"Pitiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the room, and half an hour afterwards left the house, leaving my father in a state of pitiable nervousness. Night after night I heard him pacing his room, and it was just as he was recovering his confidence that the blow did ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... satisfaction of thinking, and having others think, how fine we look. Worse still, we are tempted to try to look not as well as we can, but better than somebody else; and by this combination of rivalry with vanity we get the most contemptible and pitiable level to which perversity in dress can bring us. There is no end to the ridiculous and injurious absurdities to which this hollow vanity will lead those who are silly enough ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... to Keredec with a frightened gesture and an unintelligible word of appeal, as if entreating him to deny what George had said. The professor's beard was trembling; he looked haggard; an almost pitiable apprehension hung upon his eyelids; ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and attitudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... committee? On the one hand, there was all the property of the country, in every variety and form, aggregated to support a measure peculiarly framed for its interest and protection. Who was the other party? All that was pitiable and miserable in the land, sunken alike by ignorance and destitution. How, again, were the respective causes of these parties conducted? On the one side was one of the most active and vigilant bodies of men, the poor-law commissioners and their assistants; but who was there on the other to advocate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... interested in his fate, Affected by the details of his pitiable state. They waited on the Secretary, somewhere in Whitehall, Who said he would receive them any day ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... doctrine identically the same. In either case no improvement is possible, and the authority of human ideals is denied. To escape, to stanch natural wounds, to redeem society and the private soul, are then mistaken and pitiable ambitions, adding to their vanity a certain touch of impiety. One who really believes that the world's work is all providentially directed and that whatever happens, no matter how calamitous or shocking, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... wrongs, the national curse overtakes him. In standing up for the letter of the law against all the pleadings of mercy, he has strengthened his enemies' hands, and sharpened their weapons, against himself; and the terrible Jew sinks at last into the poor, pitiable, heart-broken Shylock. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... away without seeing Yves, asked for him with a thinly veiled persistency which was remarkable. Yves, for whom I then sent, made himself particularly charming to her, so much so that this time I felt a shade of more serious annoyance; I even asked myself whether the laughably pitiable ending, which I had hitherto vaguely foreseen, might not, after all, soon ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... foliage of the trees. It had been expensively and splendidly furnished with every thing desirable for a rich man's dwelling, and the upholsterers had enough to relate to the listening Romans of the elegant magnificence now displayed in this formerly pitiable villa. How gladly would the former promenaders now have returned to this garden; how gladly would they now have revisited this villa, which, with its deserted halls and its ragged and dirty tapestry, had formerly seemed to them not ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... but utterly incapable of understanding them—consequently a dupe in friendship, in business, in everything; governed by all who could manage to win his admiration, or on very slight grounds could claim his affection. His capacity was small, and yet he believed he knew everything, which was the more pitiable, as all this came to him with his places, and arose more from stupidity than presumption—not at all from vanity, of which he was divested. The most remarkable thing is that the chief origin of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... refuge in the monasteries, they were slaughtered by thousands together; others, tempted back to their homes by the promulgation of an amnesty, perished family by family. The lot of those who were spared was almost more pitiable than of those who died. The slave-markets of Egypt and Tunis were glutted with Chian captives. The gentleness, the culture, the moral worth of the Chian community made its fate the more tragical. No district ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... there—how he had toiled, agonized, suffered, before finally yielding to the inevitable and plunging forward in unconsciousness, written as legibly as though by a pen. Every pang of mental torture had left plainest imprint across that haggard countenance. He appeared old, pitiable, a wreck. Carson, who in his long service had witnessed much of death and suffering, bent tenderly above him, seeking for some faint evidence of lingering life. His fingers felt for no wound, for to his experienced eyes the sad tale was already sufficiently clear—hunger, exposure, the horrible ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... insight into your nature, be sure that he has mourned; such lore is the alchemy of tears. Hence the insensible and almost universal confusion of idea which confounds melancholy with depth, and finds but hollow inanity in the symbol of a laugh. Pitiable error! Reflection first leads us to gloom, but its next stage is to brightness. The Laughing Philosopher had reached the goal of Wisdom; Heraclitus whimpered at the starting-post. But enough for Lucy to gain even ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said to poor Eva, "don't pity him, though I daresay he's the most pitiable of the lot; show me the way through, and I'll follow ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... o'clock in the morning to help feed the English soldiers who were on their way home after being exchanged for German prisoners. We had the privilege of giving some of them the first white bread they had had in four years. The men who had been kept working behind the lines were in a pitiable condition. One such man happened to be at my table,—for they are taken off the train for two hours, given hot tea and roast beef and ham sandwiches,—and the poor fellow began taking sandwiches, eating a ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... or to present what is said in such a way that the student thinks there is nothing more to be said, is to dwarf and stultify the mind. The inclination of most students is to depend upon the teacher with a helplessness that is as enervating as it is pitiable. Too many teachers, flattered by this attitude or possessed of a sentimental sympathy, encourage it. Thought, discretion, and courage are required to put a student on his own resources and compel him to stay there until he ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... has opened channels flowing past almost every man's door, ready to convey his donations to distant regions of the globe, carrying light and salvation wherever they go. The appalling condition of the heathen in bygone ages has been as great and pitiable as now; but never have there been so many available opportunities to reach them. These opportunities ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... the two animals, with an injunction that she is to whip them every day at a certain hour as a further retribution for their crimes. This was accordingly punctually performed; and, at the end of each day's penance, the lady, having before paid no regard to the animals' gestures and pitiable cries, wept over them, took them in her arms, kissed them, and carefully wiped the moisture from their eyes. Having persevered for a length of time in this discipline, the offenders are finally, by a counter-incantation, restored ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... professions as well as in the Church. I, for aught he knows, may be a doctor and I might tell my own story; or I may be a barrister and have found it my duty to win a case which I thought a very poor one, whereby others, whose circumstances were sufficiently pitiable, lost their all; yet doctors and barristers do not write to the newspapers to air their poor consciences in broad daylight. Why should An Earnest (I hate the word) Clergyman do so? Let me give him a last word or two of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... him the long enchained, released For bride of the miracle day up the midway blue; She from her heavenly lover fallen to serve for feast Of rancours and raw hungers; she, the untrue, Yet pitiable, not despicable, gazed. Fawning, her body bent, she gazed With eyes the moonstone portals to her heart: Eyes magnifying through hysteric tears This apparition, ghostly for belief; Demoniac or divine, but sole Over earth's mightiest written Chief; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the effect was excellent: it gave the men time to compose themselves after the first shock; for, perhaps, of all shocks to the human frame, there is none which creates a greater panic than the first intimation of fire on board of a vessel—a situation, indeed, pitiable, when it is considered that you have to choose between the two elements seeking your destruction. Philip did not speak for a minute or two. He then pointed out to the men the danger of their situation, what were the ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were cared for hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to the neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as I have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The companionship of so many seemed to make a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... round at her surreptitiously; and Lucius turned his face upon his mother's, almost with an air of triumph. But she bore it all without flinching;—bore it all without flinching, though the state of her mind at that moment must have been pitiable. And Mrs. Orme, who held her hand all the while, knew that it was so. The hand which rested in hers was twitched as it were convulsively, but the culprit gave no outward ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... singular manner of acting. Could she not have given him his dismissal in some other way than in my presence? I hate to so cruelly use my advantage in crushing a poor rival; for, after all, a man is a man! This poor buccaneer is going to find himself in a pitiable position. But let me hold firm; and show Blue Beard that I am not the dupe of her confidence concerning her deceased husbands, and that I am not afraid to ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... here—to the heat, to fever, and to boredom; and from day to day she was bound to reflect, like a mirror, his idleness, his viciousness and falsity—and that was all she had had to fill her weak, listless, pitiable life. Then he had grown sick of her, had begun to hate her, but had not had the pluck to abandon her, and he had tried to entangle her more and more closely in a web of lies. . . . These men had done ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... divined why it was that Michael had ended by accepting his vague pretences with apparent calm, indignation, wrath, would have possessed him; he believed, however, that the old man out of kindness subdued what he really felt. Sidney's state was pitiable. He knew not whether he more shrank from the thought of being infected with Joseph Snowdon's baseness or despised himself for his attitude to Jane. Despicable entirely had been his explanations to Michael, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... were hopelessly broken; but what was considered wisdom in the French was reckoned weakness in the Germans and the Prussian Guards, whose return to Berlin, concealed in furniture-vans to hide their pitiable plight, was graphically described in the English press by an imaginative American journalist, were really sent as a contribution to that immense effort in the East by which, in spite of the Somme campaign, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a digression,—from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands stock still;—and if he goes on with his main work,—then there is an end of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... suggestion of violence such a pitiable panic fell upon the older man that Woolfolk halted. Lichfield Stope raised his hands as if to ward off the mere impact of the words themselves; his face was stained with the thin red tide ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... good a man as your father was, my boy," he said, and Dan rode back the pitiable way through the rear of that noble army of Virginia—through ranks of tattered, worn, hungry soldiers, among the broken debris of wagons and abandoned guns, past skeleton horses and ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... man can endure. My poor daughter has suffered pitiably, and night and day required three persons to support her. The crisis of extreme danger is over, and she is rallying surprisingly, but the doctors are yet doubtful of ultimate issue. But the suffering was so pitiable I almost got to wish to see her die. She is easy now. When she will be fit to travel home I know not. I most sincerely hope that Mrs. Huxley keeps up pretty well. The work which most men have to do is a blessing to them in such cases as ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... contrary; it is French comedy of the best type. Don't you agree, sir, that the police would be an inartistic error?" He was perfectly calm and collected, whereas they were in a pitiable state. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... card-playing, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of seeing Miss Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives of those rural forefathers, whom ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... pieces, and laid it down before them; when she saw that they refused to eat, she laid her paws first upon one, then upon the other, and endeavoured to raise them up, making at the same time the most pitiable moans. Finding she could not stir them, she went off, and when she had got at some distance, looked back and moaned; and that not availing to entice them away, she returned, and smelling round them, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... Nieuport, from the terrible days of the Spanish invasion down to these days of even worse fate, has been pitiable. Its former sea trade after the Spanish invasion was never recovered, and its population, which was beginning to be thrifty and prosperous up to 1914, has now entirely disappeared. Nieuport is now in ashes and ruins. When ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... of almost all nations we find some that illustrate the mournful and destitute state of motherless orphans. There seems to be hardly any feeling, which comes more directly home to the affectionate compassion of the human heart, than the pitiable and touching condition of helpless little beings left to the tender mercies of a stepmother; who, with her traditional severity, may be called a kind of standing bugbear of the popular imagination. The Danes have a beautiful ballad, in which the ghost of a mother is ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... the core. vile, base, villainous; mean &c (paltry) 643; injured &c; deteriorated &c 659; unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent; below par &c (imperfect) 651; illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c 945; shocking; reprehensible &c (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... monasteries, and secular buildings were reduced to ashes. Vineyards and fields were ravaged, and the inhabitants put to the edge of the sword. Only a few strong places escaped the fury of the soldiers.... The city of Cahors fell into the power of the conqueror and was reduced to the same pitiable condition into which it had been brought by the Saracens. The inhabitants of Quercy who survived owed this to the subterranean retreats which they had made and to the caverns in the rocks that had served them as refuges during the incursion of the infidels. The principal caves are situated ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Tales"—an accomplished classical scholar and teacher, yet no less an accomplished master and lover of his native dialect of middle Georgia. He, like Dickens, permits his rustic characters to think, talk, act and live, Just as nature designed them. He does not make the pitiable error of either patronizing or making fun of them. He knows them and he loves them; and they know and love him in return. Recalling Colonel Johnston's dialectic sketches, with his own presentation of them from the platform, the writer ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... miles to where I found him again next morning. It so disgusted me as to put me off wishing to kill for killing's sake ever afterwards. A wounded deer or antelope, or a young motherless fawn, is a most pitiable sight. ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... panted, "they will kill you!" and stretched her shaking hands out to him. Her agitation was pitiable. Unconsciously he drew her instantly within his arms, while he said with ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... a poor and pitiable being, when stricken down by disease. Sickened and subdued, his very lineaments have a voice which calls for commiseration and assistance. Celsus says, that knowing two physicians equally intelligent, he should prefer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... supplanters, and to see the former "lords of the soil" begging a copper from the passer-by. One cannot but desire that their extinction in these parts, which is certain, may be also speedy. I cannot easily imagine two more pitiable objects than those I afterwards saw at Albany in Western Australia: a native man and woman begging, standing with their shrunken limbs in rags that barely covered them. The cricket ground is in the "reserve," a ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... What can we have done that the dear Vidame is punishing us by keeping his word to the infanta? I should be pitiable indeed if ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow that he ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Negritos, although not one of extreme misery, is indeed pitiable. Their life is a continual struggle for sufficient food, but their efforts to provide for themselves stop short at that; clothing and houses are of secondary importance. The average Negrito takes little ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... dear little folks, did you ever hear of such a pitiable case in all your lives? Here was literally the richest breakfast that could be set before a king, and its very richness made it absolutely good for nothing. The poorest labourer, sitting down to his crust of bread and cup of water, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... when we were surrounded with beggars, principally women with children in their arms. The poor babes presented a most pitiable appearance, meagre, dirty to the utmost degree, ragged and flea-bitten, so that round the throat there was not the least portion of "carnation" appearing to be free from the insect plague. Their hair, too, is seldom cut; and I have seen girls ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... his daughter, inspired a deep sympathy, perhaps because her leading characteristic was a pitiable holding to her ideals. She painted her father as a good and loving man hiding his real tenderness beneath gruff mannerisms. When he denied her friendship with the man she secretly loved, she put upon that denial ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... know this Capital of Capitals, perhaps—that is, you do not know it as you should if the scenes which may presently move across the stage, now in shouting crowds of sword-armed men, now in pitiable incidents of small account, are to be properly understood, and their dramatic setting, stirring blood-thrilling, incongruous as they must be and can only be. I feel that something will come—I even know it. I have been talking vaguely ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... nature of this wretched form of slavery as carried on at Hong Kong. There did not exist a class of women brought to the pitiable plight of prostitution by the wiles of the seducer, or through the mishap of a lapse from virtue, after which all doors to reform are practically closed against such, as in Western civilization, nor were there those known to have fallen ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... is not the way to let my indignation ooze out at my fingers' ends. I shall begin by writing to condole with Markham. Poor man! what a state he must be in; all the more pitiable because he evidently had entirely forgotten that there could ever be a creature of the less worthy gender born to the house of Morville; so it will take him quite by surprise. What will he do, and how will he ever forgive Mrs. Ashford, who, I see in the paper, has a son whom nobody wants, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pitiable creature; as Menabosbu says, in the Chippeway legends, he is pursued by a "perpetual hunger;" he is exposed unprotected to the blasts of winter and the heats of summer. A great terror sits upon his soul; for every manifestation of nature—the storm, the wind, the thunder, the lightning, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... held dear upon earth? But he was fully satisfied that the glory of that Savior who loved him and gave Himself for him would be promoted by his going forth to preach to the heathen. He considered their pitiable and perilous condition; he thought on the value of their immortal souls; he remembered the last solemn injunction of his Lord, "Go teach all nations,"—an injunction never revoked, and commensurate with ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... being embarrassed, and thought of the time when, as a pretty young girl, she had walked, proud and unconcerned, along these very avenues. It seemed to her that she had fallen off so much since then, and become so pitiable. Her idea of sitting in the front row of the concert hall appeared presumptuous, almost unfeasible. It seemed also highly improbable now that Emil Lindbach would recognize her; indeed, it struck her as almost impossible that he should remember her existence. What a number of experiences he must ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... of Napoleon the First. Neither do we sympathise with the famous saying of Nelson that "one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen!" The tendency to praise one's-self has always been regarded among Christian nations as a despicable, or at least a pitiable, quality, and we confess that we cannot see much difference between a boastful man and a boastful nation. Frenchmen have always displayed chivalrous courage, not a whit inferior to the British, and ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of the Commons presented a singular spectacle. That great party, which, in the last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had now dwindled to a pitiable minority, and was indeed little more than a fifteenth part of the House. Of the five hundred and thirteen knights and burgesses only a hundred and thirty-five had ever sate in that place before. It is evident that a body of men ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or the state of the pavement. A salary was attached to the post, but she very rarely received it, although she was expected to dress like everybody else, that is to say, like very few indeed. In society she played the most pitiable role. Everybody knew her, and nobody paid her any attention. At balls she danced only when a partner was wanted, and ladies would only take hold of her arm when it was necessary to lead her out of the room to attend to their dresses. She was ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... when he got inside the door, not a step farther could he bring himself to advance, and from the furtive glances which he ever and anon cast through the doorway, it was very evident that he would make his escape if he dared. Even Charles and Anna drew back from the pitiable object which met their sight. The light streaming through the window fell on a low pallet, on which, covered with a sheet, lay the form of Mountain Moggy. By her side sat Jenny Davis, whom William recognised ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... might hope for his return to the ship to surrender the guilty one. But everything was most horribly uncertain; and the more they debated the matter the worse complexion did it assume; so that by the time that the ship was back at the anchorage and the anchor let go, they were all in a most pitiable state of distress and fright. And this state was in nowise relieved when, as day was on the point of breaking, George entered the cabin, and they noted the stern, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... of the Despot. One springs from the other's loins. He who will basely fawn on those who have office to bestow, will betray like Iscariot, and prove a miserable and pitiable failure. Let the new Junius lash such men as they deserve, and History make them immortal in infamy; since their influences culminate in ruin. The Republic that employs and honors the shallow, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... will shake the faith of the people in these degraded villains, for they can, by threatening to call in the intervention of the gods on their behalf strike terror to the heart of any man, and once having sought aid of the sorcerer, the family is pitiable indeed. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... son shrink, and a look of infinite wistfulness for a moment darkened his eyes. He was a stupid-looking, gentle-faced fellow, pitiable as ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... me with caresses; but found me in so pitiable a state, he could not restrain his tears. I was not able to stand on my limbs; and felt like to faint every moment, so weak was I. He told me the King was much angered at the Margraf [my Father-in-Law] for not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Culoz, there to take the return train for Geneva. I walked to the platform as if merely accompanying my friend, stood for a moment at the door of the carriage conversing with her, and then, as the train started for Culoz, quickly stepped in and shut the door. Her dismay was really pitiable: had I not been somewhat troubled in mind myself, I should have laughed outright. She saw nothing before me but certain destruction, and I am free to confess that the prospect of a telegram flashing over the wires at that moment from Belgarde to Culoz was not reassuring. The die, however, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... passionate, impassioned pathos, pity patron, customer peculiar, unusual perspicuity, perspicacity permeate, pervade permit, allow perseverance, persistence pertain, appertain pictorial, picturesque pitiable, pitiful pity, sympathy pleasant, pleasing politician, statesman practicable, practical precipitous, precipitate precision, preciseness prejudice, bias prelude, overture pride, vanity principal, principle process, procedure procure, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... I'll come up to Oxford to pry and peep into that snug comfortable fellowship of yours? Do you suppose I'm so much in love with you, Herbert Walters, that I can't let you go without wanting to fawn upon you and run after you ever afterwards! Pah! you miserable, pitiable, contemptible cur and coward, are you afraid even of a woman! Go away, and don't be frightened. I never want to see you or speak to you again as long as I live, you wretched, lying, shuffling hypocrite. I'd rather go back to my ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... of the Duchesse de la Tremouille, is arrested; and thus the last, with her attachment to the Queen, must be miserable indeed!—but one would think I feel for nothing but Duchesses: the crisis has crowded them together into my letter, and into a prison;—and to be a prisoner among cannibals is pitiable indeed! ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... do "a perisher." That is precisely what the master of a lonely boat in an odd angle of the Coral Sea was doing when a joyful sail appeared—a dove-like messenger from civilisation and shops. It was a pitiable famine. No one had had a smoke for a week. The black boys had broken up their nicotine-saturated clay pipes and masticated them to pulp, and still treasured the quids, while the "Boss" pondered cigars during the day and dreamt them at night. But relief was at ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... hugged each bitter enemy around the neck, slowly digging into their straining bodies till the blood spurted out in streams. But he, too, was bleeding, for his ears were suffering cruel lacerations; the dogs held on, and his tawny eyes were raised to the sky with a pitiable look of appeal. Not a cry, not a sigh or a groan escaped from a single combatant; the three animals formed a group as motionless as if they had been carved ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the pitiable story. Gaining the open country, I gazed upon the fierce flames now bursting in a dozen places from the roof of my doomed home, the funeral pyre of the last ones dear to me ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... that the book served as a valuable aid in removing a great public wrong, while the satire on foreign missions served to draw the English nation's attention to the wretched heathen at home in the East Side of London, of whom Poor Jo was a pitiable specimen. In other novels other good ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... silence, for they were worn out and despondent; they suffered dreadfully from thirst, and it was pitiable to see the tongues of the poor horses hanging out of their mouths. Day dawned, and there were no signs of the caravan. A thick vapor was rising from every quarter, and they hoped that when it cleared up they would be more fortunate; but no, there was the same monotonous ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... the common necessaries of life that she was indebted to Madame Persan, the wife of the lieutenant of the fortress, for a couple of changes of body-linen. Even the Prince de Conde, who was professedly her enemy, was deeply moved when he ascertained her pitiable condition. "It was not to Leonora that political crimes should be attributed," he said, with an indignation which did honour to his heart; "but to the insatiable ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... A pitiable spectacle, however, was the sight of those who had been evicted from the centre of the Orange "Free" State. It was heartrending to hear them relate the circumstances of their expulsions, and how they had spent the winter months roaming from farm to farm with their ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... mourning was a sign of reverence for the departed spirit. The killing in war of non-combatants, such as women and children, is partly explained by the fact that in savage life the woman without husband or protector is in pitiable case, and it was supposed that the spirit of the warrior would be better content if no widow and orphans were left to suffer want, as well ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... some chance escaped from the guardians which' the good Earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him in his lunacy, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad, and singing aloud to himself, with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw and nettles and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... said Gwendolen, with a light laugh; "it is he who understands all about mine and thinks it pitiable." Klesmer's verdict on her singing had been an easier joke to her since he had ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... drama itself, the concluded work of the master's hand, though yet to be once more subjected to a little pruning, a little touching, a little rectifying. But the author would seem to have been as trusting over the work of the printers, as they were careless of his, and the result is sometimes pitiable. The blunders are appalling. Both in it and in the Folio the marginal note again and again suggests itself: 'Here the compositor was drunk, the press-reader asleep, the devil only aware.' But though the blunders elbow one another in tumultuous fashion, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... little imagining the trial her presence had been to Alison's burning heart—sick anxiety and doubt. How could it be well? Let him be loveable, let him be constant, that only rendered Ermine's condition the more pitiable, and the shining glance of her eyes was almost more than Alison could bear. So happy as the sisters had been together, so absolutely united, it did seem hard to disturb that calm life with hopes and agitations that must needs be futile; and Alison, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... family doctor and two prominent physicians of Sioux City, did me no good. Late in the fall I got a bottle of Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery, which quieted my trembling nerves and gave me an appetite to eat. I then concluded to try the Doctor, personally. Up to this time I was in a pitiable condition. Sometimes I could not sleep until I felt almost wild, then sleep so much I would be stupefied. I could not digest any food and my whole system was wasting and failing fast. I doubt if any one who saw me expected me to get well. I took the treatment sent me by the World's ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... been more pitiable than such a proclamation? The existence of a conspiracy on the part of some disaffected persons to overthrow the King's government was made to appear with the view of covering a mistake. The proclamation was the apology for the illegal seizure of a press and types used in the publication ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... with a sneer, for of all pitiable objects he regarded an unmanly man as the most despicable. He consented, however, to sit down on a grassy bank and watch the proceedings of this Indian dandy, who had just seated himself in front of his wigwam for the purpose of making ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... ma'am," quoth the imperturbable Frank. "But as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this about poor Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together, like a couple of sensible people, and bring it to an end. Let me tell you, ma'am, that Archie is really quite ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Marchioness's warning against the theatre were present enough in the boy's mind to add a touch of awe to the curiosity with which he observed these strange objects of the Church's reprobation. They struck him, it must be owned, as more pitiable than alarming, for the duenna's toes were coming through her shoes, and one or two of the children who hung on the outskirts of the group looked as lean and hungry under their spangles as the foundling-girl of Pontesordo. Spite of this they seemed a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... regretted her sensitive obstinacy as a misfortune for both of them. She had a vision of humanity in a hurried procession, driven along by some force unseen and ruthless, a procession in which the grotesque and the pitiable were always occurring. She thought of John standing over Meshach with the cold towel, and of Meshach passing the flame across John's dying eyes, and these juxtapositions appeared to her intolerably mournful in their ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... a cot and made as comfortable as possible under the circumstances and was awaiting a motor truck to take me to a base hospital. On all sides of me were other wounded and gassed boys. Some of them were exceedingly jolly and talkative, notwithstanding their pitiable condition. I remember one boy in particular, who was about my own age. He was going over on a raid and was shot through the temple. The bullet entered on one side an inch or two above the eye, and went straight through, passing out the other side at about the same distance above the eye. It ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... which was oddly supplied by the remnants of tapestried hangings, window-curtains, and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters. His face, too, had lost its vacant and careless air, and the poor creature looked hollow-eyed, meagre, half-starved, and nervous to a pitiable degree. After long hesitation, he at length approached Waverley with some confidence, stared him sadly in the face, and said, 'A' dead and gane—a' ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... time Howard's condition was pitiable to witness. His face was white as death. His trembling lips could hardly articulate. It was with the greatest difficulty that he kept on his feet. Every moment he seemed about to fall. At times he clutched the table nervously, for fear he would stumble. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... wounded in three places." He crawled down to the shore of the pond, found an Indian canoe, and crept into it. The wind blew it out into the lake, and he was wafted to the southern shore. The sun went down, and the Indians stole away. Pitiable the condition of the settlers. Lovewell was dead, and also their beloved chaplain, Jonathan Frye, who with his dying breath prayed aloud for victory; Jacob Farrar was dying; Lieutenant Rollins and Robert Usher could not last long; eleven others were badly ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her sole dependence was on her small stipend from the school: hence she was unable to make a sufficiently reputable appearance in apparel at their accustomed little balls. The daughter of the schoolmistress, her only child, and at that time a very young girl, felt for the poor governess, and the pitiable insufficiency in the article of finery; but being unable to help her from her own resources, devised within herself a means by which it might be done otherwise. Having heard of the great fame of Sir Joshua Reynolds, his character for generosity, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... profoundly sad, he stood thinking, undecided what to do. He knew that he had not killed the Uhlan outright, but, whether or not the soldier could recover, he was uncertain. He, who had seen the horrors of naked, gaping wounds at Sadowa—he who had seen the pitiable sights of Oran, where Chanzy and his troops had swept the land in a whirlwind of flame and sword—he, this same cool young fellow, could not contemplate that dusty figure in the red road without a shudder of self-accusation—yes, of self-disgust. He told himself that he had fired ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... despotic and vindictive mood; everywhere he substitutes expiations, sacrifices, ceremonies, and mysterious practices; in a word, inventions lucrative to himself for useful and social virtues. The mind is confounded and reason interdicted with the view of ridiculous practices and pitiable means which the ministers of the gods invented in every country to purify souls and render Heaven favorable to nations. Here, they practice circumcision upon a child to procure it Divine benevolence; there, they pour water ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Basoga porters returned from the coast on their way back to their own country; but alas, with what a terrible difference in their appearance! All their gaiety and lightheartedness was gone, and the poor fellows were in a pitiable state. A frightful epidemic of dysentery had broken out amongst them, doubtless caused by their having eaten food to which they were entirely unaccustomed, their simple diet in their own homes consisting almost entirely of bananas, from which they also make a most refreshing and stimulating drink. ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... went, highly delighted at finding he had the power of doing something, however little, toward succouring the poor wretches whose pitiable condition was so patent to ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... and he had dropped like a dead man, while the profusion of blood that came from the wound covered his face, and his friends could not tell whether he was killed or not. He was a pitiable object as he lay on the ground by the surgeon's quarters; but the veteran soon assured himself that his ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... by a few figures. Read them. They are full of human interest. I have put before you some facts relating to the shameful poverty of the workers and their pitiable condition, and now I want to put before you some facts relating to the pitiable condition of the non-workers. I want you to feel some pity ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... impartial. He could not honestly assert that she had danced with him oftener than with Morson, or a dozen others, but he had a pleasant feeling that even when she shook her head and said, "I cannot," her soft eyes added for her, "though I really wish to." There was something almost pitiable, he told himself in the complacency with which that self-satisfied ass Morson would come and take her from him. As if he hadn't sense enough to discover that it was merely because she was his hostess that she went with ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... it—the recent biological proof of the fundamental and absolute difference between the sexes being unknown as yet to the laity. Yet surely, even were the facts less salient, or even were they other than they are, it is a pitiable failure of logic to suppose, as is daily supposed, that in order to prove woman man's equal one must prove her to be really identical in all essentials, given, of course, equal conditions. Controversialists on both sides, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... table-d'hotes at Lucerne and Interlaken serve us now. But we, in our "superior" condition, pooh-pooh the Byronic spirit of indifference to events and scorn of trifles,—we say it is "melodramatic," completely forgetting that our attitude towards ourselves and things in general is one of most pitiable bathos. We cannot write Childe Harold, but we can grumble at both bed and board in every hotel under the sun; we can discover teasing midges in the air and questionable insects in the rooms; and we can discuss each bill presented to us with an industrious ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... while being perfectly conscious of existing threatening evils, deliberately turn his back to appeals for help,—shut his ears to the cry of the "lost sheep of the House of Israel", and even endeavour, with an impotence of indignation which was as pitiable as useless, to shake a rod of Twelfth-century menace over the advancement of ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... severe, and Ray and Nell had been constantly at his side. When the fever broke and consciousness returned, and the patient realized where he was and who were his nurses, the man's remorse and shame were something pitiable. Of him, as an impartial historian, it is difficult to write, since long association with Stannard had forcibly impressed his views as to Rallston's character. Perhaps we were as reluctant to hear of his subsequent ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... I asked her to favour me with her commands, and she came straight at the business with a kind of directness pitiable enough. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... species of misery, but only this or that particular kind; and if the rest were added, how much worse our condition would be! The very greatest misery is to be in a state of sin. If we are poor and in sin, our condition is indeed pitiable, for we have no consolation; but if we are virtuous in poverty, bearing our trials in patience and resignation for the love of God, we have the rich treasures of His grace and every assurance of future happiness. On the ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... lately so largely interrupted, are now being resumed, but Russia presents notable difficulties. We have every desire to see that great people, who are our traditional friends, restored to their position among the nations of the earth. We have relieved their pitiable destitution with an enormous charity. Our Government offers no objection to the carrying on of commerce by our citizens with the people of Russia. Our Government does not propose, however, to enter into relations with another ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sagacities in the handling of railway stock. And then his zeal was quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots between the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de l'Universite, taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in America one's promenade was ...
— The American • Henry James
... all may live. Murderer, ingrate, traitor—those will be my names, perchance. I am sacrificing everything, even my honor, my conscience, and my faith—could I possibly give more for those pitiable ones who are crying for salvation? Let us go ere ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... the stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wake again; and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time. But it must have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by an outbreak of pitiable and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed, supposing I had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries of pain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and discordant that they shocked the heart. It was no illusion; some living thing, some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said he. He was in a pitiable state of reaction, with every nerve in a twitter. "I say, Watson, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... would not let him stand still. The poetic genius within him, as Blake called it, struggled on from one dogma concerning his nature to another. Behaviour malignant or beneficent, horrible in its tragedy and pitiable in its comedy, flowed inevitably on. Witchcraft trials and the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition belong among the more mentionable consequences of some of man's theories about his ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... yet she could not do that; she was completely unnerved and incapable of any resolution. She writhed there in pitiable pain and caught at ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... old barn, when they found that the spoliation had been complete. Reflecting on the extent of his loss, the Cure nearly fell to the ground. Moiselet was in a most pitiable state; the dear man afflicted himself more than if the loss had been his own. It was terrific to hear his sighs and groans. This was the result of love to one's neighbour. M. Senard little thought how great was the desolation at Livry. What was his despair ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... of the descendants of their former owners. I know of a case on a large plantation in the South in which a young white man, the son of the former owner of the estate, has become so reduced in purse and self-control by reason of drink that he is a pitiable creature; and yet, notwithstanding the poverty of the coloured people themselves on this plantation, they have for years supplied this young white man with the necessities of life. One sends him a little coffee or sugar, another a little meat, and so on. Nothing that the coloured ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... concentrated attack on the guns, picking off horses and officers and men, and finally reducing the snorting weapons which had been galloped too quickly into action, and were within 700 yards of the enemy's trenches, to a condition of pitiable impotence. Only the third field-battery and the Naval battery could move, and these were quickly drawn off to a place of safety. Amidst this scene of tragedy and uproar the Devons and West Surrey were steadily pursuing their way with a heroism that ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... bottle of physic, which forces an appetite for a while. But it is soon powerless against the effects of nervous exhaustion, and before the poor devil can obtain relief, he is sometimes reduced to the most pitiable condition. I have seen robust men in Holloway, by means of this plank bed and other superfluous tortures of our prison system, brought to the very verge of the grave; and I can scarcely control my indignation when I remember ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... contemptible and pitiable political spectacle was never yet presented than that which may now be witnessed in the actions and words of the 'Conservative' Democracy. Driven day by day nearer into their true light of sympathizers at heart with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Magsie? Rachael's heart rose on a wild rush of confidence. Magsie had no basis for her pretension. Magsie was young, and she had madly and blindly fallen in love. There was her single claim: she loved. Rachael could not doubt it after that hour in the sitting- room. But what pitiable folly! To love and to admit love for ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... side to side hideously; then by degrees they seemed to become less glazed, and a light of returning sanity entered them. They became fixed; and they were fixed upon Nayland Smith, who bending over the bed, was watching Sir Gregory (for Sir Gregory I concluded this pitiable wreck to be) with an expression upon his face compound of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... they were conducted to Lydiate by the fisherman, who also carried the babe. Here they told a pitiable story of their having found the infant exposed, the evening before, by some unfeeling mother; and, strange to say, the truth was never divulged until the time arrived when Harrington ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... moaned. "If you are not there I shall burst into tears and run away." Then he laughed. "I am always like this. You should see me in Paris on the eve of the opening of the Salon. A pitiable wreck! I had no angel to ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... course under the lamentable circumstances was to offer her some advice. That is just what Ludwig did offer—subsequently, however, backing it with a modest fiduciary bonus. After this Mr. Ludwig Nisson sought no more to commune with Miss Ruff. The poor, indiscreet girl was in a pitiable dilemma. She had no mother in whose heart of hearts she could seek forgiveness and shelter. If her family were made aware of the event impending, she knew the explosion of indignation would be terrific. So she professed to be tired ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... the words: even his strength to whisper seemed to be fast leaving him. He kissed his son—with a panting fatigue under that trifling exertion, pitiable to see. As I placed the boy on his feet again, he looked up at his dying father, with the one ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... only as he saw the pitiable penury of his own scanty wardrobe that he could persuade himself to accept ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the stream, and there was then no bridge. He did not care to swim back, for the excitement was out of him. He was trembling with cold, and afraid of cramp. "A mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with a flood between him and his raiment, was in a pitiable position. It did not occur to him to flay the stag, and dress in the hide, and, indeed, he would have been frozen before he could have accomplished ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... the pitiable object a roar of laughter went up from the spectators. Nowhere was the laughter louder than in the ranks of the standing plebes themselves, at the rear of the audience. This woeful-looking performer, after the orchestra had played a few preliminary strains, launched into a parody ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... have liked to talk big and to come out with a farewell phrase, a parting speech, like an actor making a showy exit from the stage, and at least to disappear with the honours of war. But his defeat was so pitiable that he could think of nothing better than to bang his hat on his head and stamp his feet as he followed the portress down the hall. It ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... knapsack, which contained the nine devils on the anvil, and asked the smith and his apprentices to strike it. So they smote with their great hammers with all their strength, and the devils uttered howls which were quite pitiable. When he opened the knapsack after this, eight of them were dead, but one which had been lying in a fold of it, was still alive, slipped out, and went back again to hell. Thereupon Brother Lustig travelled ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... she said, with a desolate look, more pitiable than passion, on her young face. "I wish to save Hope, and to save my—to save Mr. Lambert. Philip, you do not love me. I do not call it love. There is no passion in your veins; it is only a sort of sympathetic ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the wind. At the sight of the rich and glorious view before me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with which even in our literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and poured maledictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with fair France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering at their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and inspecting that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I cast loving eyes on modern Paris. ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... ravages of the Gauls left the poor plebeians in a most pitiable condition. In order to rebuild their dwellings and restock their farms, they were obliged to borrow money of the rich patricians, and consequently soon began again to experience the insult and oppression that were ever incident to the condition of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... amorous fugitives, accompanied by a notary and a dozen arquebusiers. After searching in vain all over the island now called Corregidor, they went to Camaya, and there found the young lady, Maria, on the beach in a most pitiable condition, with her dress torn to shreds, and by her side the holy friar, wearied and bleeding from the wounds he had received whilst fighting with the savage natives who disputed his possession of the fair maiden. The search-party ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... face he saw was that of the banker. In spite of the loss of blood and his pitiable condition, a whimsical expression came to his eyes. "Lucky for you you didn't lend me ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and excellent grey ribbed stockings, knitted by Mrs. Poyser's own hand, setting off the proportions of his leg. Mr. Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf. Still less had he reason to be ashamed of his round jolly face, which was good humour itself as he said, "Come, Hetty—come, little uns!" and giving his arm to his wife, led the way through the causeway ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... softening. Fanny stood by as at a spectacle provided for her amusement, without rancour, but equally without pity. Beatrice was contemptuous. What right, said her countenance, had a servant-girl to covet jewellery? And how pitiable the spirit that prompted to a filching of half-crowns! For the criminals of finance, who devastate a thousand homes, Miss French had no small admiration; crimes such as the ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... there was only something I could do!" Dorothy wailed helplessly. "A woman never can do anything in a crisis but wait!" Her distress was so pitiable to witness ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... was in a pitiable state, for the Germans as they retired carried off everything—livestock, vehicles, all food, and most of the male population. The civilians that were left behind took refuge in the cellars during the fighting, coming out as soon ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... side Arthur and John looked anxiously for some one to alight, but nobody appeared and the expression of Arthur's face was pitiable as he turned it ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the hoped-for delight we soon find satiety; instead of exhilaration, fatigue; instead of contentment, disillusion; instead of satisfaction, dust; instead of romance, the greedy claws of the harpy; and the further we go in response to this glamour the more pitiable our outlook; for the sweets and possibilities of Evil are extraordinarily limited. Can any man devise a new sin? No, but ever pursues the same old round, the same ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... of December, 1866. He had dined with my wife and myself, and, accompanied by Arthur Sketchley, who had dropped in after dinner, he bade us good-by and went for his nightly grind, as he called it. We were booked to take our departure the next morning. His condition was pitiable. He was too feeble to walk alone, and was continually struggling to breathe freely. His surgeon had forbidden the use of wine or liquor of any sort. Instead he drank quantities of water, eating little and taking no exercise at all. Nevertheless, he stuck to his lecture and contrived ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... south! Why, I saw more beauty with my eyes healthfully alert to see in two wet windy February afternoons in Scotland than I can see in my beautiful olive gardens and grey hills in a whole week in my low and lost estate, as the Shorter Catechism puts it somewhere. It is a pitiable blindness, this blindness of the soul; I hope it may not be long with me. So remember to keep well; and remember rather anything than not to keep well; and again I say, ANYTHING rather than not to ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to provide seed and cattle, and he and his tenant divide the produce; a miserable system that perpetuates poverty and prevents instruction. The same wretched country continues to La Loge; the fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are full of misery. Heaven grant me patience while I see a country thus neglected, and forgive me the oaths I swear at the absence and ignorance ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... any direction, it was not in Loder's nature to wish it retraced. His face was set, but set with determination, when he closed the outer door of his own rooms and passed quietly down the stairs and out into the silent court. The thought of Chilcote, his pitiable condition, his sordid environments, were things that required a firm will to drive into the background of the imagination; but a whole inferno of such visions would not have daunted Loder on that morning as, unobserved by any eyes, he left the little court-yard with ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... small; yet, having no soul dependent on my bounty and needing little myself, I had saved these pitiable dollars that our Congress paid us. Besides, I had a snug account with my solicitor in Albany. She might live on that. I did not need it; seldom drew a penny; my pay more than sufficing. And, after the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Chantavoine was like snow, white and cold. As the words were spoken a sigh broke from her, and there came to Philip's mind that distant day in the council chamber at Bercy when for one moment he was upon his trial; but he did not turn and look at her now. It was all pitiable, horrible; but this open avowal, insult as it was to the Comtesse Chantavoine, could be no worse than the rumours which would surely have reached her one day. So let the game fare on. He had thrown down the glove now, and he could not see the end; he was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lost love, all her mental power shrinks up. Her cat, her little dog, and the daily care of her person and small household occupy her whole mind. It is not surprising that such persons generally create a pitiable and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... that Colonel Mannering arrived at the village of Kippletringan a day or two before the time at which the sale of Ellangowan was to take place. He was much distressed at hearing the pitiable account that was given to him of his old friend, Godfrey Bertram; and the idea at once occurred to him that he would buy the property himself, and by ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... me, dear Roger, a pitiable Don Juan, a common-place Amilcar, for not profiting by the occasion. A young man strolling at night in a garden with a screen painter ought at least to have stolen a kiss! At the risk of appearing ridiculous, I did nothing of the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... shadow and the fables of theatres, the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; 'tis not without compassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our displeasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events. Nothing tickles that does not pinch. And good historians skip over, as stagnant water and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which they know ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... There was insanity on both sides. For him, the prince, to love this woman with passion, was unthinkable. It would be cruel and inhuman. Yes. Rogojin is not fair to himself; he has a large heart; he has aptitude for sympathy. When he learns the truth, and finds what a pitiable being is this injured, broken, half-insane creature, he will forgive her all the torment she has caused him. He will become her slave, her brother, her friend. Compassion will teach even Rogojin, it will show him how to reason. Compassion is the chief ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... own. He found his natural selection hang round his neck like a millstone. There is hardly a page in the "Origin of Species" in which traces of the struggle going on in Mr. Darwin's mind are not discernible, with a result alike exasperating and pitiable. I can only repeat what I said in "Evolution Old and New," namely, that I find the task of extracting a well-defined meaning out of Mr. Darwin's words comparable only to that of trying to act on the advice of a lawyer who has obscured the main issue as much ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... stated elsewhere; and I certify to your Majesty that, if all that they said could be written in this account, it would be but little shorter than the other one which I am sending to your Majesty. Without doubt it would break your Majesty's heart if you could see them as they are, and how pitiable are their appearance and the things ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... was surprised at the number of slaves who were labouring at the public works, and who formed no small proportion of the population in the streets. Their condition was pitiable. They were, of course, enemies of Christianity, and numbers of them had been pirates; but he could not help pitying their condition as they worked in the full heat of the sun under the vigilant eyes of numbers of overseers, ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... that commends itself to the reverence of his flock, while he sees the softer partner of his guilt standing in the full glare of exposure and humbling herself to the misery of atonement—between this more wretched and pitiable culprit, to whom dishonour would come as a comfort and the pillory as a relief, and the older, keener, wiser man, who, to obtain satisfaction for the wrong he has suffered, devises the infernally ingenious plan of conjoining himself with his wronger, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... men while our youth lasted, and diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us. But nothing was expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much of, and that is our tragedy. For very few things, my dear, are more pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind cannot—cannot, because of its very nature—reach to anything higher! Middle-age strips her of everything—the admiration, the flattery, the shallow merriment—all the little things that ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... this long digression, I and other two of the young Aberdeen lads were purchased by a farmer, and removed that afternoon to his home, about twelve miles from Baltimore. A more pitiable figure, as regards dress, never landed on any shore. I had still the same remnant of clothes with which I had left Edinburgh; but now they scarcely held together, and were besmeared with tar; my feet and legs were clean, but shoes or stockings were a luxury I had been long unused ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... admirable scheme, we have ever since had the pitiable sight of the parents, the sisters, and the sweetheart crooning over the emigration of the best able-bodied young men ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his theory by a huge experiment and proving its ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... these young men were invited to our house to tea, or supper, for it was a good, substantial meal. The misery of some of these lads, owing to embarrassment, possibly from awe of the Superintendent, was pitiable and evident even to me, a boy of ten or eleven years old. But as soon as my father got command, as it were, of the situation, one could see how quickly most of them were put at their ease. He would address himself to the task of making ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... It is pitiable to see how some among the Master's followers fail to learn this lesson. They contend for high places, where they may have prominence among men, where their names shall have honor. The only truly great in Christ's sight are those who forget self that they may honor their ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... 205 That I should brave thee, miserable god! But I have braved a mightier than thou. Even the tempting of this soaring heart, Which might have made me, scarcely less than thou, A god among my brethren weak and blind,— 210 Scarce less than thou, a pitiable thing To be down-trodden into darkness soon. But now I am above thee, for thou art The bungling workmanship of fear, the block That awes the swart Barbarian; but I 215 Am what myself have made,—a nature wise With ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... 'he wasn't a gentleman at all; he was one of those mean whites down South.' As she said this, the scornful emphasis on mean whites was something quite indescribable. Truly, the condition of poor whites at the South must be pitiable indeed, to be regarded with such utter contempt by the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a pitiable state of affairs indeed. David Dubbs, aroused from the joyful celebration of his Christmas dinner and from the midst of this cosey party and sent off across the river to his master's house with a miserable letter and by a miserable ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... themselves. I think that man and woman both would live more happily if the laws were more equal; but as they are, they are a shame to this enlightened age. They make a married woman a beggar all her life, although she may have a rich husband, and a most pitiable one, if he is poor. Wipe out the law entirely that gives us a third of our husband's property; we can make better bargains than that ourselves with our husbands. The one-third law does us not a mite of good, unless our husband dies, and we do not all of us want to part with them, although the laws ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fellow was little likely to reach it, for lung disease, the great foe of the Maori, had set in; and he was in a pitiable condition when Mr. Marsden, by chance, remarked his brown face on the forecastle, and inquired into his history, which was confirmed by the master of the Ann, and was really only a specimen of a sailor's vague promises, and incapacity to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge |
