"Lamentable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greatest and most lamentable errors in connection with the propaganda of modern Socialism has been the assumption of its friends, in many instances, and its foes, in most instances, that Socialism and Individualism are entirely antithetical ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... according to a somewhat late but apparently reliable tradition when the great dramatist [Shakespeare of Stratford] was returning to New Place in the evening, he had taken more wine than was conducive to pedestrian accuracy. Shortly or immediately afterwards he was seized by the lamentable fever which terminated fatally on ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... most, and the magnetic power of all, great born commanders, soon won the natives' confidence. But their admiration 'as men ravished in their minds' was rather overpowering; for, after 'a kind of most lamentable weeping and crying out,' they came forward with various offerings for the new-found gods, prostrating themselves in humble adoration and tearing their breasts and faces in a wild desire to show the spirit of self-sacrifice. Drake and his men, all Protestants, ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... one-sided and misleading if this group of emotional features were alone made responsible for the lamentable recklessness in the market. We must first of all necessarily acknowledge the tremendous powers of suggestion which the whole American life and especially the stock market contains. The word suggestion has become rather ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... incredulous exclamation; but as it was he was so confident of his success—so gratified and triumphant altogether—that he could afford to be not only forgiving but actually tolerant. He therefore replied to Sir Reginald only with a mute smile of amused compassion for the baronet's lamentable ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... studies at the grammar-school he wanted to go to Berlin, for, though the once famous university still existed in Erfurt, it had greatly deteriorated. His description of it is half lamentable, half amusing, for at that time it was attended by thirty students, for whom seventy professors were employed. Nevertheless, there were many obstacles to be surmounted ere he could obtain permission to attend the Berlin ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... heard the cry of His servants, who for so long have cried aloud before His face, and the lamentable cry which they have raised so long over the sons who were dead. Now are they risen again—from death they have come to life, and from blindness to light. Dearest sons, the lame walk, and the deaf hear, the blind eye sees and the dumb speak, crying ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... escape. The sow, as may be imagined, did not relish such treatment, but endeavoured with all her force to escape; but Tommy still keeping his hold, and continuing his discipline, she struggled with such violence as to drag him several yards, squeaking at the same time in the most lamentable manner, in which she was joined by the whole ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... "One lamentable evidence of deep degeneracy from the spirit of the Declaration of Independence is the countenance which has been occasionally given, in various parts of the Union, to this doctrine; but it is consolatory to know that, whenever it ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... evening, Joanna gave a party, at which young Vines and Southlands and Furneses offered their sheepish admiration to her sister Ellen. Of course everyone was agreed that Ellen Godden gave herself lamentable airs, but she appealed to her neighbours' curiosity through her queer, exotic ways, and the young men found her undeniably beautiful—she had a thick, creamy skin, into which her childhood's roses sometimes came as a dim ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... them along with the principle. Others, who avoid seeing it, are only the more determined in the application of it. However, they all work together with all their might to aggravate the misery of which the lamentable spectacle is so vainly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... his hand to his mouth, to signify the habit of drinking; and then shakes it in a melancholy fashion, to signify that the said habit has reached a lamentable and desperate point. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... lamentable sound, A cry of ruth! for I am found A curse to land and lineage, With ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the lamentable strain disclaim, 'And give me back the calm, contented mind; 'Which, late, exulting, viewed, in Nature's frame, 'Goodness untainted, wisdom unconfined, 'Grace, grandeur, and utility combined. 'Restore those tranquil days, that saw me still 'Well pleased with all, but most with humankind; ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... most grievous loss, if loss is a word that can be applied to my being bereft of so distinguished a man. Corellius Rufus is dead, and what makes my grief the more poignant is that he died by his own act. Such a death is always most lamentable, since neither natural causes nor Fate can be held responsible for it. When people die of disease there is a great consolation in the thought that no one could have prevented it; when they lay violent hands on themselves we feel a pang which nothing can assuage in the thought that they ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... her with a lamentable lack of perseverance were right; the linen which she began to hem fell into her lap only too soon. When her eyes—which could see nothing here except a small walled yard—closed while she was working, the others thought that she was asleep; but her mind remained awake, though ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have undertaken to fight them upon ground of their own choosing. We have been discomfited; but instead of owning to our defeat, and beginning the battle anew from a fresh base of operations, we have declared that we have not been defeated; hence those lamentable and suicidal attempts at disingenuous reasoning which we have seen reason to condemn so strongly in the works of Dean Alford and others. How ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... understand themselves. Now, and in this way alone, does growth in true knowledge begin. With it disunion, discord is no longer possible; all discord, even that which is internal, springs from want of knowledge. The error is most lamentable, when Feeling fears the Understanding, and the Understanding hates Feeling. This it is, which can lead to war for religion. No war for religion is permitted to end with the overthrow of one of these. God will not have it so; for he has created Feeling and Understanding as immortal, mutually ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... is true that at a later stage of evolution psychic sensitiveness reappears, but it is then developed in connection with the cerebro-spinal centres, and is brought under the control of the will. But the hysterical and ill-regulated psychism of which we see so many lamentable examples is due to the small development of the brain and the ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... fall the pearls of his wisdom, but to stop it with savory meat; finally this last resource failed, and he sat, looking wrathfully but helplessly on the proceedings at the other end of the table—a lamentable instance of prostrated ecclesiastical dignity. His disgust, however, was far exceeded by the horror of one of the party, a meek, cadaverous-looking boy, whose parents lived in the town, and who was wont to regard the head master as the vicegerent of all powers, civil and sacerdotal—I am ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... night, his house-warming, was turning under his eyes into a triumph for the Thesigers' manners and a failure for him. He had no illusions. Unless he did something to stop it, the whole thing would be one enormous and lamentable ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the cry of the poor was more lamentable. I knew severall that did remember the going of a cowe for 4d. per annum. The order was, how many they could winter they might summer: and pigges did cost nothing the going. Now the highwayes are encombred with cottages, and the travellers ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... image of our Lord as big as the life. The image was fastened to it with great nails, crowned with thorns, and besmeared with blood; and so exquisitely was it formed, that it represented, in a very lively manner, the lamentable spectacle of our Lord's body as it hung upon the cross. This figure was carried all along in the head of the procession; after which the company followed to all the sanctuaries in the church, singing their appointed ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... necessity of providing for the wants of a household, which even the apostle Paul had commended, or was it worldly-mindedness and greed which had brought him, a beneficed clergyman, a priest in holy orders, the vowed servant of a King whose kingdom was not of this world, to this lamentable pass? Yes; he would be dishonoured in the eyes of men, a debtor who could not pay his debts, and even with the support of his bishop would be scarcely able to weather the storm, while he must make up his mind, as he was an honest ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... she snapped her box again, and dropped it into her pocket. "It must be that lamentable mixture in your blood. Whatever a Courtenay could be thinking of, to marry a Dissenter,—a Puritan minister's daughter, too,—he must have been mad! Yet she was of good ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... cool. A poor Maronite priest from 'Ain Nebel came to me in his black robes and dark blue turban, and, leaning on his staff, gave a lamentable account of persecutions suffered by the four or five Christian villages about there, and imploring English help on their behalf. Alas! nothing could be done for him, only the case of the servant of the governor of Tibneen shooting a poor Christian, while on compulsory ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... by the firm belief, not in itself discreditable to either, that it possessed the better knowledge of the needs and interests and wishes of the vast populations of India, still too ignorant and inarticulate to give expression of their own to them. The lamentable effects of the estrangement between British administrators and the very class of Indians whose co-operation it had been one of the main objects of British policy ever since the Act of 1833 to promote, never stood clearly revealed till ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... great need of the hour is organization. There can be no doubt that the advocates of woman suffrage in the United States are to be numbered by millions, but it is a lamentable fact that our organization can count its numbers only by thousands. There are illustrious men and women in every State, and there are men and women innumerable, who are not known to the public, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... this massacre was due to the injustice, and to the subsequent incompetence, of one man, Chopart, the commandant. It led to lamentable consequences, in the utter destruction of the Natchez nation and the loss of one of the most ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of my visit, Jamaica was still celebrated for its rum, and my father had charged me not to forget to bring him a barrel, a commission I did not fail to execute. But a lamentable accident happened in connection with that same barrel. It was brought back to France and duly placed in the cellars at Neuilly, and had been forgotten for ever so long, when one fine day the King, recollecting it, ordered some of the contents to be handed round ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... palace; the mansion of the Pompeys; the Blenheims and the Strathfieldsays of the Scipios, the Marcelli, the Paulli, and the Csars; then perished the aged trophies from Carthage and from Gaul; and, in short, as the historian sums up the lamentable desolation, "quidquid visendum atque memorabile ex antiquitate duraverat." And this of itself might lead one to suspect the emperor's hand as the original agent; for by no one act was it possible so entirely and so suddenly to wean the people from their old republican recollections, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... State, and pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature of our Government. As Sunday is the only day that the laboring man can escape from the cities, to stop the street-cars, omnibuses and railroad trains would indeed be a lamentable exercise of arbitrary authority. No, no, the duty of the State is to protect those who do the work of the world, in the largest liberty, and instead of shutting them up in their gloomy tenement houses on Sunday, to open wide the parks, horticultural gardens, museums, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... relations which we follow end, there was not a single instant of rest; so shameless that ruin was seen almost at the very gates of Manila; and so universal that but few villages of our administration escaped being the theater of war and the lamentable object of its misfortunes. This is a brief compendium of the tragic events which happened in the Philippine church, which was surrounded on all sides by the waters of contradiction, as is the territory of those islands by the salt waves of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... novels were the first "mystery and horror" tales to become popular.] at Nohant, with terror and delight. My companions had many another Scotch and Irish legend in their heads, all fit to set one's hair on end. The convent too had innumerable stories of its own lamentable events,—about ghosts, dungeons, inexplicable apparitions, and mysterious noises. All this, and the thought of finally discovering the tremendous secret of the victim, so kindled our imaginations ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... second floor. Its upper stories formed a refuge for many persons. All Saturday afternoon two little girls could be seen at the windows frantically calling for aid. They had spent all night and the day in the building, cut off from all aid. Without food and drinking water their condition was lamentable. Late in the evening the children were removed to higher ground and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... have been to Nice to-day to see Dr. Bennet; he agrees with Clark that there is no disease; but I finished up my day with a lamentable exhibition of weakness. I could not remember French, or at least I was afraid to go into any place lest I should not be able to remember it, and so could not tell when the train went. At last I crawled up to the station and sat down on the steps, and just steeped myself there in the sunshine ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Episcopalians. In truth, of all the ten thousand bubbles of which history has preserved the memory, none was ever more skilfully puffed into existence; none ever soared higher, or glittered more brilliantly; and none ever burst with a more lamentable explosion. There was, however, a certain mixture of truth in the magnificent day dream which produced such ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he that first invented war! They knew not, ah, they knew not, simple men, How those were [98] hit by pelting cannon-shot Stand staggering [99] like a quivering aspen-leaf Fearing the force of Boreas' boisterous blasts! In what a lamentable case were I, If nature had not given me wisdom's lore! For kings are clouts that every man shoots at, Our crown the pin [100] that thousands seek to cleave: Therefore in policy I think it good To hide it ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... as the blue sky, the sun, the air, the bright dawn, and the fire; but, as time went on, men, forgetting the meaning of their own speech and no longer understanding the tongue of their own fathers, were misled and beguiled into fashioning all those lamentable tales: as that Zeus, for love of mortal women, took the shape of a bull, a ram, a serpent, an ant, an eagle, and sinned in such wise as it is a shame even to ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... not our business, any more than it is our inclination, to dwell here upon the state of those sumptuary enactments, which reflected such honor upon the legislative wisdom, that permitted our country to arrive at the lamentable condition we have attempted to describe. We merely mention the facts, and leave to those who possess position and ability, the task of giving to this extraordinary state of things a more effectual ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... day before the wedding. My spirits, which held up bravely during the first two weeks of my engagement, have now fallen—fallen, like a wind at sundown. I am as limp, lachrymose, and lamentable, a young woman as you would find between the three seas. I have cried with loud publicity in full school-room conclave; I have cried with silent privacy in bed. I have cried over the jackdaw. I have cried ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... falls on to a chair—and to employ the imaginative phraseology of the Chinese—her tears roll down like rain on an autumn night. Never have I seen anything so lamentable. But it will not do to leave her in this state, poor girl! She is becoming unconscious. I do not know where I am. I take ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... puckering his face, was about to vent his dismay in a lamentable yell, when it suddenly occurred to him that he might thereby disturb the hunters and earn a severe flogging. He therefore restrained himself, and sat down to indulge ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... had this dream was the night before his assassination. On the morning of that lamentable day there was a Cabinet meeting, at which General Grant was present. During an interval of general discussion, the President asked General Grant if he had any news from General Sherman, who was then confronting Johnston. The ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... but he wished to hear Titmouse's own account of the matter!—Titmouse, not daring to hesitate, complied—Gammon listening in an agony of suppressed laughter. He looked as little at Titmouse as he could, and was growing a trifle more sedate, when Titmouse, in a truly lamentable tone, inquired, "What's the good, Mr. Gammon, of ten thousand a-year with such a horrid head of hair as this?" On hearing which Gammon jumped off his chair, started to the window, and laughed for one or two minutes ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... irresistible right than either that I have mentioned, and one which will be the most readily admitted by my reader, provided he be blessed with bowels of charity and philanthropy, is the right acquired by civilization. All the world knows the lamentable state in which these poor savages were found. Not only deficient in the comforts of life, but, what is still worse, most piteously and unfortunately blind to the miseries of their situation. But no sooner did ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and undefinable suspicions crossed his mind. Was he in presence of a crime? Certainly, evidently not. But what was the cause then of the mystery and reticence he detected? Was he upon the track of some lamentable family secret—one of those terrible scandals, concealed for a long time, but which at last burst forth with startling effect? The prospect of being mixed up in such an affair caused him infinite pleasure. It would bring him into notice; he would be mentioned in the papers; and his increased practice ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... colony one died annually, so that if the traffic had ceased for eighteen years, at the end of that time the whole black population would have died out. From first to last Mauritius has been the tomb of more than a million of Africans. Their lamentable history is like the roll of the prophet, written within and without, and the writing thereof is ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... hand, and another Lord on the other; and that it is fain to be decided by having the person's name put into the King's warrant for his liberty, at whose intercession the King shall own that he is set at liberty: which is a most lamentable thing, that we do professedly own that we do these things, not for right and justice' sake, but only to gratify this or that person about the King. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, and the conceit ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in conclave, during which the vicar exhibited such lamentable ignorance of the points of a pig that, had it not been for his previous kindness, he would have fallen considerably in ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... of grief arose, My heart, responsive to the lovers' woes, With thrilling sympathy convulsed my breast. Too strong at last for life my passion grew, And, sickening at the lamentable view, I fell like one by mortal pangs ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... wrote "The Spanish Tragedy, containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio and Bellimperia with the pitifull Death of Old Hieronimo," first published in 1599, is certified by Heywood in his "Apology for Actors," and there is good authority for the opinion that it was acted as early as 1588. We ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... you for your suspicions," was the candid reply of the fat man, "if things are as you state; and I will do you the honor, Giddings, to say that, although we are business rivals, your word is as good as gold with me. This is a lamentable situation. What shall we do ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... or within two or three days of that time. Dr. Bardsley, on the other hand, relates a case in which twelve years elapsed between the bite and the disease. If the virus may lurk so long as this in the constitution, it is a most lamentable affair. According to one account, more than thirty years intervened. The usual time extends from three weeks to six or ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... I think it would, be a mistake to confound the science, morality, with the affection, religion; so do I conceive it to be a most lamentable and mischievous error, that the science, theology, is so confounded in the minds of many—indeed, I might say, of the majority ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... wardenships, and internal duties, and alarmed the old minister by the ascendancy which his virtue gave him over Louis XVI. The prince forsook him, though at the same time observing that Turgot and himself were the only persons who desired the welfare of the people: so lamentable is the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... repentance upon the hide of his blacker brother, holding him writhing, shouting, and bellowing at the full stretch of one muscular arm, as he plied the other he kept a foot on Rasu the Sweeper, so as to have him handy when his turn came. Meanwhile, the Oriental, with tears and lamentable howlings, wound about the doctor's leg, a vocal ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... unfortunate disposition, the First Consul felt very kindly to him. When the Emperor went to camp at Boulogne, Hambard refused to accompany him; and the Emperor gave him, as a place of retreat, the charge of the palace of Meudon. There he showed unmistakable symptoms of insanity, and his end was lamentable. During the Hundred Days, after a conversation with the Emperor, he threw himself against a carving-knife with such violence that the blade came out two inches behind his back. As it was believed at this time that I had incurred the anger of the Emperor, the rumor went abroad ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... by her sojourn in the calm and quiet Refuge. She had by a great and heroic exercise of her strength of mind put aside from her all thoughts of her lamentable history, of her suddenly clouded and terrible past. She had thoroughly abandoned herself to the discipline and duties of the Sisters of the Order of Refuge, and had sought with more or less success even to forget herself. Her unruffled life, passed in the continual doing of good, filled ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... destroys all distinctness and incisiveness, was due to my very high impressionability, and to the straining after technical scenic effects. Thus, extreme vehemence in anger would excite me to the point of forgetting the fiction, and cause me to commit involuntarily lamentable outbursts. Hence I applied myself to overcome the tendency to singsong in my voice, the exuberance of my rendering of passion, the exclamatory quality of my phrasing, the precipitation of my pronunciation, and ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... that School, that "in the district embraced by their Society, the consequences of ignorance were evident to the most superficial observer. Parents and children, appeared alike regardless of morality and virtue; the former indulging in profligacy, and the latter exhibiting its lamentable effects. ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... that he should not pledge himself to support Government, though he was at present well disposed to do so, and should be still more disposed when Lord Rosslyn became a part of it. Tierney said it was very lamentable that there should be such a deficiency of talent in the rising generation, and remarkable how few clever young men there are now in the House of Commons. The King did not like Lord Rosslyn's appointment; he hates all the Whigs; indeed, he hates the best men of all parties, and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... considered— the question, as every one knows, of Coleridge's whole career and life. If health was destined to give way, in any event—if its collapse, in fact, was simply the cause of all the lamentable external results which followed it, while itself due only to predetermined internal conditions over which the sufferer had no control—then to be sure cadit qu'stio. At London or at the Lakes, among newspaper files or old folios, Coleridge's life would in that case have run the same sad ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... attention, ignobly, to the existence of a work which, but for such means of publicity, might have remained unnoticed. In the case of Salome it is hard to guess to which of these two motives one ought to ascribe the choice of treatment made by the lamentable man of genius who illustrated the truth of the theory advocated by the late dramatic critic of The Times in his work ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... doubtless, when printed, prove of incalculable benefit to tens of millions who have hitherto been ignorant of the will of God, putting their trust in idols of wood and stone instead of in a crucified Saviour. I am sorry to say that this country in respect to religion is in a state almost as lamentable as the darkest regions of the East, and the blame of this rests entirely upon the Greek hierarchy, who discountenance all attempts to the spiritual improvement of the people, who, poor things, are exceedingly willing to receive instruction, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... .. < chapter xciii 15 THE CASTAWAY > It was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the most insignificant of the Pequod's crew; an event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own. Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats. Some few hands are reserved called ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the lamentable history of Hudge and Gudge; which I merely introduce as a type of an endless and exasperating misunderstanding which is always occurring in modern England. To get men out of a rookery men are put into a tenement; and at the beginning the healthy human soul ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... hesitate to apply the name to their chiefs. I was every day shocked by being addressed by that title, and though it as often furnished me with a text from which to tell them of the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent, yet it deeply pained me, and I never felt so fully convinced of the lamentable detoriation of our species. It is indeed a mournful truth that man has become like the beasts ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Lamentable now must be the case of those poor women who, in this quarter, happen to long for green pease or strawberries; for I dare assure them, upon the honest word of an astrologer, that they can get none on this side of next Easter. Some now-abouts under the notion of soldiers, shall sally ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... pass through life without being exposed to other than ordinary temptations. Thousands of the young gentlemen, devoted to the favorite pursuits of the present time, will get through existence with no worse consequences to themselves than a coarse tone of mind and manners, and a lamentable incapability of feeling any of those higher and gentler influences which sweeten and purify the lives of more cultivated men. But take the other case (which may occur to any body), the case of a special temptation trying ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... heather tuft. A sea more lonely than any ocean the most wide and distant, where no ship heaves, and no isle lifts beckoning trees above the level of the waves; a sea soundless, with no life below its lamentable surface, no little fish or proud leviathan plunging and romping and flashing from the silver roof of fretted wave dishevelled to the deep profound. The moorfowl does not cry there, the coney has no habitation. It rolled, that sea so sour, so curdled, from my feet away to mounts ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... made no reply but to gaze upon him stonily, a stare which produced another dreadful silence. Packer tried to smile, a lamentable sight. ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... proceeding from him it drew after him many who had been evil-disposed; and for the odor of his ointments many followed him, so by the grace thereof the friends of the departed woman, being attracted, brought her lifeless body unto the saint, and entreated with lamentable entreaties that he would show now on her the power which erewhile he had shown on others. And forthwith the man full of God betook himself unto prayer; and he restored the dead woman unto life; and afterwards she brought forth a son, and in a convenient ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... account of this lamentable catastrophe has been kindly contributed by the graphic pen of the only survivor, Thomas Thurnall, Esquire, F.R.C.S., &c. &c. &c., late surgeon on board the ill-fated vessel." Which five columns not only put a couple of guineas into Tom's pocket, but, as he intended ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... lyrics are unequalled among the compositions of any of the national bards. Than "The Mitherless Bairn," it may be questioned whether there is to be found in the language any lyrical composition more delicately plaintive. It is lamentable to think that one who could write so tenderly should, by a dissolute life, have been the author of many of his own misfortunes, and a constant barrier to every attempt for his permanent elevation in the social circle. In person, he was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of rare delights. It is made up of opera 25, 26, and 39. Opus 25 contains four characteristic pieces,—a "Dance" full of dance-rapture, a most original "Impromptu," and a "Rondo Giocoso," which is just the kind of brilliantly witty scherzo whose infrequency in American music is so lamentable and so surprising. Opus 26 includes ten sketches, all good, especially "Woodnotes," a charming tone-poem, the deliciously simple "Wayside Flowers," "Under the Lindens," which is a masterpiece of beautiful syncopation, a refreshingly interesting ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... reinstating her family fortunes was almost done. Fate fulfilled her expectations with a malign sarcasm; for while her agent, M. Ullman, was absent in Europe gathering a company, Mme. Sontag was seized with cholera and died in a few hours, on June 17, 1854. Such was the lamentable end of one of the noblest women that ever adorned the lyric stage. Her funeral was a magnificent one, in presence of a great concourse of people, including the diplomatic corps. The service was celebrated by the orchestras of the two Italian theatres; the nuns of St. ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... act or a single event which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... anything, and although they were, both of them, most certainly changed, they could not be said in any way to do what the Otriad expected of them. The Otriad quite frankly expected them to be ashamed of themselves. To expect that of Semyonov at any time showed a lamentable lack of interest in human character, but, as I have already said, our Otriad was always excited by results rather than causes. Semyonov had never shown himself ashamed of anything, and he most certainly did not intend to begin now. ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... shuffled uneasily between the two belligerents but continued to supply funds to Napoleon and to shelter and repair his warships; thereupon England resolved to cut off her American subsidies, but sent a force too small to preclude the possibility of a sea-fight; the fight took place, with a lamentable result, which changed the covert hostility of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... dear sir, if we had tried to make you weep! What fault you would have found with us! Suppose we had been like the ballad-singers and story-tellers who put in lamentable tales in the hope of reducing their audience to tears! What would you have said about us then? Why, even now, when you know we only wish to amuse you, not to make you suffer, you must needs ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... lamentable piece of stuff to see great statesmen have vile exits, but I hope there are nothing but ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... grave culpability on either side. Eustace spoke as a lawyer; his professional instincts were outraged. He should certainly call upon the Jacks' and utterly dissociate himself from his sister in this lamentable affair. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... itself there is nothing that is not good. It is very short, ten small pages only of some five-and-twenty lines each. But there is not a weak place in it from the moment when "the Abbot arose and closed his book" to the account of his lamentable and yet lucky fate and punishment whereof "none but he and the fisherman could tell the reason why." Neither of the two other practitioners who may be called the masters of this style, Hood and Barham, nor Praed himself elsewhere, nor any of his and their imitators has trodden ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... I have been actuated by a desire to do something towards the removal of a lamentable degree of ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... into the river, including most of the books and writing-materials of the three priests, and then left him behind, among the Algonquins of Allumette Island. He found means to continue the journey, and at length reached the Huron towns in a lamentable state of bodily prostration. Daniel, too, was deserted, but fortunately found another party who received him into their canoe. A young Frenchman, named Martin, was abandoned among the Nipissings; another, named Baron, on reaching the Huron country, was robbed by ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... aucthoritie of the reste. Accordyng to the folie and super- sticiousnes of those tymes, thei inuented and forged folie vp- pon folie, lye vpon lye, as in the battaill of Troie, thei aggra- uate the dolour of the battaill, by pitifull and lamentable in- [Sidenote: Plato reie- cteth Poetes from the com[-] mon wealth.] uencion. As for the Poetes them selues, Plato in his booke, made vpon the administracion of a common wealth, maketh [Fol. xxv.v] theim in the nomber of those, whiche ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... adoption of it by the House a test of its confidence in the administration. Lord John Russell opposed the amendment with great vehemence, pronouncing the acceptance of it, if it should be accepted, and the House should thus consent "to retract its previous vote, a lamentable proof of subserviency, which would disgrace it with the country." What Sir Robert now asked was, substantially, that they should now declare that to be expedient which they had declared to be inexpedient only three nights ago; and Lord Palmerston insisted that ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... with the cold, showed through the tatters of his nether garments. This, under the circumstances, provoked neither jeers nor pity. No one cared how the next man felt or looked. Colonel D'Hubert himself hardened to exposure, suffered mainly in his self-respect from the lamentable indecency of his costume. A thoughtless person may think that with a whole host of inanimate bodies bestrewing the path of retreat there could not have been much difficulty in supplying the deficiency. But the great majority of these bodies lay buried under ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... state of Tete quite lamentable," says Livingstone, but that of Sena was ten times worse. "It is impossible to describe the miserable state of decay into which the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... course, stoutly denied Mist's accusations, and published a touching account of the circumstances, describing his assailant as a lamentable instance of ingratitude. Here was a man whom he had saved from the gallows, and befriended at his own risk in the utmost distress, turning round upon him, "basely using, insulting, and provoking him, and at last drawing his sword ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... followed. Charlie was left on board, with directions to lay the schooner to. The dory flew over the water, Wilbur setting the stroke. In a few moments she was well up with the bark. Though a larger boat than the "Bertha Millner," she was rolling in lamentable fashion, and every laboring heave showed her bottom ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... leave my bed till the morning was well advanced. Once or twice during the day I brought my guards in with fear on their faces, the large fat man more distorted than his fellow, by the lamentable sounds I made with my willow toys. They crossed themselves again and again, and I myself appeared devout and troubled. When we walked abroad during the afternoon, I chose to saunter by the river rather than walk, for I wished to conserve my strength, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to Me.' Who is this that calls? Nay, I am deaf as are my walls; Cease crying, for I will not hear Thy cry of hope or fear. What art thou indeed That I should heed Thy lamentable need? Hungry, should feed, ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... the weal of Christianity. The pontificates of Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), Innocent VIII. (1484-1492), and especially of Alexander VI. (1492-1503), the second pope of the Borgia family, present a lamentable picture of worldly schemes and of "nepotism," as the projects for the temporal advancement of their relatives were termed. The Roman principality was the prey of petty tyrants, and the theater of wars, and of assassinations perpetrated by the knife or with poison. Alexander VI. succeeded ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... attachment of Lady Eleanor, who sparkled in the Queen's train, eclipsing all in splendor, and all but her royal mistress in beauty. He subjoined to these complaints of the unsatisfactoriness of a life of pleasure, lamentable statements of the misrule of the King, and the oppression of his government, the arbitrary punishments of the Star-chamber, the illegal fines, loans and projects, by which the royal coffers were filled, and concluded with affirming, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... has driven me out of my house may weigh upon her. It would be just as well, too, to tell her that I subscribe five thousand, and to give her some advice about the organization, and to warn her that her inexperience in such a complicated and responsible matter might lead to most lamentable results. In short, I wanted to see my wife, and while I thought of various pretexts for going to her, I had a firm conviction in my heart that I ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... divorced at death. Poor indeed must be the soul if, at death, it must part from all it loved in life. But this frenzy of excitement in which parents live in order that their children may be heirs leaves no time for the consideration of higher and better things. How much more lamentable, too, is such striving in the light of the fact that those who are to be benefited by these inheritances are in reality harmed and checked in their development. Said Senator Dolliver: "If I had a son and $100,000, I would ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst |
