"Joyless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... banishment expires to-morrow; but I shall never recross the sea. This is my country. Since I set my foot upon its shore I have never had a moment to yawn. In this land of real and substantial life, the spectre that haunted my joyless days dares not be seen—the "hour too many" is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... protestations of regret, which sink into the heart and bear a rich harvest by the time they meet again. Days and months glide by, and the pains of separation still endure; for they feel how necessary they have become to the happiness of each other, and how cold and joyless existence seems when far from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... considers the world of transmigration as a bondage or journey which the wise long to terminate. But joyless as is its immediate outlook, its ultimate ideas are not pessimistic. Even in the body the soul can attain a beatific state of perfect knowledge[256] and above the highest heaven (where the greatest gods live in ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... is not, no mirth the banquet knows: Where wine is not, the dance all joyless goes. The man, oppressed with cares, who tastes the bowl, Shall shake the weight of sorrow ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... past, as Saints and Patriarchs us'd. Here Love his golden shafts imploies, here lights His constant Lamp, and waves his purple wings, Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of Harlots, loveless, joyless, unindeard, Casual fruition, nor in Court Amours Mixt Dance, or wanton Mask, or Midnight Bal, Or Serenate, which the starv'd Lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. 770 These lulld by Nightingales imbraceing slept, And on thir naked limbs the flourie ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the pity he had before conceived for Beck increased upon him as he talked and listened. This benighted mind, only illumined by a kind of miserable astuteness and that "cunning of the belly" which is born of want to engender avarice; this joyless temperament; this age in youth; this living reproach, rising up from the stones of London against our social indifference to the souls which wither and rot under the hard eyes of science and the deaf ears of wealth,—had a pathos for his lively ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as were sufficiently exempt from sorrow or disease. My endeavours were directed towards urging them to their usual attention to their crops, and to the acting as if pestilence did not exist. The mower's scythe was at times heard; yet the joyless haymakers after they had listlessly turned the grass, forgot to cart it; the shepherd, when he had sheared his sheep, would let the wool lie to be scattered by the winds, deeming it useless to provide clothing for another winter. At times however the spirit of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... little cloud—it floats away Away it goes; away so soon! Alas! it has no power to stay: 30 Its hues are dim, its hues are grey— Away it passes from the moon! How mournfully it seems to fly, Ever fading more and more, To joyless regions of the sky— 35 And now 'tis whiter than before! As white as my poor cheek will be, When, Lewti! on my couch I lie, A dying man for love of thee. Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind— 40 And yet, thou didst not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... O maidens mine, I am filled full of tears: My heart filled with the beat Of tears, as of dancing feet, A lyreless joyless line, And music meet for ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... at life from the point of view of age about to die. Young though she felt, the heavy weight of joyless days had fallen upon her, and left her broken-spirited and old before her time. With a despairing cry, she asked the world what it could give her in exchange for the love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself whether in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... without a smile. His eyes were bent on the ground; there was a joyless contraction of his delicate, dark brows. It was with an evident effort that he suddenly looked up and spoke. "I have an interest in such subjects. I am trying to find pupils myself—or, at least, I ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... many are betrayed by degrees, in order to supply increasing expenses, that might be avoided by strict frugality; for they load the soul with thick clay, are a heavy weight to the most upright, render a man's way doubtful and joyless, and drown many ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fortune had befel me, And it would have been more happy. Had I not been born and nurtured, And had never grown in stature, 220 Till I saw these days of sorrow, And this joyless time o'ertook me, Had I died in six nights only, Or upon the eighth had perished. Much I should not then have needed, But a shroud a span-long only, And of earth a tiny corner. Little then had wept my mother, Fewer tears had shed my father, And my ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... was far greater than that of the Roman. Peace was the only boon that death could bring to a pagan, and "Pax tecum aeterna" is among the commonest of the inscriptions. The life beyond the grave was at best an unreal and joyless copy of an earthly existence, and Achilles told Odysseus that he would rather be the serf of a poor man upon earth than Achilles ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... upon the fender, her tired, passive face inclined meditatively, her rusty old black gown drawn back by one hand from the snapping sparks. "No," she said, slowly, joyless resignation mingling with pride in her voice. "I was born here over ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resur- rection, A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection. Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... talking up hill and down dale, laughing, tossing her head, showing her brilliant teeth. He looked on in silence, now spitting heavily on the floor, now putting his head back and uttering a loud, discordant, joyless laugh. He had a tangle of shock hair, the colour of wool; his mouth was a grin; although as strong as a horse, he looked neither heavy nor yet adroit, only leggy, coltish, and in the road. But it was plain he was in high spirits, thoroughly enjoying his visit; and ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and sightless eyes, she answered meekly and readily to all the questions we put to her. Poor little thing! she was shocking to look at; one of the many innocent beings whose lives are to be rendered sad and joyless by this revolution. The doctor ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... water, eaten grass and given milk for the last time, and their senses have lost all vigour. He who gives these undoubtedly goes to joyless realms. ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... Legree would not permit it, and more than once broke up such attempts, with oaths and brutal execrations,—so that the blessed news had to circulate from individual to individual. Yet who can speak the simple joy with which some of those poor outcasts, to whom life was a joyless journey to a dark unknown, heard of a compassionate Redeemer and a heavenly home? It is the statement of missionaries, that, of all races of the earth, none have received the Gospel with such eager docility ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to accompany Manon's. Doubtless, Heaven did not as yet consider me sufficiently punished, and therefore ordained that I should continue to drag on a languid and joyless existence. I willingly renounced every hope of leading a ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... nightingales? Rather would I believe you shining ran With peaceful floods, where the soft voice prevails Of building doves in lordly trees set high, Trees which enclose a home where love abides — His love and hers, a passioned ecstasy; Your tone has caught its echo and derides My joyless lot, as face down pressed I lie Upon the shifting sand, and hear the reeds Voicing a thin, dissonant threnody Unto the cliff and wind-tormented weeds. As with the faint half-lights of jade toward The shore you come and show a violet hue, I wonder if the face of my ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... puts it into his footnotes. Westcott and Hort, harsher than any of their predecessors, will not, as we have seen, allow it to appear even at the foot of the page. To reproduce all that has been written in disparagement of this precious portion of God's written Word would be a joyless and an unprofitable task. According to Green, 'the genuineness of the passage cannot be maintained[589].' Hammond is of opinion that 'it would be more satisfactory to separate it from its present context, and place it by itself as an appendix to the Gospel[590].' A yet more recent critic 'sums ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... to the door with his eyes. He was not capable of wide sympathies, or of projecting himself into the lives of other people; but he did sympathize with this girl, so lonely in the splendour of her beauty, so joyless ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... it till a year departed— Felt it of all hope bereft; Restless, joyless, broken-hearted, Then the warring bands he left;— Bade on Joppa's sandy shore Seamen hoist the swelling sail; Swift the bark to Europe bore O'er the tide ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... Elizabeth only a day of humiliation and pain. Reclining on her divan, she thought of her despised and joyless past, of ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... annihilation to which lowly birth and lack of fortune condemns so many a loftier mind. And by the side of the poor printer, who loathed a handicraft so closely allied to intellectual work, close to this Silenus, joyless, self-sustained, drinking deep draughts from the cup of knowledge and of poetry that he might forget the cares of his narrow lot in the intoxication of soul and brain, stood Lucien, graceful as some ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... children had lived. I had often sighed to return to England,—with a silly longing. My life in England for twenty-six years from the time of my birth to the day on which I left it, had been wretched. I had been poor, friendless, and joyless. In Ireland it had constantly been happy. I had achieved the respect of all with whom I was concerned, I had made for myself a comfortable home, and I had enjoyed many pleasures. Hunting itself was a great delight to me; and now, as I contemplated a move to England, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... do not envy you, ye joyless stars, Though fair ye be, and glorious to the sight— The seaman's hope amidst the 'whelming storm, When help from God or man there cometh none. No! for ye love not, nor have ever loved! Through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... with my Unitarian congregation for about a twelvemonth. My life during that time, save so far as my intercourse with Mrs. Lane, and one other friend presently to be mentioned, was concerned, was as sunless and joyless as it had ever been. Imagine me living by myself, roaming about the fields, and absorbed mostly upon insoluble problems with which I never made any progress, and which tended to draw me away from what enjoyment of life there was which ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... {56} her hopes thus blighted, succeeded in effecting a compromise by inducing his brother Aides to allow Persephone to spend six months of the year with the gods above, whilst during the other six she was to be the joyless companion of her grim lord below. Accompanied by her daughter, the beautiful Persephone, Demeter now resumed her long-abandoned dwelling in Olympus; the sympathetic earth responded gaily to her bright smiles, the corn at once sprang forth from the ground in fullest plenty, the trees, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... table, "I'm glad of course to be able to give you a passage to 'Frisco; one sailor-man should help another, that's my motto. But when you want a thing in this world, you generally always have to pay for it." He laughed a brief, joyless laugh. "I have no idea of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Year's night, an old man stood at his window, and looked, with a glance of fearful despair, up the immovable, unfading heaven, and down upon the still, pure, white earth, on which no one was now so joyless and sleepless ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... joyless and a gloomy morn, Wet was the grass, and hung with pearls the thorn; When Damon, who design'd to pass the day With hounds and horns, and chase the flying prey, Rose early from his bed; but soon he found The welkin pitch'd with sullen ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... heart swept clear of lesser loves, if He is to be grasped by our hands, and to dwell in our hearts. More of us than we are willing to believe are kept from entire surrender to Jesus Christ, by money and worldly possessions; and many professing Christians are kept shrivelled and weak and joyless because they love their wealth more than their Lord, and would think it madness to do as this man was bidden to do. When ballast is thrown out, the balloon shoots up. A general unlading of the 'thick clay' which weighs down the Christian life of England, would let thousands soar ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... elaborate books that are far away from the profound and common interests of life. One has, on one side, Mallarme and Huysmans producing this literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola dealing with the reality of life in joyless and pallid words. On the stage one must have reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has been given them in place ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... surprised and happy eyes after the long habit of seeing nothing but dirty lanes and streets. It was a wonder to them—those spacious reaches of open country to run and dance and tumble and frolic in, after their dull and joyless captivity; so they scampered far and wide over the fair regions on both sides of the river, and came back at eventide weary, but laden with flowers and flushed with new health drawn from the fresh country air and the ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... in which three hundred beautiful young fellows are shut up for life. So jealous is the queen, that no female is allowed to approach the walls within one hundred yards. Never beholding any of their race but the queen and a few dried-up and ugly spinsters, the poor creatures vegetate, mindless and joyless. ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... honourable to be as convinced of his Resurrection as they were of their own life—but they shewed also a state of mind, a quiet peace, a tranquil cheerfulness, even under suffering, which put to shame the restless and joyless zeal of their persecutor. Could HE have been a false teacher who had adherents such as these? Could that have been a false pretence which gave such rest and security? on the one hand, he saw the new sect, in spite ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... suspicion! thou turnest love divine To joyless dread, and mak'st the loving heart With hateful thoughts to languish and repine, And feed itself with self-consuming smart; Of all the passions of the mind thou ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... be instrumental, as I confidently trust it will, in destroying some medieval superstitions, in dissipating some hampering and cramping errors, in instilling some hope in the hearts of the hopeless, in bringing a little joy into the homes of the joyless, in increasing in however slight a degree the sum total of human happiness, its mission shall ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... other world were dismal to an extreme. The after-life in Hades was believed to be a shadowy, joyless copy of the earthly existence. In Hades the shade of great Achilles exclaims sorrowfully, "Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death. Rather would I live on earth as the hireling of another, even with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Telemachus thy realm obeys; In sacred groves celestial rites he pays, And shares the banquet in superior state, Graced with such honours as become the great Thy sire in solitude foments his care: The court is joyless, for thou art not there! No costly carpets raise his hoary head, No rich embroidery shines to grace his bed; Even when keen winter freezes in the skies, Rank'd with his slaves, on earth the monarch lies: Deep are his sighs, his visage pale, his dress ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Rickman. "Rickman," he said, "you shall not go over body and soul to The Museion." He regarded himself as the keeper and lover of Rickman's soul, and would not have been sorry to bring about a divorce between it and Jewdwine. His irregular attentions were to save it from a suicidal devotion to a joyless consort. So that Rickman was torn between Maddox's enthusiasm for him and his own enthusiasm ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Sumeru were shaken, from heaven there rained showers of flying stones, a whirling tempest rose on every side, the trees were rooted up and fell, heavenly music rose with plaintive notes, whilst angels for a time were joyless. Buddha rising from out his ecstasy, announced to all the world: "Now have I given up my term of years; I live henceforth by power of faith; my body like a broken chariot stands, no further cause of 'coming' or of ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... said that I never had a bad morning, for every morning, even if I am pinched with hunger, I praise God. If it rains, or snows, or hails, whether the day is serene or tempestuous, I am still thankful to God, and therefore I never had a joyless morning. If I am miserable in outward circumstances, and despised, I still praise God; you wished that I might always be fortunate, but I cannot be unfortunate, because nothing befalls me but according to the will of God, and I believe that His will is always good, in whatever He does ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the promise that if the day ever came when sugar bowls made their appearance once more, filled temptingly with the sweet granules that were "gone but not forgotten," we should put an extra lump or an additional spoonful of sugar into our coffee to help us forget the joyless ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to pierce the morrow's haze, But for the moment render praise; Nor spurn the dance, nor love's sweet passion, Ere age draws on with its joyless days. ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... After many years of joyless life, the blind grandmother had at last found something to make her happy; her days were no longer passed in weariness and darkness, one like the other without pleasure or change, for now she had always something to which she ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... lives; no word that man hath made Can tell the hue of their faces, or their rags by filth o'er-laid: For this hath our age invented—these are the sons of the free, Who shall bear our name triumphant o'er every land and sea. Read ye their souls in their faces, and what shall help you there? Joyless, hopeless, shameless, angerless, set is their stare: This is the thing we have made, and what shall help us now, For the field hath been laboured and tilled and the teeth ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... at Court, she appears at a Meet or in the "Row" in a lady's habit, trigly perfect in fit, and on a side-saddle. In America this is an extreme opinion, and it is only among the most fashionable that a young girl having all her life ridden in a man's saddle, finds the world a joyless place and parents cruel when she is no longer allowed to ride like a boy. But she becomes, in spite of her protests, "another who looks divine on a horse." And you can look divine too, if you choose! On second thoughts the adjective must be qualified. No one looks divine on a horse ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... like soot, and the trees were seared and brown. There was no peace in the place, and no loveliness. Eighty thousand folks toiled together in the hopeless Tophet, and swarmed, and struggled, and labored, and multiplied, in joyless and endless wrestling against hunger ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... furtively from its place, almost as if she were afraid of what she should see. What a list there was of sons of Lord St. Serf! some she had never known, who died young: and Reginald in India, and Hal, who was so kind—what a good laugh he had, she remembered, not a joyless cackle like Mariamne's, a good natural laugh, and a kind light in his eyes: and he had been kind. She could remember ever so many things, nothings, things that made a little difference in the dull, dull cloudy sky of ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... castellan, an old, gloomy man, the more devoted to the young knight from his dark melancholy and wild deeds, hastened to lower the drawbridge. Greetings were exchanged in silence, and in silence did Sintram enter, and those joyless gates closed with a crash behind ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... this, ye pupils of Voltaire! From joyless murmur free; Or, let us know, which character Shall crown you ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... bridegroom sound thy virtues! Have our songs thus quickly vanished, Have our joyful tongues grown silent? Evil then has been the brewing, Then the beer must be unworthy, That it does not cheer the singer, Does not move the merry minstrel, That the golden guests are joyless, And the cuckoo is not singing. Never will these benches echo Till the bench-guests chant thy virtues; Nor the floor resound thy praises Till the floor-guests sing in concord; Nor the windows join the chorus Till the window-guests ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... neither saluted nor welcomed by the once obsequious slaves in the outer lodge. Neither harps nor singing-boys, neither woman's ringing laughter nor man's bacchanalian glee, now woke the echoes in the lonely halls. The pulse of pleasure seemed to have throbbed its last in the joyless being of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... them. While they wait they still work, yet without pleasantness in their lives. As their homes by neglect have grown shabby and squalid, so their industry has become calculating and sordid. Little remains to them now but their own good temper to keep their life from being quite joyless. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... stoops not thy chaste pride. If others seek the love thus thrown aside, Vain were their hopes and labours to obtain; The heart thou spurnest I alike disdain, To thee displeasing, 'tis by me denied. But if, discarded thus, it find not thee Its joyless exile willing to befriend, Alone, untaught at others' will to wend, Soon from life's weary burden will it flee. How heavy then the guilt to both, but more To thee, for thee ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... but joyless, smile, and after another vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: "They are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least, that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... asceticism? And how much more does this all apply when we see a man who makes himself unhappy, preventing by his very act of existence the happiness of another more equably tempered mortal! Now I believe this is the present case. Drusus, I understand, is leading a spare, joyless, workaday sort of existence, which is, or by every human law should be, to him a burden. So long as he lives, he prevents you from enjoying the means of acquiring pleasure. Now I have Socrates of imperishable memory on my side, when I assert ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... sad to lose a child, and especially a son," sighed Elizabeth, and involuntarily she thought of Anna, that poor mother whom she had robbed of her son, that he might grow up in eternal joyless imprisonment, that he might be morally murdered, and from a man be ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... are"; and when, instead of this, it turns to glorifying its own powers and achievements, or sets up any end apart from such discovery and interpretation, it becomes sickly, feeble, foolish, frivolous, vicious, joyless, and moribund; and meanness, cruelty, sensuality, impiety, and irreligion are the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... lost in his own thoughts. To win a soul to the Saviour was surely a good work. He knew Melissa's sober, thoughtful nature, and the retired, joyless life she led with her surly old father. So his knowledge of human nature led him to think that she, if any one, might easily be won over to the faith in which he found his chief happiness. Baptism had given ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... painted fool again and kiss my hand With jocund air to Folly's worshippers. So day by day life's bitter bread is earned With lips that smile and frame the mirthless joke, And frailer grows the soul that once was strong,— The joyless soul of one whose trade has turned Life's tragic mantle to a jester's cloak, Life's diapason to a ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... man had alighted there for a time, like a bird on a tree; and among these continually shifting scenes, the lad had felt himself more than ever a stranger among strangers; so that he experienced always a secret though joyless satisfaction in returning to the cloisters of the St. Hilaire college and submitting himself to the yoke of the paternal but inflexible ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... of childhood, the certainty that they can expand in the sunshine of the love which is their due." Ellen Key, similarly, while pointing out (Ueber Liebe und Ehe, pp. 14, 265) that the tyranny of the old Protestant religious spirit which enjoined on women unlimited submission to joyless motherhood within "the whited sepulchre of marriage" is now being broken, exalts the privileges of voluntary motherhood, while admitting that there may be a few exceptional cases in which women may withdraw themselves from motherhood for the sake of the other demands of their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and corruption. To this joyless and thankless duty was Machiavelli called. In the energetic language of the prophet, he was "mad for the sight of his eye which he saw," disunion in the council, effeminacy in the camp, liberty extinguished, commerce decaying, national honour sullied, an enlightened and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... same house with her husband, whose third wife she was, they had long been separated, only meeting at their joyless meals. Mrs. Ready considered her husband a very stupid animal, and did not fail to make both him and her friends acquainted ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... the joyless victor sat, Revolving in his altered soul The various turns of chance below; And now and then a sigh he stole, And tears ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... above were imprisoned by her in those gloomy regions. To her came also all those who had died, not on the battlefield, but of old age or disease. And though these were treated kindly enough, theirs was a joyless life in comparison with that of the dead warriors who were feasting and fighting in the halls of Valhalla, under the kindly rule ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... of woods and hedgerows fluttering for an inconsequent moment in the gloom. He came among them, none knew whence he was going, none knew whither. He was conscious of being a creature of mystery. He pitied the fettered youth of these begrimed and joyless towns—slaves, Men with Muckrakes (he had fished up ail old "Pilgrim's Progress" from the lower depths of the van), who obstinately refused to raise their eyes to the glorious sun in heaven. In his childish arrogance he would ask Barney Bill, "Why don't they go away ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of which the people had been robbed. "We only ask freedom of speech,—the right to exercise all the franchises conferred by the Constitution upon an American. Can you safely deny us these things?" Mingled also with pathetic appeals were joyless pictures of the ravages of war, and cheerless glimpses into the future of a Republic with its bulwarks of liberty torn away. "We stand to-day," he continued, "amid new made graves; we stand to-day in a land filled with mourning, and our soil is saturated with the blood of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... became acquainted with a man of fine intellect and fascinating manners, who won her affections, and afterwards proved unworthy of her. Again the beauty of her life was darkened, and with a weary heart she wore out the tedious years of her joyless existence. She was an angel of charity to the poor and suffering. She grew lovelier through sorrow. A desire to see her brother, her nearest and dearest relative, called her North again, and when our story ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... to her charms, a most accomplished knight And monarch brave that ever yet had bowed to woman's might Was but a poor and joyless slave, compelled to wear a smile And act a part for which she loathed her ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... manifestation of truth without which human society could not last. Now as man could not live in society without truth, so likewise, not without joy, because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii), no one could abide a day with the sad nor with the joyless. Therefore, a certain natural equity obliges a man to live agreeably with his fellow-men; unless some reason should oblige him to sadden them for ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to rejoice in whatsoever was joyous. He loved beautiful flowers and beautiful women—and he had enough of both and to spare. His gardens were more splendid than the gardens of Soliman the Magnificent, and that his Seraglio was no joyless abode was demonstrated by the fact that so far he was the happy father ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... Ere long, with a joyless mien, looking up towards the poop, the host invited his guest to accompany him there, for the benefit of what little breath ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Each young man, after purchasing an ivory-headed cane retired to privacy to squint through it undisturbed. Emerging from this privacy the young man would then confer with other young men. What these joyless young men saw when they squinted they never revealed. But among their elders they spread the strong impression that it was the Capital at Washington ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I miss thy smile of light, "Welcome" at morn and kind "good night!" But, when the quiet eve comes on, I feel that thou indeed art gone. That herald of delight to me Is joyless now, for "Where ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... zeal they sought; In joyless paths they trod— Heedless of praise or blame they wrought, And left the rest to God. The lowliest sphere was not disdained; Where love could soothe or save, They went, by fearless faith sustained, Nor knew their ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... woman can grow without love, and a great deal of it. Why do you suppose I am writing all this—I, who have felt such deep and true love for you? I have no courage—the dampness of the day has settled into my soul—and I shall be joyless until there is no more cursed doubt of you ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... stupid-looking, tow-headed children. It was impossible for Phil to conceive how beautiful Mollie could be a member of such a family. Yet the unfortunate girl had told Phyllis that she had known no other than the hard, joyless ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... shadow thickening into trouble. "The next best thing to having her with me is to know that she is kindly and lovingly looked after by my married sister, of whom she is very fond. Florence is merrier, if not always happier, with her young cousins than if she were condemned to the repression and joyless routine of a house where the care of the sick is the most engrossing ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... has retreated from the fields. With the Egyptians, as with many peoples of antiquity, the committing of the seed to the earth assumed the character of a solemn and mournful rite. On this subject I will let Plutarch speak for himself. "What," he asks, "are we to make of the gloomy, joyless, and mournful sacrifices, if it is wrong either to omit the established rites or to confuse and disturb our conceptions of the gods by absurd suspicions? For the Greeks also perform many rites which resemble those of the Egyptians and are observed about the same time. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... "could I think of enshrining "An image whose looks are so joyless and dim;— "But yon little god, upon roses reclining, "We'll make, if you please, Sir, a Friendship of him." So the bargain was struck; with the little god laden She joyfully flew to her shrine in the grove: "Farewell," said the sculptor, "you're not the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... it is sufficient to look around us, and to consider the effects that religion produces on minds really penetrated with its pretended truths. We shall generally find in those who the most sincerely profess and the most exactly practise them, a joyless and melancholy disposition, which announces no contentment, nor that interior peace of which they speak so incessantly, without ever exhibiting any undoubted manifestations of it. Whoever is in the enjoyment of peace within, shows some exterior marks of it; but the internal ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... silent and deserted now. Only his wife and his daughter Eliza lived in it, and they passed their days in dreary loneliness and incessant fear and anguish. Eliza Wallner was alone, all alone and joyless. She had not seen her beloved Elza since the day when she was married. She herself had started the same night with Haspinger for her father's headquarters. Elza had remained with her young husband in Innspruck, where her father died on the following day; and after ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... happiest. Relating his reminiscences of that period, in reply to the question, "Do you retain pleasant recollections of cadet life?" he remarked, "I have little reason to do so. Without relations or acquaintances in a strange city, we spent a joyless youth. The discipline was strict, even hard, and now, when my judgment of it is unprejudiced, I must say that it was too strict, too hard. The only benefit we received from this treatment was that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... from my mind through a succession of years; and some of those which, perhaps, deeply affected me at the time, are, by the mercy of Heaven, forgotten. But enough remains to enable me to give a faint outline of the causes which have changed me from what I was, to the gloomy joyless being I am at length become. There is one scene ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... to food and wine and cheer the name of the favorite inn sounded in the ears of the mariners! It meant the mantle of ease and indolence, a moment in which again to feel beneath one's feet the kindly restful earth. For in those days the voyages were long and joyless, fraught with the innumerable perils of outlawed flags and preying navies; so that, with all his love of the sea, the mariner's true goal was home port and a cozy corner in the familiar inn. There, with a cup of gin or mulled wine at his elbow and the bowl of a Holland clay propped in a ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... almost daily to perambulate that strange region east of Aldgate where uncouth foreign names stare out from the shop signs and almost every public or private notice is in the Hebrew character. Dressed in my shabbiest clothes, I trudged, hour after hour and day after day, through the gray and joyless streets and alleys, looking earnestly into the beady eyes and broad faces of the East-European wayfarers and wondering whether any of them was the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... plain that she had had another purpose in coming there than to make that speech. Ah, that marriage that her son had insisted on contracting, contrary to her wish, at the mature age of fifty, after twenty years of joyless married life with a shrewish, bony wife; he, who had always until then deferred so to her will, now swayed only by his passion for this gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down! She had promised herself to keep watch over ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... perfect. The artist, if he would prevail, must not be seduced by any temptation, any extraneous desire, any peevish criticism, any well-meant rebuke, into trying a subject that he knows is too large for him. He must be his own severest critic. No artistic effort can be effective, if it is a joyless straining after things falteringly grasped. Joy is the essential quality; it need not always be a present, a momentary joy. There are weary spaces, as when a footsore traveller plods along the interminable road ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... impelled by their own misery to desolate the happy peoples, a vision which grew clearer in the after years. But in that easy-going Eastern life there is a power of resistance, as everybody knows who tries to change it, which may yet defeat the hosts of joyless drudgery. ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Instead of that, me frantick love detains, 'Mid foes, and dreadful darts, and bloody plains: While you—and can my soul the tale believe, Far from your country, lonely wand'ring leave Me, me your lover, barbarous fugitive! Seek the rough Alps where snows eternal shine, And joyless borders of the frozen Rhine. Ah! may no cold e'er blast my dearest maid, Nor pointed ice thy tender feet ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... And so he managed to be present at prayers, masses for the dead, to confess, make signs of the cross in front of icons, with a quiet mind, without being conscious of the lie, and to continue in the service which gave him the feeling of being useful and some comfort in his joyless family life. Although he believed this, he felt with his entire being that this religion of his, more than all else, was not "the right thing," and that is why ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... ignoring his descendant. But Michael was too wise to put himself into places where he could be pointedly ignored, and the resplendent dinner, with its six footmen and its silver service, was not really more joyless than usual. But his father's majestic displeasure was more apparent when the three men sat alone afterwards, and it was in dead silence that port was pushed round and cigarettes handed. Francis, it is true, made a couple of efforts ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... friends was a joyless pleasure. When Mary arrived in Lisbon, she found Fanny in the last stages of her illness, and before she had time to rest from her journey she began her work as sick-nurse. Four hours after her arrival Fanny's child was born. It had ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... course of the river. The postern by which Skeldergate was formerly approached no longer exists; and the few old houses left in the street are disguised in melancholy modern costume of whitewash and cement. Shops of the smaller and poorer order, intermixed here and there with dingy warehouses and joyless private residences of red brick, compose the present a spect of Skeldergate. On the river-side the houses are separated at intervals by lanes running down to the water, and disclosing lonely little plots of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... fences, nor was it until April that the ice broke up in Fore River." They were difficult—those days ushered in by the Reverend Joseph Hull. Through long nights and cold winters and an endless round of joyless living, Weymouth expiated well for the sins of her youth. Even as late as 1767 we read of the daughter of Parson Smith, of Weymouth—now the wife of John Adams, of Quincy—scrubbing the floor of her own bed-chamber ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... relief: or, as a French author has neatly observed, "Sans les femmes, les deux extrmits de la vie seraient sans secours, et le milieu sans plaisirs." "Without woman the two extremities of life would be helpless, and the middle of it joyless." ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... paths that had once echoed to the tread of slippered feet, armed sentries paced, their sharp challenges breaking the stillness of the night. Outside its wrecked fences strange men in stranger uniforms strode in and out of the joyless houses; tired pickets stacked their arias on the unswept piazzas, and panting horses nibbled the bark from the withered trees; rank weeds choked the gardens; dishevelled vines clung to the porches, and doors that had always swung wide to the gentle tap of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thick the shades of evening close! How pale the sky with weight of snows! Haste, light the tapers, urge the fire, And bid the joyless day retire.— Alas, in vain I try within To brighten the dejected scene, While, roused by grief, these fiery pains Tear the frail texture of my veins; While Winter's voice, that storms around, And yon deep death-bell's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... had just struck at St. Mary church; the day was dark and gloomy, and the sleet rattled against the windows of the joyless ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... no more of a Canadian winter than what regards the intenseness of its cold, must suppose it a very joyless season: 'tis, I assure you, quite otherwise; there are indeed some days here of the severity of which those who were never out of England can form no conception; but those days seldom exceed a dozen in a whole winter, nor do they come in succession; ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... the hand of the people's shield, Shalt thou have the thing that thou wouldedst when thou broughtest me to birth, And I, the soul of the Wolfings, began to look on earth? Wilt thou play the God, O mother, and make a man anew, A joyless thing and a fearful? Then I betwixt you two, 'Twixt your longing and your sorrow will cast the sundering word, And tell out all the story of that rampart of the sword! I shall bid my mighty father make choice of death in life, Or life in death victorious and the crowned ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... lines of suffering on their faces, aged before their time, and the mere wrecks of what they once were. Men who had gone to that region strong, active, ruddy, enthusiastic, and who, after a few months, returned thus feeble and shattered—some irreparably so; others with perhaps years of joyless life before them; a few with the unmistakable stamp of death ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... and joyless as the wide waste lying hushed around me, unblessed with the verdure of a single hope, a single love; and as I looked down the coming years, my way seemed very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... laughter of his lips Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale shape Gliding half hidden through the dusky stems, Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl, Whispering: A little space, and thou art mine! It may be on that joyless feast his eye Dwelt with mere outward seeming; he, within, Took measure of his soul, and knew its strength, And by that silent knowledge, day by day, Was calm'd, ennobled, comforted, sustain'd. ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... turmoil; she was married—that was all she knew—married to somebody she liked but did not love. Married to a man who had been chosen for her partly against her will. She glanced at him out of the corners of her eyes; if she was joyless, no less was he. It was an inauspicious beginning to a married life which would end who knew how? Before the depressing granite facade of the London Safe Deposit the party descended, Mr. Debenham paid the cabman, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... artist seemed to look triumphantly through the solemn, purplish blue eyes of the young martyr, and Beryl knew that her own heart beat under the pamted folds of the diploidion; that she had epitomized in a symbolic picture, the history of her own joyless youth. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... horrors. Nothing gives me any joy. I have learned what the bitterness of exile is, in these days; and I never should have known it but for the absence of "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,"—I can perfectly appreciate that line of Goldsmith; for it well expresses my own torpid, unenterprising, joyless state of mind and heart. I am like an uprooted plant, wilted and drooping. Life seems so purposeless as not to be worth the trouble of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... submit. They may obey in act, but there is no obedience in their wills, nor any cheerfulness in their hearts. The elder brother in the parable could say, 'Neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment,' but his service had been joyless, and he never remembered having received gifts that made him 'merry with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... girls to meet men of their own class is painfully true, and this desire is not so much the outcome of young women's natural tendency to cultivate young men, but because all such men to them are possible husbands, and marriage is the only way out from Stonor House and the joyless existence there. ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... and Buddha himself has no power to answer prayer, since he long ago passed into a realm of inactivity which is practically indistinguishable from non-existence. There is no atonement for past sin nor escape from its consequences, but by the giving up of being. Buddhism is a pessimistic and joyless religion. Hence it suffers deterioration in competition with the more active systems. Close by Boro Budor, where Buddhism reached its culmination, are the temples of Mendoet and Brambanam, which show a reversion in ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... little about it! What! will you sacrifice these glorious tresses to a hard and joyless course of study? For none can study Euclid with me with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... what fate has allotted to me has learned to know other gods than those whom the master described as dwelling happily in undisturbed repose. Rather eternal torture in another world, united to the man I love, than painless, joyless mere existence in a desolate, incomprehensible, unknown region! You will be the last to teach the children to yearn for freedom ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gone forth against him, but because of the pact between them, Murrough of the Kine sped him in peace through Iar Connaught, and at length Brian had won home again with joyless heart. ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... fathoms being the average height accorded them. Black and hideous in appearance they are said to stalk around in the darkness and silence of the night. By day they retire to dark thickets, somber caves, and the joyless resting places ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... proved too congenial. We dwelt too much in the happy present to give ourselves up to the historical past; but I do not think one gets the sweetest juices out of Rome unless he gives way to the melancholy vein now and then, and "stalks apart in joyless reverie." ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... upon his whole existence, he seemed to see in a large, clear, cold comprehensiveness, all the wasted days, the fruitless activities, the futilities, the perpetual postponements that had followed his coming to London. He saw it all as a joyless indulgence, as a confusion of playthings and undisciplined desires, as a succession of days that began amiably and weakly, that became steadily more crowded with ignoble and trivial occupations, that had sunken now to indignity and uncleanness. He was overwhelmed by that persuasion, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... moveable theatres, the vans with fat women and two-headed calves, the learned pigs, the peepshows, the peripatetic photographers, the weighing-machines, the swings, the merry-go-rounds. And so there are none of the groups of vacant faces, the joyless chawbacons lounging gloomily from stall to stall, the settled inanity and dreariness of the crowd that drifts through an English fair. An English peasant goes to be amused, and the clown finds it wonderfully hard work to amuse him. The peasant ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... power, for I have seen it tried. Pains of all sorts thro' every nerve and artery At once it scatters,—burns at once and freezes— Till, by extremity of torture forced, The soul consents to leave her joyless home. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... perception, be beauty. A fourth assigned this cause; that the Lord took away from the man beauty and elegance of life, and transferred it to the woman; and that hence the man, unless he be re-united with his beauty and elegance in the woman, is stern, austere, joyless, and unlovely; so one man is wise only for himself, and another is foolish; whereas, when a man is united with his beauty and elegance of life in a wife, he becomes engaging, pleasant, active, and lovely, and thereby wise. A fifth said, that women were created beauties, not for the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... breaking-up of his self-control. She leaned against the heavy mahogany table, clenching a tiny handkerchief between chill little hands. If the months had brought her perfect vengeance on the man who had once failed her in her need, she was finding it, indeed, a joyless victory. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... since my Sharper is untrue, I joyless make my once adored Alpeu. I saw him stand behind Ombrelia's chair, And whisper with that soft, deluding air, And those feign'd sighs which ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... IT.—The wretch without it is under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... cool'd The smother'd rancours of rebellious thoughts, Clad with the sable mantles of the night; And like the tree that, robb'd of sun and showers, Mourns desolate withouten leaf or sap, So poor Cornelia, late bereft of love, Sits sighing, hapless, joyless, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... millstone mechanically revolving. A perpetual round of joyless love-episodes and intoxication without thirst. Do you understand? The life of a courtesan endured by a true woman. My soul is mine, my spirit and my intellect, but these are chained to a body that I abandon to others—whom ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... he remained standing stock still in the dusk. She had already reached the three palms when she heard behind her a loud peal of laughter, cynical and joyless, such as is heard in smoking-rooms at the end of a scandalous story. It made her feel ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... thee down the livelong day, in the Jotuns' courts. To the Hrimthursar's halls, thou shalt each day crawl exhausted, joyless crawl; wail for pastime shalt thou ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... fundamental ideas of the book, but they give but a faint notion of the author's poetic attitude. Most beautifully is this shown in Hal's relation to a young Irish girl, Red Mary. She is poor, and her daily life harsh and joyless, but nevertheless her wonderful grace is one of the outstanding features of the book. The first impression of Mary is that of a Celtic Madonna with a tender heart for little children. She develops into a Valkure of the working-class, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... picture to see this bowed-down old man; his thin, pale face shaded by a worn-out, three-cornered hat, his dirty uniform strewn with snuff; and his meagre legs encased in high-topped, unpolished boots; his only companion a greyhound, old and joyless as his master. Neither the bust of Voltaire, with its beaming, intelligent face, nor those of his friends, Lord-Marshal Keith and the Marquis d'Argens, could win an affectionate glance from the lonely old king. He whom Europe distinguished as the Great Frederick, whom his subjects ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Big Business of Life we have the practical philosophy that it is everyone's business to abolish work and turn this world into a playground. Who will not confess that many mortals take their work too seriously, and that to them it is a joyless, cheerless thing? To be able to find happiness, and to find it when we are bending to our duties is to possess the secret of living to the full. And happiness is to be sought within, and not among the things that lie at our feet. The book before us is wholesome ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette |
