"Tragic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... repentance, and these wicked will be no more." This he therefore did, and they repented and ceased to vex him. Of this excellent and humane woman it may well be said, "She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness" (Prov. xxxi. 26). Her end was tragic. She was entrapped by a disciple of her husband, and out of shame she committed suicide. See particulars by Rashi in Avodah Zarah, fol. 18, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... letters written twenty years ago. He did not know why it was that he felt he must look at them, but he knew he must. They would satisfy no curiosity if he felt it, and he had none. Perhaps it was the old tragic tender feeling for Margery which impelled him. Perhaps he unconsciously longed to read that this man had loved her—that she had not given her life for nothing—that the story had not been one of common caprice and common treachery. As he walked his ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... apologize for a story that is nowise tragic, nor fitted to "the fashion of these times," possibly somebody will say at its end that I should also have apologized for its subject, since it is as easy for an author to treat his readers to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... There was so much of strange grief in his simple movement that I felt words would be out of place. It was not my dogged, inexplicable "hand" who was sitting before me in the bright moonlight on the baby's grave; it was a man with a hidden history of some tragic sorrow long kept secret in his homely breast,—perhaps a history very few of us could read aright. I would not question him, though I fancied he meant to explain himself. I knew that if he was willing to tell me the truth ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... exhibited him to the young people in all sorts of philosophic roles for the benefit of the industrial and military coalition. Nietzsche depicted in lines of fire the resurrection of heroism, his vision of the superman was that of an ardent soul, steeled by sufferings, meditating a tragic conception of life with serenity, and in his solitary individualism surmounting the infirmity of man and his own by the insistent will to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... leave thee, life, with no regret at parting; Full of whatever thou could'st give, I rise From thy neglected feast, and go to sleep: Yet, on this brink of death, my eyes are opened, And heaven has bid me prophecy to you, The unjust contrivers of this tragic scene:— An age is coming, when an English monarch With blood shall pay that blood which you have shed: To save your cities from victorious arms, You shall invite the waves to hide your earth[1], And, trembling, to the, tops of houses fly, While ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... replied Lionel, a shade of sadness in his tone, more than surprise, for somehow the name of Luke, coupled with his return, brought back all too vividly the recollection of his departure, and the tragic end of Rachel Frost which had ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... taken a table which sat in the shadow and who was trying by the aid of champagne to forget the tragic scene of the hour gone, came near to wasting a glass of that divine nectar of Nepenthe. He brushed his eyes and held a palm to his ear. "That voice!" he ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... tragic affair Vetch went to Boston to take a hand in an invasion of Canada which was planned for that summer. This invasion was to take place by both sea and land simultaneously. Vetch joined the fleet of Sir Hovenden Walker, consisting of some sixty vessels which sailed from Boston in ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... 10, the Philistines appear to have begun the attack, perhaps taking the enemy by surprise. The rout this time was complete. The grim catalogue of disaster in verses 10 and 11 is strangely tragic in its dreadful, monotonous plainness, each clause adding something to the terrible story, and each linked to the preceding by a simple 'and.' The Israelites seem to have been scattered. 'They fled, every man to his tent.' The army, with little ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... by King Mark's side at the banquet, imparted to him the secret of Tristrem's birth, and in proof showed him the ring given him by Blancheflour, whereupon Mark at once joyfully recognized Tristrem as his nephew. Rohand further told of the tragic fate of Tristrem's parents through the treachery of Duke Morgan, and Tristrem, fired by the tale of wrong, vowed to return at once to Ermonie ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the emphasis laid by Jesus upon his identity with his "father" which has produced the tragic results we know. For although this was the personal conception of the noblest of all human souls, it remains a proof of how much even the soul of Jesus was limited and restricted by the malicious power which opposes ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... son of the well-known statesman, John fourth Earl of Sandwich, many years First Lord of the Admiralty, by the unfortunate Miss Margaret Reay, who was assassinated, in 1779, by her affianced lover, the Rev. Mr. Hackman. The tragic affair, which excited immense interest at the time, and which gave rise to various romantic stories, is to be found in most series of judicial investigations, and especially in a collection of celebrated trials recently ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... it, darling; because, you see, I hadn't any powder left; and I was coming through the woods—just as I told you—when the Yanks got sight of me." He smiled down at her bravely, striving to add a dash of comedy to his tragic plight. "And I tell you, Virgie, your old dad had to run like a turkey—wishing to the ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... had been more deeply impressed than any of the rest by the recital of Monsieur's tragic romance. It seemed, somehow, like the plays their guardian had described to them. Phil, the skeptical, had seemed inclined to think the story over-drawn, but the girls had emphatically disagreed with ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... tragic thing. That very night I realised that he was right. There is something wrong with my heart. It is too long. It is too wide. It is too thick. It is out of place. It would be difficult to say exactly where the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... called danced himns. The truth is, that tragedy and comedy, made also originally to be sung, but which, in process of time, upon truer principles of nature, came to be acted and declaimed, were but super-inductions to the choruses, of which, in tragedy especially, the tragic-writers, could not well get rid, as being part of ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... but a kindly and reverent reserve protected her from questions. It was felt that the place was sacred to some recollection of her youth, when her young children were about her, before the cruel desertion of two, the ceaseless quarrels of other two, and the tragic death of one of ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... things together and when Mollie Wentworth passed out of the village church a wife, Cynthia, lovely as the bride, walked behind as bridesmaid. And Mollie was to have returned the favor in a few days. But something happened, something tragic and cruel, and lovely Cynthia never wore the wedding gown that had been fashioned for her. It was packed away and on what was to have been her wedding day Cynthia left Green Valley and was gone a long while. She came back once or twice but in the end Green ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... degree of Earl having been known in the north before the son and brother of the King, the latter by the fatal title of Albany, brought a new degree into the roll of nobility. Young David, all unknowing of the tragic fate before him, was then a daring and reckless youth, held within bounds, as would appear, by the influence of a good and wise mother, and if an anxiety and trouble, at least as yet no disgrace to the throne. He was the contemporary of another madcap prince, far better known ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... glasses, and, what seemed most to attract them, various stubs of partially-consumed cigarettes, lay about the tables and floor. Adjoining this was the chamber which had been known as Mrs. Dawson's, and this, too, had been thoroughly explored. 'Louette, who had disappeared after Doyle's tragic death, was found not far away, and the police thought it but fair that Mrs. Doyle should not be deprived of the services of her maid. Then came other additions, though confined in other sections of the city. Mr. Pepper ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... and heedless, still had his hand upon her arm, hurrying her along without slackening his pace. She seemed like a girl in a dream. Truly, she was very handsome, a strange tragic figure amid all the hubbub of Florence, the old-world city of noise and of narrow streets, where Counts and contadini rub shoulders, and the tradesmen are ever on the look out to profit—if only a few ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... impossible to do more than touch on the tragic episode of 1682—the trial of three unhappy women, Susanna Edwards, Temperance Lloyd, and Mary Trembles, who were accused of having practised witchcraft. Here are a few fragments of the evidence given at the trial. A witness said that, while nursing ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... tragic, pathetic, comical and otherwise, took place upon a stage made particularly fit by ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... hand. Tales of marvel and magic grew up about him, and he became a wonder-worker for the superstitious people. In time he grew to be the national hero and the national saint, and lives in history as Olaf the Saint, while his tragic death and his enthusiasm for the cause of Christ gave him a strong hold on the people's hearts and aided greatly in making Norway truly a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... dramatic change in our fortunes! One that easily might have been, might even yet be, tragic. At half-past one, less than two hours before, we were comfortably on board a fine ship, absolutely unsuspicious of the least danger. If any of us had thought of the matter at all, we probably imagined we were in the safest part of the ocean. But, at three o'clock, here we were, having undergone ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... clothes they would whip us. This we dreaded from experience, and determined to avoid. It was June, the sun was very warm, and we soon dried our clothing by spreading it on the rocks about us. We promised never to tell the story, and I never did until after Lincoln's tragic end." ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... him a fragment of a history that, if followed out, might lead to curious results. He told him, in a tone half serious, what he had heard respecting the quarrel of the two brothers, and the Bloody Footstep, the impress of which was said to remain, as a lasting memorial of the tragic termination of that enmity. At this point, Hammond interrupted him. He had indeed, at various points of the narrative, nodded and smiled mysteriously, as if looking into his mind and seeing something there analogous to what he was listening to. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you have confessed. Now I shall tell you why you feel this wicked sorrow'?—proceeding to an account of the depravity of human nature so unredeemed by comfort for a childish mind of common intelligence that one can scarcely imagine the interview ending in anything less tragic than a fit ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... of conditions off shore revealed the fact that Robeson Channel was practicable for navigation. Our work was done, success had crowned our efforts, the ship was ready, we were all fit, and on July 18, with only the tragic memory of the lost lamented Marvin to lessen our high spirits, the Roosevelt pulled slowly out from the cape and turned her nose again to ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... expense of Turks, Circassians, and Persians is a subject alien to this narrative; and the tragic story of the overthrow of Poland at the hand of the three partitioning Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, does not ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... in languid nothingness, and he slept. Dodson arose preparatory to stretching himself on his couch. But first he bent over his friend with a sense of tragic appreciation. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... tough old politician of the Fifteenth Ward was laughing, at one of his own jokes probably, and looking up in the face of Mr. Blake, whose back was turned to me, in a way that entirely precluded all thought of any tragic expression in that quarter. Somewhat disgusted, I withdrew ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... reformer, with a marked turn for eloquence, and yet not be a serious dramatist. Dr. Clifford is a reformer; Mr. Henniker Heaton is a passionate reformer; and both are capable of literature when they are excited. But they are not dramatists. We still await Mr. Henniker Heaton's tragic fourth act about the failure of the negotiations for a penny post with France. Brieux is too violent a reformer ever to be a serious dramatist. Violent reformers are unprincipled, and the reformer in Brieux forces the dramatist ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... news upon six or seven girls, for all of whom Hogboom had a tender regard. He insisted upon arranging the funeral and vetoed our plans as fast as we made them. He was as domineering and ugly as if he was the only man who had ever met a tragic end. He acted as if he had a monopoly. We hated him cordially by Monday night, but we were helpless. Hoggy claimed that being dead was a nerve-wearing and exhausting business, and that if he didn't get the respect due to him as a corpse he would put on his plug hat and ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the man to be systematic even in his grief, which was sincere. He recorded in his diary the details of each day during Mary's illness, and it was not until the last that he shrank from coldly stating events to him so truly tragic. The only dashes which occur in his diary follow the date of Sunday, Sept. 10, 1797. Kegan Paul says that his writing to his friends "was probably an attempt to be stoical, but a real indulgence in the luxury of woe." To Holcroft, who, he knew, could appreciate his sorrow, he said, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... to me Of the long plunge and welter of the sea; Likewise you are Oracular Of its low melody. You voice its laughing moods, Its lyric interludes, Its secrecies, its sorceries, its mysteries, Its tragic histories. Aye, all that it has breathed, may breathe, shall breathe, You unto me bequeath; Thus am I made the fair inheritor Of that rare essence of true harmony Which many a land-girt ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... pedestrian or the lone fisherman may see, resting upon a gravelly flat, the remains of an old Indian canoe, whose once beautiful proportions, now untraceable in its rottenness, bore a prominent part in the tragic event I ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... easy to her, that she has made, does make, and will make innumerable worlds. But, because you do not conceive that nature is able to produce such effects without some rational aid, you are forced, like the tragic poets, when you cannot wind up your argument in any other way, to have recourse to a Deity, whose assistance you would not seek, if you could view that vast and unbounded magnitude of regions in all parts; ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... all the North American continent is marked with interest more romantic than that which attaches to the Rio Grande of Mexico. On its banks has been enacted many a tragic scene—many an episode of Indian and border war—from the day when the companions of Cortez first unfurled Spain's pabellon till the Lone Star flag of Texas, and later still the banner of the Stars and Stripes, became mirrored on ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... has recorded an occurrence, belonging to the autumn of 1877, which most impressively brings before us the tragic grandeur and the portentous issues of Bismarck's career. It was twilight at Varzin, and the Chancellor, as was his wont after dinner, was sitting by the stove in the large back drawing-room. After having sat silent for a while, gazing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... country risen, and fought as stubbornly as the Volunteers did, no troops could have beaten them—well that is a wild statement, the heavy guns could always beat them—but from whatever angle Irish people consider this affair it must appear to them tragic and lamentable beyond expression, but not mean and ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... no means encouraging. In 1893 Colonel French was actually retired on half-pay! It is an admirable system which allows the middle-aged officer to make way for youth in the British army; but the spectacle of a French despatched into civil obscurity at the ripe age of forty-one, has its tragic as well as its comic side. That it acutely depressed him we know. For a time he was almost in despair as to ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... like the lightning of the storm Forensic message on the walls Of heaven writes, to fill the earth With pause of tragic dread, so did Guteba's name, on alien tongue For one brief moment holden stay The stealthy steps that stole about The Sioux and closed escaping path Around him. And as thunder lends Unto the tempest's roar a voice More awful because of that ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... promotion eight months before, and Peyronie, recovered of his wound and eager for another bout with the French. He also had been promoted for his gallantry, and now had his own company of rangers. There was Captain Polson, for whom a tragic fate was waiting, and my old captain, Adam Stephen. And there was Carolus Spiltdorph, advanced to a lieutenancy like myself, and by great good fortune in my company. We began to chum together at once,—sharing ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them she rarely exchanged a word. Hence it ensued that what her mind had gathered of the real concerning them was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more powerful ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... listen, fain forget; She smiles, but with those tragic, waiting eyes, Those proud and piteous lips that hunger yet For love's fulfilment. Ah, when Landry cries "My heart is dead!" with what a wild regret Her own heart feels the throb that ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... shrouds, where, however, she could see that he was in no imminent danger, for he had one of the sailors on either side of him who would catch him should he slip—was obliged perforce to do as all the rest were doing and gaze at the thrilling marine drama that was being acted out with such tragic earnestness on the surface of the deep ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... any further explanation, but returned immediately. At a small door on the terrace stood the woman who had been her guide a few hours before, her face ashen, her eyes suffused with tears, her whole appearance tragic in the extreme. She seized Philippa by the hand and led her swiftly away. Between the sobs that were shaking her the girl ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... Election Day for the thing Hale most dreaded—a clash that would involve the guard in the Tolliver-Falin troubles over the hills. There had been simply a preliminary political gathering at the Gap the day before, but it had been a crucial day for the guard from a cloudy sunrise to a tragic sunset. Early that morning, Mockaby, the town-sergeant, had stepped into the street freshly shaven, with polished boots, and in his best clothes for the eyes of his sweetheart, who was to come up that day to the Gap from Lee. Before sunset he died with those boots on, while the sweetheart, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... a picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... have it, the second night we sat down to dinner in that garden, news had come of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand-Charles-Louis Joseph-Marie d'Autriche-Este, whom the tragic death of Prince Rudolphe, almost exactly twenty-four years and six months earlier to a day, had made Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary—and the tone of our gathering was changed. From that day the party threatened to become a little Bedlam, and ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... not until after my friend's departure that I suddenly recollected the mysterious interview which I had been told of as preceding the suicide of young Prescott. Then I thought of the ravings of poor Reeves, rendered more tragic by the fact that I had heard that very day of his death. What was the meaning of it all? Had this woman some baleful secret to disclose which must be known before her marriage? Was it some reason which forbade her to marry? Or was it ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lyne had been the most tragic blow which had ever overtaken him. And if they had arrested him he would have been indifferent. For this hang-dog criminal, with the long, melancholy face, lined and seamed and puckered so that he appeared to be an old man, had loved Thornton ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... the police court in the morning as a witness. The terror of that ordeal almost overshadowed the tragic fact that Parsons was not only summoned for assault, but "swapped," and packing his box. Polly knew himself well enough to know he would make a bad witness. He felt sure of one fact only, namely, that "'E then 'It 'Im on the 'Ed and—" All the rest danced about in his mind now, and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... of personal wrong, neither the one nor the other were the prime causes of his actions. The evils of the city were enormous, his courage was heroic, and after profound reflection he resolved upon the step which determined his tragic career. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... known as "The Legend of Elphi." Elphi the Farndale dwarf was doubtless at one time the central figure of many a fireside story and Elphi's mother was almost equally famous. The most tragic story in which they both play their leading parts is that of Golpha the bad Baron of Lastingham and his wicked wife. The mother helped in hiding some one Golpha wished to torture. In his rage he seized the mother, and sentenced her to be burnt upon ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... curious," I said, "to learn what the motive force of this tragic affair was—I mean the patent medicine. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... point was not three feet in depth. He drew the corpse to the bank, and, in so doing, recognised his acquaintance, Mr. Fouracres, with whom he had spent an hour or two at a public-house in Woodbury on the evening before. How the landlord of the Pig and Whistle had come to this tragic end neither the gardener nor any one else in the neighbourhood ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... thirty—and I was then thirty-three—experience a milder return of their adolescent warmth, a kind of fainter second spring, since the first has not fulfilled its promise. Of course, I wasn't clearly conscious of this at the time: who is? But I had had my youthful passion and my tragic disappointment, as you know: I had looked far enough into what Thackeray used to call the cryptic mysteries to save me from the Scylla of dissipation, and yet preserved enough of natural nature to keep me out of the Pharisaic Charyb-dis. My devotion to my legal ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... tragic touch of all—the party would march briskly off to the strains of the liveliest air in the whole repertoire of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... sooner settled down to a lonely winter than suddenly Wallace came back. He came up to see her on the very evening of his return, to explain his sudden appearance and tell her all the tragic sum ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... imagine the tragic figure Mrs. Jones must have looked, and the effect the sight would have on the susceptible nerves of a Bay fisherman. Then she said hurriedly: "I shall have great faith in Mrs. Jenkin's judgment after this, although I have wondered how she could be so persistently hopeful in the face of such ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... Chapultepec, or wandering within the gigantic Caverns of Cacahuamilpa, the recollection of which, she says, "rests upon the mind, like a marble dream," and where an unfortunate traveller, years before, had lost his way and met a tragic death. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... still, as if in deep thought. Then in a shrill high voice full of passionate fervour, and trembling as if with tears, she spoke in her own tongue, and ever and anon amid the tragic torrent of sound the words "Tatapatamoi chepiack, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... its grim outer walls the ancient world's sad glories Were recorded in fire; upon its inner stone, Drawn by dead hands, I saw, in tales and tragic stories, The woe and sickness of an age of fear ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... the primmest pucker, rolled her eyes in a horrified way, clasped her hands before her, and said, in a tragic tone: "Young ladies! Such conduct is most unseemly," in such perfect mimicry of Miss Carter that Ruth and ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... advantage; but it has an equally important disadvantage—the combatant cannot see to aim; on the other hand, he cannot see to dodge. And all the while Penrod was receiving two for one. He became heavy with mud. Plastered, impressionistic and sculpturesque, there was about him a quality of the tragic, of the magnificent. He resembled a sombre masterpiece by Rodin. No one could have been quite sure what he was ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... lips that parted of themselves as if in wonder at great things newly seen, and big troubled eyes that spoke, despite her leanness and long legs, of a spring of hot blood crouching within her. Yes, she seemed doomed to something far and tragic, and outside the lives ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... when a reasonable curiosity about syphilis can be satisfied without either shame or secrecy by a reasonable presentation of the facts. We need the light on this subject and the light on reserved shelves is notoriously poor. The stigma attaching to syphilis as a disease is one of the most tragic examples of a great wrong done to do a little right. What if there are a few who deserve what they got? We may well ask ourselves how free we are to cast the first stone. And why single out syphilis as the badge of venery? The "itch" is transmitted by sexual relations ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... Mary Jane were smitten with a desire to rush into print, and I overheard them concocting a tragic Love Story in the kitchen, and they were highly indignant later on, because the Doctor-in-Law would not accept it. You can hardly wonder at it though, for it really was ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant "What in hell are you up to now! pull her down! more! more!—there now, steady as you ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... my possession, it was comparatively easy for me to find the passageways, and after the old woman's death I had chance to examine the house room by room. And sometimes, Sophy, when I have been alone in this tragic old place—" he paused, and looked at me with a puzzled frown—"it has seemed to me that there were—well, secret influences, say; things outside of our sphere. I have felt a sense of horror and despair descend upon my spirit, a weight almost too heavy to bear. Sometimes it would ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Mary was scarcely more favourable to letters. No one knew what to be at in religion. In Magdalen no one could be found to say Mass, the fellows were turned out, the undergraduates were whipped—boyish martyrs—and crossed at the buttery. What most pleases, in this tragic reign, is the anecdote of Edward Anne of Corpus. Anne, with the conceit of youth, had written a Latin satire on the Mass. He was therefore sentenced to be publicly flogged in the hall of his college, and to receive one lash for each line in his satire. ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... engraved concerning their illustrious traditions. The man whom ye saw me conversing with by the stockade was the one whom the tribe intrusted with the task; but the priests, after much consideration among themselves of the object of his visit, refused to have anything to do with such a tragic affair, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... love the voyage. Jumping from the side of the ship as she goes along, skurrying and leaping from ice-pan to ice-pan, and then having killed, "sculped," and "pelted" the seal, the exciting return to the vessel! But it has its tragic side, for it takes its regular ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... huge black sea; a raft beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black, against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,—deeper, because more natural, than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance: or his livid "Orestes," ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with renewed confidence to the development of the policies he had so far advanced. But fate cut short his designs. In the September following his second inauguration, he was shot by an anarchist while attending the Buffalo exposition. "What a strange and tragic fate it has been of mine," wrote the Secretary of State, John Hay, on the day of the President's death, "to stand by the bier of three of my dearest friends, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, three of the gentlest of men, all risen to the head of the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... door, and slipping into the springhouse, lie down and sleep quietly in its cool moist shade for a quarter of an hour; then, still asleep, sit up and in a startled way, talk earnestly for some time, his features transformed by a look of tragic intelligence, which they did not possess at other times. Then he would lie down again and after a few minutes quiet sleep, awake and return to ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... almost all artists were versatile, than any other but one. Probably Leonardo da Vinci was gifted in as many different ways as Michael Angelo, and in his own lines was as powerful. This Florentine's life was as tragic as it ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... wage, or, rather, to put it more justly, for a true end to the life we lead. Yet it is not so. The conclusion is more weighty by far that all things bear their fruit: that the comprehender and the master of so much, the very mind, suffers to no purpose and in one moment a tragic, final, and unworthy catastrophe agrees with nothing other that we know. It is not thus of the good things of the earth that turn kindly into the earth again. It cannot be thus with that which makes of all the earth a subject thing for contemplation and for description, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... when all had drawn their chairs into a circle, a man deaf in the right ear sat at his left, while at his right sat a tall young lady, who though slightly pale was of an interesting appearance, notwithstanding. The somewhat tragic cast of her large and classic features was intensified by a pair of great mournful eyes and a wistful mouth, the whole framed in luxuriant masses of black hair, and altogether she was a girl whom one would give a second and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... interesting of all the epochs of Scottish history—and that not for Mary's sake alone, but for the wonderful conflict going on apart from her, and in which her tragic career is but an episode—so it is the most exciting and picturesque period in the records of Edinburgh, which was then in its fullest splendour of architectural beauty and social life; its noble streets more crowded, more gay, more tumultuous ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the dream in the light of newly discovered evidence did not wholly commend itself to the son's more logical mind; he had, for the moment at least, a conviction that it foreshadowed a more simple and immediate, if less tragic, disaster than a visit to the Pacific Coast. It was Halpin Frayser's impression that he was to be garroted on ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... smooth surface into a thousand miniature waves which turned, as she stared, into the mocking smiles of her acquaintances and friends; and she knelt quite still until the surface was once more smooth, out of which, as she stared, looked the tragic face of the dead man's mother and the grief-stricken, shamed face of her ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... features of that tragic night, to the plaisant this question had reiterated itself persistently in the solitude of his cell. True, he had forgotten he was only a jester; but had it not been the memory of her soft glances that had hurried him on to the avowal? She had no fault ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... now: what she will be remains to be seen. Her family wish her to be an artist: she wishes to adopt the stage as a profession, and is studying for it sub rosa. Did you ever see a more tragic face?" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... clings to him, stuck to his post, visiting the sick, burying the dead, and even, which seems a little superfluous, preaching and afterwards printing "by request" their funeral sermons. A brave man, indeed, and one reserved for a tragic end. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... aera: and on grounds of plain sense and universal logic to see and assert the superiority of the former in the truth and nativeness both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we were studying the Greek tragic poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons: and they were the lessons too, which required most time and trouble to bring up, so as to escape his censure. I learned from him, that poetry, even that of the loftiest and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... street that intrigues me most is Gay. There were two of them for a while, the one that is now N, and another, way up near the college, which was renamed in honor of General Lingan, after his tragic death. Who was Gay Street named for? It wasn't a local celebrity, for Baltimore also had a Gay Street, still has, way down in its old section. There was somebody the people of that generation admired and ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... as a writer of "lite comidy" if you continue to weave such tragic spells. "The Lean Larder" would not be an attractive title for ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... honours, two of which were the Victoria Cross. In recognition of its services in the allied cause the University received a grant of one million dollars from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. McGill's war record, tragic but glorious, is one of ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... break one's balance-pole, smash our refuge,—yes, that would be serious," said Blondet with a tragic air. ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... Parian, the slaughter of the Chinese in the villages beyond, and the execution of the ring-leaders. At the end of the narrative of the insurrection some additional information is given. The governor sends an envoy to China with the news of this tragic affair. The writer relates bits of news which have come from China to Manila—of ravages occasioned therein by floods, earthquakes, and a ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... creatures are!—I said to my inner self,—what hope after all is there for us, imprisoned in a world which has no pity for us whatever may be our fate,—a world that goes on in precisely the same fashion whether we live or die, work or are idle? These tragic hills, this cold lake, this white moon, were the same when Caesar lived, and would still be the same when we who gazed upon them now were all gone into the Unknown. It seemed difficult to try and realise this obvious fact—so difficult as to be almost unnatural. ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... "SOS"—the most tragic of all the calls of the sea, was coming to them as a frantic appeal sent out through the air to any and all who might ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... hot July day, and planted herself quite unconcernedly beside the professor, and he, looking down into the funny little round face, beheld a great black-and-blue bump on the forehead. The sight grieved him to the soul, even before he knew its tragic meaning. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the tragic tale of horror told by Suetonius. Nero's last words in the play "O Rome, farewell," &c., seem very poor to "Sero et Haec est fides"; but, if the playwright was young and inexperienced, we can hardly wonder that his strength failed him at this supreme moment. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... His first match was unpropitious. Foiled in his attempts upon the chastity of a lady of great beauty and high honor, he was rash enough to marry her; rash, we say, for from that fatal hour all became as darkness; the curtain fell upon the comedy of his life, to rise to tragic horrors. When, passion subsided, repentance awoke, and he became anxious for deliverance from the fetters he had so heedlessly imposed on himself, and on ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... younger men to win laurels for themselves. He was still a young man, perhaps thirty-five, when the most trying crisis in the history of his people came upon them. As I know and as Doctor Grinnell's book amply corroborates, he was the general who largely guided and defended them in that tragic flight from the Indian Territory to their northern home. I will not discuss the justice of their cause: I prefer to quote Doctor Grinnell, lest it appear that I am in any way exaggerating ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... royal actor borne The tragic scaffold might adorn: While round the armed bands, Did clap their ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... dream of life is wisdom." So wrote Oliver Goldsmith; and surely among those who have earned the world's gratitude by this ministration he must be accorded a conspicuous place. If, in these delightful writings of his, he mostly avoids the darker problems of existence—if the mystery of the tragic and apparently unmerited and unrequited suffering in the world is rarely touched upon—we can pardon the omission for the sake of the gentle optimism that would rather look on the kindly side of life. "You come hot ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... years after Clive had laid the foundation of our empire in India by the victory of Plassey, events occurred in that country which completely cast into the shade the tragic incident of the 'Black Hole' of Calcutta. During the century which had elapsed since the days of Clive, the British power had been extended, till nearly the whole of the great peninsula from the Himalaya Mountains to Cape Comorin ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... sat several elderly and decrepit people, and among them a stately ruin of a woman on a very large scale, with a profile—for I did not see her front face—that stamped itself into my brain as a seal impresses hot wax. By the tragic gesture with which she took a pinch of snuff, I was sure it must be Mrs. Siddons. Her brother, John Kemble, sat behind,—a broken-down figure, but still with a kingly majesty about him. In lieu of all former achievements, Nature enables him to look the part of ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... helped to deaden my hatred toward human nature and my bitterness. A better friend I never wish to find. It has made up for all the years of mental and physical suffering. One strange thing is that the feeling is mutual. He has had a tragic life, for his wife, whom he loved beyond everything, died under very sad circumstances. He says I am the best male friend he has ever had. While with him, much of the lower nature in me was stamped out. I shall ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... all that was most fleeting and unsubstantial—in divertissement; in the pleasure of looking on, a spectator of the accidents of existence, an observer of the follies of mankind. Like the Gods of the Epicurean, you seem to regard our life as a play that is played, as a comedy; yet how often the tragic note comes in! What pity, and in the laughter what an accent of tears, as of rain in the wind! No comedian has been so kindly and human as you; none has had a heart, like you, to feel for his butts, and to leave them sometimes, in a sense, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... streaks of rust, its rawhide lashings had been eaten off, but snugly rolled inside the tarpaulin was a sack of mail. This mail the travelers brought in with them, and the Nome newspapers, in commenting upon the find, reprinted the story of that tragic fight for life in the Arctic hurricane, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... my own consent! 130 Give me a son's unblemish'd truth again, Or quench the sparks of duty that remain. How slight to force a throne that legions guard The task to me! to prove unjust, how hard! And if the imagined guilt thus wound my thought, What will it when the tragic scene is wrought! Dire war must first be conjured from below, The realm we rule we first must overthrow; And, when the civil furies are on wing, That blind and undistinguish'd slaughters fling, 140 Who knows what impious chance may reach the king? Oh, rather let me perish in the strife, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... amusing, if it were not tragic!" retorted MacNair. And picking up the gun which the wounded Indian had dropped, held it before the eyes of the girl. "The hunters of the North, Miss Elliston, do ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... of whom so many of the greatest talents were to live such passionate lives and die such tragic deaths, one serene man, T. W. Rolleston, seemed always out of place. It was I brought him there, intending to set him to some work in Ireland later on. I have known young Dublin working men slip out of their workshop ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... the startled steeds from the front. In this manner he easily caught two; and two more he drove towards Stas. Only Gebhr's and Chamis' horses could not be found, but at any rate four remained, not counting the lap-eared creature, loaded with the tent and things, who, in view of the tragic occurrences, displayed a true philosophical calm. They found him beyond a bend, cropping closely and without any haste the grass growing on the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... is beset with foes to right and left, of a character unknown to the tragic and the lyric poet, or ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in Vienna, I will send the whole packet of parts to your address in Vienna, free, immediately after the Zwickau Concert. For the poem belonging to it, which I will also send with the rest, it is desirable that you should get an adequate tragic declaimer. In Dresden Davison undertook this, and in Zwickau Frau Ritter will declaim it. I am writing today to Herr von Bulow, but rather doubt whether he will be able to accept your invitation for this winter. According to what ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... members who have been uncertain of the outcome of the convention, and will eventually bring to us many who are sick of the hypocrisies, the shams and the illusions that have held them in chains for nearly three tragic years." ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... seemed scarcely louder than the ringing of her own ears. The rest had been only the natural sequel; Danny and Arlt's failure had led inevitably up to the finale when Thayer's eyes, burning with that new, strange light, had held her own eyes captive while he had sounded the tragic note which dominates all ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... dams, and nuclear power plants. Many islands or island groups are also disputed, including those at sea and in streams. Nonetheless, many nations are actively cooperating to clarify, delineate, and demarcate their international borders. The tragic aspect of international discord is the impact on the sustenance and welfare of populations caught in the conflict. It is frequently left to members of the world community to cope with enormous refugee situations, and the resultant ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... historic picturesqueness his life will not compare with that of Knox, although it had incidents, such as his appearances before the King and Council at Falkland and Hampton Court, which are unsurpassed by any in Scottish history for moral grandeur. There were not the same tragic elements mixed up with Melville's career. His life fell on duller times and among feebler contemporaries. He had not such a foil to his figure as Knox had in Mary; there was not among his opponents such a protagonist as Knox encountered in ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... There's hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so! As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master, And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe, We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere, The tragic road to Anywhere, such ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... The tragic event of Bosinney's death altered the complexion of everything. There was no longer the same feeling that to lose a minute would be fatal, nor would he now risk communicating the fact of his wife's flight to anyone till the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... scum of a blacks' camp, its repulsiveness was tragic. Dirt and odour sickened, yet its appeal was irresistible. That universal language, a human cry, which everywhere and always quickened the pulse, stirred pity to its depths. I seized the stained bag (it was a desperate deed) and, breaking ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... breathed through them. By that admirable artist, so like our great bard in a too early death, they were married to an air of exquisite pathos, "such as the meeting soul may pierce." Burns, Jessy Lewars, Felix Mendelssohn—genius, goodness, and tragic melancholy, all combined in one ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... where God or Angel Guest With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt And disobedience: On the part of Heav'n Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv'n, 10 That brought into this World a world ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of us witnessed the tragic end of a Lap-longspur. Pursued by a fierce Skua Gull, it unfortunately dashed out over the lake. In vain then it darted up and down, here and there, high and low; the Skua followed even more quickly. A second Skua came flying to help, but was not needed. With a falcon-like swoop, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... man in him who had hitherto seemed but a child to her, she lowered her eyes with a sort of tragic slowness. She allowed me to take and kiss her hand without betraying her inward pleasure, which I nevertheless felt in her sensitive shiver. When she raised her face to look at me again, I saw that she ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... eyeglasses, an enormous mustache that drooped over either side of his mouth and framed his chin, he was certainly not so handsome as Selivestroff. But he had one irresistible charm, the charm of Art. With the tragic Russian in her mind and on her conscience, she felt the need of burning herself in the immortal flame of the ideal; and she adored the famous musician for the artistic associations that hovered about him. For ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... history have I been able to find an account of the tragic death and dramatic burial of the schoolboy Christopher Snider, given in chapter VIII. It was the expression of sympathy by the people in following the body of the murdered boy from the Liberty Tree to the burial-place that intensified the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... which this story might be told. It might be told as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of both ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to make them appear ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... story to tell which will move amidst tragic circumstances of too engrossing a nature to be disturbed by archaeological interests, and shall not, therefore, minutely describe here what I observed in Nuremberg, although no adequate description of that wonderful city has yet fallen in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... longing somehow to summon a secret agency to that place where Linda Proudfit's portrait hung. For we had long been agreed that, as soon as she was at home again, Linda's mother must be told all that we knew of Linda. Thus, to Calliope and me, the time held a tragic meaning beneath the exterior of our simple cheer. But the time held many meanings, as a time will hold them; and the Voice of its new meaning said to me, as we all waited on the Proudfit veranda with its vines and its climbing rose and ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... only interest her life had for us, we could pass hastily over her youth. It will be found however that her religious development, begun prematurely with her fourth year and continued without consideration or discretion until at seventeen she became a chronic invalid, gives a kind of tragic interest to her earlier years. Her religious education may not have been unique; it may have been characteristic of much of the religious life of New England, but girls set at work upon the problems of ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... The tragic adventures of the Indian captives must often have been relieved by comic incidents like those of Knight's escape from his guard; but there is very little record of anything except sorrow and suffering, danger and ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... went over Bart. He let go of her hand and lay staring bleakly at the wall. He supposed that was his probable fate: remembering the tragic tone of Raynor Three when he said I won't remember you, he gritted his teeth, feeling his face ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of enthusiasm for the Dollon affair; for its interest was increasing, its mystery deepening! But Fandor was single-handed now! He had had a miraculous escape from the bomb which had blown up Lady Beltham's house on that tragic day when Juve had all ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre |
