"Discontent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The discontent of the Indians was strongest throughout Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. The Delawares—those who would not listen to such chiefs as White Buffalo—were angered in the extreme, and the Shawanoes were ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... Negro education was bitter in the South, for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro. And the South was not wholly wrong; for education among all kinds of men always has had, and always will have, an element of danger and revolution, of dissatisfaction and discontent. Nevertheless, men strive to know. It was some inkling of this paradox, even in the unquiet days of the Bureau, that allayed an opposition to human training, which still to-day lies smouldering, but not flaming. Fisk, Atlanta, Howard, and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... his wagons through it. George very sensibly refused to destroy his army in this way. Indeed, he foresaw that to follow their advice would be to bring the nation to grief a second time. This increased the discontent and opposition of his enemies, who regarded it a great grievance that a general would not ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... satisfaction of Pao-yue, who day after day, when at home, devoted his time and attention to these extraneous matters. But who would have anticipated that he could ever in his quiet seclusion have become a prey to a spirit of restlessness? Of a sudden, one day he began to feel discontent, finding fault with this and turning up his nose at that; and going in and coming out he was simply full of ennui. And as all the girls in the garden were just in the prime of youth, and at a time of life when, artless and unaffected, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... crew that was ever brought together for excommunication. It is not, however, till the end of the essay that the true root of bitterness between the critic and his victims is suffered fully to appear. "A splenetic and idle discontent with the existing institutions of society seems to be at the bottom of all their serious and peculiar sentiments." In other words, the Edinburgh takes up the work of the Anti-Jacobin; with no very good grace Jeffrey affects to sit in the seat of Canning ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... lumber-jack, had read Peter's thought. "My God!" he said. "What a job it is to make the workers class-conscious!" He sat on the edge of his cot, with his broad shoulders bowed and his heavy brows knit in thought over the problem of how to increase the world's discontent. He told of one camp where he had worked—so hard and dangerous was the toil that seven men had given up their lives in the course of one winter. The man who owned this tract, and was exploiting it, had gotten the land by the rankest kind of public frauds; there were filthy bunk-houses, ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... Eastern leaders of that movement. Had these leaders been gifted with vision broad enough to enable them to appreciate the vital economic and social problems of the West, the Liberal Republican movement might perhaps have caught the ground swell of agrarian discontent, and the outcome might then have been the formation of an enduring national party of liberal tendencies broader and more progressive than the Liberal Republican party yet less likely to be swept into the vagaries of extreme radicalism than were ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... this adequate standard, I do not think that by the possible increase of his gains under contingencies of trade, or by divisions of profits with his master, he should be enticed into feverish hope of an entire change of condition; and as an almost necessary consequence, pass his days in an anxious discontent with immediate circumstances, and a comfortless scorn of his daily life, for which no subsequent success could indemnify him. And I am the more confident in this belief, because, even supposing a gradual rise in social rank possible for all well-conducted persons, my experience does not lead ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... to be that, I will give up—as you have made all other methods impossible for me—all which seems to make life worth having'? Oh! instead of finding fault with such men; instead of, with vulturine beak, picking out the elements of Manichaeism, of conceit, of discontent, of what not human frailty and ignorance, which may have been in them, let us honour the enormous moral force which enabled them so to bear witness that not the mortal animal, but the immortal spirit, is the Man; and that when all which outward circumstance can give ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... remarkable circumstance, which this experiment gave me occasion to observe, consists in the good reception given by the bees to the stranger queen, while they still preserved the first. Having so often seen the symptoms of discontent that a plurality of queens occasions, after having witnessed the clusters formed around these supernumerary queens to confine them, I could not expect they would pay the same homage to a second ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... to Glen Cove all that troubled Jeanne was that her pony had sprained a tendon, and that in the mixed doubles her eye was off the ball. Proctor Maddox suggested other causes for discontent. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... three-year structural adjustment program in cooperation with the IMF. On the minus side, public sector wage increases and regional peacekeeping commitments have led to continued inflationary deficit financing, depreciation of the cedi, and rising public discontent with Ghana's austerity measures. Political uncertainty and a depressed cocoa market led to disappointing growth in 2000. A rebound in the cocoa market should push growth ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... father, that is to say, of all vices. Griskinissa's face and her mind grew ugly together; her good humor changed to bilious, bitter discontent; her pretty, fond epithets, to foul abuse and swearing; her tender blue eyes grew watery and blear, and the peach-color on her cheeks fled from its old habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... liberties, as the natural excesses of a spirit that had been lately released from the monotony of a sea-life. The repose which usually reigned in the countenance of the Alderman had been a little troubled; but he succeeded in concealing his discontent from any impertinent observation. When the chief actor in the foregoing scene, therefore, saw fit to withdraw, the usual tranquillity was restored, and his presence appeared to ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... dogs were far from being quiet or satisfied. Their masters, accustomed to being surrounded at night by wolves and foxes, or other beasts, took little heed, however, of the discontent of these creatures, which were in the habit of growling in their lairs. The bee-hunter, as he kept rubbing at his friend's legs, felt now but little apprehension of the dogs, though a new source ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... of lust make the sex adjustment the most difficult of all and produce the queerest results. Sex is a road to power and to failure, a road to health and sickness. As in all adjustments, there are some who are conscious of but few difficulties, who are moral or immoral without struggle or discontent. Contrasted with these are the ones who find morality a great burden, and those who, yielding to desire, find continuous inner conflict and dissatisfaction and lowered ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... settlers would gather at Bright's inn of an evening, smoke their pipes, mutter their discontent at the way things had turned, compare their "equivalents," and relate how much saving it had cost them to get the money thrown away on them. If it had not been for Hanz Toodleburg, they said, not a man of them would have believed a word of the story about Mr. Kidd and his ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... shot. The bullet that reached his heart touched that of every warrior in these nations. Every man but one in the wagon-train was slain, the animals driven off, and the wagons burned. The fires of discontent that had been smoldering for two years in the red man's breast now burst forth with volcanic fury. Hundreds of atrocious murders followed, with wholesale destruction of property. The Ninth Kansas Regiment, under the command ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... plans and were impatient to see the result of their—to them—successful labours. They could not understand this halt, and grumbled under their breath at the strange hesitancy of their young leader. But everything had gone so well under his guidance that none of them dared to express his discontent aloud, and Max was left to put the finishing touch ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... merry, spirited Atossa nearly made up to her for the loss of her sister Tachot, so far away on the distant Nile. She could not have desired a better companion than this gay, cheerful girl, whose wit and merriment effectually prevented homesickness or discontent from settling in her friend's heart. The gravity and earnestness of Nitetis' character were brightened by Atossa's gaiety, and Atossa's exuberant spirits calmed and regulated by the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... madness, whether solitary or epidemic. It may be very active; it may be very quick at catching at new and grand ideas—all the more quick, perhaps, on account of its own secret malaise and self-discontent: but it will be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt to mistake capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for earnestness, virulence for force, and, too often, cruelty for justice. It will lose manful independence, individuality, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... chickens, and demands heavy fees for services rendered. The State however, fixes the price of labour and food at its fair value and demands a certain amount of one or other from each village. This sometimes leads to discontent and rebellion just as do the taxes levied by other Governments, and it is necessary to occupy territory with troops. No soldier however, is allowed to have in his possession a rifle unless he is accompanied by a white ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow of their solemn repose fell on her face; its fierce discontent faded into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes: the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to rest, the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than ever before. The Quaker ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... and the people, when in excess of the demand of the army, and that transportation be allowed, and that a government store be opened in Richmond. I told him plainly, that without some speedy measure of relief there would be much discontent, for half the families here are neither half-fed nor half-clad. The measure, if adopted in all the cities, would be a beneficent one, and would give popular strength to the government, while it would be a death-blow to the speculators and extortioners. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... cloak of punctual attendance to discipline and pretended piety. She was long in the station of sub-prioress, and would, for her capacity, have been promoted to the rank of prioress, had she not betrayed a certain discontent with the ecclesiastic life, a certain contrariety to her superiors, something half expressed only of inward dissatisfaction. Renata had not ventured to let any one about the convent into her confidence, and she remained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... to furnish appetizing food, possibly a joint of roast mutton from the flocks of sheep accessible to us on the islands in the harbor, a fresh mackerel or cod. We are not yet shut in from the sea, and possibly we may soon have free access to the surrounding country, for I hear there is much discontent among the provincials, and their numbers are rapidly melting away, now that the first excitement ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... contributed to Alfred's discontent. He had remarked that to putty up holes, paint a board or smear a hurricane deck was not much of a trade or calling, but to be an artist like Alfred's father was a profession that ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... new weight to the conclusions reached in this book—that the causes of Bacon's Rebellion were deep-seated, that it grew out of the discontent caused by the Navigation Acts, the heavy taxes, the corrupting of the Assembly by Berkeley, and the misuse of the courts. It in no way shakes the conviction expressed by Thomas Mathews, who himself was ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... arising in the congregation, to which the human mind is everlastingly prone, caused discontent: Individuals began to sting each other, which in 1745, produced ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... room, and trilling some blithe air, Opened my wardrobe, wondering what to wear. Momentous question! femininely human! More than all others, vexing mind of woman, Since that sad day, when in her discontent, To search for leaves, our fair first mother went. All undecided what I should put on, At length I made selection of a lawn - White, with a tiny pink vine overrun:- My simplest robe, but Vivian's favourite one. And placing a single flowret in my hair, I crossed the hall ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... finished and little by little she began to tell me the things I wanted to know. We made no real progress in our conversation until I learned that she had been a student at Sherman Indian Institute for eight years. When she found that I knew the school well and some of the teachers, a look of discontent and unhappiness came over her face. She said that she had been very, very happy at Sherman. With a wave of her slender brown hand she said: "Look at this!" Her eyes rested with distaste on the flock of sheep grazing near, turned to ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... is selected from the scene-plot of "Sun, Sand and Solitude," a scene-plot diagram from which we reproduce on a succeeding page. The theme of this story is the discontent of a young wife, caused by seeing, month in and month out, the sun-baked stretches ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... consumer, of course, is the one who pays the freight and stands the cost of all this. Hence we have the swift growth of American discontent with living conditions. There is no longer land for free homes in America. This is no longer a land of opportunity. It is no longer a poor man's country. We have arrived all too swiftly upon the ways of the Old World. And today, in spite of our love of ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... for the great light, of which he had only the dim glimmerings, kept his face turned westward, while he hoped and yet dreaded to meet the young Shawanoe, who, unsuspected by himself, was the cause of his strange discontent. ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... relations with the Shia community. Shia political societies participated in 2006 parliamentary and municipal elections. Al Wifaq, the largest Shia political society, won the largest number of seats in the elected chamber of the legislature. However, Shi'a discontent has resurfaced in recent years with street ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... mobile, more merciful amongst the creations of [humankind]." Although not all homes are good, good and happy homes do sometimes exist. Men by themselves, on the other hand, were responsible for creating the State which "continually gives cause for discontent and bitterness." There has never been a State which could satisfy all its members, which did not ask to be reformed from its very foundations. Yet it is through the State that humankind will reach its highest hopes. Her conclusion: women must add their special virtues, what she calls "God's ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... to Aix-la-Chapelle in 1776. He had planned and carried into execution the revolution so favourable to the King, but had left Sweden in discontent, and came to take the waters ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Chicago will be! That is the ever-recurring burden of one's cogitations. For Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, to her destinies; so much one perceives even in the reiterated complaints that she is asleep. Discontent is the condition of progress, and Chicago is not in the slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they chasten her. They are never tired of urging her on, sometimes (it must be owned) with most unfilial objurgations; and ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... began to complain much of the want of water, and I for some time followed the traces of these native boys, who had come from the southward and eastward, in the hope that their tracks would lead us to it, but the grumbling and discontent of some of the men was so great that I found it almost impossible to induce them to move. My object was to get them to walk to a high peaked hill distant about five miles from us in a due south-east direction, and under which I felt certain, from its height, that we should find ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... made. Enough has been said to show that the State has and exerts the right to control the actions of those who belong to it, and that in time of stress it can and does very greatly intensify that control and does so without arousing any real or widespread discontent. Of course we all grumble, but then everybody, except its own members, always does more or less grumble at anything done by any government: that is the ordinary state of affairs. But at any rate we submit ourselves, more or less ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... beauteous deliverer thus uttered her divine instructions: 'My name is religion. I am the offspring of truth and love, and the parent of benevolence, hope, and joy. That monster, from whose power I have freed you, is called superstition: she is the child of discontent, and her followers are fear and sorrow.'"—See Key. "Neither hope nor fear could enter the retreats; and habit had so absolute a power, that even conscience, if religion had employed her in their favour, would not have been able to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... them, but tell them rather, 'I will never slay my brothers, nor throw them into chains.' Endure, suffer, submit, will what God wills, and your will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. What seems evil is evil, and what seems good is good. Striving and discontent is the true curse of mankind. Let us then be peaceful and content, and never strike the wicked, for fear ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... writes: "Ther was a Catechise lately in print ther, that denied the divinity of Christ, yett ther was motions in the house by some, to have it lycenced by authority. Cromwell mainly oposed, & at last it was voted to bee burnt which causes much discontent of somme." Six years had made ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... that of either France or Great Britain, it has not only subjects of other languages, but actually discontented subjects, in three corners, on its French, its Danish, and its Polish frontiers. We ask the reason, and it will be at once answered that the discontent of all three is the result of recent conquest, in two cases of very recent conquest indeed. But this is one of the very points to be marked; the strong national unity of the German Empire has been largely the result of assimilation; and these three parts, where recent conquest ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Riseholme, happier than he of Russia, had no need to fear the finger of Bolshevism writing on the wall, for there was not in the whole of that vat which seethed so pleasantly with culture, one bubble of revolutionary ferment. Here there was neither poverty nor discontent nor muttered menace of any upheaval: Mrs Lucas, busy and serene, worked harder than any of her subjects, and exercised an autocratic control ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... take service with me?" he continued, abruptly. "Austria is ripe to revolt against the tyranny of the emperor. With the discontent in the Netherlands, the dissensions in Spain, Europe is like a field, cut up, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... wise which would leave the negro good ground to hesitate, when the exigencies of the country required his prompt assistance? Can that be sound statesmanship which leaves millions of men in gloomy discontent, and possibly in a state of alienation in the day of national trouble? Was not the nation stronger when two hundred thousand sable soldiers were hurled against the Rebel fortifications, than it would have been without them? Arming the negro was an urgent military necessity three years ago,—are ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it be harmonized with Zionism, to which the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... Debussy and Franck will amply testify.[148] The same analogy holds equally in all realms of life, human and physical. The truest development of character depends on the warring elements of good and evil. Honest discontent is the first step to progress. Dissonance is the yeast of music and should be welcomed for ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... is desirable to know what is the Interior to which the Southern Confederates propose if beaten to retire. If in Arms they will be pursued, if not in Arms their discontent will cause but little embarrassment to their Conquerors. But can the country be held permanently by the U.S. Armies if the Confederates have small bodies in Arms resisting the authority of the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... have ceased to know His name, because the world grows old, but then He was accounted great among great men; Young, strong, and godlike, lacking nought at all Of gifts that unto royal men might fall In those old simple days, before men went To gather unseen harm and discontent, Along with all the alien merchandise That rich folk need, too restless ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... discontent, but nothing serious. Travers was sacked with several others. I know the man quite well. He's an insolent ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... grand-master. A couple of mysterious and well-managed apparitions were sufficient to terrify the duke, and render him ductile as wax. The most implicit submission was required of him, and soon the crafty Reuterholm got the royal authority entirely into his own hands. There was discontent and murmuring amongst the true friends of the royal family, but Reuterholm's spies were ubiquitous, and a frowning brow or dissatisfied look was punished as a crime. Amongst others, Count Armfelt, who took no pains to conceal his indignation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... husband and her son made ready and went to pass the holidays at the seat of their ancestors at Queen's Crawley. Becky would have liked to leave the little brat behind, and would have done so but for Lady Jane's urgent invitations to the youngster, and the symptoms of revolt and discontent which Rawdon manifested at her neglect of her son. "He's the finest boy in England," the father said in a tone of reproach to her, "and you don't seem to care for him, Becky, as much as you do for your spaniel. He shan't bother you much; at home he will be away from you in the nursery, and he ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... discontent probably did lead to the revelation of many incidental wrongs and to much humane hard work in certain holes and corners. It also gave birth to a great deal of quite futile and frantic speculation, which seemed destined ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... close in a mellow sunset of popular approval. But no prophetic genius was required to foresee that clouds of discontent and controversy would hang heavy about the head of his successor. Adams certainly did not expect it to be otherwise. "Prospects are flattering for the immediate issue," he recorded in his diary shortly before the election, "but the fearful condition of them is that success would open to a far severer ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... filled. Nearly everyone spoke of the great war and of the peril which menaced Lutha. Upon many a lip was open disgust at the supine attitude of Leopold of Lutha in the face of an Austrian invasion of his country. Discontent was open. It was ripening to something worse for Leopold than an ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and opportunity, presides over marriages; she takes away and extinguisheth all the violent fury of pleasure, and makes it tend to friendship, mutual confidence, and endearment, and not to effeminacy, lust, or discontent. The delight which the eye or ear receives is a sort of pleasure, either appropriate to reason or to passion, or common to them both. This the two other Muses, Terpsichore and Melpomene, so moderate, that the one may only tickle and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... be thought of with fear or abhorrence, but to be rejected as such a piece of incredible treachery and villainy, as it were atheism to believe could ever be successful. But I now see plainly why that hypocritical Marthon often seemed to foster every seed of petty jealousy or discontent betwixt my poor kinswoman and myself, whilst she always mixed with flattery, addressed to the individual who was present, whatever could prejudice her against her absent kinswoman. Yet never did I dream ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... heat sufficient for the preparation of a scanty portion of food. Her profile only was visible to the strangers, though, from a slight motion of her eye, they perceived that she was aware of their presence. Her features were pinched and spare, and wore a look of sullen discontent, for which the evident wretchedness of her situation afforded a sufficient reason. This female, notwithstanding her years, and the habitual fretfulness (that is more wearing than time), was apparently healthy and robust, with a dry, leathery complexion. A short space ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reason whatever to think that there will be any discontent in the future under the liberal and beneficent government of the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... flights into the bosom of family life with some natural discontent. Her brother Samuel she had always disliked because he laughed at her; her sister she did not care for because she was very innocently, poor lady, flaunting her superior married state; and her brother-in-law she did not like because he always behaved as though ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... are placed in a position of authority, no care in their training will prevent it from falling often to singularly unfit persons. The command of a permanent military force was a temptation to ambition, to avarice, or hatred, to the indulgence of private piques and jealousies, to political discontent on private and personal grounds. A combination of three or four of the leading nobles was sufficient, when an incapable prince sate on the throne, to effect a revolution; and the rival claims of the houses of York and Lancaster to the crown, took the form of a war unequalled in ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... The discontent of the Greek people at the chronic mismanagement of their affairs had been quickened by the Turkish Revolution into something like despair. Bulgaria had exploited that upheaval by annexing Eastern Rumelia: Greece had failed to annex Crete, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... the food of the spirit as seriously at least as for the food of the body. Learn to recognize poisons and also indigestibles. The first are subjects of scandal, bitterness of spirit, malice, impatience, tale-bearing, unkindly criticism, and discontent. The second are subjects too heavy for children: your formal theology would be one of them, your judgments on some intricate subjects may be among them. It is seldom wise to announce negative injunctions, but we can make up our own minds to avoid the conversational ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... could not understand why Margaret wanted anything better; what better thing indeed could life hold! Sometimes, looking admiringly at her associate's crown of tawny braids, at the dark eyes and the exquisite lines of mouth and forehead, Mrs. Porter would find herself sympathetic with the girl's vague discontent and longings, to the extent of wishing that some larger social circle than that of Weston might have a chance to appreciate Margaret Paget's beauty, that "some of those painters who go crazy over girls not half as pretty" might see ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... captivity captive and gave gifts for men, and brought back the servant into his country, crowned with double honor, and endued with a garment of immortality. When Mercy beheld this, she had no grounds for complaint, Truth found no cause of discontent, because her father was found true. The servant had paid all his penalties. Justice in like manner complained not, because justice had been executed on the transgressor; and thus he who had been lost was found. Peace, therefore, when she saw her ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Mr Gladstone had written on the 26th of January on the subject of competitive examinations for the Civil Service; in reply to the Queen's letter, he referred to the discontent existing in the Service with the system of appointment by favour, and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... disturbed his happiness, which was, that he was pretty old, and had no children, though he had so many wives. He knew not what to attribute this barrenness to; and what increased his affliction was, that he was likely to leave his kingdom without a successor. He dissembled his discontent a long while; and, what was yet more uneasy to him, he was constrained to dissemble. At length, however, he broke silence; and one day, after he had complained bitterly of his misfortune to his grand vizier, he demanded of him if he knew ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... goods, such not being "a work of necessity, or mercy," and numerous convictions were recorded. Most of the persons convicted were poor, and with large families, who sold tobacco, fruit, cakes and sweets, in a very humble way of business, and considerable discontent and indignation was manifested in the parish in consequence of such prosecutions; the outcry was raised that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor, and a party that strongly opposed the proceedings on the part of the parish, resolved to try the legality ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Italian language, haue published, not onely Euclides Geometrie, but of Archimedes somewhat: and in Arithmetike and Practicall Geometrie, very large volumes, all in their vulgar speche. Nor in Germany haue the famous Vniuersities, any thing bene discontent with Albertus Durerus, his Geometricall Institutions in Dutch: or with Gulielmus Xylander, his learned translation of the first sixe bookes of Euclide, out of the Greke into the high Dutch. Nor ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... state at Rome. This was a standing grievance even in the eyes of many sincerely devout Churchmen, and one which was prone to make statesmen and politicians look with a favourable eye on any movement which promised to lessen or to abolish it. Germany in this respect had special reasons for discontent; as has been well said, "It was the milch cow of the Papacy, which at once despised and drained it dry." And, as everybody knows, it was in Germany that the standard of revolt against the authority of Rome was first successfully raised. The political constitution of that country was also peculiarly ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... organization is an experience so novel that no man can do it without being affected; he will never again be the same steady and indefatigable workman; the spirit of unrest creeps in, the spirit of discontent closely follows; his life is changed; though he never goes through another strike, he can never forget ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... heart's division! who would come and say to me, With the eyes of far-off friendship, "You are as you used to be"? Something glad and good has left me here with sickening discontent, Tired of looking, neither knowing what it was or where it went. So it is this sight of Coogee, shining in the morning dew, Sets me stumbling through dim summers once on fire with youth and you— Summers pale as southern evenings when the year ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... you was a orphing. Well, you see, I think it must ha' bin a love o' change or a love o' discontent, or suthin' o' that sort, as brought me cruising in these here waters, for I can't say what else it was. You see I was ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... eyes I ever beheld," the doctor writes, "are those of Voltaire, now in his eightieth year. His whole countenance is expressive of genius, observation, and extreme sensibility. In the morning he has a look of anxiety and discontent; but this gradually wears off, and after dinner he seems cheerful; yet an air of irony never entirely forsakes his face, but may always be observed lurking in his features whether he frowns or smiles. Composition is his principal amusement. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... numbers, and have, sometimes, executed that justice which they had not interest to procure, and trampled upon that insolence that has dared to defy them; yet I shall not insist upon such motives, because it is notorious that discontent is epidemical in all ranks, and that condition and observation are far ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... exclaimed Kurt. "Now you listen to this. You're the first I.W.W. man I've met. You look and talk like an American. But if you are American you're a traitor. We've a war to fight! War with a powerful country! Germany! And you come spreading discontent in the wheat-fields,... when wheat means life!... Get ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... comfort. It is true that the independence of the Canadian settler must be the fruit of his own labour, for none but the industrious can hope to obtain that reward. In fact, idle and indolent persons will not change their natures by going out to Canada. Poverty and discontent will be the lot of the sluggard in the Bush, as it was in his native land—nay, deeper poverty, for "he cannot work, to beg he is ashamed," and if he be surrounded by a family, those nearest and dearest to him will share ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... a fissure as this piece of discontent cracked in him, the crowd of his grievances with the woman rushed pell-mell, deluging young shoots of sweeter feelings. She sulked! If that woman could not get the command, he was to know her incapable of submission. After besmutting the name she had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Hath brought to Court to sue for Had-I-wist That few have found and many one hath mist! Full httle knowest thou that hast not tried What hell it is in suing long to bide; To lose good days that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent, To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow, To have thy prince's grace yet want her Peers', To have thy asking yet wait many years, To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares, To eat thy heart ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... all apt to be a little discontented; but do you think there is any reason for that belief more than the natural tendency of the men to discontent?-I cannot say whether there is any real ground for that ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... efforts to increase his army and to fortify his strongholds, while he was also gaining the sympathy of foreign powers, and, by means of blockade-running, was adding not a little to his munitions of war. The army shared largely this general discontent. "Why do we not advance?" was every where the interrogation ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... recurring periods when moodiness and ill-stifled discontent got hold of her. Sometimes she stole out along the cliffs to sit on a mossy boulder, staring with absent eyes at the distant hills. And sometimes she would slip out in a canoe, to lie rocking in the lake swell,—just dreaming, filled with a passive sort of regret. She could not ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a little pain at her heart, as she waited, following him with her eyes until the cavalcade was lost to view under the plumy shadows of the distant cypress-trees. Was it thus that kings should spend long summer days when there were rumors of discontent in the air—rumors definite enough to have reached the palace circle in mysterious undertones, quickly repressed when she turned to ask their meaning? Should Janus not have given up his pleasure to stay and examine into ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... a spirit of discontent had been gradually spreading among the sepoy regiments. An impression had become prevalent among them that the British government intended forcing them to give up their ancient faith and become Christians. Just about this time, the ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... surprise swept through the room. Such an incendiary harangue was new to the serfs of that region. Never before had such revolutionary doctrines been openly advanced. Subdued complaints, undefined expressions of discontent, were frequent, and were as frequently repressed, but such an outspoken insult to the reigning nobility, such a fearless invitation to rebellion against the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Hitt. "The restless spirit of the modern world is hourly voicing its discontent with a faltering faith which has no other basis than blind belief. It wants demonstrable fact upon which to build. In plain words, mankind would be better if they but ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... dull embers of resignation and then died into the apathy of contentment with things that are. Worse still, they have grown fond of their prison world, and the most pessimistic feature in the Fijian situation of to-day is the evident fact that there is almost no discontent among the natives. Old things have withered and decayed, but new ambition ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... and the solar disc as well that shines in the universe in its own light. Upon the exhaustion, again, of their merits, they fall away from those regions repeatedly. There, in Heaven itself, is distinction of inferior, superior, and middling felicity. There, in Heaven itself, is discontent at sight of prosperity more blazing than one's own. Even these are the goals which I have mentioned in detail. I shall, after this, discourse to you on the attainment by Jiva of the condition of residence in the womb. Do thou hear me, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... depriving the people of their rights and liberties, and taking away trials by juries, and in short putting an end to the law itself. If this was not a libel, he did not know what was one. Such persons as did take these liberties ... ought to suffer for stirring up sedition and discontent among the people." ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Blossom and his son do not appear, unless the comparatively early death of the son—after which his father went to New England—furnishes a clue thereto. Bradford says: "Those that went back were, for the most part, such as were willing to do so, either out of some discontent, or fear they conceived of the ill success of the Voyage, seeing so many crosses befallen and the year time so far spent. But others, in regard of their own weakness and the charge of many young children, were thought [by the Managers] least ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... in the two languages of the country were issued and sold in all the public-houses. Congregations were gathered in all the cities, and even small towns, and everywhere the authorities could see that no spirit of discontent with anything but sin and evil habits was being created, but that the police would find their tasks lightened, and the life of the poorest of the people brightened and bettered, if they ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... to eat buckwheat cakes that He doesn't send down to you by an angel with His compliments. My idea is that He wants folks to do things for themselves and not to sing about it. As for being discontented, that's the one thing that drives the world around. I think God made discontent just for that." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... "Discontent indeed prevails everywhere, and unless reforms take place, I know not what will be the result," he said, with a deep sigh. "Even in this place the people are in an ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... determined to bring about by any and every means a bloody and violent overturn of all existing institutions. They will oppose the Scheme, and they will act logically in so doing. For the only hope of those who are the artificers of Revolution is the mass of seething discontent and misery that lies in the heart of the social system. Honestly believing that things must get worse before they get better, they build all their hopes upon the general overturn, and they resent as an indefinite postponement of the realisation of their dreams any attempt at a reduction ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... men, however, who put the other side of the question. In a tract called The Refutation of the Arguments used on the Subject of the Agricultural Petition, written in 1819, it was said that the increase in the farmer's expenditure was the cause of his discontent. 'He now assumes the manners and demands the equipage of a gentleman, keeps a table like his landlord, anticipates seasons in their productions, is as choice in his wines, his horses, and his furniture.' Let him be more thrifty. 'Let him dismiss his steward, a character a few years ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... congenial business. Like most adventurous boys, he thought much of the romance of a sea-life. An elder brother had run away, had gone to sea, and for years had not been heard from. Benjamin's father became very anxious as he witnessed the discontent of his son. This anxiety was increased when an elder brother married, removed to Rhode Island, and set up a soap and candle establishment for himself. This seemed to Benjamin to rivet the chains which bound him at home. Apparently his ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... changes of a generation,—a blessed, lasting peace in place of the horrors and burdens of civil war, a reunited, loyal country; progress that hears the demand of the people for pure and economic administration, for relief from restrictions and taxation; progress that feels the discontent and suffering of great masses of the people,—this progress, if willing and ready to shape into legislation the new wishes and the new wants, rises to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... deal of my father in the face, but it is my father transformed and glorified; his hesitating discontent drowned in a kind of triumph. From my first day in that house, I continually turned to this handsome kinsman of mine, wondering in what terms he had lived and had his hope; what he had found there to look like that, to bound at one, after all those years, so joyously ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... until the slaves were admitted to give their evidence: but to admit them to this privilege in their present state would be to endanger the safety and property of their masters. Mr. Vaughan had, however, recommended this measure with limitations, but it would produce nothing but discontent; for how were the slaves to be persuaded, that it was fit they should be admitted to speak the truth, and then be disbelieved and disregarded? What a fermentation would such a conduct naturally excite in men ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... the shores of Lacedaemon, had not forgotten her promise, and in Sparta itself she was at work at its fulfilment. She inspired Queen Helen with a growing discontent and restlessness of spirit. Menelaos had not noticed any change in her, and it was with an utterly unsuspicious mind that he received the fatal strangers and made them welcome guests in his land ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... went to the home of the Yuans, to a member of which family it was said she had been promised. There they had already painted the walls, and swept the courtyard, and all was in readiness to receive the bridal carriage. Sia was overcome with remorse and discontent. He no longer ate, and fell ill. His parents were quite stunned by the anxiety they felt on his account, and were ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... foremost in securing the passage of the great act which gave complete religious freedom to the people of that state. No man understood better than he the causes of the alarming weakness of the federal government, and of the commercial disturbances and popular discontent of the time; nor had any one worked more zealously or more adroitly in bringing about the meeting of this convention. As he stood here now, a leader in the debate, there was nothing grand or imposing in his appearance. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... could throw upon it a beam of modifying and softening light, and that was the presence of the brave Champlain, who bore all without a murmur, and, we may be sure, without a throb of unmanly fear or a sensation of cowardly discontent. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... had lived, of late years, as a sedate, middle-aged gentleman should, with no implication of finding the world any less roseate than his hopes had promised. As to Dick, the very sight of him had shown him beyond a doubt how little disposed he was to take the lad into that area of tumultuous discontent which was now his mind. "Fire away," he bade her. "You in trouble, dear? ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... heart against his father had not abated one jot, and whenever these spasms of discontent would seize him he was wont to tell himself, "I am fighting old Tom Brent now, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... can those, who have thus miscarried in their chief design, elude the memory of their ill success? with what amusements can they pacify their discontent, after the loss of so large a portion of life? they can give themselves up again to the same delusions, they can form new schemes of airy gratifications, and fix another period of felicity; they can again resolve to trust the promise which they know will be broken, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... she said, "a most hopeful thing to see the discontent that is stirring amongst young women in this age, because an essential preliminary to their improvement is the conviction that they have the capacity for a freer, nobler life than that to which they are bound by obsolete domestic traditions. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... with a priori opinions about all forms and means and ends of Socialism will smile if he be kindly and sneer if he be not. But most of these people are in earnest. If they represent nothing else, and however they disagree and quarrel, they do represent an enormous amount of real discontent. "I protest" is often in their mouths; as the president yells "Monsieur, vous n'avez pas la parole" they stand in the benches and protest again in acute screams. It is under extraordinary difficulties that the movement is being carried forward. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... than himself is his misfortune, rather than his fault. Yes! ... he is my paid Critic, paid to rail against me on all occasions public or private, for the merriment of those who care to listen to the mutterings of his discontent,—and, by the Sacred Veil! ... I cannot choose but laugh myself whenever I think of him. He deems his words carry weight with the people,—alas, poor soul! his scorn but adds to my glory,—his derision to my fame! Nay, of a truth I need him,—even as the King needs the court fool,—to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... some modern republics, seems to watch over the minutest actions, and to be at all times ready to disturb the peace of every citizen. Where the security of the magistrate, though supported by the principal people of the country, is endangered by every popular discontent; where a small tumult is capable of bringing about in a few hours a great revolution, the whole authority of government must be employed to suppress and punish every murmur and complaint against it. To a sovereign, on the contrary, who feels himself supported, not only by the natural ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... exhausted, and, further, that he is subject to fall after he hath entirely exhausted his merit, form, in my opinion, the disadvantages of heaven. The fall of a person whose mind hath been steeped in happiness, must, O Mudgala, be pronounced as a fault. And the discontent and regret that must follow one's stay at an inferior seat after one hath enjoyed more auspicious and brighter regions, must be hard to bear. And the consciousness of those about to fall is stupefied, and also agitated by emotions. And as the garlands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the native officials and nobles to carry on the administration of the kingdom, he sought to strengthen his own power by appointing Spaniards to offices of trust and by sending Spanish troops to suppress all symptoms of discontent. He set aside the Grand Council which by custom had the rights of a parliament, and without consultation with the authorities in the Netherlands he decided upon a new ecclesiastical division of the country. Hitherto there were only four ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... those who were there thought it not fit To discontent so ancient a wit, And therefore Apollo called him back again, And made him mine host of his own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... he still said; 'I do not know whether Mervyn will come home, and there must not be too many empty chairs. Good-bye!' and he walked off with long strides, but with stooping shoulders, and an air of dejection almost amounting to discontent. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... labors of the apostles greatly augmented the spread of the new doctrine of the kingdom, and the name and works of Jesus were proclaimed throughout the land. The people of Galilee were at that time in a state of discontent threatening open insurrection against the government; their unrest had been aggravated by the murder of the Baptist. Herod Antipas, who had given the fatal order, trembled in his palace. He heard, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... season and the hand to mouth struggle of the long winter months. Perhaps the amenities of life were not missed because they can hardly have been known; but the restrictions on building and the absence of local authority must early have given rise to bitterness and discontent. Certainly we must admire the constancy of men who were content to live, a solitary cluster, on the coast, with an unexplored interior and savage inhabitants behind them, and with no more secure prospect of material progress than a process ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... starvation. The government yielded to the outcry that arose; but the expedients by which it sought to mitigate the evil, notably the division of those entitled to relief into classes, only increased the alarm and the discontent. The universal misery gave point to the virulent attacks of Babeuf on the existing order, and at last gained him a hearing. He gathered round him a small circle of his immediate followers known as the Societe des Egaux, soon merged with the rump of the Jacobins, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... reach. Comfort, health, calmness, and content, are sacrificed to grasp at something more. Our cheeks grow pale, our brows wrinkled, our hearts clouded, from a settled, taught, established habit of discontent with any position that is not the highest. There is much of truth in all this, as every one who treads our crowded marts and finds each man, however prosperous, cankered with the thought that he is not prosperous enough, will admit. All this ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... in the toy-box had apparently bred discontent between Jack and Flora—or perhaps they sought to keep their countenances before the world; at any rate, they sat on opposite sides of the room, Jack keeping boon company with the lead soldiers, his spouse reposing, her lead-balanced eyes closed, in the broken clockwork ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... planning, purpose, desire, hope, unrest, lust and ambition. In its general sense, it is Unfulfilled Desire. It is the voice constantly crying in the ears of success, "Arise and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." It is the dissatisfaction with all things done—it is our Noble Discontent. In its first manifestation it is sex. In its last refinement it means the love of man and woman, with the love of children, the home-making sense, and an appreciation of art, music and science—which is love with ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... and his brother Egbert—had lived, "farmed out" to a hard-necked, flinty-hearted pair of relatives because of a brother's stipulation and a certain English law. With them they had existed in mutual discontent and dislike. Derwent, when he became old enough, had stepped over the traces. All this Keith had gathered from the letters, but there was a great deal that was missing. Egbert, he gathered, must have been a scapegrace. He was a cripple ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood |
