, Violence and Tyranny of the Spaniards came to the highest degree of extremety: for they had shook hands with and bid adieu to all fear of God and the King, unmindful of themselves in this sad and deplorable condition, for the Destructions, Cruelties, Butcheries, Devastations, the Domolishing of Cities, Depradations, &c. which they perpetrated in so many and such ample Kingdoms, are such and so great, and ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... well-being of his people; but of a diffident temper, timid, hesitating, and uncertain in decision, and under the influence of his young consort, the beautiful Queen Marie Antoinette, who had the imperious temper of her house, wedded to light and frivolous manners; she brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of judgment and a steadfast incompetence in knowledge ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... the wretched maiden, as she beheld the deplorable, the maddening sight, might have melted hearts of stone, had there been even such among the Indians. But Indians, engaged in the delights of torturing a prisoner, are, as the dead chief had boasted himself, without heart. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... public opinion here will be deplorable unless this is done. His majesty's Government, on their side, are most anxious to avoid any incident of an aggressive nature, and the German Government will, I hope, be equally careful not to take any step which would make the situation between ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... urged their jaded horses through the crush, cursed and screamed at by those on foot, menaced by bayonets and sabres. The infantry, drenched, starving, plastered with mud to the waists, toiled doggedly on through the darkness; batteries in deplorable condition struggled from mud hole to mud hole; the reserve cavalry division, cut out and forced east, limped wearily ahead, its rear-guard firing at ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... modest by living on a poultry farm, for there are constant expositions of the most deplorable vanity among the cocks. We have a couple of pea-fowl who certainly are an addition to the landscape, as they step mincingly along the square of turf we dignify by the name of lawn. The head of ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... moment with her eyes on him. "Yes—ces choses-la se voient. My brother, in a single word, has the deplorable habit of falling in love with other women. I don't judge him; I don't judge my sister-in-law. I only permit myself to say that in her position I would have managed otherwise. I'd either have kept my husband's affection or I'd have ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... War of the Polish Succession presently sank into a mere armistice, and until 1736 we dimly perceive Vauvenargues sharing the idle and boring life of the officer who, too poor to retire to Paris, vegetates in some deplorable frontier-garrison of Burgundy or Franche Comte. We know that he was dissipated and idle, for he tells us so, but his confession is marred by no sort of priggishness, and it is very important to ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... either side, there was a practical dead-lock in much of the business of the Court. Suitors were put to serious delay, inconvenience, and consequent expense. Counsel were profoundly disgusted, and of course took sides for and against. Judge Willis was so sensible of the deplorable consequences of such a state of things that, as soon as Term was over, he entered into a minute and searching investigation of the constitution and power of the Court of King's Bench as established in Upper Canada.[106] He was desirous of finding some way out of the difficulty, or at all events ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Progressist idea, that much can be done by legislation to ameliorate the condition of the masses of the population, nor do they see that in a country like New Zealand, where labour is dear, food cheap, and the climate mild and equable, their condition need necessarily be so deplorable. They still cherish the old theories of individualism. The humanitarian ideals of Mr. Reeves, not being idealists, they regard with little interest. What they see is the Government of their Colony, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... was the state of Keith's soul a reproach to Isaac's conscience, but the brilliance of Keith's intellect was a terror to it. Any day that same swift illuminating power might be turned on to the dark places in his own soul, showing up the deplorable discrepancies between his inner and his outer life. He wanted his son and everybody else to think well of him, and Keith's lucid sincerity at times appalled him. He had not yet discovered that his protection was in the very thing he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... abilities to judge, but with good-nature enough, like a prudent teacher with a young learner, to praise perhaps a little more than is exactly just, lest the thin-skinned animal fall into that most deplorable of all poetic diseases—heart-breaking despondency of himself. Dare I, Sir, already immensely indebted to your goodness, ask the additional obligation of your being that friend to me? I enclose you an essay of mine in a walk of poesy to me entirely new; I mean the epistle addressed to R. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... reference to outward objects as to secure, so far as we can, our own safety and happiness, and the welfare of our fellow-men. But there can be no greater blunder than to confound the laws of natural objects with the law of human conduct; and into this deplorable blunder Mr. Combe has allowed himself to fall. Throughout the whole of his statements respecting the "natural laws," there are two things included under one name, which are perfectly distinct and separate from each other. In the first place, there ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... yehoi!" and so I was dragged aboard. I was put to bed, and had swallowed so much water that it took a very considerable quantity of brandy to bring it to a proper mixture in my inside. In fact, for some hours I was in a very deplorable state. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been three whole weeks without anything new In the way of flounced silks, and thus left in the lurch, Are unable to go to ball, concert or church. In another large mansion near the same place Was found a deplorable, heartrending case Of entire destitution of Brussels point-lace. In a neighboring block there was found, in three calls, Total want, long continued, of camel's-hair shawls; And a suffering family, whose case ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... a typical session of the court. Night after night, from eight o'clock until one in the morning, the scene is repeated. The moral effect and its reaction upon those who conduct the proceedings—the judges, officers, and the police, cannot but be deplorable; the evil done to those forcibly brought there ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... better, his imaginative adventures between the covers of his books or his real adventures in his daily strolls. True, it was not his mountain home—this place in which he found himself; neither was there anywhere his Silver Lake with its far, far-reaching sky above. More deplorable yet, nowhere was there the dear father he loved so well. But the sun still set in rose and gold, and the sky, though small, still carried the snowy sails of its cloud-boats; while as to his father—his father had told him not to grieve, and David was trying very ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... Lombard flew at him like a small terrier attacking some big mastiff. All Lodovico's tact and courtesy were needed to allay the storm, and when at length Merula died in 1494, the duke ordered the immediate destruction of all the papers relating to this deplorable controversy, of which all parties, he felt, had good reason to be ashamed. The remodelling of the library of the Castello di Pavia was another important work which was carried out in the year 1492, by Tristano Calco the historian and kinsman of the chief secretary, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... pity," said the housekeeper, sincerely, "and they do say yer ma does deplorable bad cooking, and yer sisters that's older than you aren't great hands at learning." The housekeeper sat down on a grave near the paling, as if too discouraged at the picture she had drawn to have energy ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... Africa,—by mariners most dreaded of any other in the world. The very thought of it causes the sailor to shiver with affright. And no wonder: on that inhospitable seaboard thousands of his fellows have found a watery grave; and thousands of others a doom far more deplorable than death! ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Castellana.—I could not write a word to-night in the salon, because I wished to listen to the conversation of two intelligent travellers, who, arriving after us, were obliged to occupy the same apartment. Our accommodations here are indeed deplorable altogether. After studying the geography of my bed, and finding no spot thereon, to which Sancho's couch of pack-saddles and pummels would not be a bed of down in comparison, I ordered a fresh faggot ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... drugs indiscriminately, such as morphine, codeine, camphor, or ether without doctors' orders. When untrained Sisters and inexperienced dressers do this (which constantly happens) the results are sometimes very deplorable. I have myself seen a dresser give a strong hypodermic stimulant to a man with a very serious haemorrhage. The bleeding vessel was deep down and very difficult to find, and the haemorrhage became so severe ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... instance. When the thin, intermittent crackle of blank ammunition shall have been replaced by the whistle of real bullets, we shall get over our predilection for sitting up and taking notice. The conversation of our neighbour, or the deplorable antics of B Company on the neighbouring skyline, will interest us not at all. We shall ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... fold and smoothed into some sort of decent seeming, rather than cast beyond its pale and made the prey of its enemies. {144b} The task was a hopeless one. In the pages of Pascal the Jesuits too obviously make a deplorable business both of religion and morality. But they were as much the victims as the authors of a system which Rome had sanctioned, and which came directly from the claims which it made to govern the world not merely by spiritual suasion, but by ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... my privilege as your betrothed, to alleviate her suffering as much as possible, and to repair the injury for which you are responsible. When human life and reputation are at stake, hypercritical fastidiousness is less pardonable than the deplorable mistake ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that 'The Times-Democrat' boat was at his service, and would remove his family at once to the hills, and on Monday a flat would take out his stock, as, until that time, they would be busy. Notwithstanding the deplorable situation himself and family were in, Mr. Ellis did not want to leave. He said he thought he would wait until Monday, and take the risk of his house falling. The children around the door looked perfectly contented, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... expedient to publish the true history of an episode which, if unexplained, is only too likely to prejudice me to a serious extent. Any circumstance that tends to undermine or lessen the world's reverence for its instructors is a deplorable calamity, to be averted at all hazards, even when this can only be effected by disclosures scarcely less painful ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... even you would be able to take the hint contained in my previous parcel. As however it was evidently lost on you, I am writing to suggest to you more plainly that you should wash your dog. I noticed its deplorable condition when I passed it in the road the other morning, and am surprised that the simple explanation of the trouble has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... fit's off!" said he; "I'm sober again! I finished the chapter, and, by Jove, I think it's the worst thing I have done yet. It's simply infamous! I read it with strong sensations of nausea! I really don't know how I can get such deplorable rubbish down on paper. No matter, I get all the rapture of creation, and that's the best part of it. I simply couldn't live without it. It clears off some perilous stuff or other, and now I feel like a convalescent. Did you ever see anything so enchanting as ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... man, in the Common-Wealth; how disagreeable was the Event? the Sheapard could endure himself; and sit down contentedly under his misfortunes, whilst lost Antony, unable to hold out, and quitting all hopes both for himself and his Queen, became his own barbarous Executioner: Than which sad and deplorable fall I cannot imagine what could be worse, for certainly nothing is so miserable as a Wretch made so from a flowrishing & happy man; by which tis evident how much we ought to prefer before the gaity of a great and shining State, that Idol of the Crowd, the lowly simplicity of a Sheapards ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... to collect a sufficient Quantity of Provisions for their Subsistence. Your own Experience, & knowledge of the Importance of that Post, render it needless for us to press you to procure the most expeditious & vigorous Exertions for its Support; nor need we describe the deplorable Situation in which his Excellency Gen1 Washington & the brave Army under his Command would be involvd, should a successfull Attack be made on the ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... roads were dangerous, the stage was deplorable, and everything but the scenery unpleasant. The interior and west of the country were connected with Dublin by canals cut in the time of the Irish Parliament, which followed the enterprise of the Dutch. They were looked upon at the time as feats of engineering skill, somewhat in the light that ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... was contributed to our mountain, when we set out anew on our pilgrimage, with a result at first deplorable, for the number of our own pieces of luggage being known and registered in the official documents, it turned out, at our first stopping-place, that the trunk of our new companion had been substituted for one of our own, which, of course, was left behind. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... couldn't resist looking in upon you," he said, a cloud of care coming over his face. "I only hope it won't get you into a scrape. I came over to try to avert this deplorable business about poor Kellner too late, I fear. And the worst of it is, I must have blundered somehow for my coming leaked out, and they are on the watch for me. If I get safe across to France ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... haggard. I do not like him personally, as you know, but the man looks ill and old and the papers are becoming bolder in what they hint at concerning him and the operations he was, and is still supposed to be, connected with; and it is deplorable to see such a physical change in any human being, guilty or innocent. I do not like to see pain; I never did. For Dysart I have no use at all, but he is suffering, and it is difficult ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... his hat, and hurried off in the gathering dusk. He had some little trouble in finding Mr. Dilger's establishment, which was a dirty, dusty little place in a back street, with a few deplorable old chairs, rickety washstands, and rusty fenders outside, and the interior almost completely blocked by piles of dingy mattresses, empty clock-cases, tarnished and cracked mirrors, broken lamps, damaged picture-frames, and ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... "Make the people acquainted with the Word of God." But the Bible was of little use to the masses so long as they could not read. Luther therefore set himself sturdily to the improvement of the schools, which were in a deplorable condition. He urged the principle of parental responsibility for the education of children. "Believe me," said he, "it is far more important that you exercise care in training your children than ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... To misapprehend Wyeliffe himself, that is, not to recognize him as the first and purest reformer, the man between the Waldenses, Tauler, and Luther, is, however, a heresy more worthy of condemnation than the ignoring of Germany in the Reformation, and doubly deplorable when one sees such blind faith in the bloody sentences of that most miserable court of judgment of Henry VIII. I must therefore invert your formula thus, "L'histoire romanique (romantique) ne vaut pas le Roman historique." (I am not speaking of "Two Years Ago," for I only began ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... a serpent. All that is doubtless as it should be, in a romance; but the unfortunate publication of Mrs. Carlyle's letters and journals introduced a jarring note of reality. A jungle of controversial writings has since grown up around the domestic relations of the Carlyles,—impertinent, deplorable writings, which serve no purpose but to make us cry, "Enough, let them rest in peace!" Both had sharp tongues, and probably both ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... says Mr Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, 'I really am in that state of adoration of you that I don't know what to do with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the corner of the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope that I may—may think it possible ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Tennessee, where he met with great success. In the meantime the Confederate President Davis visited Bragg, and thinking Chattanooga was sure to be captured, sent Longstreet with his corps to the defence of Tennessee. His men were in a deplorable state—hungry, ragged, and tentless; but under this indefatigable leader, they shut up Burnside's force in the works at Knoxville. Meanwhile, Grant, in the moment of his splendid triumph at Chattanooga, ordered Sherman's torn, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... inexplicable, but its reason is readily understood by those who know the sway of falsehood over a society perverted in its opinions as in its tastes; to those who know the deplorable facility with which error is spread and the tenacity with which it clings to our poor mind. Error, moreover, owes to our abasement which it flatters and crushes, the privilege of freedom from contradiction, and it is only in regard to truth that ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the long avenues of trees over the long, wet road, through bitter wind and driving rain. Soaked with rain, and shivering with cold, I entered the village of Schoneberg at two o'clock, just after the rain had ceased, as deplorable a figure as a man commonly presents when all the vigour has been washed out of his face, and his clothes hang limp and damp about his body. Wearied to death, I halted at the door of an inn, but was told inhospitably—miserable tramp as I seemed, and was—that ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... emotional—stories, our taste is not thereby proved to be hopeless, or our national character bad. It is better to be creatures of even sentimental sentiment with the author of "The Rosary," than to see the world only as it is portrayed by the pens of Bernard Shaw and Anatole France. The first is deplorable; the second is dangerous. I should deeply regret the day when a simple story of honest American manhood winning a million and a sparkling, piquant sweetheart lost all power to lull my critical faculty and warm my heart. I doubt whether ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... condamnable, a recueillir le mal qu'il me suppose avoir eu l'intention de dire des personnes que j'ai citees, et cependant, apres tout ce travail, a peine a-t-il pu decouvrir l'ombre d'une seule allusion maligne. Jamais on ne fit un usage plus deplorable de son tems et de ses peines, car toutes les phrases de cette production sont aussi obscures que tirees ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... taken from America; for I am sure we can spare none from hence. The negligence and dilatoriness of the ministers at home, the wickedness of our West Indian governors, and the little-minded quarrels of the regulars and irregular forces, have reduced our affairs in that part of the world to a most deplorable state. Oswego, of ten times more importance even than Minorca, is so annihilated that we ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Kai-kaus and the Persian army, then in the power of the demons. With pious earnestness he besought the Almighty to bless him in the great work; and whilst in a despairing mood he was lamenting his deplorable condition, his tongue and throat being parched with thirst, his body prostrate on the sand, under the influence of a raging sun, he saw a sheep pass by, which he hailed as the harbinger of good. Rising up and grasping his sword in his hand, he followed the animal, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... camping ground. On the morning of the 9th the confused and disorderly march was resumed, but after a mile had been traversed a halt for the day was ordered at the instance of Akbar Khan, who sent into camp by Captain Skinner a proposal that the ladies and children, with whose deplorable condition he professed with apparent sincerity to sympathise, should be made over to his protection, and that the married officers should accompany their wives; he pledging himself to preserve the party from further hardships and ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... "There goes a proper handsome man," saith our previously quoted authority, Jack Hall, "somewhat ameliorates the terrible thoughts of the meagre tyrant death; and to go in a dirty shirt were enough to save the hangman a labor, and make a man die with grief and shame at being in that deplorable condition." With a gracious smile of condescension, like a popular orator—with a look of blarney like that of O'Connell, and of assurance like that of Hume—he surveyed the male portion of the spectators, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was a most deplorable state of things; but, unfortunately, we cannot limit the truth of our descriptions to the scenes we have just attempted to portray. The misery which prevailed, as it had more than one source, so had it more than one aspect. There were, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... sight in these days. Why, is it possible that the Commune has committed the unqualifiable imprudence of not arresting the cure of Saint-Ferdinand, and that she is weak enough—may she not have to regret it!—to permit the inhabitants of Ternes to be baptised, married, and buried according to the deplorable rites and ceremonies of Catholicism, which has happily fallen into disuse in the other quarters of Paris? I can now understand why the shells fall so persistently in this poor arrondissement: the anger of the goddess of Reason (shall ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... they found to their sad disappointment that nothing could be got there, except some provisions; it was therefore necessary to proceed to Fort Edmonton, at least 400 miles distant, with but one intermediate post. They succeeded in reaching it, though in a most deplorable condition, half starved and half frozen, none of the party being provided with winter clothing; but they were most hospitably received by the kind-hearted bourgeois Mr. Rowand; and, after remaining a ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... have been dispersed. Baudin killed, the Faubourg cold. Such things spoke aloud. It was a supreme, manifest, absolute demonstration of that fact, the inaction of the people, to which I could not resign myself—a deplorable inaction, if they understood, a self-treason, if they did not understand, a fatal neutrality in every case, a calamity of which all the responsibility, we repeat, recoiled not upon the people but upon those who in June, 1848, after having promised ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... threaten the chief of brigade, Barthelemy. If, contrary to the laws of war, you authorise such an act of barbarism, all the prisoners taken from you shall be immediately made responsible for it with the most deplorable vengeance, for I entertain for the officers of your nation that esteem which is ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Mazarin, after his return to Paris, was to restore the finances, which were in a deplorable condition. Louis was fond of pleasure. It was one great object of the cardinal to gratify him in this respect, in every possible way. Notwithstanding the penury of the court, the cardinal contrived to supply the king with money. Thus, during ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... as the causes may be, the results are just as deplorable, and repeatedly to-day the criticism is made that Negroes do not recognize sufficiently their responsibility in this matter. Such critics forget how little power to-day Negroes have over their own lower classes. Before the black murderer who strikes his victim to-day, the average ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... so much violence that we feared he must have broken some of his bones, and ran anxiously to his assistance; but fortunately he had fallen on a clump of tangled herbage, in which he lay sprawling in a most deplorable condition. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have, I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, invironed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... mention, too, that I have visited modern schools, and observed that there is a tendency to hang printed pictures in an untidy and soulless manner on the walls, and occasionally to display on the mantel-shelf a deplorable glass case containing certain objects which might possibly, if placed in the hands of the pupils, give them some practical experience of the weight of a pound and the length of an inch. And sometimes a scoundrel who has rifled ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... assault by Satan upon this little seed of God's people in the new world," continued Master Mather, fervently, "I have now no doubt whatever. Proof has been multiplied upon proof, and the man, or woman, who does not by this time believe, is simply one of those deplorable doubters, like Thomas, who never can be convinced. For my part, I consider Witchcraft the most nefandous high treason against the Majesty on High! And a principal design of my book is to manifest its hideous enormity, and to promote a pious thankfulness to God that Justice ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... deplorable state of things. In fact, the documents contained in uncatalogued depositories and collections are practically non-existent for researchers who have no leisure to work through the whole of their contents for themselves. We have said before: no documents, no history. But to ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... delusion—real bona fide visions and revelations are so common, and I think there is but little downright imposture. Meanwhile familiarity breeds contempt. Jinns, Afreets and Shaitans inspire far less respect than the stupidest ghost at home, and the devil (Iblees) is reduced to deplorable insignificance. He is never mentioned in the pulpit, or in religious conversation, with the respect he enjoys in Christian countries. I suppose we may console ourselves with the hope that he will pay off the Muslims for their neglect of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... it was something extremely deplorable and characteristic of genius, and I quite feel for his wife." Mrs. Rabbet sighed, and endeavored, I think, to recollect whether it was Ingomar or Spartacus that Shakespeare wrote. "However," she concluded, "they play Ten Nights in ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... roof over one corner of a ruin is as much as can be hoped for. Until that is done the people have to live in cellars, in shell-holes, in verminous dug-outs like beasts of prey or savages. Their position is far more deplorable than that of Indians, for they once knew the comforts of civilisation. For instance, I visited a farmer who before the war was a millionaire in French money. Many of the farmers of this district were; their acreages were large even by prairie standards. The American Red ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... school your tone? Is it beneath you to ensure the largest possible amount of your own 'way' by the simplest means? Or is there at the back of your mind that peculiarly English and German idea that politeness, sympathy, and respect for another immortal soul would imply deplorable weakness on your part? You say that your happiness does not depend on every person whom you happen to speak to. Yes, it does. Your happiness is always dependent on just that person. Produce friction, and you suffer. Idle to argue that the person has no business to be upset by your tone! You have ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... there are reasons why an intending visitor might, perchance, fail to penetrate as far as this den of books and bric-a-brac, and I might allege a considerable number, but they may all be summed up in the one deplorable fact that there are but twenty-four hours to the day, and seven days to the week. Time is precious to me, and leisure is a thing unknown. If, however, the said visitor is of congenial tastes, has gained admittance, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... he found learning was most deplorable, presenting a marked contrast to conditions in England. Learning had been almost obliterated during the two centuries of wild disorder from 600 on. From 600 to 850 has often been called the darkest period of the Dark Ages, and Alcuin arrived when Frankland was at its worst. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... noble victory has been nobly won; and won, happily at a cost, which, deplorable though it actually was, was relatively small, as must be acknowledged by every student of the warfare ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... himself, like unfaithful cashiers when they first appropriate their employers' money: "I will pay it back, and no one will ever know it!" However, when the day of settlement came he had found himself in as deplorable a plight as on the day of the robbery, and he had been compelled to yield to the force ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... but presently, while the coolies were still busy, he sauntered across the plank and strolling to the onlooker exchanged a salaam and squatted beside him. Passers by might have caught a word or two about the grain market; the high prices; the difficulties of transit; the deplorable slackness of trade; the infamous duplicity of the Greek merchants. At last the banya rose, salaamed, and ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... my constituency I duly established myself in my apartments, where I spent most of the afternoon writing cheques. The restoration of the North Transept proved to be in an even more deplorable state of backwardness than I had feared; but the Dean ultimately left me with the utmost expressions of goodwill, promising to reassure the most exacting spirits in Cathedral society as to my soundness on the questions of (1) Disestablishment and (2) ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... ministers had not that sort of courage: neither Heartbreak House nor Horseback Hall had bred it, much less the suburbs. When matters at last came to the looting of shops by criminals under patriotic pretexts, it was the police force and not the Government that put its foot down. There was even one deplorable moment, during the submarine scare, in which the Government yielded to a childish cry for the maltreatment of naval prisoners of war, and, to our great disgrace, was forced by the enemy to behave itself. And yet behind all this public blundering and misconduct and futile mischief, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the terrace at Meudon, at which, regardless of her delicate health, she ate and drank more voraciously than ever. The same evening she was taken ill; and when, on the following Sunday, her mother-in-law, the Duchess, visited her, she found the patient in a deplorable condition—wasted to a "shadow" and burning with fever. "She was suffering such horrible pains in her toes and under the feet," says the Duchess, "that tears came to her eyes. She looked so very bad that ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... arrival in Bryanston Square, Irene went to see the Hannafords. She found her aunt in a deplorable state, unable to converse, looking as if on the verge of a serious illness. Olga behaved strangely, like one in harassing trouble of which she might not speak. It was a painful visit, and on her return home Irene talked of it ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... maintains, that the Egyptians heaped the insupportable insult upon the children of Israel by telling them that they were not of the human family. Can the whites deny this charge? Have they not, after having reduced us to the deplorable condition of slaves under their feet, held us up as descending originally from the tribes of Monkeys or Orang-Outangs? O! my God! I appeal to every man of feeling—is not this insupportable? Is it not heaping ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... of infinite importance for himself, for those who may otherwise become its victims, for the wife he may one day wed, and for the children, legitimate or illegitimate, that he may beget—his one idea is personal enjoyment. One deplorable result of this idea will be adverted ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... tell; it might blow over in one or two hours, or days might elapse before it ceased. It was too early in the year, however, to fear the setting in of winter weather, even in that elevated region, or my condition would indeed have been deplorable. ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... first, "how is it that we find you in a situation so deplorable and wretched as this? Who are you, or why is it that you have not a friendly roof ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... belonging to the nature of civilized man, than mere form. They are strangers to almost every idea, that doth not relate to their labour or their food; and though naturally possessed of strong sagacity, and lively parts, are, in all respects, in a state of most deplorable brutality.—This is owing to the iron-hand of oppression, which ever crushes the bud of genius and binds up in chains every expansion of the human mind.—Such is their extreme ignorance that they are utterly unacquainted with the laws of the world—the injunctions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... content to exist all the other days in the week merely as a building. Six days and more than half six evenings in the week the churches stand empty and deserted. Simply from the point of view of material economy this waste in church property, reduced to dollars and cents, would appear deplorable. From the point of view of social economy, reduced to terms of humanity, ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... them; a people who are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination—require that the public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of civilized life have nothing else to rest on. These deplorable states of feeling, in any people who have emerged from savage life, are, no doubt, usually the consequence of previous bad government, which has taught them to regard the law as made for other ends than their good, and its administrators as worse enemies than those ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... careful reflection I am driven to the belief that the real reason why the trade unionist movement of this country is in such a deplorable state of inefficiency is to be found in the fictitious importance which the workers have been encouraged to ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... hearers on the success of the campaign on the Continent. That success he attributed, in language which must have gratified their feelings, to the bravery of the English army. He spoke of the evils which had arisen from the deplorable state of the coin, and of the necessity of applying a speedy remedy. He intimated very plainly his opinion that the expense of restoring the currency ought to be borne by the State; but he declared that he referred the whole matter to the wisdom of his Great Council. Before he concluded ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with a deplorable lack both of manner and grammar. "Why"—light seemed to break on her odious countenance. "Why, you don't think that was the Prince, do you, Miss Mapp? He arrived here at one, so the station-master has just told me, and has been playing ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... as the unknown knight had left, the Viceroy, Don Antonio and Sancho hastened to Don Quixote's side. They found him covered with perspiration and stiff in all his limbs. Rocinante had not yet stirred, for he, too, was in a deplorable condition. Sancho for once had lost his speech, and all that had happened to his master in so short a time seemed to him proof that the enchanters were still pursuing him. Now that his master for ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... on 'New Sources of English History' the learned author has given us a startling account of the deplorable condition into which some of the most precious of our national manuscripts had been allowed to fall—of the utterly chaotic state of our depositories—of the hopelessness, the despair which must needs have come upon one student after another ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... walk boldly up to him, protest he is the best fellow in the world; and should he be so senseless as to venture an allusion to your "late conduct," to vow, with the extremest audacity, that he happens to be under some evident and deplorable mistake, &c. &c. In short, should you really find yourself in a scrape, to back out of it as well as you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... it, I think, my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind, and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict and cross my fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive our- selves urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power of hellebore, as this. The opinions of theory, and posi- tions of men, are not so void of reason, as ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... him in her parlor now—her too spotless parlor, for not even the ashes in the grate were visible, which is a mistake—she was not very friendly. He had discovered what Tommy was, and as she had been the medium she could not blame him for that, but how could he look as calm as ever when such a deplorable thing had happened? ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... was peculiarly luxurious. The Admiral didn't mind me, and had a moment's surprise about an observer of long ago strolling so far from home and going forth in a high sea to make a call. I confessed to being an ancient Wanderer, but not an Ancient Mariner, and expressed disapprobation of the deplorable roughness of the California Albatross, a brute of a bird—a feathered ruffian that ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... are not interested. Besides, while under your father's roof, it would seem to me very poor taste, indeed, for you to make constant reference to things you may have been doing while not under his roof. The situation is deplorable enough, however you take it, without making it positively unbearable. You ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... under the Confederate flag, burned our merchant vessels and swept our commercial marine from the ocean. The French Government was equally hostile to us, and there was hardly a kingdom in Europe which did not sympathize with the South, allied as they were by their feudal customs to the deplorable system of Southern slavery. Russia alone favored our cause, and stood ready, if need be, to assist us with her fleet; probably more from antagonism to England and France, than from any other motive. The agents ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... should be the religion of the divine morals of the New Testament, and the religion of The Saviour be the corrupt morals of the Koran. But if we were to judge of a religion and its morals from those who profess it, our ideas would soon get into confusion, and we should fall into the most deplorable errors. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... portrait of a lovely female—an old attachment, I suppose, that turned his brain, although I fancy sometimes that it is his mother or sister, for there is certainly a resemblance to himself in it. The picture is set in gold. When Robin first discovered it, the agony of the stricken wretch was most deplorable. He was afraid that the man would remove it, and he screamed and implored like a true maniac. When he found that he might keep it, he evinced the maddest pleasure, and beckoned his keeper to notice and admire it. He pointed to the eyes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... criminal even to open that book, or to enter into any real, searching, and impartial investigation of the subject to which it relates. Innumerable pulpits support this tone of thought, and represent, with a fervid rhetoric well fitted to excite the nerves and imaginations of women, the deplorable condition of all who deviate from a certain type of opinions or emotions; a blind propagandism or a secret wretchedness penetrates into countless households, poisoning the peace of families, chilling the mental confidence of husband and wife, adding immeasurably to the difficulties which ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... But deplorable as would be such a violation of compact in itself and in all its direct consequences, that is the very least of the evils involved. When sectional agitators shall have succeeded in forcing on this issue, can their pretensions fail to be met by counter pretensions? ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... side; but upon the deplorable side must be reckoned her extravagance and her meddling in statecraft. Ambitious for power, she surrounded the doting monarch with her "creatures"—Rouille, Saint Florentin, Puisieux, Machault. With the exception of the Duc de Choiseul, her appointees ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... be more deplorable than the condition of the Netherlands at this time. Every family was mourning for some of its dearest relatives. The death-bell tolled hourly in every village, while the survivors almost apathetically awaited the time when they themselves ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... you have ties which must render your life more than ever valuable and dear to you, and duties to which, I know, you must be anxious to betake yourself. In our present deplorable state of doubt and distress Castlewood can be a welcome place to no stranger, much less to you, and so I know, sir, you will be for leaving us ere long. And you will pardon me if the state of my own spirits obliges me ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... friends and hospitables. It was an accident, and deplorable—most deplorable.' Here he smiled sweetly all round the mess. 'But you will think of this little, little thing. So little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers—I snap my fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done nothing, him I believe. Seventy—how much—millions ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling |
