"Melancholic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and temperament I have written. No one can fail to note the chief characteristics: their gregariousness, their melancholic and subjective way of looking at life, their passion for music. It is more what they think, than what they do or see, that gives them pleasure. They agree with Erasmus, that "it is a foolish error to believe that happiness is dependent upon things; it ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... thing first became known, but there was soon no doubt whatever that it was true. Thomas Reid, the sexton, who remembered that the old squire died forty years ago come Michaelmas, and had been buried in a "wonderful heavy" coffin, Thomas Reid the stern censor of the vicar's sermons, a melancholic and sober man, so far lost his head over the news as to ask Mr. Ambrose's leave to ring the bells, Mr. Abraham Boosey having promised beer for the ringers. Even to the vicar's enlightened mind it seemed fitting that there should ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... law of sacrifice,' Mr. Evelyn said, in his melancholic way. 'The harvest of surrender here is to be garnered ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr'd up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours. Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and illustrate ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of this work, Mr. Leland has aimed at the defence of that view of life which combines a cheerful earnestness of purpose with manly energy of action, as opposed to the melancholic, whining, lachrymose spirit, which has been affected by certain popular modern poets, and, through their vicious example, has been cherished as one of the essential qualities of genius. Of this style of character ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... also educate our dispositions. Some one has said: "Disposition is a lens through which men and things are seen. A fiery temper, like a red glass, gives to all objects a lurid glare; a melancholic temper, like a blue lens, imparts its own hue; through the green spectacles of jealousy every one else becomes an object of distrust and dislike; and he who looks through the black glass of malice, finds others wearing the ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... in the gathering shadows with melancholic despair. Its walls looked out over the unproductive acres around it as grimly as a fortress overlooks a hostile territory, and its occupants lived with as defensive a frugality as if they were in fact a beleaguered garrison ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... at once follows his passion before his reason counsels him. Now the impulse of passion may arise either from its quickness, as in bilious persons [*Cf. I-II, Q. 46, A. 5], or from its vehemence, as in the melancholic, who on account of their earthy temperament are most vehemently aroused. Even so, on the other hand, a man fails to stand to that which is counselled, because he holds to it in weakly fashion by reason of the softness of his temperament, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the cardinal died, and many gentlemen that served the Red Robe found themselves no longer in esteem, Gonzague passed at once into the circle of the king's most intimate friends. Gonzague, as the comrade of a ruling potentate, proved himself a master of all arts that might amuse a melancholic sovereign newly redeemed from an age-long tutelage, and eager to sate those many long-restrained pleasures that he was at last free to command. Gonzague's ambition appeared to be to play the Petronius part, to be the Arbiter of Elegancies ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... conceding at the time of the poet's death something to the British admiration of him, said he was "rich in temperament." The phrase is well chosen. An English expert on the subject of temperament, who visited Whitman some years ago, said he had all four temperaments, the sanguine, the nervous, the melancholic, and the lymphatic, while most persons have but two ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... tough, hard-fisted men of the world, but to the tender sensibility of a poet it must have been a crushing blow. There can be as little doubt that it brought on the malady that abbreviated his life, as that it gave a melancholic tone to his thought and filled his mind ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Nay, I remember. When I wrote that sentence I was thinking of Berreo. I loved him, though I took his city. He was a valiant and liberal gentleman, and of a great heart. I mind how I combated his melancholy, for he was most melancholic. But now I have grown like him. Perhaps Sir Edward Coke was right and I have a Spanish heat. I think a man cannot strive whole-heartedly with an enemy unless he have much in common with him, and as the strife goes on he gets liker.... Ah, Jasper, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... and foil. Six feet and three inches tall, he was long-legged, lantern-jawed and goggle-eyed. Bilious in his constitution, he was melancholic in his temperament, had been crossed in love and soured at twenty, betrayed and bankrupted at thirty, and at forty had turned his back upon the world, forswearing all its amusements but those of the table, which his poor digestion made ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... then shining so brightly, and the sky is so blue, and all is so calm and motherly and safe. She sighs for the peace of that sequestered home; then shudders to think that she shall never see it more. Accused of witchcraft, by her own ascetic melancholic father, she utters no word of denial to the charge; for her heart is dark, it is tarnished by earthly love, she dare not raise her thoughts to Heaven. Parted from her sisters; cast out with horror by the people she had lately saved from despair, she wanders forth, desolate, forlorn, not knowing ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... ease and pleasaunce where, an ye be minded to list to the folly of a rarely foolish fool, I will, with foolish jape and quip, befool thy mind to mirth and jollity, for thou art a sad fool, methinks, and something melancholic!" ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... sixteenth in England, repressed and killed all germinations of free intellectual or social intercourse amongst ourselves. One was the national reserve;' and this was strengthened by concurring with a national temperament—not phlegmatic (as is so falsely alleged), but melancholic, dignified, and for that reason, if there had been no other, anti-mercurial. But the main cause of this reserve lay in the infrequency of visits consequent upon the difficulties of local movement. The other frost lay in the Spanish stateliness and the inflexibility of our social ceremonies. Our ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... nymph of a most wandering and giddy disposition, humorous as the air, she'll run from gallant to gallant, as they sit at primero in the presence, most strangely, and seldom stays with any. She spreads as she goes. To-day you shall have her look as clear and fresh as the morning, and to-morrow as melancholic as midnight. She takes special pleasure in a close obscure lodging, and for that cause visits the city so often, where she has many secret true concealing favourites. When she comes abroad she's more loose and scattering than dust, and will fly from place to place, as she were wrapped with a ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... life with our own eyes, it seems to me, a very different hypothesis suggests itself. What little we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken an earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? His nervous melancholic temperament indicates rather a seriousness too deep for him. Of those stories of 'Spectres;' of the white Spectre in broad daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, we are not bound to believe much;—probably no more than ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Montaigne's daily life, with outward monotony and internal variety, was a pleasant miscellany on which to comment. He was of a middle temperament, "between the jovial and the melancholic"; a lover of solitude, yet the reverse of morose; choosing bright companions rather than sad; able to be silent, as the mood took him, or to gossip; loyal and frank; a hater of hypocrisy and falsehood; a despiser of empty ceremony; disposed to interpret all things to the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... you object to the horrible, I will gently slide into the pathetic and melancholic. There is our friend Atticus,—I call him so in public, because it would not do to name Brown right out, when telling his private griefs. Atticus, when he read a book lately, having "A man married is a man marred" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... poems of his which have been preserved, for his early lampoons on his neighbors have happily been lost, are equal in poetic spirit and metrical art to Whittier's "The Prisoner for Debt," to which they are strikingly similar in melancholic mood. ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... a great reputation in melancholic affections. Manardus says it removes sadness and makes him ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... or my honor that the maniac had undermined. It was death that he had planned for me; death with the degradation of the scaffold. To strike me down with certainty he had not hesitated to end his life—a life which was, no doubt, already threatened by a melancholic impulse to self-destruction; and the last agony of the suicide had been turned, perhaps, to a devilish joy by the thought that he dragged down my life with his. For, so far as I could see at the moment, my ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... down to watch, upon a Bank, With Ivy canopied, and interwove With flaunting Honeysuckle, and beganne, Wrapt in a pleasing Fit of Melancholic, To meditate. ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... disheartened; desponding; chapfallen[obs3], chopfallen[obs3], jaw fallen, crest fallen. sad, pensive, penseroso[It], tristful[obs3]; dolesome[obs3], doleful; woebegone; lacrymose, lachrymose, in tears, melancholic, hypped[obs3], hypochondriacal, bilious, jaundiced, atrabilious[obs3], saturnine, splenetic; lackadaisical. serious, sedate, staid, stayed; grave as a judge, grave as an undertaker, grave as a mustard ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... which time it is good to bleed the choleric; in its third quadrant it is cold and moist, and phlegmatic people may be bled; and in its fourth it is cold and dry, at which time it is well to bleed the melancholic." Whatever the moon's phase may be, let blood be shed! We are reminded here of that sanguifluous theology, which even Christians of a certain temperament seem to enjoy, while they sing of fountains filled with blood: as though a God of love could ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... and when he came to him cried, "Fetch me my Wazir, Ja'afar the Barmaki, without stay or delay." Accordingly, he went out and returned with the Minister who, finding him alone, which was indeed rare, and seeing as he drew near that he was in a melancholic humour, never even raising his eyes, stopped till his lord would vouchsafe to look upon him. At last the Prince of True Believers cast his glance upon Ja'afar, but forthright turned away his head and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... broiled the day before, underwent the operation of frying on the following. Cold meat appeared as hot pie, with many other curious and ingenious devices. Then the wine was so adulterated, compelled, like a melancholic patient, to look old before its time, and fitted, like a pauper, with a ready-made coat perceptibly impregnated with bad brandy, and tasted of every thing but the grape, that, in about six months, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... little lame, but unaffected, warm and obliging. Mrs. Harville, a degree less polished than her husband, seemed to have the same good feelings and cordiality; while Captain Benwick, who was the youngest of the three naval officers and a comparatively little man, had a pleasing face and a melancholic air, just as he ought to have. He had been engaged to Captain Harville's sister, and was now mourning her loss. They had been a year or two waiting for fortune and promotion. Fortune came, his prize-money ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... mental diseases into two, the maniacal and melancholic. Mania was, however, really a further development of melancholia, and represented a high grade of insanity. Under melancholy he groups not only what we denominate by that term, but also all depressed conditions, and the paranoias, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... either Monsieur or Madame Perny, I beg you will give them this melancholic proof of my caducity, and tell them that the last time I went to see the boys, I carried the Michaelmas quarterage in my pocket; and when I was there I totally forgot it; but assure them, that I have not the least ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 1829.—I shall always be glad to have you come to me when saddened. The melancholic does not misbecome you. The lights of your character are wintry. They are generally inspiriting, life-giving, but, if perpetual, would glare too much on the tired sense; one likes sometimes a cloudy day, with its damp and warmer breath,—its gentle, down-looking ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... made her acquaintance, that she was lively even to giddiness, heedless, bold, even coquettish, and appeared to be incapable of a reasonable attachment? However, to-day, you tell me, she has become a serious melancholic; pre-occupied, timid, affected; sentiment has taken the place of mincing airs; at least she appears to so fit in with the character she assumes to-day, that you imagine it to be her true one, and her former one, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... 'You were always a melancholic soul,' Trombin observed. 'As for me, I cannot but laugh when I think that we shall have to rescue our man from the danger of being hanged as a counterfeiter, in order that we may ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... "Celts of tall stature, with blue eyes, white skins, and blond hair: they are communicative, impetuous, versatile; they pass rapidly from courage to despair. The Bretons are entirely different: they are taciturn, hold strongly to their ideas and usages, are persevering and melancholic; in a word, both in morale and physique they present the type of a southern ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... so detached from everything?... It is not true. Tell me that it pleased you.... It must please you, if only because it pleases me. I don't like you to have a disillusioned air. The tone of your letter is melancholic. That must not be.... It is good that you are more just to others. But that is no reason why you should abase yourself, as you do, by saying that you are worse than the worst of them. A good Christian would applaud you. I tell you ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... naturally runs into the notes peculiar to any of these moods, are likewise in nature hereunto congenerous? C Fa ut may show me to be of an ordinary capacity, though good disposition. G Sol re ut, to be peevish and effeminate. Flats, a manly or melancholic sadness. He who hath a voice which will in some measure agree with all cliffs, to be of good parts, and fit for variety of employments, yet somewhat of an inconstant nature. Likewise from the TIMES: so semi-briefs ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... etiology of mental disease and that no one would count the cerebral symptoms of Bright's disease as mental is no longer held. Ballet enumerates a number of works upon so-called folie brightique which tend to prove that acute or chronic Bright's disease gives rise either to melancholic disorder or alternately to maniacal and melancholic disorder. How the mental disease is produced is doubtful. Ballet holds that all the various psychopathic disorders resulting from Bright's disease are autotoxic. Renal disease like heart disease is only capable ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... naturally feels for a discovery of his own. This kindly feeling (in some cases, at least) extended to the author, who, on the internal evidence of his sketches, came to be regarded as a mild, shy, gentle, melancholic, exceedingly sensitive, and not very forcible man, hiding his blushes under an assumed name, the quaintness of which was supposed, somehow or other, to symbolize his personal and literary traits. He is by no ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the ascendant. But each and every of them concealed his thought and hid all he had seen nor would any return a reply or aught of address would supply; and said they, 'O King of the Age, verily appearances in dreams hit the mark at times and at times fly wide; for when a man is of a melancholic humour he seeth in his sleep things which be terrible and horrible and he waxeth startled thereat: haply this vision thou hast beheld may be of the imbroglios of dreams so do thou commit the reins to Him who all overreigns and the best Worker ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... that beaucheouz weatheh juz at the pwesent? Me, I'm well. Yes, I'm always well, in fact. At the same time nevvatheless, I fine myseff slightly sad. I s'pose 'tis natu'al—a man what love the 'itings of Lawd By'on as much as me. You know, of co'se, the melancholic intelligens?" ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... without speaking or making other advances. He was a hard-working, honest, sober man of quiet habits, a good father to his family and happy at home. He showed not the slightest sign of insanity. But he was taciturn, melancholic and nervous; a sister was an idiot. He was arrested, but on the report of the experts that he committed these acts from a morbid impulse he could not control he was released. (Trochon, Archives de ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... apparent phlegm, from which it would seem impossible to arouse them. This phlegmatic temperament lessens the credit of the men with the females, who uniformly prefer the European, or the still more vivacious negro. "The indigenous Mexican is grave, melancholic, silent, so long as he is not under the influence of intoxicating liquors. This gravity is peculiarly remarkable in Indian children, who at the age of four or five years display more intelligence and precocity than the children of whites. The Mexican loves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... Sir George Goring was caustic and severe; Sir John Finett pleasant and social, delighting in nothing so much as in the happiness and gratification of his friends. But the natural disposition of his thoughts was wild and melancholic, taking its hue from some early impression, that was now fading in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the fact that the Professor was evidently again suffering severely. "There is a melancholy," said Goedike, "and it is the most usual, in which the inward depression easily changes to displeasure against every one, and the household of the melancholic suffers thereby intolerably; for the displeasure turns against them,—no one does anything properly, nothing is in its place. How very different is Gellert's melancholy! Not a soul suffers from it but himself, against himself ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach
... decapitation—and his consequent enthusiasm was so rabid that I was afraid the morbidity of such matters was beginning to pervert his senses. For several years I had become progressively aware of Carse's melancholic attitude, and I had often recommended that he take a vacation from criminal cases. His indefatigable enthusiasm for research was all against my advice, and he had gone relentlessly ahead to the tragic climax which my greatest fears could not have ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... no cause. They also weep disproportionately on the occurrence of any real cause of grief. The length of time during which some patients weep is astonishing, as well as the amount of tears which they shed. One melancholic girl wept for a whole day, and afterwards confessed to Dr. Browne, that it was because she remembered that she had once shaved off her eyebrows to promote their growth. Many patients in the asylum sit for a long time rocking themselves backwards and forwards; "and if spoken to, they stop their movements, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... procured in response to your request, and the governor's instructions to me for a full inquiry into all the circumstances is that since her confinement Miss Vinsolving has been under constant observation. She has been orderly and obedient and except for slightly melancholic tendencies, which might easily be provoked by the nature of her environment, is quite natural in her behavior. I draw the inference, however, that this docility may be merely the forerunner of ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb |
