"Depressing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the open market, is in the production of articles for which there is a steadily growing demand within this country. Even in this case the utmost care should be exercised to prevent the products of assisted labour from so depressing prices as to injure the wages of outside ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... enemy daily along the Thiaumont-Vaux front. Their "nibbling" process went on unceasingly, seizing some hundred yards of trenches, or taking batches of 200 or 300 prisoners with such frequency as to produce a decidedly depressing effect on the German commanders and on their troops, who in this sector represented the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... have fooled it off well enough; and yet, Alan, all is not at ease within me. I am affected with a sense of loneliness, the more depressing, that it seems to me to be a solitude peculiarly my own. In a country where all the world have a circle of consanguinity, extending to sixth cousins at least, I am a solitary individual, having only one kind heart to throb in unison with my own. If I were ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... characteristics of the regular soldier. He is quick to discover himself aggrieved, but is readily appeased if he feels that his officer is really doing his best for him, and that both of them are the victims of a higher power. On the other hand, he is often amazingly cheerful under uncomfortable and depressing surroundings. He is growing quite fastidious, too, about his personal appearance when off duty. (You should see our quiffs on Saturdays!) He is quite incapable of keeping possession of his clothing, his boots, his rifle, his health, or anything ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... inevitable evils, it was yet more noble to undergo them voluntarily with an equal fortitude. But even if Epaphroditus were not guilty of breaking the leg of Epictetus, it is clear that the life of the poor youth was surrounded by circumstances of the most depressing and miserable character; circumstances which would have forced an ordinary man to the low and animal level of existence which appears to have contented the great majority of Roman slaves. Some of the passages in which ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... her—quarrels in her early days, from her seventh to her eleventh year, between her mother and her stepfather, Mr. Carter; the latter's drunkenness verging upon delirium tremens at times; movings from one place to another—all sorts of sordid and depressing happenings. Berenice had been an impressionable child. Some things had gripped her memory mightily—once, for instance, when she had seen her stepfather, in the presence of her governess, kick a table over, and, seizing the toppling ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... development has been followed by a period of stagnation, increased by the suppression of the penitentiary, the principal source of income to the town. The latter has never grown to the size originally planned and laid out, and its desolate squares and decayed houses are a depressing sight. Two or three steamers and a few sailing-vessels are all the craft the harbour contains; a few customs officers and discharged convicts loaf on the pier, where some natives from the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... and paced the room with leaden feet. For the first time in his life his age was visibly upon him. His head was heavy and hot, and the thoughts that rolled in it were confused and depressing. Could it be that he had made a mistake in the principles of his existence? There was no argument in what Harold had said—it was almost childish—and yet it had shaken the elder man more deeply than he cared to show. It held ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... and rolling so wildly that it was impossible to maintain one's footing without clinging to something; the continuous raving of the wind among the maze of spars and rigging, especially when the ship rolled to windward, was most depressing to listen to; and the appalling proportions of the vast liquid mountain ranges that, with dreary, persistent, remorseless monotony, came sweeping down upon us from the northward and westward, piling their hissing crests high around us, completed a picture which, for dreary ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... startled by this; she did not understand it at all. Geoffrey waited for her to say something, and there was a depressing pause ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the barn first. This was a depressing old pile, unpainted in years, with what had once been stout doors now swinging and bumping in the light breeze. As the two men drew nearer, this breeze—which seemed to sigh through the place at will—brought foul odors that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... advice, he took the opportunity of renewing his addresses to Agnes. He could hardly have chosen a more unpropitious time for pleading his cause with her. The gaieties of Paris (quite incomprehensibly to herself as well as to everyone about her) had a depressing effect on her spirits. She had no illness to complain of; she shared willingly in the ever-varying succession of amusements offered to strangers by the ingenuity of the liveliest people in the world—but nothing roused her: she remained persistently dull ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... manufacture within the home, the quilt possesses a peculiar merit. Although exposed for a full century to the competition of machinery, under the depressing influence of which most of the fireside crafts have all but vanished, the making of quilts as a home industry has never languished. Its hold on the affections of womankind has never been stronger than it is to-day. As a homemaker, the quilt is a most capable tool ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... oven, pan and kettle is not essential to a healthy diet, but few people in this changeable, and often cold, depressing climate are willing to forgo their occasional use. One cannot get hot water for a drink without a kettle or a small saucepan and a gas ring, and hot water is often a very comforting and useful drink, especially where an effort is being made to ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the library was loaded with books many deep; MSS. of all kinds were confusedly mixed up with them,—boys' exercises, probably, and examination papers—but all littering untidily about. The room in fact was as depressing from its slatternliness as from its atmosphere of erudition. Theobald and Ernest as they entered it, stumbled over a large hole in the Turkey carpet, and the dust that rose showed how long it was since it had been taken up and beaten. This, I should say, was no fault of Mrs Skinner's ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... sight to a man in the most Christian frame of mind is the crowd that a fine summer evening fetches out into the roaring Strand, as the sun fetches out flies on the window of a village grocery. To him just then it was at once depressing and provoking, and he went shouldering his way towards Temple Bar as thoroughly out of tune as he had been for many ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... old-fashioned apartment, but with that depressing atmosphere which gathers into rooms, especially large ones, which have ceased to be much lived in. The curtains drooped sorrowfully, the carpet had a lonely, untrodden look; the chairs had an air of not expecting to be sat upon, some Elizabethan portraits on the walls ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... The depressing monotony in the customs, habits, and ideas of the Chinese, as contrasted with their neighbors, the Japanese, forces itself upon the notice of the traveler. There is no variety among the race, either in manners, dress, or architecture; one section of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... on the day before Christmas, and added not a little to the gloom of an anniversary already sufficiently depressing, passed so far from friends and home and amid such untoward surroundings. He and Mr. Short were in Mr. Jefferson's little octagonal library, still discussing the letter, among others received by the same packet, when Mr. Morris came in, the three gentlemen ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the market on the morning of the 21st if no news had arrived such as raised the funds on that day, could any persons have sold this large quantity of Omnium and Consols without very much depressing the market? ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... daily bread—panem quotidianum ... (God does not grant it for nothing!)—revealed to her bourgeois friend the murderous war which, for poor folks and particularly for women, reigns cunningly deep and without a truce below the lie of peace. She did not talk too much about it, however, for fear of depressing him: on seeing the excitement into which her accounts threw him, she had an affectionate feeling of her own superiority. Like most women she did not entertain with regard to certain ugly facts of life the physical and moral disgust which upset the young fellow. ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... still and sultry. The clear and glowing daylight was gone, exchanged for the dull, hazy, and depressing atmosphere of a summer's night. The cricket chirped in the walls, and the beetle hummed his drowsy song, wheeling his lumbering and lazy flight over ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... for the despondent, power for the weak, comfort for the afflicted, guidance in times of difficulty, wise counsel for moments of perplexity, a stimulant to faithfulness, a cure for the blues, exhilaration, jubilation. Everything of a depressing nature has been scrupulously ruled out. The keynote, persistently followed through all the pages, is optimistic, bright, buoyant. Trumpet calls and bugle notes are furnished in abundance, but no dirges or elegies. Large space, it will be seen, is given to such ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... considered must have floated off from some island; "not the continent," says the Admiral, whose theories are not to be disturbed by a piece of grass, "because I make the continental land farther onward." The crew, ready to take the most depressing and pessimistic view of everything, considered that the lumps of grass belonged to rocks or submerged lands, and murmured disparaging things about the Admiral. As a matter of fact these grasses were masses ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... stripes. Shirts with stripes that were meant to run vertically but are caused to run horizontally, by reasons over which the wearer has no control, remind others of the awning over an Italian grocery. So the fat man must stick to sober navy blues and depressing blacks and melancholy grays. He is advised that he should wear his evening clothes whenever possible, because black and white lines are more becoming to him. But even in evening clothes, that wide expanse of glazed shirt and ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... he did not oppose it, he took little interest in the matter. In fact, he had very little ambition for anything. He was feeling somewhat weary during the fall, and the silence of his house was more depressing than ever. During the lonely days, and still more lonely nights, he thought much about the past. He knew that he had made a failure of life, and that he had nothing to live for now. At times he would endeavor to fan the ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... struggling Parson Adams. College fellowships were less open to talent then than now, and patrons were never too propitious to the uncouth giant, who had to force his way by sheer labour, and fight for his own hand. Accordingly, the young scholar tried to coin his brains into money by the most depressing and least hopeful of employments. By becoming an usher in a school, he could at least turn his talents to account with little delay, and that was the most pressing consideration. By one schoolmaster he was rejected on the ground that his infirmities would excite the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... munificence—a gift of 1000l., to pay off debts to which he had been left heir. In a letter to his uncle, the former gratefully alludes to this generosity: "Oh, if you knew the exultation of heart, aye, and of head to, I feel at being free from those depressing embarrassments, you would, as I do, bless my dearest friend and brother, Byron." The whole transaction is a pleasing record of a benefit that was neither sooner nor later resented by ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Among the depressing circumstances that had occurred in this gloomy period, not the least painful was the death of Mrs. Judson's early friend, and companion in her eastern voyage, Mrs. Harriet Newell. Of less mental and physical vigor than Mrs. Judson, this amiable and ardent Christian had gladly relinquished all other ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... India from the British islands, the vast expense of transporting bulky articles eight thousand miles accross the ocean, have prevented the counterpart of this effect taking place; and the British farmers feeling the depressing influence of the Indian plough, in like manner as the Indian manufacturers have the ruinous competition of the British steam-engine. But it is clear that, if India had been nearer, the former effect would have taken ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... into the outer world, yet realizing that at each step we might be burrowing more deeply into the heart of the great cliff, or circling futilely in the vague wandering that could end only in death. And the darkness! It was almost palpable, and utterly depressing. I had matches, and in some of the more difficult places I struck one; but we couldn't afford to waste them, and so we groped our way slowly along, doing the best we could to keep to one general direction in ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his room trying to read. He had left the office early, and though it was still some hours before dark, a heavy unremitting rain had enveloped the afternoon in a premature twilight. The perpetual run of water from a break in the gutter near his window sounded drearily through the depressing history of the woes and disappointments of David Grieve. The gloom of the book and the afternoon was settling upon Faraday with the creeping stealthiness of a chill, when a knock sounded upon his door, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the arrival of the Coquille, as soon as the morning sun had lit up the bay, the melancholy and desolate appearance of the place, which had taken every one by surprise on the previous evening, became still more depressing. The name of the town was Talcahuano; and the picture it presented was one of houses in ruins and silent streets. A few wretched canoes, ready to fall to pieces, were on the beach; near them loitered a few poorly ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... miles of Paris. And so also, he thought, were the Germans! It rather looked as if they were heading straight towards the city, and that would mean a siege. It was no use worrying about things, but that depressing idea was in the minds of most of the Officers that evening. Not that the Subaltern cared much at the time—it would mean a stop to this everlasting marching, and perhaps the forts of Paris could stand it; anyhow the German Fleet had been rounded up. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... of the ladies who turned up their disapproving noses, was more dull or more depressing than Hadria could be, on occasion, as she had herself pointed out; and would not this soften ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... heavy with snow, hung sullenly along the horizon; and above, the sky was of a somber, leaden hue. The air felt chill and clinging, like that of a vault; and heaven above, and earth beneath betrayed a severity of mood infinitely depressing. Norma shivered in spite of her heavy furs, and hurried on, burying ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... in. Since Cuvier first recognised the conjunction between the course of inductive discovery and the course of civilisation 82, science had its share in saturating the age with historic ways of thought, and subjecting all things to that influence for which the depressing names historicism and ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... become assistant bar-keeper, and now he could save eight dollars a week. He bought a couple of motor magazines and went to one vaudeville show and kept his sub-landlord's daughter from running off with a cadet, wondering how soon she would do it in any case, and receiving a depressing insight into the efficiency of society for keeping in the mire most of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... distasteful; uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, thankless. unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable. distressing; afflicting, afflictive; joyless, cheerless, comfortless; dismal, disheartening; depressing, depressive; dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous; woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable; sad, affecting, touching, pathetic. irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling; unaccommodating, invidious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... afford a single noticeable incident. The weather has been cold, damp, and foggy, with light head winds and a heavy swell; we have been confined closely to our seven-by-nine after-cabin; and its close, stifling atmosphere, redolent of bilge-water, lamp oil, and tobacco smoke, has had a most depressing influence upon our spirits. I am glad to see, however, that all our party are up today, and that there is a faint interest manifested in the prospect of dinner; but even the inspiriting strains of ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Brighton in a very thoughtful mood. She said she had had a "heavenly visit." Such nice weather—such a contrast to dirty, dreary, depressing London! She had met several old acquaintances, they had had company every night, and had she only had a third evening dress her bliss would have been complete. As it was, a slight sense of inferiority ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... would not be very many cattle to deliver in Wyoming by the time we got there. After the buffalo stampede we rounded up our scattered herd and went into camp for a couple of days' rest before proceeding on our journey north. The tragic death of Cal Surcey had a very depressing effect on all of us as he was a boy well liked by us all, and it was hard to think that we could not even give him a Christian burial. We left his remains trampled into the dust of the prairie and his fate caused even ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... look cheerful under these depressing conditions, but there were days when her patience was sorely tried and when she found herself regretting that Virginia had "taken it so particular" with Mr. Stafford. Of course, they all suffered by ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... are in high glee at having escaped what seems to me the imaginary terrors of the passage across the Dasht-i-na-oomid, and as we ride along toward Ghalakua their exuberant animal spirits find expression in song. Few things are more harrowing and depressing to the unappreciative Ferenghi ear than Persian sowars singing, and three most unmelodious specimens of their kind at it all at once ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of that night when you couldn't fit your plans to mine which has made me write this letter. When I came home from Harbor Light I found Bettina waiting up for me, and she broke down as the depressing realities of your work were forced upon her. I was very toploftical, Anthony—and was prepared to read her a sermon on the duties of a doctor's wife, when all at once I had a vision of myself in that rosebud organdie. I hated your work then, and I felt ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... approaching disease, a child is punished for what is called idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness; and punished, too, in the unwisest way—by an increase of tasks and confinement to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, and depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed? Are you aware, I ask again, of all this? I speak earnest upon this point, because I speak with experience. As a single instance: a medical man, a friend ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... each in its place and proportion, that work would be the world's masterpiece of morality as well as of art. Partiality is immorality; for any book is wrong that gives a misleading picture of the world and life. The trouble is that the weakling must be partial; the work of one proving dank and depressing; of another, cheap and vulgar; of a third, epileptically sensual; of a fourth, sourly ascetic. In literature as in conduct, you can never hope to do exactly right. All you can do is to make as sure as possible; and for that there ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that if octaves are to remain perfect, and we desire to establish an equal temperament, the above-named difference is best disposed of by dividing it into twelve equal parts and depressing each of the fifths one-twelfth part of the ditonic comma; thereby dispersing the dissonance so that it will allow perfect octaves, and yet, but slightly impair ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... said, getting up to go. "And I dare say it will do you no harm to be out of the way of all this church-going and confessing to priests, who are always depressing people even ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... suppose they would crawl in by depressing the terminal portion of the labellum; and that when within the flower this terminal portion would resume its former position; and lastly, that the insect in crawling out would not depress the labellum, but would crawl out at back of flower. (595/1. The observations ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... souls with them. The outlook is confined within the narrowest limits. Palm trees, banyan trees, houses, walled gardens, everywhere restrict it. The fields are small, the trees and houses numerous. Nothing distant is to be seen. To the European the prospect is depressing. But to the Bengali it is his very life. These densely inhabited plains are his home. They have, therefore, all the attraction which familiar scenes in which men have grown up from childhood always ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... adversity with an equal mind, and he displayed stoical courage throughout prolonged illness of a most depressing type. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... It was a depressing little room; it was so clean, and looked as though it were never used. A ship imprisoned in a glass bottle stood upon the mantelpiece, and there were shells from far-away places, pictures of ships in sand—all the things one finds as a rule adorning ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... scattered all over the city, constituting the world renowned University of the same name, was "done" the next day, but done in a hurry. It is a depressing business to pass by so much, giving but a glance here and there, and not be able to see so many things more at leisure, Magnificent libraries and museums, grand churches and chapels, and extensive buildings and botanical gardens, were rushed through ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... second Carol realized that for all Guy's love of dead elegances his timidity was as depressing to her as the bulkiness of Sam Clark. She realized that he was not a mystery, as she had excitedly believed; not a romantic messenger from the World Outside on whom she could count for escape. He belonged to Gopher Prairie, absolutely. She was snatched back from ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... of Indian thought is not due to physical degeneration or a depressing climate. Many authors speak as if the Hindus lived in a damp relaxing heat in which physical and moral stamina alike decay. I myself think that as to climate India is preferable to Europe, and without arguing about what must be largely a question of personal taste, one may ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... boys home, for rain in a tent is most depressing, and as all the other bungalows were being repaired, they could not live in one ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... The depressing effects of the corroding wind of a hot Sirocco can only be conceived by those who have suffered from them; the unwonted dulness with which it overcasts even the most active mind; the deep-drawn sighs it will elicit; and if there be one melancholy feeling which presses on the heart more heavily than ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... for a rigorous examination into details of method and into the way they were connected to form a whole system. The latter point, indeed, was neither clearly thought out, nor was it worked out in practice. What I saw was to me at once elevating and depressing, arousing and also bewildering. My visit lasted only a fortnight. I worked away and tried to take in as much as I could; especially as, to help me in the duties I had undertaken, I felt impelled to give a faithful account in writing of my views on ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... reason of what he does to his own shareholders than because of what he and the corporation may succeed in doing to the public. In the actual amount of evil done, the robbing of shareholders is less important than the taxing of consumers and the depressing of wages, which occur when the effort to establish a monopoly is successful; but in the amount of iniquity and essential meanness which it implies on the part of those who practice it, it takes the first rank, and its effect in ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... from their company, to say the least of it; while the prospect of making a long sea passage with those two fellows was depressing. And my other thoughts in solitude could not be of a gay complexion. The crew was sickly, the cargo was coming very slow; I foresaw I would have lots of trouble with the charterers, and doubted whether they would advance me enough money for the ship's expenses. Their attitude ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... been canceled with offense and inconvenience. The whole day indeed had worked itself away to cross purpose, and John came home weary with the aching brows that annoyance and worry touch with a peculiar depressing neuralgia. It need not be described; there are very few who are not familiar with ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the middle of the machine, turning an engine, by which wings artificially disposed are made to beat the air after the manner of a bird in flight. Also, an instrument, small in size, for raising and depressing almost infinite weights, than which nothing on occasion is more useful: for, with an instrument of three fingers in height, and of the same width, and of smaller bulk, a man might deliver himself and his companions from all danger of prison, and could rise or descend. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... the most propitious air: an anomaly indeed half explained by the fact that life in general, all round us, was perceptibly more theatrical. And there were other reasons, whether definitely set before us or not, which we grasped in proportion as we gathered, by depressing hearsay, that the French drama, great, strange and important, was as much out of relation to our time of life, our so little native strain and our cultivated innocence, as the American and English had been directly ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... had fallen—"For King and Fatherland!" the cards always said. I counted thirteen of these death notices in one issue of a Cologne paper. Now they have almost disappeared. I imagine that, because of the depressing effect of such a mass of these publications on the public mind, the families of killed officers have been asked to refrain from reciting their losses in print. Yet there are not wanting signs that the grim total piles up by the hour ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... France, - the bright, cheerful, smokeless industry of the wonderful country which produces, above all, the agreeable things of life, and turns even its defeats and revolutions into gold. The whole town has an air of almost depressing opulence, an appear- ance which culminates in the great place which sur- rounds the Grand-Theatre, - an establishment in the highest style, encircled with columns, arcades, lamps, gilded cafes. One feels it to be a monument ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... his long career, from the depressing indifference of his public to the true spirit of poetry. "An old college mate of mine," said James Madison—who was by tradition Freneau's roommate at Princeton in the class of 1771—"a poet and man of literary ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... well what is coming after this prelude. He is accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who has a subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the depressing disclosure of his real errand. He is not unacquainted with the conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting stranger, who, having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in the cars, or of having his pocket picked at the station, finds himself without the means ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... polish, but inner skill in carrying his faculties. Man is only a rudimentary man when in those stages he blunders in all his meetings with his fellows, and cannot buy nor sell, vote nor converse, without harming, marring, depressing, discouraging his fellow men. In our age many books have been written similar to Lyman Abbott's volume called "The Study of Human Nature," and the time has fully come when each child should be made ready for life's battle beforehand, and taught how to armor himself against ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... is rather more depressing than Georgie, isn't she? But it was Julia's turn. I can't come alone, and they've grown to expect it. They haven't, either of them, much ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... the maps, excite the imagination of the traveller, and when the reality comes into view, and he enters their narrow limits, the commonplace architecture and generally unattractive surroundings have a most depressing effect, and he sighs, "What's in a name?" We find upon the map the name and appearance of a city, but it proves to be the most uninteresting of villages, though known as Amsterdam. We also find many towns of the Hudson duplicated in name on the Ohio, and ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... of a bride is as magnificent as the widow's is depressing and dowdy. It consists of three different dresses, the first of white velvet with apron of moire-antique, the second of purple velvet, and the third of cloth of gold with embroidered sleeves, with a piece of the same material. A wide sash, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and syllabled complaint of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the Castle the visitors were first taken over the interior, which was ill-lighted and rather depressing, after which the Count led them through a spacious courtyard to the kitchen-garden, where the Queen deigned to compliment him on the huge size of the vegetable marrows and pumpkins that were ripening ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... buckboard, with solemn Silent Pete in charge, had a depressing effect upon the group left watching it. Everything would go on just as usual, of course. Why should there be any difference? But—how lonesome it was! How they would miss Lady Gray's sweet voice and presence, and the ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... horses there was nothing but an inspiration to honest endeavor; but in this subtle diplomacy Allis detected the touch of defilement which her mother so strongly resented. Perhaps to-night she was more sensitive to depressing influences; at any rate she felt a great weariness of the whole business. Then the spirit of resolve rose in open rebellion against these questionings; almost Jesuitical she became at once. What mattered the ways or means, so that she did no wrong? Was not the saving of her father's ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... I must start at the beginning. My last entry was the depressing one of still no news. Well, I have had news, but it was like a drop of water in the mouth of a parched-up man. Another agonizing twenty-four hours passed, and I was sitting in my room about ten o'clock, ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... too depressing in finding the old hut in such a desolate condition. I had had so much interest in seeing all the old landmarks and the huts apparently intact. To camp outside and feel that all the old comforts and cheer had departed ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... suffered have rendered it impossible for the draughtsman to distinguish the true folds of the draperies amidst the defaced and worn colours of the fresco, so that the character of the central figure is lost. The only points requiring notice are, first, the manner in which St. Joseph holds his rod, depressing and half-concealing it,[17] while the other suitors present theirs boldly; and secondly, the graceful though monotonous grouping of the heads of the crowd behind him. This mode of rendering the presence of a large multitude, ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... again, and if not quite so jolly as we were before, at least we looked forward to our supper with a keen relish and the horses were urged faster than they otherwise would have been. The beautiful snow is rather depressing, however, when there is snow everywhere. The afternoon passed swiftly and the horses were becoming jaded. At four o'clock it was almost dark. We had been going up a deep canon and came upon an appalling sight. There had been a snow-slide and the canon was half-filled with snow, ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Sampson's victories must be very depressing to French, German and Russian naval aspirations," observes a gentleman of Washington, who is a most competent authority. "For years they have been measuring up against England, and quietly calculating what combinations they could make to ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... of our desires? In our passage through life we meet scarcely any who do not persist, with a kind of unreasoning obstinacy, in throning the material within them, and there maintaining it supreme. Gather together a number of men and women, all of them free from life's more depressing cares—an assembly of the elect, if you will—and pronounce before them the words "beatitude, happiness, joy, felicity, ideal." Imagine that an angel, at that very instant, were to seize and retain, in a magic mirror or ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of Charley's barrister-friends, in whose society I had found considerable satisfaction, to his father's house—to spend the evening with some friends of the family. The gathering was chiefly for talk, and was a kind of thing I disliked, finding its aimlessness and flicker depressing. Indeed, partly from the peculiar circumstances of my childhood, partly from what I had suffered, I always found my spirits highest when alone. Still, the study of humanity apart, I felt that I ought not to shut myself out from my kind, but endure some little ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... and left us in pitch darkness—such an absolute darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment's notice. To me, with my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something depressing and subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold dank ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... a moment we were trooping down the Rue de Renne. It was smoking hot; Paris glittered with that superficial brilliancy which is so agreeable to the man in high spirits, and in moods of dejection so depressing; the wine sang in my ears, it danced and brightened in my eyes. The pictures that we saw that afternoon, as we sped briskly and loquaciously through the immortal galleries, appear to me, upon a ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... his own, Ward secured a mount and journeyed dismally toward the north. The farm horse was fat and stolid and plodded with slow pace; for saddle there was a folded blanket. With only the lantern to light the way, he did not dare to hurry the beast. It was not until wan, depressing light filtered from the east through the mists that he ventured to make a detour which would take him outside of Adonia. He realized that Craig would have arranged for tote teams to be waiting at Adonia, as he had had a special waiting at the junction, and was ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... to wait in London for one day while my passport was being made out, and I went to examine the streets in which I purposed to live; I had picked them out, from studying a map, as desirable; and so they were, if judged entirely by my reason; but their aspect was very depressing to one country-bred, and just fresh from the beautiful street-architecture of Oxford. The thought of living in such a monotonous gray district for years made me all the more anxious to prolong my holiday by all the economy which could eke out my fifty pounds. I thought I could ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... same applies, though in lesser degree, to sounds, quite independent of their juxtaposition as melodies and harmonies. As there are colours which feel, i.e. make us feel, more or less warm or cool, colours which are refreshing or stifling, depressing or exhilarating quite independent of any associations, so also there are qualities of sound which enliven us like the blare of the trumpet, or harrow us like the quaver of the accordion. Similarly with regard ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... publisher toward a successful author whose works became highly lucrative, but the support by one enlightened scholar who happened to be in a profitable business of another who happened to be out of it. The earlier life of Erasmus exhibits a rather depressing illustration of the humiliations to which professional scholars were exposed in trying to get a living from the pensions and benefactions of the idle rich. Literary patronage, as it existed from the days of Horace ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... into the work of the three respective parties, and this re-acted in various ways on the Women's Suffrage propaganda. It might seem that this had a depressing effect, for the rigid neutrality in regard to party which always had characterised the National Societies for Women's Suffrage might easily seem dull and tame to the ardent party enthusiasts, and many of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... me perdas" in the "Recordare." And if one wants sheer strength and majesty, turn to the fugue on "Quam olim Abrahae," or the C natural of the basses in the "Sanctus." But the prevailing mood is one of depressing sadness, which would become intolerable by reason of its monotony were it possible to listen to the Requiem as a work of art merely, and not as the tearful confessions of one of the most beautiful spirits ever born into ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... excitements that come with it; namely, the physical stimulus and the expression of good. In tragedy, the misfortunes help to give the impression of truth, and to bring out the noble qualities of the hero, but are in themselves depressing, so much so that over-sensitive people cannot enjoy the beauty of the representation. So also in humour, the painful suggestions are felt as such, and need to be overbalanced by agreeable elements. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... suits all circumstances and all constitutions, operating easily, curing without disturbing, raising the spirits without depressing them, a circumstance that deserves repeated attention, especially in these climates, where strong liquors so fatally and so frequently produce those very distresses they are designed to remedy; and if I am not ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... They were depressing trips through miles and miles of devastated villages and small cities. From two to three days each were spent in front-line posts on the Amiens-Bethune, Albert-Peronne, Bapaume-Soissons, St. Mihiel, and back of the Argonne sectors. Often, the party was the first civilian group to enter ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... might be news coming down the traffic-gorged castle road out of the region where the guns sounded that convalescents were not intended to hear. For news could travel in other ways than by bulletin-boards; and the judge's son, merely watching the faces of medical officers, guessed that it was depressing. But after the first attack on Engadir their faces lighted. The very thrill of victory seemed to be in ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... occasion, on defending a prisoner, said: "Drink has upon some an elevating, upon others a depressing, effect; indeed, there is a report, as we all know, that an eminent judge, when at the Bar, was obliged to resort to heavy drinking in the morning, to reduce himself to the level of the judges." Lord Denman, the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... pornographic literature and art. But it does indicate that a nation has not lost its idealism when it reads such a beautiful work, a work of such imagination as The Sunken Bell, does it not? I wish I could admire other of Hauptmann's work, such as Michael Kramer, Der Biberpalz, or the depressing Fuhrmann Henschel. And I also wish that I could include among his big works his latest, The Flight of Gabriel Schilling (written ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... theory of practice, of considerable stimulative power towards a fair life. What Marius saw in him was the spectacle of one of the happiest temperaments coming, so to speak, to an understanding with the most depressing of theories; accepting the [137] results of a metaphysical system which seemed to concentrate into itself all the weakening trains of thought in earlier Greek speculation, and making the best of it; turning its hard, bare truths, with wonderful tact, into precepts of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... depressing of all physical sufferings are those which are uniform in their duration, and can be combated only by long patience. It is probable, that in the exhalations of the forests of the Cassiquiare M. Bonpland imbibed the seeds of a severe malady, under which he nearly sunk on our arrival at Angostura. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... a depressing influence on Dutch opinion, which has latterly shown a marked desire to ally the country with some other. An alliance with Belgium, that of the North and South Netherlanders, the old Union of the Provinces broken in 1583 and ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... her mother—for that optimistic outlook upon life which never would come back. She had learned much since that smiling "pitcher" was taken—what "mortgages" mean, for instance—that poverty has more depressing depths than the lack of servants and horses, and that "marrying well," as she interpreted a successful marriage then, is seldom—outside of "fiction and Pittsburgh"—for the girl who earns her own living. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... type one disagrees with rather than deplores. When he first came here he not unnaturally put people's backs up. He has no tact and no manners—I don't mean by that that he has bad manners—and he will not keep his opinions to himself. We nearly complained about him to our depressing Signora, but I am glad to say we thought better ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... These depressing reflections, as I was soon convinced, were only to be banished by activity; but of what was I to take hold? I had, indeed, much to make up for in many things, and to prepare myself, in more than one sense, for the university, which I was now to attend; but I relished and accomplished ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... aisle are of no special interest. That to Bishop Warburton at the west end contains an epitaph that is worth reading. Next to it is an ungainly tomb, filling up an enormous wall space, with a depressing effect. Farther eastwards is the tomb by Flaxman to the memory of Mrs Morley, who died at sea ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... Wakefield. In his novels he depicted the environment and struggles of the lower and lower middle classes with a somewhat pessimistic and depressing realism, although his last work, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, seemed to usher in the dawn of a somewhat brighter outlook. His other novels include Demos (1886), Thyrza (1887), The Nether ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... atmosphere and dark environment, which the sun's rays vainly attempted to penetrate, began to have a depressing effect on my spirits. After a couple of nights spent thus, a longing for sunshine came over me and I decided to stay one day, make a clearing, dry our belongings, and put up a shelter in which to ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... people, often starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents because there was no place for them to go. The sky became more and more densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day and left nothing but a dull red glare 'extraordinarily depressing to the spirit.' In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, clinging to their houses and in many cases subsisting in a state of partial famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores in the shops of the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the dense foliage grew depressing—suffocating. Each one longed breathlessly for the minute when he should emerge from this heavy timber-growth, even to do more rugged climbing. Distant rumbles were heard. Herb's prophecy was being fulfilled. Pamolah was grumbling ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... all about him at the front door, in the hall, and extending far into the rooms, a truly depressing chaos of packing boxes, swathed tables, chairs, bureaus, and barrels of china. Nor was this all; for even as I loitered up to the door the dray of Sam Murdock halted in ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Topeka. Those who were bent on finding homes for themselves and little ones should press on further to the west, where there was land in plenty to be had for the asking, or, rather, for the pre-empting. So, when Monday morning came, wet, murky, and depressing, Bryant surrendered to the counsels of his brother-in-law and the unspoken wish of the boys, and agreed to go on to the newly-surveyed lands on the tributaries of the Kaw. They had heard good reports of the region lying westward of Manhattan ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... cheery spirit and homely faith were just the tonics that Mildred needed, and they were all the more effective because combined with the exhilarating tea and wholesome food. Therefore instead of a weary and depressing day, in which body and spirit acted and reacted on each other until the evening brought shadows deeper than the night, her courage and cheerfulness grew with the hours of sustained and healthful toil, and when her father ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... triumph; and certainly, looking at the result from their standpoint, they had cause to rejoice, for their victory was far-reaching in its results. It strengthened the opponents of temperance throughout our fair Dominion—yes, beyond its bounds—while it certainly had a depressing effect upon its staunch supporters, for they were well aware the failure would not be attributed to its true source —that is, the bitter opposition it had met with from its unprincipled opponents, the lethargy of many of its pretended friends, and from other causes which we have already ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... usually possible to hyper-extend the joint, and, in the extended position, to rotate the leg outwards to a greater extent than is normal. In unilateral knock-knee, the affected limb is a little shorter than its fellow, but the patient compensates for this by depressing the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... our temporary destination, Meacham's Station, my own strength utterly failed. I had borne up so long, partly to set an example of cheerful endurance, and partly from something like Mark Tapley's pride at coming out strong and jolly under the most depressing circumstances. I lay beside the road, remarking to Captain Haslett, who immediately came riding to the spot, "Captain, here's a fine chance to try your marksmanship; I can't march any further; shan't ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... pale, silent, and with nothing to recommend her but her wretchedness and her resignation to it. She was never seen speaking to any other woman, and no song cheered her garret. She worked without interest and without relaxation; a depressing gloom seemed to envelop her like a shroud. Her dejection affected Maurice; he attempted to speak to her; she replied mildly, but in few words. It was easy to see that she preferred her silence and her solitude to the ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... quite a depletion of the rank and file of the army took place, by the mustering out of large numbers of three months' and two years' men. And such had been the depressing influences of Chancellorsville upon the country, that the places of these men were not very easily filled. To the sagacious leaders in political and military circles this state of things was not a little alarming. But to the Rebel leaders the times were affording opportunities ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... because brainless men are disposed to seek out the effeminate and the frail in preference to the rugged and the well-endowed, then she must suffer the consequences. If a young lady, compelled to toil for support, will prefer the factory or the store, with its hot air and depressing associations, to work in the home, because she hopes in the store or factory to secure the hand and heart of a husband sooner than elsewhere, she must suffer accordingly. But if woman will unite in securing a reform in this direction,—if the pure and the ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... had finished a rapid bit of writing, Langholm sat down to correct, and a depressing task his spent brain always found it; but for once he let it beat him altogether. After a morning's tussle with one unfortunate chapter, the desperate author sent off the rest in their sins, and rode his bicycle to abolish thought. But that mild pastime fell lamentably ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... but was more laughter-provoking than recreative: a bundle of rags tightly rolled up in a sphere served as a ball, and pieces of boards of old packing-cases served as bats and wickets. Leapfrog and the three-cornered game of "cat" were favourite pastimes, but nothing broke the monotony. It was depressing, and it was not an unusual sight to see men weeping from homesickness—utterly unable to keep back the tears. There were attempts at suicide also, and men eagerly sought opportunity to endanger themselves. Actual fighting on the desert was to us the greatest ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... bitter, suspicious, and merciless. Those who fell under his displeasure were imprisoned in iron cages, or put to death; and the more turbulent families, such as the house of Armagnac, were treated with frightful severity. But his was not wanton violence. He acted on a regular system of depressing the lawless nobility and increasing the royal authority, by bringing the power of the cities forward, by trusting for protection to the standing army, chiefly of hired Scots, Swiss, and Italians, and by saving money. ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about the Party institutions of this country: the equipoise between them, and their almost incredible durability. We have only to look at the general elections of 1900 and 1906. I do not suppose any circumstances could be more depressing for a political Party than the circumstances in which the Liberal Party fought the election in 1900, except the circumstances in which the Conservative Party fought the election of 1906. At those two elections, what was the salient fact? The ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... lips, and the soft palate forms a movable partition between the mouth and the pharynx. In a condition of repose the mouth space is practically filled by the teeth and the tongue, but the cavity may be enlarged and room provided for food by depressing the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... sometimes of the same regiment, but oftener of odd ones; men lying exhausted or asleep by the roadside, or with their packs off and sitting on the grass, nibbling at a biscuit or looking hopelessly before them. It was a depressing sight, and I wondered how on earth the formations would ever come together again. Officers of course were doing their best to get their own men together, but the results were small. Whenever we passed men of the 15th Brigade we collected them ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... unlocked the door. You know how, when I want to get things out of people, I disguise myself with a spaniel smile and spaniel eyes? Well, I did that with Pat. There was just enough light in the room for her to see my spanielness, for she'd done away with all but one small reading-lamp, with a depressing green shade. She was in her kimono, with her hair down, looking an ideal Ophelia. Not that Ophelia sported a kimono; but you know the effect I mean, all masses of wavy tresses round a small white face, and eyes very big and ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... usually spoken of with a shrug, the sole reason for which seems to be that there is no other just like it in the city. I myself have always considered it imposing and majestic; but to the average man it is too suggestive of Old-World feudal life to be pleasing. On this afternoon—a dull, depressing one—it looked undeniably heavy as we approached it; but interesting in a very new way to me, because of the great turret at one angle, the scene of that midnight descent of two men, each in deadly fear of the other, yet ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... can be more dreary than a gay party from which there is no escape when one's mind is out of tune for society of any description. The idea that for so many hours the conventional smile must be upon our brow, and the conventional nothings upon our lips, is depressing in the extreme. It may be injudicious, but it is certainly allowable, to look sad when the bank that holds our all suddenly falls; but for a woman to acknowledge in her face that the bank of her affections is broke ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... l. 17. The Golden-crested Wren (Motacilla Regulus).] Is the smallest of the British birds; it takes its name from a circle of gold-coloured feathers, bordered with black, forming an arch above its eyes, which it has the power of raising or depressing: it is a native of every part of Europe, and is also to be found in Asia ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... cordial, the mineral springs curative; nothing could be better for a depressed invalid than to spend the autumn here. So the doctors sent Michael to the Platten See. But they had forgotten that toward the end of the summer hail-storms had laid waste the whole district; and nothing is more depressing than a place ruined by hail. The vineyards, which usually resound during the vintage with joyous cries, now stand deserted: the leaves of the fruit-trees are coppery-green or rusty brown; they take their leave until the coming spring: all is silent and sad; even the roads ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... What a pity it is that Scotland is so far off! all the good one has gained there gets shaken off one in the terrific journey home again, and then the different atmosphere is so trying to one fresh from the pure air of Fife—so exhausting and depressing. If it hadn't been that I had a deal of housemaiding to execute during the week I was here before Mr. C. returned, I must have given occasion for newspaper paragraphs under the head of 'Melancholy Suicide.' But dusting ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... last. The British victories have swept the clouds away and there are no uncheerful faces. For three months the private dinner parties (we go to no public ones) have been Lodges of Sorrow, and just a little depressing sometimes; but now they are smiley and animated again. Joe, do you know the Irish gentleman and the Irish lady, the Scotch gentleman and the Scotch lady? These are darlings, every one. Night before last it was all Irish—24. One would have to travel far to match their ease and sociability and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... confidently expected him, having made Roderick give him a solemn promise to spend the evening with him, in order to hear what it was that for several weeks had been depressing and agitating his pensive friend. Meanwhile Emilius wrote down ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... oxygenated quartz, all of which occupied points of exhibit on the "whatnot." Over the carpet were spread a deer skin, and a rug made from the hide of a timber wolf. Bennington found all this interesting but depressing. He was glad when Mrs. Lawton returned and took up ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... deaf man's lathe came more and more faintly to his ears. He felt sure now that he was on his way to make his fortune, and the wood seemed full of voices which said, "Lunnon Town, Lunnon Town," over and over again. The thought of his mother's sad face was, it is true, a little depressing. "But," he said to himself, "how pleased she'll be when I come back rich!" Then he considered what sort of shawl he would buy for her with the first money he earned—whether it should be a scarlet one, or mixed colours with an apple-green ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... smell, and hear, and feel, those gloomy wearisome conditions at Benton Barracks of over half a century ago. I have read, somewhere in Gen. Sherman's Memoirs, a statement in substance to the effect that rain in camp has a depressing effect upon soldiers, but is enlivening to them on a march. From personal experience I know that observation to be true. Many a time while on a march we would be caught in heavy rains. The dirt road would soon be worked into a loblolly of sticky yellow mud. Thereupon we would take off ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... eye across the counter. I had succeeded. At any rate, this was a tangible horror, and could be grappled with; it was not beyond human reach, a shadowy retribution from the invisible world. To face the circumstances, however repulsive, is less depressing than to await in suspense the coming of their footsteps, and the descent of that blow we know they will inflict. I had always found that policy best which was bravest. I remembered this now. Dropping my high tone, and soothing my excited features, I beckoned the woman and gave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... only it lasted. The hush of death could not have been quieter nor more impressive. Even as people looked at each other in wonder, the tumult came to its own again. Afterward a whole populace was to recall this strange, depressing second of utter stillness; to the end of time that sudden pall was spoken of with bated breath and ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... discussion as to the propriety of wearing their sable garments. Romeo, disliking the trouble of changing, argued that Allison ought to see that their grief was sincere. Juliet insisted that the sight would prove depressing. ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... no Blue-book, depressing letter from C.; a long, amusing ramble from my mother; vast masses of Romeike; they ARE going to war now; and what will that lead to? and what has driven, them to it but the persistent misconduct ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the river was left. Still on and on they come. The moon is now sinking low, and the shadows are weird and ghostly. Auroras, phantom-like, flit in the northern sky, while some of them seem like frightened spirits flying before avenging enemies. The sight is depressing to Alec, and so he turns his eyes from beholding them ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... Nevill, going to Oued Tolga. One entire wall had been sliced off, leaving the inside of the tower, with the upper chamber, visible from below. It was like looking into a half-dissected body, and the effect was depressing. ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Milligan would have "eaten up," as he mentally expressed it. The love interest, he realized bitterly, must be touched upon lightly in his scenarios from now on; which would have lightened appreciably the heart of Lite Avery, if he had only known it, and would have erased from his mind a good many depressing visions of Jean as the film sweetheart of those movie men whom ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... again. Joyousness, a sacred gift long dethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and obscenity, rises like a flood miraculously out of the fetid dust and mud of the slums; rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from people among whom the depressing noise called "sacred music" is a standing joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in murderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and splendid red; Fear, which we flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and transfigured ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... considerable number of our casks remained unfilled. Fever too had broken out on board. Three of our men were down with it, and day after day others were added to the number. The two first seized died, and we took them on shore to be buried. This had a depressing ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... always cry when I am particularly well pleased. It is a family peculiarity. You should see me at the theatre. At a farce comedy I am a depressing sight, and that is the reason I always ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... somewhat higher levels as surely as the moon draws the tide. Superficial persons in these days are drawing pictures of the failure of Christianity, which has failed in part; but they could find a much more depressing subject by painting a world from which all Christian idealism ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... to grow too depressing, Wayne decided to break the spell. "I'd like to point out that the valley's been completely cauterized," he said. "The aliens have been wiped out. And I propose to lead a mission out to reconnoitre for the ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... all very depressing, so we talked together and went on a voyage of discovery and found an hotel; then we went back to the billet and said "good-bye" to Madame and moved our stuff there. But the hotel wasn't a dream—at ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... all my reds, including the vermilion, and I couldn't do any more sunsets, then you took the emerald-green and the chrome-yellow, and finally I had nothing left but indigo and Chinese white, and could only do moonlight scenes, which are always depressing to look at, and not at all easy to paint. I never told on you, though I was very much annoyed, and it was most ridiculous, the whole thing; for who ever heard ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... turn down the patient's arms, and press the elbows firmly but gently downward against the sides of the chest, for two seconds. By this means foul air is expelled from the lungs by depressing ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... dark when she entered. It seemed very quiet, and close, and depressing after the sparkle and rush of the afternoon on the river. ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... insane people! This room was undoubtedly designed for some one afflicted in that way. That is why the window is barred, and there is no door, and why the room is done in lavender. Lavender has a soothing and depressing effect on people's nerves and would probably keep an insane person from becoming violent. We got here through some ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... day brooded over Southampton, and an impenetrable fog hung over sea and shore alike, penetrating the clothing, chilling the blood and depressing the spirits of every unlucky person who was so unfortunate as to come within the range of its influence. The passengers on the steamship America, from Bremen for New York via Southampton, found the brief period of their stay at the latter port almost unendurable; and while some ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... west breathed the fragrance of countless wild flowers and sweet may blossom from the leafy hedges, and the scent of roses and honeysuckle was wafted from every cottage garden. After a month spent amid the languid air and depressing surroundings of London, one felt glad at heart to experience once again the grand, pure air and rural ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... however many dogs there may be on board. On the contrary, I should say that on voyages of this kind it is more than ever vitally necessary to keep one's surroundings as clean and sweet as possible. The important thing is to get rid of anything that may have a demoralizing and depressing effect. The influence of uncleanliness in this way is so well known that it is needless to ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... tobacco smoke mingling with the smoke of sandal-wood that floated back and forth in layers as the punkahs swung lazily. Outside, the rain swished and chilled the night air; but the hot air from inside hurried out to meet the cool, and none of the cool came in. The noise of rain became depressing until Yasmini made a signal to her maids and they started ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy |
