"Dismal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... means to ends, to say nothing of the eager spirit of application manifested by the busy population, produces an impression on the mind of no common character. Besides which, the town itself, so ill-arranged and ugly, is a spectacle; and in the people that inhabit the dismal streets, the visitor may find studies in morality as well ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... scene drew to its close, she became calmer. She reflected that some sort of registry would be kept of the graves. A few dismal monuments, and two rows of little black wooden crosses that stuck up mournfully out of the snow, gave proof positive of that. She counted the crosses. Stampa was standing near the seventh from a tomb easily recognizable at some future time. Bower faced it on his knees. She could not see him ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland —no fire at all —the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind —not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... close cells as they sleep in at night,—it almost stifled me to think of it,—and so dismal and cheerless, too, with an iron door to bolt them in. On Sunday they stay in their cells nearly all day, and some of the cells are so dark that they cannot see even to read the Bible allowed them: and there they lie, thinking over, and over, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... dog wandered about throughout that dismal day, which seemed interminable. Nothing interested them, even the very things that had made the other days pass so quickly and so happily. Nothing except gloomily watching Tom, whose actions would have plainly proved his guilt to "Scotty" had the man not been ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... since the world began. Over the greater part of it was not a blade of grass, nor a grain of earth; it was bare and iron-like stone, crusted, round all the coast as far as high-water mark, with limpet and still smaller shells. We ascended wrinkled hills of black stone, and descended into worn and dismal dells of the same; into some of which, where the tide got entrance, it came pouring and roaring in raging whiteness, and churning the loose fragments of whinstone into round pebbles, and piling them up in deep crevices with seaweeds, like great round ropes and heaps ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... See you not from far How we are followed by observing spies? A dismal, barbarous prohibition scares Each sympathetic ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Catholic Emancipation in order to avoid civil war in Ireland, speaking about Canada in the House of Lords on January 18, 1838, coupled together the United States, British North America, and Ireland as dismal examples of the folly of concession to popular demands. Pointing to the results of the Canada Act of 1831, to which I have already alluded, and which gave the Assemblies control of the provincial revenue, and with an eye, no doubt, on the tithe war barely at an end in Ireland, he said: ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... when you have not written a line for a week!) And so on. We knew them all, these specious lures to idleness, and strangled them with a firm hand each morning after breakfast. Well we knew that on a dark dismal rainy day we would hear the Tempter saying, "Who could work on a day like this? Leave it until the sun shines in the window. Try that interesting novel you brought home. After all, you know, you must read to see how the accepted masters do it. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... promotion of Christianity among the Jews." It owned a large court, shut off from the road by high gates, around which stood about a dozen houses—with the church facing the gates at one end of a pretty avenue of trees. It was an oasis in the desert of that dismal region. It possessed also an industrial institution for helping its converts to make a living, when driven out of their own homes; and its main work was carried on for the most part by superannuated missionaries. One ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... still raining. Under the leaden sky the works looked more dismal than ever. Lakes of water lay where there had been pools; rails and machinery glistened as if they had been carefully oiled. A thick light-brown river raced past. The echoing wind and the hoarse murmur of the gang at work on Section ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... morning had its beneficial effect upon all of them. It aided the reaction—consequent on a night of such a dismal character—and as they ate their breakfasts of broiled meat they were again almost cheerful. The buoyancy of Caspar's spirits had well-nigh returned, and his fine appetite showed itself in full vigour. Indeed all of them ate heartily, for on the preceding day ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... rich alluvion from the interior, sinks the deposit where the tide meets the Atlantic, and forms an interminable mesh of spongy islands. To one who approaches from sea, they loom up from its surface, covered with reeds and mangroves, like an immense field of fungi, betokening the damp and dismal field which death and slavery have selected for their grand metropolis. A spot like this, possessed, of course, no peculiar advantages for agriculture or commerce; but its dangerous bar, and its extreme desolation, fitted it for the haunt of the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... bed, we sat for a long time talking and smoking. But even the bright fire and the soothing tobacco smoke did not wholly dispel the gloom of the place, and when we finally carried the candles into the bedroom, I felt a vague sense of dismal anticipation and apprehension. We left both doors open, so that the light from our room streamed across the corner of the sitting-room, and threw a great square of strong reflection on the studio carpet. While undressing, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... they were. The temperature fell below the zero mark and stayed there, the sun hardly ever shone, the whole sky being blotted out as behind a thick grey curtain. The few hours of daylight that each twenty-four hours brought round was little more than a dismal twilight. Times were dreary, too, provisions ran scarce and very high, and the cheerless cold and darkness seemed to paralyse the energies of the strongest and lay a grip upon the whole town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and spirits ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... did his tongue utter this word. It is further to be remarked of this Hesselts, that his wife, a daughter of the President Viglius, had expressly stipulated in the marriage- contract that he should resign the dismal office of attorney for the king, which made him detested by the whole nation. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... it was too late to help the man whom I had not been able to save, I went out into the street and bent over him. He was bloody, disfigured, dying, but was yet alive, uttering dismal groans. I tried to lift him up, but soon saw that the wounds which he had received from bullets fired at close range were both mortal, one being in the head, and the other in the loins. Just then a patrol, of the National Guard turned round the corner of the street. This, instead of being a relief, ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... while he spake, the sun From the sweet hills pierced the gloom, Kindling th' affrighted fiends upon. Wild flapped their wings, as if in doom, He heard a dismal hooting laughter:— ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... a night bird fluttered through the trees and a frog gave a dismal croak, but otherwise not a sound ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... and went inside. Doughy saw her and, having reached the maudlin stage, got up and lurched across the street, anxious to make it up and be friends. Quite like the old times, thought Mrs Yabsley, when the street was as good as a play. And suddenly remembering her dismal thoughts of an hour ago, she saw in a flash that she had grown old and that the street had remained young. The past, on which her mind dwelt so fondly, was not wonderful. It was her youth that was wonderful, and now she was grown old. She recognized that the street was the same, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Arabella perched upon the table, jubilant at having achieved a pocket,—I dismal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... afterwards. Thy house is not highly timbered. It is unhigh and low; when thou lyest therein, The bottom and side boards shall bind thee near: 10 Close above thy breast is builded the roof. Thou shalt dwell full cold in the clammy earth. Full dim and dismal that den is to live in. Doorless is that house, and is dark within; Down art thou held there and death hath the key. 15 Loathly is that house of earth and horrid to live in. There thou shalt tarry and be torn by worms. Thus ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... the last which I told you. Several times since that day we had had to make up examples in school to illustrate different rules, but there had never been any row except when we did them wrong. At last there came a day when we were going through those dismal things which people call Conditional Sentences, and we were told to make a conditional sentence, expressing a future consequence. We did it, right or wrong, and showed up our bits of paper, and Sampson ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... I've been a haunted man, with a soul like a dark and dismal garret peopled with bats and varmints that flap and flutter all the time. I used to figger that if I killed this man I'd kill that memory, too, and those flitting, noiseless things would leave me, but the thought of doing it made me afraid every time, so I ran away, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... caught it, and gleamed brilliant as sunny snow, the hull being scarcely visible, and the sea around dark; other smaller vessels too, so that they looked like heavenly-winged things just alighting on a dismal world. Shifting their sails, perhaps, or going on another tack, they almost disappear at once in the obscure distance. Islands are seen in summer sunshine and green glory; their rocks also sunny and their beaches white; while other islands, for no apparent reason, are in deep shade, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... however, in this dismal state of affairs. Sometimes the rain ceased; the sun burst forth in irresistible splendour, and the whole country began to steam like a caldron. A cart, too, succeeded now and then in struggling up with a load of fresh ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the wet, he spent a great part of the day sitting by the fire in the Committee Room in Wicklow Street with Jack, the old caretaker. They had been sitting thus since e short day had grown dark. It was the sixth of October, dismal ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the yard presented a rather dismal appearance in the early winter dark, the house was bursting with hospitality and good cheer. From every one of the bare high windows raw gushes of light tunnelled the gloom outside, and although the cold outside had frosted all the glass, dim forms could be seen moving about, and voices ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... o'clock on a May afternoon; a dismal, dreary rain is being whirled through the streets by as nasty a wind as ever blew out of the east. You are in the private office of that "king of kings," Henry J. Roebuck, philanthropist, eminent churchman, ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Night came, but without darkness or repose,— A dismal picture of the general doom, Where souls, distracted when the trumpet blows, And half ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to be amazed at my dismal comments on latter-day literature. The fact is, you have dissected our present book-makers better than I could do it myself, for the reason that I am too amiable (I presume, you see, that I have the wit) to judge my ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... waited for the fluttering bird whom adverse Fate had driven into his dismal lair with all the pompous severity of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... furthermore, to be the compensating justice of Nature, the treasures of the earth are always hidden in the most unattractive, dismal, and dreary spots. At least all the mining places I ever visited are so located, and Bisbee is no exception. To get away from the cramped little village and its unsavoury restaurant, I established my first camp ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... circumstances, among which the lighting up of the two skulls with a candle-end inside of each, and a great many flourishes with the bone, were chiefly conspicuous; not to mention a variety of grave exercises with the blunderbuss and sabre, and some dismal groaning by unseen 'prentices without. All these dark and direful ceremonies being at length completed, the table was put aside, the chair of state removed, the sceptre locked up in its usual cupboard, the doors of communication between the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... dismal state, think thus with thyself, It is true, I do love my sins, my lusts and pleasures; but what good will they do me at the day of death and of judgment? Will my sins do me good then? Will they be able to help me when I come to fetch my last breath? What good will my profits do me? And what good ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of every name: begin the wo, Ye woods, and tell it to the doleful winds; And doleful winds, wail to the howling hills; And howling hills, mourn to the dismal vales; And dismal vales, sigh to the sorrowing brooks; And sorrwing brooks, weep to the weeping stream; And weeping stream, awake the groaning deep; And let the instrument take up the song, Responsive to the voice—harmonious ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... athlete's confidence in his fists, suddenly responded to the instincts of primordial man. He leaped lightly to one side, caught the rushing giant's foot across his instep, and as Connick's moccasined feet went out from under him, the young engineer struck him behind the ear. He fell with a dismal thump of his head on the ice, ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... now, driven in fury before the raging tempest, in their scarcely seaworthy vessel. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight, against the staggered vessel. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates of the court, which had that ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... instant to his eyes as if it had been but yesterday. That insistent bell brought the scene surging back to him: the dismal day; the drizzle; the few mourners; little David decked out in black, his fair hair contrasting with his gloomy clothes, his face swollen with weeping; the Dale hushed, it seemed in death, save for the tolling of the bell; ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... been very dismal lately. I hope the next captain of St. George's Company will be a merrier one and happier, in being of use. I am inherently selfish, and don't enjoy being of use. And here I've no Susies nor Kathleens nor Diddies, and I'm only doing lots of good, and I'm very miserable. I've been going ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... love of men, the treasures of earthly friendship and earthly affection—the whole world we might gain and enjoy; but if through all these, or in spite of all, we should not be led to the love and friendship of God, we should know only vanity, and life for us would in its issue be nothing but a dismal failure. ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... next room and sat down before it. She had left the door of his room ajar, and a ray of light from his lamp fell across the dark carpet and dimly illuminated the room. The hours passed slowly. No one in the house was astir. No sound came from the outside save the dismal barking of a dog down the road. She was fatigued and almost asleep, when she was suddenly roused ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... physiological sequelae, or both. The attack of malaria passes, but in long years after it returns anew and devouring the red blood, it breaks down a man's cheerfulness; a night in a miasmic forest may make him for ever a slave in a dismal swamp of pessimism. It is so with starvation, and all things physical. It is so with things mental, with degradations, with desolation; the scars and more than scars remain: there is outward healing, it may be, but we often flinch at ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... blessed life reserved for men hereafter. One remarkable specification may be noticed. The only pagan description of children in the future life is that given by some of the classic poets, who picture the infant shades lingering in groups around the dismal gates of the under world, weeping and wailing because they could ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... speed was not more than half a knot per hour; and the stranger was probably a mile distant—two hours away at the raft's then rate of progress! Something must be done, and quickly, too; for out of the darkness round about him there now floated weird, whispering sighs, faint, dismal moanings, and now and then a sudden momentary rush as of invisible wings, telling that the storm-fiend was marshalling his forces and about to make his swoop. What was to be done? There were only two oars on board the raft—the steering-oars—and they were so firmly secured that it would ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... emitted a dismal groan, and clapping his hand over his mouth strove to make it pass muster as a yawn. It was evident that the malicious Mr. Smithson was deriving considerable pleasure from his discomfiture—the pleasure natural ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... in keeping with the general dismal effect. La Cibot heard a heavy footstep, and the asthmatic wheezing of a virago within, and Mme. Sauvage presently showed herself. Adrien Brauwer might have painted just such a hag for his picture of Witches starting for the Sabbath; a stout, unwholesome slattern, five feet six inches ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... waves pounded like Titanic sledgehammers against the vessel's quivering timbers; the gale roared a deep diapason through the cordage; and the regular thud, thud, thud of the pumps, and the long melancholy whistling of the wind through the blocks, filled our minds with dismal forebodings, and banished all ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer—so far as I am aware—has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during his term ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... had scarcely weighed anchor, when the admiral split, and immediately went to the bottom, so that they had hardly time to save the men. The crowd of people, who were gathered together on the shore to see them go off, beheld this dismal accident, and took it for a bad omen of the expedition; murmuring at the same time against Father Xavier, who was the author of it, and casting out loud cries to recal the other vessels. The governor, who saw the people in an uproar, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... loomed up, black, dripping, and hideous. Every once in a while the wind caught the water as it trickled from the eaves, and sent it flying abroad in a chill unsparkling spray. The morning came in, cold, damp, and dismal. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... black to you—I have such days—everybody has these hours of depression, but we must fight them. It would be so much better for us both if I were your husband, then I could be with you and watch over you every hour. I could help you fight these dismal moods. It would be my hourly care. Come, let's go out and seriously set to work to find ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... believe. There are some illuminated Missals, said to be the finest in Italy. Though the idea of gaiety seems inconsistent with Ferrara, they have an opera, corso, and the same round of festivals and merriment as other Italian towns, but I never saw so dismal ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... dismal room so doleful with her talk that aunt Corinne began to feel terribly about life, and Robert Day wished he had gone to the ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... meres and reedy fens, of the cool north, with its purple hills, leaping streams, and life-giving breezes, of long northern winters, and ice and snow, but the realities of sultriness and damp scared away our coolest imaginations. In this dismal region, when about forty miles east of Tutuila, a beast popularly known as the "Flying fox" {14} alighted on our rigging, and was eventually captured as a prize for the zoological collection at San Francisco. He is a most interesting animal, something like an exaggerated ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... on the teacher's desk which contained numerous designs, many of them much more intricate than she would have attempted to use as classwork. Their instinct for exploration led them to struggle with the directions until they had worked out some designs which would have proved dismal failures had they been attempted as class lessons. In this instance those who belonged to the persevering group were happy in a new-found sense of strength and independence, while the others had accomplished as much as any would have done under the ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... churchyard where little Pip was so terribly frightened by the convict. Or, descending the long slope from Gadshill to Strood, and crossing Rochester Bridge—over the balustrades of which Mr. Pickwick leaned in agreeable reverie when he was accosted by Dismal Jemmy—the author of Great Expectations and Edwin Drood would pass from Rochester High Street—where Mr. Pumblechook's seed shop looks across the way at Miss Twinkleton's establishment—into the Vines, to compare once more the impression on his unerring "inward eye" with the ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... it still was necessary to feel their way with great caution to prevent collisions with trunks and limbs. But the bliss of Ned Clinton; who shall tell it? He forgot all the misery of a short time before when the world seemed dismal and full of despair, and was only conscious of the sweet fact that he held the hand of Rosa Minturn in his own! At the first touch it seemed that a thrill like the flash of the subtle magnetic current ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... when Mr. Sharpe had quitted his forge for the night and, seated at his domestic board, was, with a dismal presentiment of future indigestion, voraciously absorbing his favorite meal of hot saleratus biscuits swimming in butter, he had apparently forgotten his curiosity concerning Mainwaring and settled himself to a complaining chronicle of the ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... we arrived at the border of a dark and dismal swamp, which was covered with small hemlocks, or some other evergreen, and other bushes, into which we were conducted; and having gone a short distance we stopped to encamp ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... a chilly, dismal day in April, and all the town was absorbed in the imposing pageant. The receipts during the first week were ninety-two dollars; the expenses five hundred and twenty-five. But the little paper soon caught public attention, and the circulation increased for three weeks at the rate ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... in his mountain," the old man said, "because of a conjunction of the stars unfavourable to study, and his class have gone to their homes for many weeks." He bowed again and led on along that corridor of dismal stone. The others followed, and still as Rodriguez went that famous name Saragossa echoed within ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... "In this dismal old Castle, Arthur," said Eustace, "apart from all your playmates? It will not be like home, remember; for scarce ever will you be able to go beyond the walls—and with me lying here, and Gaston always occupied, you ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first stone of a city, and I have laid the last." He had no doubt that, when they had gone, the buildings in which they had slept, the villages which they had seen, the wayside herders and flocks, would vanish like theatrical scenery, and the country present the dismal ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the dismal surprise occasioned by his reported death, and the joyful amazement at finding him alive; and deem it not wonder if I permitted myself, under your protection, to say more than my reflection justified. But then I knew not the worst, and thought the danger exaggerated. Alas ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... about, with nettles, briars, and weeds sprouting in tufts from the loose stones, all unite to raise those melancholy impressions, which are the merit of such scenes, and which can scarcely anywhere be felt more completely. The cloisters form a dismal area, in the centre of which grows the most prodigious yew-tree I ever beheld, in one great stem, two feet diameter, and fourteen feet high, from whence a vast head of branches spreads on every side, so as to perform a perfect canopy to the whole space. I looked for its fit inhabitant; ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... an unknown land was indeed enticing. In a few brief words he recalled my dismal forebodings of the life in an underground office in London, and contrasted it with a free existence in a fertile and abundant land, where I should be the guest and perhaps an official of its ruler. He urged me most strongly to go as his companion, and ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... dry, and the wind, when it blew, was as a breath from the mouth of a volcano. The grass, withered and brown, fell away into dust; the leaves hung limp and flaccid on the trees; the cultivation areas of the selections were parched and dismal; and to add to the tribulation of the selectors, swarms of grasshoppers were abroad, swooping down in clouds, made up of myriads, upon everything that was green or bore the semblance of green, and never moving ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... Nish in the rain, and Jo was wearing a cotton frock. There may be more dismal towns than this Nish, but I have yet to see them, and this, although the great squares were packed with gaily coloured peasants—some feast, we imagined—carts full of melons, melons on the ground, melons framing the faces ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... slept, ever since boarding the steamer. The conversation in the room was of no interest to them. Even the weather failed to elicit any questions from them. They seemed to be insensible to the tossing of the great vessel, or the dismal howling of the wind. The force of the roll was so tremendous that Frederick involuntarily clutched at the thing nearest to him. Up went the port side, down went the starboard. Up went the starboard, down went the port side. Sometimes Frederick felt as if port ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was a dismal one on that particular day. The sky was overcast and gray, with a distinct threat of rain. The sea was gray and cold and cheerless. The fields were bare and bleak and across them moved a damp, chill, penetrating ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had promised; and she did it discreetly for so young a person. She was never peevish, but always sad and listless. By this means she did not anger her parent, but only made him feel she was unhappy, and the house she had hitherto brightened exceeding dismal. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... thing," said the Colonel, relighting his cigar. "I was on the point of discharging him, you remember, with the hearty approval of the directors. His stuff was dismal, abysmal, and hopeless. One day he turned around and began handing in stuff of a totally different kind. First-rate, some of it. I thought at first that he must be hiring somebody to do it for him. Did you see the paper while ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... into those sacred and profane, except the temple of Mother Matuta. From that neither the sanctity of the building itself, nor respect for the gods, is said to have restrained them, but an awful voice, emitted from the temple with threats of dismal vengeance, unless they removed their abominable fires to a distance from the temples. Fired with this rage, their impetuosity carried them on to Tusculum, under the influence of resentment, because, having abandoned the general association of the Latins, they joined themselves not only ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... might not have been known before. But the impression made by facts depends largely on their narrator, and not a little on the mood of the hearer. It was one thing to hear general statements, and another to sit with one's brother, and see through his eyes the dismal failure of the 'remnant' to carry out the purpose of their return. So the story, whether fresh or repeated with fresh force, made a deep dint in the young cupbearer's heart, and changed his life's outlook. God prepares His servants for their work by laying on their souls ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... grew ever more atrocious. Their captives were tortured to death for punishment or for ransom, or, it is to be feared, for the mere amusement of the bestial captors. The open country became everywhere a wilderness. The soldiers themselves began starving in the dismal desert. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... as the circle of the wide sea-line Swept them together again. He saw her staggering With mast snapt short and wreckage-tangled deck Where men like insects clung. He saw the waves Leap over her mangled hulk, like wild white wolves, Volleying out of the clouds down dismal steeps Of green-black water. Like a wounded steed Quivering upon its haunches, up she heaved Her head to throw them off. Then, in one mass Of fury crashed the great deep over her, Trampling her down, down into the nethermost pit, As with a madman's wrath. She ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... philosophical—man is a combination or union of animal with something supernatural. An important part of my task will be to show that both of these answers are radically wrong and that, beyond all things else, they are primarily responsible for what is dismal in the life and history of humankind. This done, the question remains: What is Man? I hope to show clearly and convincingly that the answer is to be found in the patent fact that human beings possess in varying degrees a certain natural faculty or power or capacity ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... narrow street straight up from the Square of the Pantheon to the Via della Dogana Vecchia. It used to be chiefly occupied at the lower end by poulterers' shops, but towards its upper extremity—for the land rises a little—it has always had a peculiarly dismal and gloomy look. It bears a name about which are associated some of the darkest deeds in Rome's darkest age; it is called the Via de' Crescenzi, the street and the abode of that great and evil house which filled the end of the tenth century with its ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of dismal deeds, people keep their secrets. The secret is the thing above all others. The secret, in the eyes of these wretches, is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is to tear from each member of this fierce community something of his own personality. To inform ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... empty as a shell, room opening out of room, half lighted, bare and dismal. There was nothing to be got out of it and he was back on his way to the warmth of the kitchen when he thought of the broken-legged table in the pantry. Propping this up against the window ledge, a drawer fell from it, scattering sheets of paper and envelopes on the floor. He stood ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... however, when we bring the suicide rate into correlation with season and weather. Long ago, before accurate statistics made a scientific investigation of the subject possible, there was a widely prevalent popular belief that dark and dismal months of the year, and gloomy, rainy, or uncomfortable weather, predisposed mankind to self-destruction, and that the suicide rate was highest in November or December, and lowest in spring or ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... abroad, either presaging or aping the dismal and tragical actions of some amongst us; and have also many disastrous doings of their own, as convocations, fighting, gashes, wounds, and burials, both in the earth and air. They live much longer than we; yet die at last, or [at] least vanish from that state. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... they thought a woman could not be with one of their sex and not be ready to sacrifice her own life and the lives of all her kinsfolk for him. "It be such puddling folly to start with," she said indignantly; "talking about Denas being false to her father and mother! 'Tis a doleful, dismal, ghastly bit of ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... upon the course, farewell peace, and the hopes which cluster around it. The doors I might enter and the gates of quiet life will shut behind me, never to open again, for Rome keeps them all; and her outlawry will follow me, and her hunters; and in the tombs near cities and the dismal caverns of remotest hills, I must eat my crust and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... was difficult to land them; after that there was a steep hill up which they had to be carried to the hospital, so that by the time they arrived they were generally in a sad condition. But their trials were not over then. The hospital was dirty and dismal. There was no proper provision for the supply of suitable food, everything was in dire disorder, and the poor fellows died ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... Silence gives consent, and Mr. Vane, though he thought a great deal, said nothing; so Pomander rose, and they left the boxes together. He led the way to the stage door, which was opened obsequiously to him; they then passed through a dismal passage, and suddenly emerged upon that scene of enchantment, the stage—a dirty platform encumbered on all sides with piles of scenery in flats. They threaded their way through rusty velvet actors and fustian carpenters, and entered the green-room. At the door of this magic chamber Vane ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... a match for me any day; and sooner than be shut up again in this dismal ould box, I'll give you what you ask for my liberty. And the three best gifts I possess are, this brown cap, which while you wear it will render you invisible to the fairies, while they are all visible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... in a precipice 1000 feet high, facing Kubra, which prevented his exploring further north.] There were two stone huts on the bleak face of the spur, scarcely distinguishable at the distance of half a mile from the great blocks around them. To the north Gubroo rose in dismal grandeur, backed by the dazzling snows of Kubra, which now seemed quite near, its lofty top (alt. 24,005 feet) being only eight miles distant. Much snow lay on the ground in patches, and there were few remains of herbaceous vegetation; those I recognised were chiefly of poppy, Potentilla, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... items are apt to add up handsomely in the final figure of any calculation. A man who says 'No' to-day may be won to consent to-morrow under altered conditions of weather and diet. Therefore the Chancellor, who had avoided his daughter since her return, made choice of a dismal morning to bring his influence to bear upon her. He relied a good deal upon Valerie's affection for himself, which was strong and single-hearted. Moreover, he had trained her to the masculine habit of taking a broad view, a bird's-eye view, of the whole ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... not to deny them that just and easy Request of the Restoration of Liberty. He adjures him by those Furies which will eternally haunt his Soul upon his impious Refusal: He implores him by the foresight of those dismal Calamities, that horrible Slaughter, those endless Wars, and that unbounded Devastation, which will certainly fall upon Mankind, if the Restoration of Liberty is prevented by his Death, or his incurable Sickness: And lastly, he entreats him by his Thirst of immortal Glory, that Glory in which ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the dismal march went Grom, with his mate A-ya, and her two children, and the hairy little scout Loob, whose feet were as quick as his eyes and ears and nostrils, and whose sinews were as untiring as those of the gray wolf. Immediately behind these came the main body of the warriors, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... step in the social scale—the farmer—is widening and increasing day by day. The labourer is thus left without any chance of improving his condition. His position is one of hopeless and irremediable dependence. The workhouse stands near him, pointing out his dismal fate if he falls one step lower, and, like a grim scarecrow, warning him to betake himself to some more hospitable region, where he will find no middle-age institutions opposing his ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... of Snow Sound, and being almost perished with cold, the first thing he did was to make a large fire, with some small trees which he found upon the spot. He then climbed one of the rocky mountains, with Mr Pickersgill, a midshipman, and one of the seamen, to take a view of the streight, and the dismal regions that surround it. He found the entrance of the sound to be full as broad as several parts of the streight, and to grow but very little narrower, for several miles inland on the Terra del Fuego ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... there that is procurable by this money which we desire? Is it anything of worth, and anything lasting? Why, then, do we desire it? A dismal resting place it provides, which costs so dear! Very often it obtains for us hell itself, fire everlasting, and torments without end. Oh, if all men would but regard it as profitless dross, how ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... morning I breakfasted with Jowett and his guests, found that return would be difficult: while as the young men were to return on Friday there would be no opposition to my departure on Thursday. The morning was dismal with rain, but after luncheon there was a chance of getting a little air, and I walked for more than two hours, then heard service in New Coll.—then dinner again: my room had been prepared in the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... soon after our engagement, for his annual visit. He was succeeding rather better than his dismal fancies had once prognosticated. He was very often at our house,—very much my friend. I saw through all that clearly enough; I knew he loved me a hundred-fold more passionately than in our earlier days; and the knowledge was to me as a cool draught to one who is perishing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... light of the sunny autumn noontide, the blacks and roans and smoked drabs of the low old brick front looked more dingy to his eye than ever. It spoke of antiquity, no doubt, but it was a dismal and graceless antiquity of narrow purposes and niggling thrift. It was so little like the antiquity, for example, of Hadlow House, that the two might have computed their age by the chronological systems of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... plague is still in Jerusalem, so that we must keep ourselves in quarantine. The plague only communicates by contact, so that we are not allowed to touch any one, or let any one touch us. Every night we heard the mourners going about the streets with their dismal wailings for the dead. On Sabbath Mr. Nicolayson read the prayers, and Dr. Black preached from Isaiah 2:2. Dr. Keith in the evening. Three converted Jews were among the hearers. On Monday (10) we visited the sepulchre, and a painful sight, where we can find ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... upon this lady. A proposal which would have made her opulent for life, was defeated by the unreasonable fondness of her mother, who lived to suffer its dismal consequences, by tasting the bitterest distresses. We have already observed, that Mrs. Thomas thought proper to retire to the country with her daughter. The house where she boarded was an eminent Cloth-worker's in the county of Surry, but the people of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... before Christmas was gray and dismal. There was no wind—indeed, there was a sort of tightness in the air, as if the supply of freshness had given out. People had headaches—even the Telephone Boy was cross—and none of the spirit of the time ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... contrast with the dismal source from which it escaped. "Escaped" is the word; for the fear that I should hasten my trial by exhibiting too great a gain in health, mental or physical, was already upon me; and it controlled much of my conduct during the succeeding ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... crime. The recollection of it is engraven upon my memory by an awful catastrophe. The night wind that sung her funeral dirge, howled with dismal fury through the burning ruins of my paternal mansion. Yes! that very night, as if it were in mercy to them, my father and my mother both perished in the flames which reduced the house itself to cinders. They were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... The horn continued its dismal wail for a few seconds more before two patrolmen and a sergeant came up on horses. It took somewhat more time than that for Malone to convince the sergeant that he didn't have time to go down to the station ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the head waters of the Platte, Arkansas, and Rio Grande and had probably seen the great mountain that now bears his name. Major Long followed Pike in 1820, gave his name to Longs Peak, and brought back such a dismal account of the West that he was largely responsible for the belief in a desert. The great plains from the sources of the Sabine, Brazos, and Colorado rivers to the northern boundary Were, he said, "peculiarly adapted as a range ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... is!" Kelson whispered—and whilst he was speaking there came a dismal croak, croak, and the swaying ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... not formidable in the flesh, the evil that he does lives after him. Freeman's view of Froude is not now held by any one whose opinion counts; yet still there seems to rise, as from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of his life." He did make history the business of his life, and he cared more for truth than for anything else in the world. Freeman's ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... laugh, the gossips of Bethlehem talk over Naomi's return ('they said,' in verse 19, is feminine), Boaz stands among his corn, and no sounds of war disturb them. Thank God! the blackest times were not so dismal in reality as they look in history. There are clefts in the grim rock, and flowers blooming, sheltered in the clefts. The peaceful pictures of this little book, multiplied many thousand times, have to be set as a background to the lurid pictures of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Marten, he hunted in a list and told a man to take my bag to Number VII. staircase in the back quadrangle. I followed, feeling rather dejected, and I cannot say that the first sight of my rooms tended to raise my spirits. They were small and dismal, the window opened on to a balustrade which, if it prevented me from falling into the quadrangle, also managed to shut out both light and air. The furniture can be described correctly by the word adequate; there were some chairs and a table, college ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... the middle of autumn, and had rained all day. Through the lozenge-panes of the wide oriel window the world appeared in the slowly gathering dusk not a little dismal. The drops that clung trickling to the dim glass added rain and gloom to the landscape beyond, whither the eye passed, as if vaguely seeking that help in the distance, which the dripping hollyhocks and sodden sunflowers bordering the little lawn, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... on a dork an wintry night, Tha stormy wine a blawin; Tha houns made a naise an a dismal yell; Jitch as zum vawk zAc da death vaurtell, ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... groaning with a thousand noises, expressing his torment in a dismal voice." (Or:) "Wailing, complaining, groaning, murmuring much avail lugubrious sounds."—Verses of Attius, in his Phaloctetes, quoted by Cicero, De Finib., ii. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... about for the best crossing for the motor. I sent Meares and the dogs over with a can of petrol on arrival. After some twenty minutes he returned to tell me the motor had gone through. Soon after Campbell and Day arrived to confirm the dismal tidings. It appears that getting frightened of the state of affairs Campbell got out a line and attached it to the motor—then manning the line well he attempted to rush the machine across the weak place. A man on the rope, Wilkinson, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... right hand descended many times with a force that brought dismal howls from the unlucky culprit—so many times and with such force that the girl began to fear that Jimmy would be fatally injured. Jimmy likewise entertained that fear, for his howls grew more shrill, laden with mingled terror and pain, until the piercing appeal of them sent the other pupils ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the sublimity, such as it is, consists wholly in the painting of everything grey or brown,—not the grey and brown of great painters, full of mysterious and unconfessed colors, dim blue, and shadowy purple, and veiled gold,—but the stony grey and dismal brown of the conventionalist. Madame de Genlis, whose general criticisms on painting are full of good sense—singularly so, considering the age in which she lived[85]—has the following ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... chair or table, by no means remarkable originally, but cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to "High Art furniture." The epithet has succeeded to what was once "fashionable" ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... sticks of candy or jawbreakers, for his uncle Loren did not believe in spending money. And Eddie had no mother to go to when the boys mistreated him and the girls ignored him. A dismal life he led until he grew up as far as he ever ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... of the pillow and arrangement of the bed- clothes, Soeur Lucie went away, leaving Madelon, not to sleep, but to lie broad awake, framing the most dismal little pictures of the future. And was this to be the end of it all, then?—the end of her vague dreams, her undefined hopes, which, leaping over a dim space of intervening years, had rested on a future of indefinite brightness lying somewhere ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... it, and entered with all the zest of novelty into the social pleasures of the place. He loved his beautiful and high-born wife with both passion and pride, and she loved some imaginary hero in his form, and was happy in the illusion. Thus all went merry as a marriage bell until one dark and dismal day in December, when the rain fell in floods and the wind raved around the house, and the state of the weather kept the newly married couple closely confined within doors, his bride turned to him, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... silent suffering of "violent oppression" at Philippi. There he and his companion have surely comfort beyond any that Solomon can offer, and the overflowing joy of their hearts comes from no spring that rises in this sad desert scene. Never before had prisoners in that dismal jail heard aught but groans of suffering coming from that inner prison, from the bruised and wounded prisoners whose feet were made fast in the stocks; but the Spirit of God notes, with sweet and ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... nocturnal animals began to creep out of their holes and go about. Huge vampire-bats, one of which had given Barney such a fright the night before, flew silently past them; and the wild howlings commenced again. They now discovered that one of the most dismal of the howls proceeded from a species of monkey: at which discovery Martin laughed very much, and rallied his companion on being so easily frightened; but Barney gladly joined in the laugh against himself, for, to say truth, he felt quite relieved and light-hearted at discovering ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the Keep are modern, but the rest of it—the walls, 12 to 18 feet thick; the dismal dungeon, or guard chamber, with iron rings and fetters still fastened to the walls and central pillar; the beautiful little chapel, with its finely-ornamented arches; the little chambers in the thickness of the walls; the well, 94 feet deep, sunk through the solid masonry into the rock beneath; ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... isolating whether there were room on my carts. Then the body would be lifted up; there would be muttered directions, the wounded man would cry, then the other wounded would also cry—after that, there would be the dismal silence again, silence broken only by the shrapnel and the heavy plopping smothers of the rain. But it was myself upon whom my eyes were fixed, myself, a miserable figure, the rain dripping from me, slipping down my neck, squelching under my boots. And as I stood ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... bed, on the eve of Bosworth fight, it seemed as if the spectral shadows of all those she had injured in the body or the soul, by her unerring demands upon one, and her negligence as to the other, rose a host of dismal spectres round. Their pale, exhausted, pleading looks, as she scolded and threatened, when the clock struck one, and the task was yet undone, and the head for a moment dropped, and the throbbing fingers were still. Those hollow coughs in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... where they had landed it was the rule that all emigrants who came ashore should be kept in one place till the Czar's agents came to examine them; and the place where they were kept was an old warehouse, very bare and dismal-looking, with nothing in it but a few old sails and some heaps of straw. Here they remained for two days, while the snow fell and the wind roared outside, their food being brought them by the soldiers of the port. The men smoked their pipes ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... The whole country, in fact, was weltering and surging with the wet formed by the incessant overflow of rivers, while the falling cataracts, joined to a low monotonous hiss, or what the Scotch term sugh, poured their faint but dismal murmurs on the gloomy silence which otherwise ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Indeed, it was a dismal drive over to Eglosilyan, bright as the forenoon was. The old lady did her best to be courteous to Mr. Roscorla and cheerful with her grandson, but she was oppressed by the belief that it was only her presence that had so far restrained the two men ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various |
