"Tragedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a right down tragedy, because then you'd be hung,—and so there'd be an end of us all. I don't think I'd ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... however, make but brief reference to this festive occasion, and proceed to tell of an event which created an unexpected sensation in our little community, and might have closed our New Year's Day amusements with a terrible tragedy. ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... up to town unexpectedly for a few days. "And he's just as well out of the way," she added briskly, "till we've got this tangle straight"—little dreaming that her nephew was responsible for the whole knotting of the tangled skein. By kindly probing she elicited the real, grim tragedy which lay behind all the gossip, and her anger against Eliot knew no bounds. But once she had given characteristic expression to her opinion of men in general, and of Eliot in particular, she promptly set to work to try and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... word of protest the blades had clashed and they were hungry for blood. It was dark in the shadows of the trees and the trio were quite alone with their tragedy. She heard Baldos laugh recklessly in response to Marlanx's ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... you think the tragedy in the life of father was accidental? Due, I mean, to the particular characters of grandfather and poor mother? Now, if the one had been less proud, less exclusive, or the other more capable ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... no martyr for a wife, nor yet a tragedy queen. If you can come to me and honestly say, 'I trust my happiness to you,' well and good. But as I told you once before, I am not a saint, and I cannot always control myself as I have been forced to do tonight. If this admission is damaging, it is too true to be put lightly aside. I ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... and brave, and having secured independence, they maintained it at all cost through centuries of trouble. Fifty-eight sieges has Monaco sustained from either the French or the Genoese, but she never lost her independence excepting for a few years at a time. In 1428 a terrible tragedy of great dramatic interest occurred in the castle. John Grimaldi was prince, and married to a Fieschi Adorno of Genoa, a lovely lady, but a faithless. She had not long been a wife ere she fixed her affections on her husband's younger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... puny, unprepossessing, and dirty. Worse tragedy than this, Burton knew it. The woman who presently appeared to gaze at him with open-mouthed wonder, was pretentiously and untidily dressed, with some measure of good looks woefully obscured by a hard ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had been acquainted since he was a young man with some of the most distinguished actors. With him I saw Edwin Booth in "Macbeth," and Lester Wallack in "Rosedale," and John McCullough in "Virginius," a tragedy which was to me so real and moving that I wept all the way home in the train. Sometimes I was allowed to visit the theatre alone, and on these afternoons I selected performances of a lighter variety, such as that given by Harrigan & Hart in their theatre on Broadway. Every Thanksgiving Day ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... and evil report, she has laboured unceasingly these forty-five years, to see the arrogant Prussian humbled to the dust and Alsace-Lorraine restored to France. 1917, she firmly believes will revenge and reverse the tragedy of 1871. More fortunate than the great British soldier who spent his veteran days in warning his countrymen of the ordeal to come, Madame Adam, now in her eighty-first year, may yet hope to see the banners of the Allies crowned with victory, the black wreaths on the ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... my experience that the reader is likely to find this warmly sympathetic interpretation of human nature, its pleasures and its sorrows, its humor and its tragedy, most often in the American magazines that talk least about their own merit. We are all familiar with the sort of magazine that contents itself with saying day in and day out ceaselessly and noisily: "The Planet Magazine is the greatest magazine in the universe. The greatest literary ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... clothing. Some of the dead had been found, but not in a condition to be discussed, and of course many fragments of debris. And now a number of patrol boats were on the scene, he had handed over his patient to a naval doctor, and that was all the news of the tragedy ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... upon some terrible and unexpected tragedy will have noticed with what care the great dramaturgist so wove his play that every little unheeded event in the days before helped directly to create the final catastrophe. It happened on this evening that Stella went downstairs earlier than the ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... 1709-1784 Sipped his tea at the 'Cheshire Cheese,' Or at the 'Mitre' of renown, Spreading his wit throughout the Town. Garrick When Garrick as the 'Moody Dane' Drew the Town to Drury Lane, Mrs. Siddons Sarah Siddons was all the rage Tragedy Queen of every age. Highwaymen armed to the teeth Waited for prey on Hounslow Heath; Per contra the Highwayman's pate Was oft strung up at Tyburn Gate. Capt. Cook It's only right a History book 1728-1779 Should mark ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... Catholic church, and a faithful servant of God and the king. He then repeated the Miserere psalm on his knees; and when he had ended and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which promised ill for the manner in which his part in the tragedy would be accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed him. "Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive," he said. "Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. Take heed ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... supremely mournful. What the deuce ailed him? I wondered angrily. The thing was almost weird. Of a sudden, with irritation, yet with dread, too, I felt myself on the threshold of a house of tragedy. The man might, from the look of him, have been watching some loved young ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Smith was getting supper ready, as it appeared. I followed her out passively, and sat down in a sort of maze. It seemed incredible that, amid the shabby tragedy of this household, there should be time or thought for the kindly business of spreading a meal. The girl marched briskly to and fro, stooping to the oven door, tinkling softly among her spoons and bowls, evidently taking a timid zest in her labors. It made her seem the most sane, assured, and stable ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... opinion, and for the fast growing public, especially in the {21} city of Paris, there was no opportunity for comment or criticism on the events of the day. In a tentative way the theatre proved itself a possible medium. In 1730, Voltaire produced his tragedy Brutus. It fell flat because of ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... my wits again. In an instant I had drawn myself to my full height and stood regarding calmly my enraged father. Ah, that I have not one kind thought—one gentle memory——" Again the stranger paused, and the girls felt the undernote of tragedy in his voice. Instinctively, Lucile glanced at her own father where he sat, knees crossed, cigar in hand, listening attentively, and her heart gave a great, warm throb as she whispered, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... right; but this family have come into considerable prominence lately owing to the tragedy connected with the young lady who ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... the tragedy of the week only. Others had occurred before and others would probably occur again. It was getting too prevalent for comfort. So, as soon as a quick cayuse and a boy could get down into town, the news spread and the authorities began in the routine manner to set the old legal mill ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... intended to settle down to the enjoyment afforded by my sense of humour. I had preserved it intact as a private personal accomplishment. On the stage, having steered clear of comedy and confined myself to tragedy, it had never been cheapened and made nauseous by sham and machine representations indigenous to the hated footlights, and was an untapped preserve to be drawn ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... quickly over that there was no time for the incidents of heroism and suffering which heightened the tragedy of St. Clair's defeat. At the beginning of the action, General William Henry Harrison, afterwards President of the United States, but then one of Wayne's aids, said to him, "General Wayne, I'm afraid you will get into the battle yourself, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... of things established. Individuals cannot choose a better life than that of holding themselves ready to sacrifice themselves and to die in their fight for love and justice. The gaze which the mysterious eye of tragedy vouchsafes us neither lulls nor paralyses. Nevertheless, it demands silence of us as long as it keeps us in view; for art does not serve the purposes of war, but is merely with us to improve our hours of respite, before and during the course ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... is an intricate illusion. God is a pack of lies under which man staggers to his grave. And man—ah, here we have Nature's only mountebank; here we have Nature's humorous and ingenuous experiment in tragedy. And thought—ah, the tissue-paper chimera that seeks forever to ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... you, sir," as made friends of her lovers; and she entered at once into pleasant relations with them. Her nature was so healthy, and free from all morbid suggestion; her yes and no so perfectly frank and positive, that there seemed no possibility of any tragedy caused by her. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The tragedy was over, but the countenance of the murdered man haunted us, while his murderer continued walking with an unconcerned look about the deck, as if his hands were ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the final act of the tragedy. Four young and vigorous horses were attached, each to a seared and lacerated limb, and the attempt was made to rend asunder the still living body. The horrible spectacle lasted for more than an hour. Finally the surgeon and the physician in attendance gave ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... of going inside and putting on his coat and boots and getting his arms and starting out toward it on his pony. But this was too much trouble, and he stood watching the tragedy of the plain, hoping for the plucky animal that was doing its best to outrun and outwit the wolves, for they were close enough now for him to see that there were four of the gray devils of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... suicide, would frighten the attendants into calling this doctor whose presence I now desired—and desired the more because of his studied indifference. No man that ever lived, loved life more than I did on that day, and the mock tragedy which I successfully staged about dusk was, I believe, as good a farce as was ever perpetrated. If I had any one ambition it was to live long enough to regain my freedom and put behind prison bars this doctor and his burly henchmen. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... perfumed the air than ordnance would that is charged with amomum, musk, civet and ambergreece." It was surely a mock-modesty which led Nash to fear that such ghost-stories as these would appear to his readers duller than Holland cheese and more tiresome than homespun. To 1594, too, belongs the tragedy of "Dido," probably left incomplete by Marlowe, and finished by Nash, who shows himself here an adept in that swelling bombast of bragging blank verse of which he affected to disapprove. A new edition of "Christ's ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... most successful of all Thomson's plays; "but it may be doubted," says Dr. Johnson, " whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of study, much qualified for tragedy: it does not appear that he had much sense of the pathetic; and his diffusive and Descriptive style produced declamation rather ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... recognized the figure of a friend and neighbor, Dr. Whitney, swept up beside the overturned one. When she ran, as she presently found herself running, to the spot, other men and women had gathered there, drawn from lawns and porches by this sudden projection of tragedy into the gayety of ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... received by his heart. The struggle between the demands of a purely artistic presentation of reality, i. e., one governed exclusively by esthetic rules, and its sympathetic rendering, constitutes the poetic tragedy of most of our "naturalistic writers," and especially of the most important one among them, Gerhart Hauptmann. But from this general ideal of the poet, who only through his own experience will give to reality a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... head sank on his breast. He had little time to brood over his troubles, however, for a tragedy was beginning to unfold around him, the most shocking, perhaps, in the annals of the sea—a tragedy to be hinted at rather than ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... taken no part in the killing; that was one thing in their favour. Another satisfaction, which stood out like a dull gleam of light in the grim dark tragedy, was that now there were three fewer men to share their limited supply of water. But the greatest good of all, in fact the only real ray of hope, was the fact that one horse was still left, Mick's stanch gelding, Ajax. If the drover had not fastened him up the evening ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... comparison, made there and then an elaborate prose note of it in one of the diminutive pocket-books that he was in the habit of carrying in the capacious pocket of his waistcoat. Years afterwards—shortly before his death, in fact—when he came to write ‘The King’s Tragedy,’ remembering this note, he thought he could find an excellent place for it in the scene where the king meets the Spae wife on the seashore and listens to her prophecies of doom. But he was at once confronted by this ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... off short and looked into the darkness behind him, whence had come the crash of china as Bates dropped a tray of coffee cups. Silence succeeded the tragedy, during which they could hear the butler's muttered ejaculations of horror and distress as he ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the beautiful and pathetic saying of Mr. Barrie that every window-blind is the curtain of a tragedy. I thought of that dictum as the minister of Cunningsburgh pointed to one cot after another in the neighbourhood, and narrated the calamities that had fallen upon them within recent years. Here, an old widow was mourning the loss of a son ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... that many had been killed, did he express a single word of regret; apparently having no feeling but gratification, that even at such a fearful sacrifice his hated rival had been driven from the field. But responsibility is not so easily shaken off, and in real life as well as in tragedy, conscience will force ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... besides the Nasik tragedy have occurred since Tilak's conviction to show how dangerous was the spirit which his doctrines had aroused. One of the, gravest, symptomatically, was the happily unsuccessful attempt to throw a bomb ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... verandah and heard the story of the tragedy, her heart bounded with a very human relief at the thought that a most precious life had been spared. For a moment she had room for no other thought in her mind. "Thank God, Brian is safe!" she cried to ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... an invitation for her to speak, and, without further invitation, in as few and simple words as possible, she told him why she had come to Beni-Mora, and something of her parents' tragedy and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of hope by it was placed on the mountain peak of human history, in sight of all races, and tribes, and peoples of the whole world. Calvary is set over against Ararat, as Mary is set over against Eve. After the birth-song of Eden came the tragedy, in which Abel lost his life and Cain his character. After the birth-song of Bethlehem came the tragedy of Calvary, in which Christ gave up his life, that he might open to man, enveloped in the ruins of the fall, a way back to the Eden in reserve ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... The chief tragedy in the trend of later literature may be expressed by saying that the smaller Macaulay conquered the larger. Later men had less and less of that hot love of history he had inherited from Scott. They had more and more of that ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... counted their own lives as naught so that the cause to which they gave themselves might win. The comforts, freedom, and opportunities we enjoy some one paid for, bought with endless effort and sacrifice. Our very religion, the symbol of life, gladness, and salvation, has as its background tragedy, suffering, ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... While this tragedy was being enacted, the cruisers scattered in all directions and headed for the open at their highest speed. It was a bitter necessity, and it was bitterly felt by every man and boy on board them; but the captains knew that to stop and attempt the rescue of even some of their comrades ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... western solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown, until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being, covered with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... love with a girl. She rather likes him, but naturally the idea of marrying a giant doesn't appeal to her. So that's off, too. And he's got no resources, and he's gradually starving in a garret. See the tragedy?' ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... skinny wretchedness one sees in Ireland, and (what freezes our sympathies) the groveling, swiny shiftlessness that pervades these hovels, no traveler can be prepared for. It is the bare prose of misery, the unheroic of tragedy. There is not one redeeming ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... is a great misfortune, all the more tragic since under favourable conditions, which it should have been natural to attain, it might so easily be avoided. But there is this further result, full of the possibilities of domestic tragedy, that the wife so situated, however innocent, however virtuous, may at any time find her virginally sensitive emotional nature fertilised by the touch of some ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... lisping words which move to laughter Are themselves poems of unconscious melody, So the old gravestones with their crabbed muse Are beautiful for their halting words of faith, Their groping love that had no gift of song. But all the broken tragedy of life And all the yearning mystery of death Are celebrated in sweet epitaphs of vines and violets. Close by the wall a peristyle of pines Sings requiem to all ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... smile, curtsey, caress, dissemble! How resolutely they discharge the social proprieties; how they have a word, or a hand, or a kind little speech or reply for the passing acquaintance who crosses unknowing the path of the tragedy, drops a light airy remark or two (happy self-satisfied rogue!) and passes on. He passes on, and thinks that woman was rather pleased with what I said. "That joke I made was rather neat. I do really think Lady Maria looks rather favourably at me, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... partly, I think, through the very sensitiveness of the Hellenic nature. The spectacle of the ever-baffled struggle in Nature and Man they felt at times almost intolerable. Aristotle saw that this perpetual failure in the heart of glorious good made the very essence of tragedy. The tragic hero is the man of innate nobleness who yet has some one defect that lays him open to ruin. Man is set in a world full of difficulties, a world much of which is dark and strange to him: his action and those of others have results which he did not, and in ...
— Progress and History • Various
... had been taken to the seaside to be helped by the bracing air of the Norfolk coast to recover her lost appetite and forget her small tragedy, she had observed that unaccustomed things were taking place in the house. Workmen came in and out through the mews at the back and brought ladders with them and tools in queer bags. She heard hammerings which began very early in the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that in the quarrel between Servia and Austria, Hungary is only a side issue of the larger question that divides Europe into armed camps. Were categoric proof sought of how small a part the quarrel between Vienna and Belgrade played in the larger tragedy, it can be found in the urgent insistence of the Russian Government itself in the very beginning of the diplomatic conversations that preceded the outbreak ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... season of fine weather, probably heightened the illusion. Back came the happy swallows to their old playground, and one of the pioneers flew headlong at the closed gate and fell stunned and dying on the ground, a minor tragedy that may possibly come as a surprise to those who regard the instincts ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... tell your tale, for I am dying to disclose mine. Or shall I begin? No—that would be inverting the order of nature or custom, which is the same thing—beginning with the farce, and ending with the tragedy—so commencez au ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... things had arranged themselves, as they often do, rather than been arranged by him. During ten or twelve years no one had heard of Mary Thorne; the memory of Henry Thorne and his tragic death had passed away; the knowledge that an infant had been born whose birth was connected with that tragedy, a knowledge never widely spread, had faded down into utter ignorance. At the end of these twelve years, Dr Thorne had announced, that a young niece, a child of a brother long since dead, was coming to live with him. As he had contemplated, no one spoke to him; but ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... to touch a sore point. Instead of this, I will discuss it with my diary. Perhaps it will be just the thing to give it any value. Besides, what can be more natural than to write about what interests me? Everybody carries within him his tragedy. Mine is this same 'improductivite slave' of the Ploszowskis. Not long ago, when romanticism flourished in hearts and poetry, everybody carried his tragedy draped around him as a picturesque cloak; ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... be fires, for stoves are there, but no one seems to have the gumption to put them up. Here and there men and women are sleeping on valuable rugs, which look strange in the bare shelters. Most of the women knitted, and some wove on little "fegir" looms. The dullness of their existence matches the tragedy of it. The food is so plain that it doesn't want cooking—being mostly bread and water; but sometimes a few rags are washed, and there is an attempt to try and keep warm. Yet I have heard an English officer say that nothing ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... than four columns of the Woman's Journal and an adequate idea of its wise philosophy illuminated with the sparkling wit for which she was renowned cannot be conveyed by quotations. "A few years ago," she said, "a famous poet roused the compassion of the world by portraying the tragedy of hopeless toil by the Man with the Hoe. He might have found nearer home a better illustration of the work that is never done, that has no inspiration to lighten it and looks for no appreciation to glorify it, in the Woman with ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... A cell in a prison on a volcanic rock in the sea, a stone sepulchre for the living dead, buried like a toad in a hole left by the running lava of life, guarded, watched, tortured in body and soul—a figure of tremendous tragedy, the hapless man once worshipped by the people spreading impotent hands to the outer world, until madness comes to his relief and suicide helps him to escape into eternity and leave only his ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... the midst of tragedy; for it is said that little John Way could have put both his feet and his fists into one ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... felt like a Judas when she kissed the sister she was planning to betray. Abbie began at once to recite a catalogue of troubles. They were sordid and petty, but Mamise shivered to think how real a tragedy impended. She wondered how right she was to devastate her sister's life for the sake of a cause which, after all, was only the imagined welfare of millions of total strangers. She could not see the nation for the people, but her sister was her sister, and pitifully human. That was the worst wrench ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... among so many instances of cruelty and bigotry, the most infamous act of all the many in this tragedy was that performed by the Canon Nicolas Loiseleur, a creature of Cauchon, as false, as cruel, and as unscrupulous as his master and patron. This reverend scoundrel had, at the beginning of the trial, by his feigned sympathy for the ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... healthful and commodious, your sill lie solid and square, your essay be judicious and sound. But if on the canvas you have a Christ's head by Leonardo, out of the pile of stones a Strasburg Cathedral, from the block of marble a Venus of Milo, with the vocabulary a tragedy of Hamlet, you have works which are so creative that they tell on the mind with the vivid, impressive, instructive, never-wearying delight of the works of nature. The men who wrought them were strong to do so through the vigor of their sympathy with what Plato ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... were also rebels, an accumulating reason for a stupendous reproach against herself, her husband, her children, and her unhappy fate. Her whole nature was in revolt—in that complete mental and moral anarchy from which springs tragedy and murder. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part I should be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded before me by ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the nobler ones had kept the man within the pale of human affections. There had been one hour when the temptation was very nearly too much for him; and that very hour there came to him two hundred dollars from Elizabeth. It turned him back. Ah, how many a time two hundred dollars would prevent a tragedy! How many a time financial salvation means also ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the elucidation of a mystery which, for three-quarters of a century, baffled all search. The story is derived from traditions in the neighborhood, from allusions to Lucy in the local histories, and from the dying statement of a chief actor in the tragedy. ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... London at the Carlton with two men. One of them was an excellent type of young England, strong, healthy, athletic, and straightforward. The other was a clever London doctor who was building up a great practice in the West End. At dessert the conversation turned upon a then recent tragedy in which a great reputation had gone down, and young England spoke rather contemptuously of the victim, with the superior surprise human beings generally express about the sin which does not happen ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... be repaired. Your fearful prophecies and denunciations so terrified my daughter, that she died distracted. My brokenhearted wife was not long in following her; and now you have made me the murderer of my son. Complete the tragedy, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... stage, and jumped among the music racks in the orchestra. He caught a glimpse of the early morning sun shining on the tawdry hangings of the boxes and the exaggerated perspective of the scenery. He ran through corridors between two great statues of Comedy and Tragedy, and up a marble stair case to a lobby in which he saw the white faces about him multiplied in long mirrors, and so out to an iron balcony from which he looked down, panting and breathless, upon the Palace Gardens, swarming with ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... questions to form the customary work of the department; but the skies were serene; murder, rape, and sudden death no one thought of; Lloyd's, which will gamble on anything from the weather to an ocean tragedy, would have written a policy at a ridiculously low premium on the maintenance of the peace of Europe; any statesman rash enough to have predicted war for the United States within three years would have aroused the concern of his friends ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... tragedy is your remark," he retorted, "an' I joins you tharin. Take them disasters that pounces on Slim Jim. What happens in the case of this yere Slim Jim tenderfoot," the old fellow continued as a damp gleam of sympathy shone in his eye,"is both hardship an' tragedy. Which of course ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Hersch. A half-hour of profound silence, then the culprit rose, and making sure that his wife was sleeping the sleep of the just, he cautiously took his book and spectacles, glided out of doors, and sitting upon the old moss-grown bench in front of the house, continued the tragedy of the Danish prince by the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... witness this great tragedy even to its last scene," said Athos. "Whatever happens, let us not leave England before the crisis. Don't you ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... able to eradicate in two hundred years. The Indians say of an insane man that his brain is frozen. And they believe in their hearts that the only way to melt it is by drinking human blood—a woman's or a child's by preference. That is the real explanation of many an obscure tragedy ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Labienus—his desertion of his general, his insults and his cruelties to his comrades, expiated at last in his own blood. Attius Varus was killed also, who had been with Juba when he destroyed Curio. The tragedy was being knitted up in the deaths of the last actors in it. The eagles of the thirteen legions were all taken. The two Pompeys escaped on their horses, Sextus disappearing in the mountains of Grenada or the Sierra Morena; Cnaeus flying for Gibraltar, where he hoped ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... of his own danger from the Uhlans. He had told Lorraine, partly because he wished her to understand their position, partly because the story of his capture, trial, and escape led up to the tragedy that he scarcely knew how to break to her. But he had done it, and she, pale as death, had gone silently to her room, motioning him away as he stood awkwardly at ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... variety of objects which will occur in the long circuit of a morning walk. I assiduously frequented the theatres at a very propitious aera of the stage, when a constellation of excellent actors, both in tragedy and comedy, was eclipsed by the meridian brightness of Garrick in the maturity of his judgment, and vigour of his performance. The pleasures of a town-life are within the reach of every man who is regardless of his health, his money, and his company. By the contagion of example I was ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... of remark is, that all of these depend for their interest upon a human association. Not one of them professes any concern with the sea or ships for their own sake. The sea is a sad, solemn reality, the theatre upon which the seaman acts his life's tragedy. It has no more of enchantment to him than the "magic fairy palace" of the ballet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances leading to them. This, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... instinct, Dorothy borrowed from the curate a volume of a certain more attractive edition of Shakespeare than she herself possessed, and left it in Juliet's way, so arranged that it should open at the tragedy of Othello. She thought that, if she could be drawn into sympathy with suffering like, but different and apart from her own, it would take her a little out of herself, and might lighten the pressure of her load. Now Juliet had never read a play of Shakespeare in her life, and knew Othello ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... established frameworks they have been individualistic and highly idiosyncratic at all times. Under the communist regime, however, the government is omnipresent, and people must toe the official line. One senses the tragedy that affects well-known scholars, writers and poets, who must degrade themselves, their work, their past and their families in order to survive. They may hope for comprehension of their actions, but nonetheless they must suffer shame. Will the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... terror which their elders made no attempt to calm. They were ragged, pitiful, wistful urchins; lads with pinched faces, poor little snippets of girls. Their childish imaginations made of the affair a tragedy which they could not understand. Under their arms they held frightened cats, helpless kittens, or rag dolls. The callous calm of the men mystified them; the weeping of their mothers made their ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the excitement, "tragedy—make it a tragedy. It is for the stage! Think of them lost without food and the balloon coming into sight! Think of the scenic effects, the low music as the orphan kneels in the middle of the stage and prays that ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... seven, and poor Sophia, alone and melancholy, sat reading a tragedy. It was the Fatal Marriage; and she was now come to that part where the poor distrest Isabella disposes of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... here yesterday, and in the evening read to us his daughter Fanny's Tragedy of Francis the First—a very wonderful production for so young a girl. There is considerable vigour in many parts of this work, and several passages in it reminded me of the old dramatists. The character of "Louisa of Savoy" is forcibly drawn—wonderfully so, indeed, when ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... tragedy—whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair, told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of Bisesa—Trejago ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... exterior of the piece was more that of a French play than like the drama of any other nation. The specimen of this style most accessible to American students is the Aspasia of Rizos, published in Boston some twenty years ago, a tragedy, by the way, well worth reading. But latterly, the antique tendency prevailing, plays are written in the old measures, and with all the old machinery. This is in fact a revolutionary proceeding, but we hope may not be without its use, for Greece ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Representatives now assembled in Washington, humbly confessing their dependence upon Almighty God, who rules all that is done for human good, make haste at this informal meeting to express the emotions with which they have been filled by the appalling tragedy which has deprived the nation of its head and covered the land with mourning; and in further declaration of their sentiments ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... history in their own country, and both to die as generals upon the battle-field, the death they chiefly loved. Both men were to suffer more than falls to the ordinary lot, and the life of one, some part of whose story is here to be told, was nothing else but tragedy. For the gods had bestowed upon him quick gifts of mind and matchless beauty of face, and yet he was to be hated by his nation, till his name has become a byword, and to be betrayed by his own friends who were cowards ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... GRILLPARZER, the German dramatist, $4,000 for his writings, but he refuses, not because he thinks the price too low, but because he will not take the trouble of preparing and publishing a collected edition of his dramas, the last of which was entitled Maximilian Robespierre, a five act tragedy. He has also a variety of unpublished manuscripts, which it is feared will never ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Some of Reynolds's contributions: Lady Elizabeth Keppel as Bridesmaid, Countess Waldegrave and Child, and Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy. ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... harsh thing you choose to call me,—marriage in some freak, boyish corner of my mind, still defines itself as being the mutual sharing of a—mutually original experience. Certainly whether a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness,—whether it eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy, or mere sickening ennui, to two people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage, the thrill of establishing publicly a man-and-woman home together is an emotion that cannot be ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... vast influence on the political situation, to consider any existence apart from the setting we had chosen for the play. And, after all, what was it, that career from which we hoped so much? I stood waiting my cue, ready to act my part in the farce or tragedy, whichever it turned ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... outworn garments and renewed her armour and vesture. Hers are no grass-grown squares and deserted streets; no ruined splendours telling of pride abased and glory departed; no sad memories of waning cities once the mistresses of sea and land; none of the tears evoked by a great historic tragedy; none of the solemn pathos of decay and death. Paris has more than once tasted the bitterness of humiliation; Norseman and Briton, Russian and German have bruised her fair body; the dire distress ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... there was no hope of diverting Enderby's attention; he must go through with it and only trust that he might be believed, and once again that slight sense of the ludicrous came upon him. Tragedy was in the air; yet, as often happens in real life, it was being pushed to comedy point, and he grudged even the shadow of a jest at this important crisis in his dealings with Miss Clairville, who was now sitting at supper with ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... Chelsea on Sundays. In this book he also found a niche for the exhibition of his own distresses in the character of Melopoyn the dramatic poet. His applications to the directors of the theatre, indeed, continued so unavailing, that he at length resolved to publish his unfortunate tragedy by subscription; and in 1749 the Regicide appeared with a preface, in which he complained grievously of their neglect, and of the faithlessness of his patrons, among whom Lord Lyttelton particularly excited his indignation. In the summer of this year his view of men and manners ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... a sensation. How little the Greeks cared for that! It was beauty and charm, delicate colour, fine subtlety of which they were, in search; they held all things holy, yet nothing solemn. Their dignity was not a pompous dignity, but the dignity of high tragedy, of unconquerable courage and ruthless fate; not the dignity of the well-appointed house and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... their voice as there is emphasis in their speech. Our pupil's speech will be plainer and simpler still, for his passions are still asleep, and will not blend their tones with his. Do not, therefore, set him to recite tragedy or comedy, nor try to teach declamation so-called. He will have too much sense to give voice to things he cannot understand, or expression to feelings ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the aid of the allies to leave the kingdom, that they might then exterminate the Protestants by a general massacre. Catharine decided to accomplish by the dagger of the assassin that which she had in vain attempted to accomplish on the field of battle. This peace was but the first act in the awful tragedy of St. Bartholomew. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... prostrate before her the mightiest of human intellects. Instances illustrative of both propositions are of daily occurrence. It has been said of Sophocles, that being desirous of proving that at an advanced age he was in full possession of his intellectual faculties, he composed a tragedy, was crowned, and died through joy. The same thing happened to Philippides, the comic writer. M. Juventius Thalma, on being told that a triumph had been decreed to him for having subdued Corsica, fell down dead ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... Minister at Belgrade, the first containing an account of a mob which gathered before the Serbian Legation on July 2, on account of his having hoisted the national flag at half-mast as a sign of mourning; the bodies of the victims of the Sarajevo tragedy having been brought that day to the Austrian capital. The police dispersed the mob. The papers of July 3, under the heading of "Provocation by the Serbian Minister," falsely described the incident. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... careful to avoid the catastrophe of Dora and even the demise of her four-footed favourite. The book that suits them best is 'Martin Chuzzlewit.' Its genial comedy, quite different from the violent delights of 'Pickwick,' is well adapted to their grasp; while its tragedy, the murder of Montague Tigg—the finest description of the breaking of the sixth commandment in the language—leaves nothing to be desired in the way of excitement. But here we stray beyond our bounds, for 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is not a 'sick book;' or rather, it is one of the very few productions ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... had read it over to us. Upon my word—and that of an elder—I do not believe that even Mr Wiggie himself could have done the thing greater justice. It was just as if he had been a play-actor man, spouting Douglas's tragedy. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... the saddest picture of the whole revolution, and even if not true, was certainly typical of much of the pathos which crowned this mixture of humour and tragedy. ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... very foolish high tragedy, but if you're not careful there may be some real tragedy. If you care for this Holcroft, as you say, you had better ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... passing at Rome, another scene of the tragedy was enacting in London. The violence of the Tory party in attacking Keats had increased after his leaving England, but he had found able defenders, and amongst them Mr. John Scott, the editor of the "Champion," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... was saying, "Council Bluffs, Iowa, was still threatened by stark tragedy. But 200 weary rescue workers have refused to give up hope, and continue to dig in an effort to save Elbert Haggedorn, 183, who has been wedged for two ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut |
