"Loneliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The loneliness of the gloomy cavern became frightful to him. "Where are you, my brave lads," cried he, "old companions of my watchings, inroads, and labour? What can I do without you? Did I collect you only to lose you by so base a fate, and so unworthy of your courage! Had you died with your sabres ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... scenery, to meet a different complexion of humanity and a different type of home and food and apparatus, to mark unfamiliar trees and plants and flowers and beasts, to climb mountains, to see the snowy night of the North and the blaze of the tropical midday, to follow great rivers, to taste loneliness in desert places, to traverse the gloom of tropical forests and to cross the high seas, will be an essential part of the reward and adventure of life, even for the commonest people.... This is a bright and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... towered, high and massive, above her! And she felt acutely her slightness, her girlishness, and her need of his help. She could not afford to transform sympathy into antipathy. She was alone in the world. Never before had she realized, as she realized then, the lurking terror of her loneliness. The moment was critical. In another moment he might be gone from the room, and she left solitary to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... lay all the while a sense of loneliness and hopelessness. He did not entertain the thought of failure to hold the crossroads, and he was so certain that General Baines would come with his division that he could almost see the advance-guard trotting toward him down the trunk road. But there is no accounting for a soldier's moods, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... bright eyes glancing to right and left. At every step forward there would come a fresh recognition, a nod of the head, a wave of the hand, a quick "Halloa!" more eloquent than elegant. Rhoda felt a spasm of loneliness at the realisation that no greeting waited for herself, and at the strangeness of the many faces. She looked critically around and came to the ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... desert—Heaven itself overclouded—and death all the while standing at such a weary distance that there is no refuge within the horizon of endurance? Be these things right or wrong, they are: and while they are, will the woman who loves, unrequited, feel desperate on the discovery of her loneliness—and, the more pure and proud, innocent ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... mother did not seem to fancy there was any danger, till, all at once, she was pounced upon by the animal, and dragged away, and I never saw her more. Then I crept back into the nest, and lay half-dead with fright, moaning and crying at times for very loneliness; but she never came. And even now, Master Herbert—would you believe it?—I keep thinking of that dreadful time, and I have to shriek out for some relief to my feelings. You often ask me what I am crying ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... lazily floating far overhead gave deeper background to the slender strip of over-arching blue. It all combined to form a nature picture of primeval peace, rendered peculiarly solemn by those vast ranges of overshadowing mountains, and more deeply impressive by the grim silence and loneliness, the seemingly total ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... state of rebellion. It was Gowan's presence she was resenting, not Dolly's. To tell the truth, she was rather glad to see Dolly. She had begun to feel the loneliness of her position, and it had half intimidated her. But the sight of Gowan roused her spirit. What right had he to come and interfere with her, since he did not care for her and thought she was nothing but a child? It made her feel like a child. She turned her back to him openly as she ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... God! Men! Men! Bring lights and let me see the face Of human beings 'round about!" So cried My cousin Mark not half an hour agone, As one on whom the mirth of loneliness Falls all ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... exhausted alike in mind and body, I threw myself upon my bed, but not to sleep. A sense of my utter desolation and loneliness came over me, blended with a feeling of bitter and unmerited wrong. I recollected the many manifestations of affection which I had received from her who had that day given herself, in the presence of Heaven, to another; and I called to mind the thousand sacrifices I had made to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... footstep, and not a very stealthy one, approaching the house, and the dog bounded forward to the full length of his chain, but he was beaten down with a blow that stunned him. The men were too strong in numbers, and too secure in the extreme loneliness of the dwelling, to care about taking many precautions. Miss Anne and Stephen heard Mr. Wyley cross the floor of his room above, and open his window; but there was silence again, and the chime of the house clock striking eleven was the only sound that broke ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... but rock, rock, rock! It is as if we were passing where the foot of man had never trod before, so solemn is the stillness here in the midst of the "everlasting hills." To see one solitary bird flitting fitfully from point to point only makes the loneliness seem greater, and it is absolutely touching to find in a place like this the lovely little Ranunculus alpestris and Ranunculus glacialis forcing a way between the shingly stones and opening their delicate white petals to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... world and five years afterwards found herself be-Gedged out of existence. They were struggling people in those days, and before her death my wife used to employ her, when she could, for household sewing and whatnot. And tiny Phyllis, in a childless home, became a petted darling. When my great loneliness came upon me, it was a solace to have the little dainty prattling thing to spend an occasional hour in my company. Gedge, an excellent workman, set up as a contractor. He took my modest home under his charge. A leaky tap, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... think! You remember all kinds of things you've never thought of for years and years. I used to talk to myself at last, and make believe it was another man. I was out seven days: and he was only out one night. But I think it's the loneliness that got hold of him. Man, those stars are awful; and that stillness that comes toward morning!" He stood up. "It's a great pity, because he's as good a fellow as ever was. But perhaps he'll come ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... lamp-light The prairies were brown and forbidding, the sky often a mere gray pall. The monotony of the life began to seem terrible. Sometimes her ears ached for a sound. For a time in the summer so many had seemed to need her that she had been happy in spite of her poverty and her loneliness. Now, suddenly, no one wanted her. She could find no source of inspiration. She wondered how she was going to live through the winter, and keep her patience and ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... which the limitations of the frontier permitted. Generally sharing the one-room cabin, like any member of the family, he soon learned that he was a welcome guest rather than a stranger in their midst. The loneliness of the frontier stimulated ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... laughed, a bit hysterically, because laughter is, after all, akin to tears. And the little green car shot off with a whir as I turned to enter my new world of loneliness. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Queen of Love, from Earth had flown, With her love fled, and left all nature prone; From Earth all peace with love then fled amain. In loneliness the bull stalked o'er the plain, And tossed his drooping crest toward the sky, In sadness lay upon the green to die; On the far kine looked weary and bereaved, And turned toward the gods, and wondering grieved. The troubled kine then gravely chewed their cud, And hungerless in ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... about seeing; how his position prevented him from accepting of civilities, because he had no home where he could return them; in short, he seemed about as miserable a being as is to be found anywhere,—lonely, and with sensitiveness to feel his loneliness, and capacities, now withered, to have enjoyed the sweets of life. I suppose he is comfortable enough when busied in his duties at the Custom-House; for when I spoke to him at my entrance, he was too much absorbed to hear me at first. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... should die! Oh, Hannah! it is common enough to talk of being willing to die for one we love! It is easy to die—much easier sometimes than to live: the last is often very hard! I will do more than die for my love: I will live for him! live through long years of dreary loneliness, taking my consolation in rearing his son, if you will give me the boy, and hoping in some distant future for his return, when I can present his boy to him, and say to him: 'If you cannot love me for my own sake, try to love me a little ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... I coax her to the top of the water? The Splash had been father and mother to me, and I loved her. In my loneliness I wanted her companionship. It did not look like an easy task to raise her; and yet the most difficult things become easy when we hit upon the right method of doing them. The Splash was ballasted with ten fifty-sixes, each with a ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... said Cologne, with a smile, "pathetic accounts of prisoners, who in extreme loneliness carved their names over and over again on stone as hard as the jailer's heart, but your Highness seems rather to have enjoyed yourself while so cruelly interned. May I further beg of you to enlighten us concerning ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... settlement; but a more lonely spot cannot be imagined. More than thirty years ago, Fitzroy had sailed up this bay, partially surveyed it, and marked this harbor on his chart. If any vessel has broken the loneliness of its waters since, no record of any such event has been kept. Of the presence of man, there was no sign. Yet the few days passed there were among the pleasantest of the voyage to Agassiz. The work of the dredge and ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... the multitudinous stars—which, to my mind, never betray their immeasurable distance so clearly as when one is in mid-ocean—with the sough and moan of the night wind and the soft, seething hiss of the sea whispering in one's ears, the feeling of loneliness becomes almost an obsession, the sense of all-pervading mystery persistently obtrudes itself, and one quickly falls into a condition of readiness to believe the most incredible of the countless weird stories that sailors love ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... know what gave him this horrible attack of "the blues," but the truth is he took out his handkerchief and cried like a baby from very loneliness ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... sobs and tears. "Heaven give me strength," he sighed, "that I may retain her sweet face in my memory." This was indeed a misfortune that seemed to shut the past from his thoughts, and to increase his sufferings as the future appeared to him in all its loneliness. And when he had partially recovered from this shock of grief, the good woman brought him food, for he was hungry; and also procured him a change of raiment from one of the neighbors, there not being a shred of his own in the house. And when he had satisfied his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... was, it was bound to be wholly! With women there could be no half-measures. He could not imagine a fellow half-trusting a woman in that intimate relation to himself, and in those particular circumstances of conquest and loneliness where no confidences could appear dangerous since, apparently, there could be no one she could give him away to. Moreover, in nine cases out of ten the woman would be trusted. But, trusted or mistrusted, was her presence a favourable or unfavourable condition ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... heart-broken at this bitter separation. She felt the loneliness of the castle deeply, she longed for his happy presence and the sound of his voice. She could never speak to Golo as to the friend to whose care her husband had recommended her. Her pure eyes shrank from the passionate look which gleamed in ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... expectations. It was she who had encouraged him to leave his ship, in the hope of securing a friend and defender for the girls. The wife of old Giorgio was aware of her precarious health, and was haunted by the fear of her aged husband's loneliness and the unprotected state of the children. She had wanted to annex that apparently quiet and steady young man, affectionate and pliable, an orphan from his tenderest age, as he had told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... his private secretaryship—one can imagine the twinkle in the Governor's eye, when he first came across my father building his own hut on his section outside Wellington! The offer was gratefully refused. But another year of New Zealand life brought reconsideration. The exile begins to speak of "loneliness" in his letters home, to realize that it is "collision" with other kindred minds that "kindles the spark of thought," and presently, after a striking account of a solitary walk across unexplored country in New Zealand, he confesses ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he was traveling through the green hills, regretting that he had left his child behind him at the instance of a strange woman! Even now he was doubtless deploring that he should have been moved to consider another's loneliness ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... did my wife, and we thought it might relieve your loneliness a little to spend a few days here ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... was opened. A burst of merriment smote across the loneliness. A head appeared. The ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Florimond, that her loyalty to him was no more than her loyalty to her father's wishes. Nevertheless, he thought, what manner of hurt must not her pride receive when she learned that Florimond had brought him home a wife? Garnache was full of pity for her and for the loneliness that must be hers hereafter, mistress of a vast estate in Dauphiny, alone and friendless. And he was a little sorry for himself and the loneliness which, he felt, would be his hereafter; but that was ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... loneliness of the ruins, with the silence only intensified by the sounds of fluttering wings in the tops of the towers, we in imagination sweep away the haystacks and reinstate the former grandeur of the fortress in the days ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... attacked Miss Callista once again in regard to it. She gave me a quick smile, for she was always amiable, but shook her head and introduced another topic. But one night when the wind was howling in the chimneys and the sense of loneliness was even greater than usual in the great house, we drew together on the rug in front of my bedroom fire, and, as the embers burned down to ashes before us, Miss ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... removed the poor young Prince's condition became even worse. His horrible loneliness induced an apathetic stupor to which any suffering would have been preferable. "He passed his days without any kind of occupation; they did not allow him light in the evening. His keepers never approached him but to give him food;" and on the rare occasions when they took him to the platform ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... vastness of its sameness lends A fascination which it else had not; And here my sense of solitude transcends What I have felt on any other spot: Of solitude, yet not of loneliness, For God seems present, and ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... Loneliness ached in her heart—spoke to her from the future. And five miles away Oliver, too, was lonely—and in pain. Pain!—the thought of it, as of something embodied and devilish, clutching and tearing at a man already ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surges ever through the great highway of the homeless. They shine upon long rows of lodging-houses, in which hundreds of young men, cast helpless upon the reef of the strange city, are learning their first lessons of utter loneliness; for what desolation is there like that of the careless crowd when all the world rejoices? They shine upon the tempter setting his snares there, and upon the missionary and the Salvation Army lass, disputing his catch with him; upon the police detective going ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... waned. The happy wives of young engineers, who had been tented along the line during the summer, watched the wildflowers fade with a feeling of loneliness and deep longing for their stout-hearted, strong-limbed husbands, who were away up in the cloud-veiled hills; and they longed, too, for other loved ones in the lowlands of their childhood. Foy's blasters and builders buttoned their coats and buckled down to keep warm. Below, they could ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... etc.—to say nothing of shoes and clothing, out of her earnings. Clara Morris and the Bradshaws solved the problem in the only possible way by rooming together in a large top-floor room, where they lived with a comparative degree of comfort, and with less loneliness for Clara than ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of wood were roaring and crackling in the broad fireplace, and throwing a cheerful glow and warmth through the room. The tallow candle on the mantel had not been lit, for there was no need of it, and, despite the loneliness and poverty of the sad-faced woman, there was an air of neatness and comfort about her home which would have tempted any one who could look through the narrow window ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... lessening the isolation of farm life and making it brighter and more attractive. In the immediate past the lack of just such facilities as these has driven many of the more active and restless young men and women from the farms to the cities; for they rebelled at loneliness and lack of mental companionship. It is unhealthy and undesirable for the cities to grow at the expense of the country; and rural free delivery is not only a good thing in itself, but is good because it ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Boswell's touch that summoned me from my divan. My family were on the eve of departure for a month's rest from care and play in the mountains, and I was looking forward to a period of very great loneliness. But as Boswell materialized and began his work upon the machine, the great idea flashed across my mind, and I resolved to "play it" for ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... of intense loneliness swept over her—the loneliness of the man who has been cast on a desert island, only returning to his fellows after many weary months of absence. She felt she could not endure to waste another moment ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Loneliness and desolation descended like a cloud over Julian when he had gone, for the frank belief of the boy, who cared nothing, struck like an arrow of truth to his heart, who cared everything. Was Valentine indeed dead? He would not believe it, for such a belief would bring the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... loneliness meant before!" The big hand fell in a gesture of despair. "It's dark and cold, I'm slipping down into a bottomless pit. There's not a soul in heaven or earth or hell to whom I can ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... his home in Missouri in the spring of 1822, and started for the heart of the Rocky Mountains, with a single packhorse to carry his camp equipage, and a single riding-horse. He trapped by himself for more than two years. In a short time that terrible loneliness which comes to all men, for man is a gregarious animal, was experienced in all its horrors by this isolated trapper. Like all men of his class at that time, he was exceedingly superstitious. He wanted somebody to talk to, and in the absence of a possibility ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... bitterer your loneliness, the more you are like Him who cried upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" He knows what that grief, too, is like. He feels for thee at least. Though all forsake thee, He is with thee ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... moments his irritation was manifested in a sullen reserve. To himself he could give no explanation of his state of mind; he knew merely that he retreated day by day farther into the shadow of his loneliness, and that, while in his heart he still craved human sympathy, an expression of it even from those he loved was, above all, the thing he most bitterly resented. A light flashed in the kitchen, and he went on slowly toward the house. As he reached the back porch he saw that Lila was sitting at the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the helpless living, and bombed the tombs of the helpless dead; who wrenched families apart in the night, taking their boys to slavery and their girls to wholesale violation, leaving the old people to wander in loneliness and die; who in her raids upon England slaughtered three hundred and forty-two women, and killed or injured seven hundred and fifty-seven children, and made in all a list of four thousand five hundred and sixty-eight, bombed by her airmen; whose trained nurses ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... to her conduct. Once or twice he mentioned health-food and dieting, and was pooh-poohed into a corner. As for the women attendants, who had been sent along that they might be the companions of the Princess during the long hours of loneliness and seclusion, they were trained to act as hair-dressers and French maids ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... branches of a pine, her white hands clasped upon her knees, he saw a woman sitting alone. If a hamadryad had suddenly thrust her head around the bole of a tree and looked him full in the face, he would not have been more astonished, so absolute was his sense of utter loneliness; but when he saw that the figure was that of Miss Wycliffe, he stood like one transfixed and deprived of the power of speech. This was like a wild freak of his fancy, and he could scarcely believe the vision real. The surprise ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... tale that follows could happen only as a result of the fearful loneliness and, more especially, the maddening heat of such a place as is described in these opening paragraphs. The setting in this story causes and determines ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... after fruition falls May well too high be rated ere enjoyed— In plain words,—if she looks an angel now, you will be better mated than you expected, when you find her—a woman. For flesh and blood she is, and that young blood,—whom her childish misusage and your brotherly love; her loneliness and your protection; her springing fancy and (for I may speak to you as a son) your beauty and knightly grace, have so bewitched, and as some say, degraded, that briefly, she loves you, and briefly, better, her few friends fear, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... white sand; in the frowning outlines of the determined rocks that like fortresses defied their enemy the ocean; in the roll of crisp pasturage that in unbroken swells covered the long backbone of the cape; in the few giant old trees, and, more than all, in its character of freedom, loneliness, and isolation, there was a savage charm and dignity that the thrift and cultivation, the usefulness and comfort of civilisation's ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... surely synonymous terms. And then, suddenly, a feeling of intense loneliness broke over her like a wave. She felt like a bit of driftwood, cast up upon a summer shore where flowers and verdure smiled on every side and all was peace; but at the next tide, once more the waters would engulf her and drag her back to the sparkling, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... worshipped by the heathen tribes of Eastern Europe. But he was the descendant of men who had worshipped in those groves; and the glamour of them was upon him still. He peopled the wild forest with demons and fairies: but that did not surely prevent his feeling its ennobling grandeur, its chastening loneliness. His ancestors had held the oaks for trees of God, even as the Jews held the Cedar, and the Hindoos likewise; for the Deodara pine is not only, botanists tell us, the same as the Cedar of Lebanon: but its very name—the Deodara—signifies nought else but "The ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... hear him. Her ears were attuned to voices floating to her across the desert. Of course she was beginning to wander in her mind. She knew that. There could be no other human beings in this sea of loneliness. They were alone; just they two, the degenerate ruffian and his victim. Still, it was strange. She certainly had imagined the murmur of people talking. It must be the beginning ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... most familiar objects put on strange and unreal forms, the most familiar sounds become loud and alarming. Annie slept for about an hour soundly; then she awoke, trembling with cold in every limb, startled, and almost terrified by the oppressive loneliness of the night, sure that the insect life which surrounded her, and which would keep up successions of chirps, and croaks, and buzzes, was something mysterious and terrifying. Annie was a brave child, but even brave little girls may be allowed to possess nerves ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... faint, faraway pictures of mother and father, which she had dreamt over so often that they were always fair and tender like the hazy distance of an autumn landscape. Dimly, too, she could recollect the time of loss and loneliness and half-understood grief when she cried herself to sleep at night for want of the familiar kisses, and she had hazy remembrances of strange faces and changes, and a time when the cottage by Oakfield Common was a new home, and Cousin Amelia Crayshaw, ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... Then loneliness, like a black midnight, overwhelmed her, swiftly wasting her strength, disintegrating her pride in its horrid flood. She glanced about for support, as a woman in the open street who feels she is going ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the only place for me! I cannot go among entire strangers. I am such a coward. I am afraid in my loneliness: I should be driven to despair or to insanity, or worse than all, to the unpardonable sin of suicide! I dare not go among strangers, nor dare I go among people who know me as the Duchess of Hereward, or knew me as Valerie ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... fortune of between L200 and L300 a year, which she had tied up so that nobody can touch it. That was about a year ago. I wrote to tell my father of her death, and received a pitiful letter; indeed, I have had several of them. He implored me to come out to him and not to leave him to die in his loneliness, as he soon would do of a broken heart, if I did not. He said that he had long ago given up drinking, which was the cause of the ruin of his life, and sent a certificate signed by a magistrate and a doctor ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... unseeing upward through the stalks, like the absurd and ghastly contrast of a horrible dream. But among them were the stricken living in as varied an agony, of raw wounds stung by gnats, of pain cutting deep to vitality, of thirst, of the broiling sun, of a buzzing fly, or of an intolerable loneliness there with death. Groans rose over the plain, and guided the searchers. Driscoll had already found many of his men in this way. Once he heard his own name. The voice was weak, but there was something ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the comforts and refinements of a civilized country, and came as pilgrims to a hard soil, a cold clime, and a heathen shore. They were continually forced to encounter danger, privations, sickness, loneliness, and death; and all these their religion taught them to meet with calmness, fortitude, and submission. And thus it became the custom and habit of the whole mass, to repress rather than to ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... who gazed wistfully towards the pier was one who made no farewell signal, and received no parting wave. Philosopher Jack had concealed his intention of going to sea from all his college chums, and a bitter feeling of loneliness oppressed his heart as he thought of his old father and mother, and the lowly cottage on the Border hills. He had not, indeed, acted in direct opposition to the wishes of his parents, but he had disobeyed ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... bigness of it, which had expanded her spirit an hour ago, began to frighten her. It spread out so; it went on so uncontrollably; she could never know it. Kennicott was closeted in his detective story. With the loneliness which comes most depressingly in the midst of many people she tried to forget problems, to look at the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... of feeling such as this. "If I could avoid it, I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world. I'm sorry, Dad, awfully sorry——" He hesitated, then his voice rang out clearly. There was in his tone, when he spoke again, a recognition of that loneliness which is the curse and the crown ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... like thoughts! One of the many sad things about being the "last leaf upon the tree" is having to watch the other leaves shrivel and drop off and to be left at last in utter loneliness. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the old generation were silent. Of the women who had made the social life of the century so powerful and so famous, many were quietly asleep before the storm broke; many were languishing in prison cells, with no outlook but the scaffold; some were pining in the loneliness of exile; and a few were buried in a seclusion ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... when Jeanne first attracted attention, she was about eighteen years of age. She was naturally of a susceptible disposition, which diligent attention to the legends of saints and tales of fairies, aided by the dreamy loneliness of her life while tending her father's flocks, had made peculiarly prone to enthusiastic fervor. At the same time, she was eminent for piety and purity of soul, and for her compassionate gentleness to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... glance followed his, hers grew warm and kindly. Sandford, by chance meeting the look, smiled back across the room. This little by-play filled Hillard with a sense of envy and loneliness. At three-and-thirty a bachelor realizes that there is something else in life ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... man; he thinks he is a scientist, he rather prides himself upon being cold-blooded; yet a cunning woman could twist him round her finger. He had an unhappy love-affair when he was young, so he confided to me; and now, in his need and loneliness, a beautiful woman is transformed into something supernatural in his imagination—she is like a shimmering soap-bubble, that he blows with his own breath. I know that I could never get him to see the real ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... course the outlay had been heavier than he had intended it to be, and these cares made him rather anxious. Being very good friends, we had formerly received confidences from him about the dissatisfaction created by the loneliness of his home and the want of a strong affection—in spite of his success in society and the flattering smiles and speeches of renowned beauties. In answer to my suggestion that marriage would perhaps give him what he wanted, he had answered: "No doubt; ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... down in this great church. I was thinking more of other Sabbath mornings at home, with my wife and baby, than anything else. A hymn was announced. I stood up mechanically, but there was no song in my throat. There was a great lump of loneliness only. But suddenly I listened to the words they were singing. Had they selected that hymn just for me? It seemed so. It so answered the loneliness in my heart with comfort and quiet. ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... them and to have seen noble purposes by their own self-confidence become the very means of ignoble ends, if it do not wholly depress, may kindle a passion of regret deepening the song which dares not tell the reason of its sorrow. The grand loneliness of Milton in his latter years, while it makes him the most impressive figure in our literary history, is reflected also in his maturer poems by a sublime independence of human sympathy like that with which mountains fascinate and rebuff us. But it ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... such rides. Healthy, and fearing nothing, he was a stranger to a feeling of loneliness. Alternately singing an old air, and then whistling with notes as clear and musical as a flute, he at last came in sight of the creek which had been so tranquil when he crossed it in the morning. There ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... know. That's what makes it feel so bad. I guess it's the silence, the sense of all that loneliness out beyond there that upsets me. It feels almost as if there were some living presence off over the alkali that ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... Pecos was heard, as it flowed by on his right, and now and then the gentlest possible breath of night-wind disturbed the branches overhead; but nothing else caught his notice. To prevent the feeling of utter loneliness from gaining possession of him, Fred occasionally emitted a low, soft, tremulous whistle, which was instantly responded to from the direction of Mickey. It was the old familiar signal which they had ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... profoundest desolation of mind and soul, in forced companionship with all that is unlovely and uncongenial—men, persevering nobly, live on, and live through all. The mind, like water, passes through all states, till it shall be united to what it is ever seeking. The very loneliness of man here is the greatest proof, to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... until they gave him a vague feeling of discomfort and loneliness. He turned away and looked down into the bottom of the mountain's cup. The lake lay darkling there, hooded with shadows like a nun, the snow banks at the edge indicating the band of white ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... narrow street. All round the horizon there is this same line of sinuous wave-like hills; the scoops into which they fall only revealing other hills beyond, of similar colour and shape, crowned with wild, bleak moors—grand, from the ideas of solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from the feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monotonous and illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind in which ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... fiercely. 'Cast here, in this awful loneliness—' I saw him look around on sea and cliff ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sentiments. But for duty's requirements, she would have yielded to the evident wish of Oswald Langdon. Her conduct seemed less restrained, and there was an absence of that preoccupied air so puzzling to Oswald. Realizing that their lives would drift apart, Esther felt a sense of loneliness. Her smiles were wistful ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... weak and complaining despair, he composed one of his sturdiest works, "Kampf und Sieg." He settled in Munich, and continued to correspond with Caroline, writing her the most minute descriptions of his life and his lodgings, and begging her to write him with equal fulness. His loneliness, however, at length told upon his spirits, and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... move him deeply, dangerously. He began to understand how she had turned to Clarke for companionship, not merely because he was a clergyman, but because he was a young man of more than usual culture and attainment, whose sympathy and counsel promised aid and comfort in her loneliness. "She does not love him; she merely admires certain sides of his character; she fears to marry him, and quite properly. His morbid ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... dragged their length for Miss Lady, months of heartache and rebellion, of loneliness and tears. Then came a day when, without apparent reason, the shadows lifted. She was tramping across the river flats, with Mike at her heels, when once again she heard the world singing, and before she knew it an answering song sprang ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the loneliness of his water-girt home, made his way to the meeting-house, more for the sake of a gossip with some of the neighbors than for the day's preaching, and it was there that he first heard the startling news of the unaccountable ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... "It's the loneliness of death that is terrible," said Mrs. Belmont. "If we and those whom we loved all passed over simultaneously, we should think no more of it than of changing ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... her, the queen of the scene—more reasons, I say, for the ineffable thrill of pleasure that coursed, a rapid, intoxicating stream, through her veins, than grateful affection for the author of all these goods. With a Sybarite's dread of pain and loneliness, she seldom trusted herself to look at the dark curtain in the background, against which her latter-day glories shone the more dazzlingly. But to-night she felt safe upon her throne—sat, the lady of kingdoms, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the three. "He rose up from His prayer," and turned from the spot moistened by the drops of His agony. With the traces of them upon His brow, "He came unto the disciples." How much of pathos in the simple record, "He found them sleeping." Without heavenly or earthly companionship, His loneliness is complete. ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... and we'll walk straight down to the post office and mail it so that it will go on to-night's train." Tears were far from Keineth's eyes as she walked by Barbara's side down the white road between the fields of daisies and buttercups. The little cloud of loneliness that had for a brief time threatened her sky had disappeared and she was again a light-hearted little girl, eagerly awaiting the happy things that each new day at Overlook seemed to ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... loneliness she made for herself, like many other forlorn children, a phantom friend. It was a little girl two years older than she was, for Henrietta preferred to look up, and be herself in an inferior position. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... that for home was for the loneliness of Janey Fricker, left with Miss Foster in the Rue St. Jean. She wished for Janey to walk with her in the rough sea-wind, to bathe with her, and talk with her. One morning when the sun was glorious on the dancing waves, she cried out her longing for her little friend. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... be saved and | come to the knowledge of the truth; Prosper, we pray thee, our | brethren who labour in distant lands, [especially those for whom | our prayers are desired]. Protect them in all perils by land and | sea; support them in loneliness and in the hour of trial; give | them grace to bear faithful witness unto thee; and endue them with | burning zeal and love, that they may turn many to righteousness, | and finally obtain a crown of glory; through Jesus Christ our | Lord. Amen. | | For Home Missions. ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... clime! where ceaseless summer smiles Benignant o'er those blessed isles, Which, seen from far Colonna's height, Make glad the heart that hails the sight, And give to loneliness delight. There shine the bright abodes ye seek, Like dimples upon Ocean's cheek,— So smiling round the waters lave These Edens of the eastern wave. Or if, at times, the transient breeze Break the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... remunerative; but that master has accumulated (by means of industrious application to his work and his friends) the sum of $20, which he will cheerfully pay to the man, woman, or child who will bring Jessie back again. For he is a weak human creature, is Jessie's master, in his loneliness, without his faithful, admiring ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... little roadside station shut in by the pine bush of Ontario. There was a wooden hotel beside the track, and one or two stores; but that was all, and the fact that nobody except the station-agent had appeared to watch the train come in testified to the industry, or, more probably, the loneliness of the district. While Weston stood looking about him a man came out of the office, and he was somewhat astonished to find himself face to face with ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... youth is so happy, so gay—and as for me, ever since I was a child, I have had nothing but weariness. All that travelling about, that banishment from one's own country—ill tempers, discontent, narrow ways, hard lessons—straps and backboards because I was not strong—loneliness, not a friend of my own age—and then this horrible Paris—and things that might have happened there, if my father had not saved me—" She stopped, with a little catch in her breath, and Angelot understood, remembering ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... solemn moment for all. Outside the ice drifted slowly about, thick fog settled over us, the ship's whistle sounded, and night came on. The loneliness increased. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... more compliments than visits," she writes. "I had made everybody ill. All those who did not dare send me word that they feared to embroil themselves with the court pretended that some malady or accident had befallen them." By degrees, however, she adapted herself to her situation, and in her loneliness and disappointment betook herself to pursuits which offered a strong contrast to the dazzling succession of magnificent fetes and military episodes which had given variety and excitement to her life at the Tuileries. When she grew tired of her parrots, her dogs, her ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Richmond with anger in his voice. "I wonder how many people there are nowadays who have passed through this last experience of ineffectual invocation, this appeal to the fading shadow of a vanished God. In the night. In utter loneliness. Answer me! Speak to me! Does he answer? In the silence you hear the little blood vessels whisper in your ears. You see a faint glow of colour on ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... will share my life's plans, and the needful studies of my soul." The money was found at once, and a royal hint given. The demon blood of the Angevins, which frightened most men, and kept Henry in loneliness, had no terrors for Hugh; and Henry could hardly express the pleasure he felt in a rare friendship which began here. He loved and honoured no other man so much, for he had found a man who sympathised with him ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... shade of the linden Elsa thought of all this, and pitied her own loneliness in that no brother or friend stood at her side to help her. Then the sweet singing of birds seemed to comfort her, and she dropped into a gentle sleep. As she dreamed it seemed to her that a young knight stepped out of the depths of ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... gloom and solitude of the shortened day make one readily understand why travelers of old halted at this north entrance to the Highlands, rather than run the chance of being overtaken by the dark in the depths of its loneliness. Cooper could hardly have hit on a more fitting place for the adventures of the Spy than ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... By a virtue of forgiveness which I admire and thank you for, you write telling me of the literary work you are engaged upon. If I had thought before writing the letter I am now apologizing for, I could not have failed to see that you write to me because you would relieve my loneliness as far as you are able. But I did not think: I yielded to my mood, and see now that my letters are disgracefully egotistical, and very often absurd; for have I not begged of you to remember that since ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... doors. In a dark night, and especially in a night both dark and stormy, I feel myself one of the most wretched beings in existence. Imagine a vessel lost in the wide ocean, and without a compass, and you will have some faint idea of my perplexity, discouragement, and loneliness at such a time. I have a strange propensity for shooting off into the gutter, or for shouldering the fences, under the impression that I am pursuing a straight course. I go quite out of my way to trip over chance stones, or to pick ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... everything—understood that all was finished and finished forever. With the intuition of a woman, she felt that Jean's love for my sister was real and deep, she bowed her head to circumstances and she departed, accepting, without a murmur, the loneliness that Jean's action brought upon her. She carried her fidelity to the end, for she would have slain herself sooner than become [hesitating out of respect for Mme. de Ronchard] a courtesan. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... heart audacious, Weeping, lifts up in bodeful stress, What if my native land forget me In my sad exile's loneliness? ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... They have known joys and sorrows, failures and successes. They have hoped and feared. All that Beethoven poured into this music from his experience of poverty, of conflict with physical weakness and the cruel limitations of Fate, of baffled desire, of loneliness, of strong resolution, of immortal courage and faith, these players in their measure and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... has its place in this ideal; every irksome job, every wearisome responsibility. The fact that we are not always aware of it in no way annuls the other fact that it is so. Boredom, monotony, drudgery, bereavement, loneliness, all the clamour of unsatisfied ambitions and aching sensibilities, have their share in this divine yearning of the spirit to grasp what as yet is beyond its reach. All of that hacking of the man to fit the job ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... Geoff, starting up. "When I think what this place is going to seem like after you've gone, and what the ranch will be with all the heart taken from it, and the loneliness made twice as lonely by comparison, I grow desperate, and feel as if I could not let you go without at least risking the question. But Clover,—let me call you so this once,—no woman could consent to such a life unless she cared very much for a ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... Browning told her all this shortly after, but before he told, she had divined his thought. For solitude and loneliness and heart-hunger had given her the power of an astral being; she was in communication with all the finer forces that pervade our ether. He would love her back to life and light—he told ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... accustomed to solitude; but, when the Scud had actually disappeared, he was almost overcome with a sense of his loneliness. Never before had he been conscious of his isolated condition in the world; for his feelings had gradually been accustoming themselves to the blandishments and wants of social life; particularly as the last were connected with the domestic affections. Now, all had vanished, as it ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... hate it, I think, Miss Norah," he said, "when the loneliness of it comes over me, and all the queer sounds of it bother me and keep me awake. Then I realise that I'm really a good way from anywhere, and I get what are familiarly called the blues. However, that's not at all times, and indeed mostly I ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... down off the high plateau, with its cold and snow, and camped in a sunny sward near a splendid ranch where lambs were at play on the green grass. Blackbirds were calling, and we heard our first crane bugling high in the sky. From the loneliness and desolation of the high country, with its sparse road houses, we were now surrounded by sunny fields ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the spiritual life, for such an interruption would hardly harmonize with their curriculum of regular progress towards enlightenment. But mystic poetry testifies that in Asia as in Europe this feeling of desertion and loneliness is a frequent experience in the struggles and adventures of the soul. It is apparently not necessary, just as the incidental joys and triumphs of the soul—strains of heavenly music, aerial flights, and visions ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... then it was always quiet; and perhaps I noticed the obtrusive air of solitude and sleepiness even more than usual, because I had just returned from Salisbury. All things are comparative. After the lost loneliness of Klaas's farm, even brand-new Salisbury ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... chimes! that in the loneliness of night Salute the passing hour, and in the dark And silent chambers of the household mark The movements of the myriad orbs ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... new-born lamb nursing under her flank. Here was his new realm peopled at once. Here were followers of his own kind. He stepped briskly down from his hillock and graciously accepted the homage of the ewe, who snuggled up against him as if afraid at the loneliness and the coming on of night. All night he slept beside the mother and her young, in the sheltered hollow, and kept no watch because he feared no foe. But the ewe kept watch, knowing well what perils might steal ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... work to us all the way. When I think of the tons of candy and the mountains of flowers and the wagonloads of latest books that we lavished, and of the hard feelings it made in other quarters, and of our loneliness amid all this gayety, and of our frantic efforts to make the prom a success, with ten couples dancing and the rest decorating the walls, I sometimes wonder whether the college was worth our great love ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... quite light now, and she crept to her husband's room. She had not seen him during the previous day. He had been out the whole of it. She felt drawn towards him by calamity, by the loneliness of her misery. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... their collapsing bunks, shivered incessantly, and kept on groaning even as we went about our work. But they all worked. That crew of Liverpool hard cases had in them the right stuff. It's my experience they always have. It is the sea that gives it—the vastness, the loneliness surrounding their dark stolid souls. Ah! Well! we stumbled, we crept, we fell, we barked our shins on the wreckage, we hauled. The masts stood, but we did not know how much they might be charred down below. It was nearly calm, but a long swell ran from ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of Latisan—the breaking of her grandfather's ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... too comfortable with Mrs. Bobby. In fact I wished to be just a little miserable in Belvern, so that I could paint with a frenzy. Sometimes, when I have been in a state of almost despairing loneliness and gloom, the colours have glowed on my canvas and the lines have shaped themselves under my hand independent of my own volition. Now, tucked away in a corner of my consciousness is the knowledge that I need never be lonely again unless I choose. When I yield myself fully ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... servants and lights when they returned from an evening's pleasure in the Piazza. It seemed scarcely just; but then, those Giustiniani were dead, and we were alive, and that was one advantage; and, besides, the loneliness and desolation of the palace had a peculiar charm, and were at any rate cheaper than its former splendor could have been. I am afraid that people who live abroad in the palaces of extinct nobles do not keep ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of religion nor of chivalry. Dowers were more thought of than devotion in convents as elsewhere. Whitby being one of the oldest and grandest foundations was sure to be inaccessible to a high-born but unportioned girl, and Grisell in her sense of loneliness saw nothing before her but to become an anchoress, that is to say, a female hermit, such as generally lived in strict seclusion under shelter of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... many years believed that he must have some personal wrongs to brood over,—wrongs, probably, to which were to be attributed his loneliness and exile; but of such Duncan had never spoken, uttering no maledictions except against the real or imagined foes ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... ten. The loneliness of the place somewhat depressed her. She took up a book and threw it down again. Then she examined with curiosity some knick-knacks upon a small round table by her side. Amongst them was a revolver. She handled ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the head of the house, who represented it, could not understand that he might have wronged his own good sense and hurt the interests of all. Nevertheless, he was sad. Few days went by when he did not cry in secret, for his wife, and although loneliness began to weigh on him, he was more afraid of entering into a new marriage than desirous of finding a support in his sorrow. He had a vague idea that love might have consoled him by coming to him of a sudden, for this is the only way love can console. We never find it when ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... a companion on Adam met the wishes of man, who had been overcome by a feeling of isolation when the animals came to him in pairs to be named.[39] To banish his loneliness, Lilith was first given to Adam as wife. Like him she had been created out of the dust of the ground. But she remained with him only a short time, because she insisted upon enjoying full equality with her husband. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... were induced to risk their money upon such representations?* Oh, the dreariness, the loneliness, of that first night at anchor in the Bay of Biscay! The misgivings that filled my heart! Who was right? What should I find over there? Surely these statesmen, capitalists, journalists, legislators, should ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... risen, and Ruth, gazing into the starry vault of the sky and exchanging no speech with Martin, experienced a sudden feeling of loneliness. She glanced at him. A puff of wind was heeling the boat over till the deck was awash, and he, one hand on tiller and the other on main-sheet, was luffing slightly, at the same time peering ahead to make out the near-lying ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... true that "loneliness tends to save the Seer from becoming a charlatan and to make of him a true Reformer." But it is not that peculiar loneliness of the Seer that the medical trade unions afford the reforming physician. That is inevitably ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... consuming desire impelled him to spend two years in Italy (1786-1788). The rest of his years Goethe spent in Weimar, his life enriched above all else by his friendship with Schiller. In this second Weimar period Goethe reached the acme of his powers. Even his declining years, although marked by loneliness and bringing him a full measure of grief (his wife, Christiane Vulpius, whom he had met shortly after his return from Italy, died in 1816, followed in 1830 by his only son), exemplified that earnest striving ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... effect of their meeting on Mordecai. For many winters, while he had been conscious of an ebbing physical life, and as widening spiritual loneliness, all his passionate desire had concentrated itself in the yearning for some young ear into which he could pour his mind as a testament, some soul kindred enough to accept the spiritual product of his own brief, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... heard that the train-service had stopped; that he could not persuade her to wait till daylight or to listen for a moment to what he had to say of the danger and terrors awaiting her in the darkness, and the awful loneliness of the hills. She didn't fear nature even at its worst, and she knew these hills better than many who had lived among them for years. She was bound to go, and ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... he appreciated the full extent of his loneliness; his utter lack of resource in a crisis like this. Most men, however solitary, lay by material things for themselves, build homes and surround themselves with personal possessions from which, or amid which, they can gain some ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... volition. There is something deeper in man than his esthetic desire or his active practise, something deeper beneath us all than anything that finds expression, certainly than anything that finds satisfaction. There is the self; there is myself, yourself; there is that strange, mysterious life of loneliness which stands, and thinks, and judges, and appraises. When, by divine grace, we escape from the voice of the crowd, and from the cry of custom, from the delirium of desire, that poor lonely self within us pleads to us in a cry like the call of the starveling ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... this song? Because, all at once, as she thought of Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the misery of that time swept over her—its rebellion, its hideous fear, its bitter loneliness. She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her then, in the hour of her direst apprehension. She sang it now to her own dead child, and to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... silk watch-pocket, a parting present from a kind-hearted, sentimental German governess with flaxen curls and little blue eyes; and sometimes an old friend from Moscow would come out to you and throw you into ecstasies with new poetry, often even with his own. But, oh, the loneliness, the insufferable slavery of a tutor's lot! the impossibility of escape, the endless autumns and winters, the ever-advancing disease!... ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... the world is there ever utter solitude? The vanity of man supposes that loneliness is his absence! Who shall say what millions of spiritual beings glide invisibly among scenes apparently the most deserted? Or what know we of our own mechanism, that we should deny the possibility of life and motion to things ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distribution of the dead mother's estate, had fallen all that they deemed of value—the mocking-bird. They could be divided, but it could not, so it was carried away into the strange country, and the world of William knew it no more forever. Yet still through the aftertime of his loneliness its song filled all the dream, and seemed always sounding in his ear and in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce |
