"Heartrending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imagined that the storming of the place would be an easy matter. But despair had suggested to the Carthaginians means of defence in every direction. All assaults were repelled. Everybody was engaged day and night in the manufacture of arms. Nothing can be more heartrending than this last struggle of despair. Every man and every woman labored to the uttermost for the defence of the city with ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... prisoners have just landed in this country. The stories they tell of the hardships they endured and the cruelties practised on them are heartrending. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 57, December 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... overwhelming odds, and though in want both of ordinary munitions and of the very necessities of life, the forces of Paoli continued a fierce and heroic resistance. It was only after months of devastating, heartrending, hopeless warfare, that their leader, utterly routed in the affair known as the battle of Ponte Nuovo, finally gave up the desperate cause. Exhausted, and without resources, he would have been an easy prey to the French; but they were too wise to take him prisoner. On June thirteenth, 1769, by their ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the day the second attack came on. The crisis was terrible. Herbert felt himself sinking. He stretched his arms towards Cyrus Harding, towards Spilett, towards Pencroft. He was so young to die! The scene was heartrending. They were obliged to ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... determined to pursue his march to the battle ground to bury the dead, if he could not avenge their fall. He was joined by many friends of the killed and missing, from Lexington and Bryant's station. They reached the battle ground on the 25th. It presented a heartrending spectacle. Where so lately had arisen the shouts of the robust and intrepid woodsmen, and the sharp yell of the savages, as they closed in the murderous contest, the silence of the wide forest was now unbroken, except by birds of prey, as they screamed and sailed ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... all she had in the world to have been able to call Harold back to her. Diana Enderby tried reproofs for her flightiness, but only made her worse; with Dermot she would only make ridiculous nonsense, and utter those heartrending laughs; and when I tried to soothe her, and speak low and quietly, she started away from me, showed me her foreign purchases, or sang snatches ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other delightful scenes of popular education, but of late Mrs. Rodney had informed her sister that she was no longer young enough to permit these expeditions. Imogene accepted the announcement without a murmur, but it occasioned Waldershare several sonnets of heartrending remonstrance. Imogene continued, however, to make his breakfast, and kept his Parliamentary papers in order, which he never could manage, but the mysteries of which Imogene mastered with feminine quickness and precision. Whenever Waldershare was away he always ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the death of a hero. His body was taken back to England for burial, and Caroline Lamb stood at her window and saw the procession go by. The coffin was followed by a dog, howling piteously. Caroline uttered a heartrending cry, and sunk to the floor insensible. They raised her and placed her in her bed, from which she never rose; she was borne ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... comforts in a child with which my cruel disappointment forbade my ever being blest—though, in the endeavour to soothe, I often only aggravated both his and my own misery at our irretrievable loss—when a ray of unexpected light burst upon my dreariness. It was amid this gloom of human agony, these heartrending scenes of real mourning, that the brilliant star shone to disperse the clouds which hovered over our drooping heads,—to dry the hot briny tears which were parching up our miserable vegetating existence—it was in this crisis that Marie ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... barbarous scenes, unbelievable were they not proved by evidence of every description. The savage acts committed in Isabela by the inhuman Leyba and Villa cannot possibly be painted true to life and in all their tragic details. The blackest hues, the most heartrending accents, the most vigorous language and the most fulminating anathemas would be a pale image of the truth, and our pen cannot express with true ardour the terrifying scenes and cruel torments brought about by such fierce chieftains on such indefensive religious. It seems impossible that a ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... cruel, it is monstrous, it is heartrending!" gasped Tricotrin, when he grasped the enormity of his failure; "but, light of my life, why should you blame me for this ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... upon his closed eyes and noble gray head. Just behind him they led his riderless black horse, with his master's boots reversed in the stirrups and the empty saddle knotted with crape. It was at once majestic, heartrending, and terrible. It unnerved me, and yet it was not surprising to have such a moving spectacle greet me on my ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... his wife cannot be right," declared Ben, endeavoring to speak with mature and legal poise; "but as you say, that heartrending doubt of your duty may attack you at times. How would it be to put it beyond your power to yield to his wishes by marrying some one ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... but one idea, to escape from the street, from the noise; to be alone, quite alone, so that she might plunge headlong into that abyss of heartrending thoughts, of black things dancing madly in the depths of her mind. Oh! the coward, the infamous villain! And to think that only last night she was speaking comforting words to him, with her arms ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... themselves. All who had sat patiently through trouble and trial, working with might and main, suffering from endless ills, in peril of their lives, and deprived of property and home, now joined in one heartrending wail of woe and disappointment. The consternation that followed the announcement of the ignoble surrender is thus described by Mr. Nixon, who was an eye-witness and sharer of the general ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... but one and all had no Patriotism whatever and refused to let us use their terratory. It was heartrending, for where we not there to help to protect that very terratory from the enemy? But no, they cared not at all, and said they did not want papers all over the place, and so on. One woman observed that she did ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the South African War. I admit the generous philanthropy of our country has been evinced to a degree that is almost inconceivable, and I hesitate even now in making this fresh appeal, but can only plead as an excuse the heartrending accounts of the sufferings of Mafeking that I have received from my sister, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... in Grey'! Now I wonder what that means? Do you think it's a disguised love message to some forlorn damsel in the east, or does it conceal the heartrending cry of a lost soul to some fond but angry parent?" Then, as the man did not immediately answer, she went on with a pucker of thought upon her brow. "'Yellow'—that might mean gold. 'Booming'—ah, yes, the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... the seal of this when I am dead.' This was most heartrending, coming from a man I loved better than any one in the world excepting my wife. He died that night, in silence, and without a soul ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... the artistes were allowed to take away the implements of their work, before the final closing. The move began: they fetched out basket trunks, hoisted packing-cases on to cabs. It was a heartrending sight, all those things, made for the glitter of the footlights, now displayed in the street. And everybody made such haste as he could, under the eyes of the inquisitive passers-by, for fear of a general execution, with ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... American, waited. The boys watched as the animal came to a halt. The driver bowed to the party. Then, taking a thin stick, he tapped the camel on bony knees that were wrapped in worn burlap. Instantly the camel let out a heartrending groan. Its ungainly legs folded like a poorly designed beach chair, and moaning in pure anguish, ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... and kissed it and wept again, in grief so passionate, so heartrending, as to draw bitter tears from my eyes. I said what little I could to calm her—to have sought to do more would have been a mockery; and observing that the darkness had closed in, I took my leave and departed, being favoured with the services of ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... our people, and in our science and literature. Some of the ideas for which Luther's stubborn and contentious spirit fought, against both Catholics and Calvinists, are abandoned by the free investigation of modern times. His intensely passionate beliefs, gained in the heartrending struggles of a devout soul, occasionally missed an important truth. Sometimes he was harsh, unfair, even cruel toward his opponents; but such things should no longer disturb any German, for all the limitations of his nature and training are as nothing ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... wayward demon Chance intervened. Had St. Just risen but two minutes earlier, had his active mind suggested the desired excuse more readily, who knows what unspeakable sorrow, what heartrending misery, what terrible shame might have been spared both him and those for whom he cared? Those two minutes—did he but know it—decided the whole course of his future life. The excuse hovered on his lips, de Batz reluctantly was preparing to bid him good-bye, when Celimene, speaking common-place ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... instinctively rushed to their parents for protection. Oh, the anguish depicted upon the faces of these little things when they discovered that their loving progenitors were no more. Their looks and moans were heartrending. But there were others made happy. A sudden shout of joyousness burst forth from the throats of a dozen civilized men who eagerly rushed from behind their fortresses to view the work of destruction. They had displayed fine marksmanship and were greatly pleased. Good shooting, said one of the ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... daughter, calling her a Christian dog and other vile names. Finally it was deemed best to set him and the other Moors ashore; and when the old man saw the ship sail away with his daughter, he began to sob and cry aloud in the most heartrending way, threatening to kill himself if she did not return to him. The last words that she heard were, "I forgive you all!" and they made her weep so bitterly that it seemed as if her tears would never ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Heartrending scenes are witnessed in front of the closed doors of the various banking establishments, where large posters are to be seen, bearing the inscription: Closed temporarily, by order of the Government. The most popular of these institutions is the Wiener ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... into their pockets and gave her what cash they had. I never knew a man to hang back when a collection for a widow was being taken. Contributions sometimes were as high as five dollars. It made a heartrending scene: the broken body of a once strong man lying under a white sheet; the children playing around and laughing (if they were too young to know what it meant); the mother frantic with the thought that her brood was now homeless; and the big grimy workers wiping their tears with a rough ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... under the Point, apparently for the purpose of anchoring, as was afterwards reported by the crew of the tugboat which was at anchor. They saw the steamer moving about for some time. Then a crash was heard, followed by most heartrending cries. The steamer went out to sea, and did not heed the signal rockets which were sent up by the "Northfleet." The little tugboat had only four men and a small boat, which was at once launched, and the mate and the engineer, with one sailor, went to the rescue. When they ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... Barrack Hospital at Scutari was indescribably horrible; everybody was frantic to rush to the relief; no one knew what best to do; public feeling was at fever-heat. How could it be otherwise when William Howard Russell, the Times correspondent, was constantly writing such true but heartrending letters ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... critics are unanimous in their praise of the truth and uniform consistency of his characters, of his heartrending pathos, and his comic wit. Moreover, they extol the beauty and sublimity of his separate descriptions, images, and expressions. This last is the most superficial and cheap mode of criticising works of art. Johnson compares him who should endeavor to recommend this poet by passages unconnectedly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... were fired, and the flame, rushing up like fire from the crater of a volcano, soon reached the tapestry, which it quickly devoured. In the midst of all this frightful tumult and these terrific cries, two reports, fearfully distinct, followed by two shrieks more heartrending than all, froze me with terror. These two shots had mortally wounded my father, and it was he who had given utterance to these frightful cries. However, he remained standing, clinging to a window. My mother tried to force the door, that she might go and die with him, but it was fastened ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... set and the awful scene was enveloped in darkness there was a dreadful spectacle of maimed Germans, Hollanders, Frenchmen, Irishmen, Americans, and Boers lying on the veldt. The groans of the wounded were heartrending; the dead could no longer speak. Another charge, and the British, encouraged by their success, had taken our last position, guns and all. My only resource now was to flee, and the battle of Elandslaagte was a thing of ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... impressive; and so I am told they are, but the cremation of the poor lacks every element of this nature. My heart bled for a poor widow whose husband had just been taken to the pile. She was of a very low caste, but her grief was heartrending; not loud, but I thought I could taste the saltness of her tears, they seemed so bitter; but she has this consolation to comfort her after the outburst, that she insured the eternal happiness of her mate by having his ashes mingled with the sacred river of God. No one will touch or associate ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... grotesque diner: "This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque—far from it!—but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... however," he said to himself; "the only means of reclaiming this lost—this miserable—this still most lovely and most unhappy girl, must rest in her father's appeal to the broken laws of his country. I must haste to apprise him of this heartrending intelligence." ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... started to prosecute his work more earnestly in Baltimore. The sight of the slave-pens along the principal streets; of vessel-loads of unfortunates torn from home and family and sent to Southern ports; the heartrending scenes at the auction blocks, made an impression on Garrison never to be forgotten; and the young man whose mother was too poor to send him to school, although she early taught him to hate oppression, resolved to devote his life to secure ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... if, amid the shouts of joy and the thundering of the cannon, a shriek of terror was heard, loud, penetrating, and heartrending. What was that? What means the tumult upon the deck of the admiral's ship? Seems it not as if they had roughly seized this princess whose feet had just now touched the ship? as if they had grasped her, as if she resisted, stretching her arms toward heaven! and hark, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... him his mind wandered, driven as a leaf is driven by wandering winds. He headed columns in Hindustan; he called the name of the one woman he had loved. In death, as in life, his thought was for others, for Clive, dear, dear Clive. He said, 'Take care of him when I 'm in India;' and then, with a heartrending voice, he called out, 'Leonore, Leonore!' She was kneeling by his side now. The patient voice sank into faint murmurs; only a moan now and then announced that he was not asleep. At the usual hour the chapel bell began to toll, and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... mothers' meeting one day in a Northern town a care-worn-looking woman invited me home with her. Here she related another heartrending story of a lost girl, an only child, for whom she had toiled day and night at the wash-tub, so as to send her to school dressed as finely as the other girls. "I have had to work very hard as long as I can remember," ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... morning there came a heartrending letter from Aunt Ju. She was very sorry that Lady George should have been so troubled;—but then let them think of her trouble, of her misery! She was quite sure that it would kill her,—and it would certainly ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... to the infuriated rabble the secluded mansion where the Christian household dwelt. He could not offer to them a more acceptable service, and the lady's modest apartment was soon swarming with enemies of her God and His followers. In spite of her heartrending cries and supplications, her children were seized, and when the youngest boy clung to her, the mother was thrown senseless upon the pavement. The whole five were carried off in triumph; it was the greatest success of the day. There was some hesitation how to dispose of them; at last the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... had been settled, without troubling himself much on the subject, considered it as certain that he would go back to his pleasant house and garden. And though there would be much that was melancholy, nay, almost heartrending, in such a return, he still was glad that it was to be so. His daughter might probably be persuaded to return there with him. She had, indeed, all but promised to do so, though she still entertained an idea that the greatest of mortals, that important atom of humanity, that little god ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Tatsu, with his heartrending smile; "for at best, the thoughts of Kano Indara cannot be our thoughts. He ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... Miss Gardner and her war with her tenants—more evictions, emergency men from Dublin to hold possession—and all the rest. I was introduced by a Protestant clergyman to a gentleman connected with the executive of the law for a quarter of a century. He knows the heartrending inner history of legal eviction. This gentleman has a wonderful tenderness in his heart for Miss Gardner. "Sure she grew up among us. The other one (Miss Pringle) found her as kindly a woman as was on God's earth and has made an ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... heartrending news as I have had!" began she. "A relation of mine is dying, and wants to see me. I ought to be away by ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to wear herself out and cease. She sat herself down upon the rocky floor, shook the dense cloud of her beautiful hair over her face and breast, and began to sob terribly in the torture of a heartrending despair. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... sight to watch the ethical degradation of one of the most remarkable intelligences among the men of his generation; it was heartrending to see him fall every day more and more into the power of unscrupulous people who did nothing else but exploit him for their own benefit. South Africa has always been the land of adventurers, and many a queer story could be told. ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... Spain defaults. 399 The rebel chiefs being in exile, the people are goaded to fresh revolt. 400 The tragedy of the Calle de Camba. Cebu Island rises in revolt. 401 The Cebuanos' raid on Cebu City; Lutao in flames; piles of corpses. 402 Exciting adventures of American citizens. Heartrending scenes in Cebu City. 404 Rajahmudah Datto Mandi visits Cebu. Rebels in Bolinao (Zambales). 406 Relief of Bolinao. Father Santos of Malolos is murdered. 408 The peacemaker states his views on the reward he expects from Spain. 409 Don Maximo Paterno, the Philippine "Grand ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... up, the people who are doubtful, the people to beware of; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Four, are my Adopted Handwritings of public characters; my testimonials to my own worth and integrity; my Heartrending Statements of the officer's family, the curate's wife, and the grazier's widow, stained with tears, blotted with emotion; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Numbers Five and Six, are my own personal subscriptions to local ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... conditional upon life, and he who has recourse to self-destruction sets an example of unseemly revolt against one of the most beautiful and comforting of all the laws of nature. Moreover, suicide was a waste of force on which it was simply heartrending to have to look. There were so many great deeds to be done which called for the laying down of life. In a thousand different ways one might benefit mankind by Winkelried-like actions. If one was determined to die, one should at least render thereby to those ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... mind towards me?" he asked, and in his voice and eyes was that heartrending pathos which once in a lifetime a man's soul may come to share with ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... heartrending groan of pain. The boys stood stricken with consternation. It was going to be a long and difficult task to get the professor out of his present predicament, and there seemed ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... some and caused them to jump into the flood and death; the torture of despair that gripped those who, imprisoned in their homes by the water, waited in vain for help until the advancing flames came and destroyed them. The most heartrending feature of the situation was the pitiable terror of the women and children. Many of them sat up and sobbed through the night refusing to believe that their fathers had been drowned in ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... his satisfaction, Jim found that the man was suffering from nothing more serious than a severe scorching, and he guessed that it must have been the anticipation of torture which had made the Indian send up those heartrending screams. As soon as the poor wretch had recovered from the shock which he had sustained, Jim questioned him as to how he came to be in such a situation, and was told that the man, whose name, by the way, was Jose, had been a guide in the guerilla service. The Bolivians ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the doors of his house, mounted his horse, and with a broken spirit set out on his journey; but he had hardly gone half-way when, harassed by his reflections, he had to dismount and tie his horse to a tree, at the foot of which he threw himself, giving vent to piteous heartrending sighs; and there he remained till nearly nightfall, when he observed a man approaching on horseback from the city, of whom, after saluting him, he asked what was ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... America, as written by one of Admiral Cervera's captains,[1] with the publication of the actual telegrams which passed between the Government and the fleet, and the military commanders in the colonies, is one of the most heartrending examples of the sacrifice, not only of brave men, but of a country's honour to political intrigue or the desire to retain office. This, at least, is the opinion of the writer of this painful history, and his statements are fully borne out by the original telegrams, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... still on the same spot, but there was a change in their positions. The prisoner was now kneeling with clasped hands before the cut-throats, begging for his life for the sake of his wife and children, in heartrending accents, to which his executioners replied in mocking tones, "We have got you at last into our hands, have we? You dog of a Bonapartist, why do you not call on your emperor to come and help you out of this scrape?" The unfortunate man's entreaties became more pitiful and their mocking replies more ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in his room. He could not conceal from her that he had something heartrending on his mind. Then there was more than tragedy in his expression. Lenore felt a leap of fear at what seemed her father's hidden anger. She appealed to him—importuned him. Plainer it came to her that he wanted ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... occasionally now, and we can't see but that she's as nice as she used to be when she hauled our family wash home in a little wagon every Saturday night. Being rich hasn't hurt her at all, though it has spoiled her figure beyond the utmost and most heartrending efforts of her clothes ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... out of my mind, I expect. If he were dead!—if he were lyin' under the hillock yonder beside his brothers, I would say nothing. He gave, and He has a right to take away! But, Almighty God!"—-And the man uttered a cry so frightful, so heartrending, that the knives and forks fell from our hands, and a number of negro women and children came rushing in to see what was the matter. We gazed at him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... comfortable, and vacant. Comparing it hastily with the first-class compartment being held by Francesca, I found that it differed only in having no carpet on the floor, and a smaller number of buttons in the upholstering. This was really heartrending when the difference in fare for three persons would be at least twenty dollars. What a delightful sum to put aside for a rainy day!—that is, be it understood, what a delightful sum to put aside and spend on the first ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that Johnston—the gardener, you know—had dug the grave where I had chosen he should lie, dear Rover, and—you have heard the expression, Mr. Jackson—a yawning grave? Well, the grave yawned. It was too heartrending. I simply went to my room and cried, and Tim went in one direction and Johnston in another, and the maids looked too, and they found the dear doggie, and the Vet.—a most obliging man called Davidson—came back ... and dear Rover ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... depth, just enough may be found to moisten the sand, but it is so saline that it aggravates the thirst instead of appeasing it. As we went on, the wind increased in violence. We met a number of Bedouins greatly suffering from thirst and heat, who asked us for a little water. It was most heartrending to see young children toiling along, and to hear them entreating their parents for a draught. Even now I can fancy I hear their piteous lamentations, as one after the other they tried to drain a drop from the empty clay bottles. ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... passage-way, eight summers ago, swarmed thousands of wretched refugees from the seat of war in Eastern Armenia; small oblong mounds of loose rocks and bowlders are frequently observed all down the ravine, mournful reminders of one of the most heartrending phases of the Armenian campaign; green lizards are scuttling about among the rude graves, making their habitations in the oblong mounds. About two o'clock I arrive at a road-side khan, where an ancient Osmanli dispenses feeds of grain for travellers' animals, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... about to reach over to Skipper Zeb to wake him, when all at once the stillness was broken by a terrifying, heartrending howl, rising and falling in mournful cadence, and echoing through the forest behind them. The howling creature was separated from Charley only by the thickness of the canvas, and Charley's ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... terrible anguish passed over the Duke's countenance; he raised his hands as though to shield his eyes from some grizzly spectre, and in tones of heartrending agony exclaimed: "Too ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... bite right into the heart of his hearer. Nothing could have been better calculated to goad him to extremity. In one short, harsh sentence he had dashed every hope that the other possessed. And with a rush the stricken man leapt at denial, which was heartrending ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... than the feeble frame of Anastasia could endure. She rapidly failed, and on the 7th of August, 1560, she expired. The grief of Ivan was heartrending, and never was national affliction manifested in a more sincere and touching manner. Not only the whole court, but almost the entire city of Moscow, followed the remains of Anastasia to their interment. Many, in the bitterness of their grief, sobbed aloud. The most inconsolable were ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... darting to and fro under the planks. He had cracked his voice at last, and could only squeak miserably. His back or else his head rubbed the planks, now here, now there, in a puzzling manner. He squeaked as he dodged the invisible blows. It was more heartrending even than his yells. Suddenly Archie produced a crowbar. He had kept it back; also a small hatchet. We howled with satisfaction. He struck a mighty blow and small chips flew at our eyes. The boatswain above shouted:—"Look out! Look out there. Don't kill the man. ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... hourly grew worse. Mrs. Middleton was sent for, and a telegram was forwarded to his friends in New York, bidding them come soon if they would see him alive. Mr. Miller, who was teaching in a distant part of the country, dismissed his school to attend his dying friend. It was heartrending to hear Mr. Wilmot in his delirium, call for Julia to come to him—to let him look on her face once more before he died. Then he would fancy himself at home and would describe Julia to his sister in all ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... much. Reason tottered on its throne, and he became a raving maniac; in his moments of delirium he would imagine that he was escaping from slavery; that the pursuers were upon his back; that they had caught him, and were rebinding him about to take him back to slavery, and then it was heartrending to hear him beg, and plead to be carried to ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... faithful Morar Gopal fall under the blows of some Mohammedans he felt that they were irretrievably lost. He had seen how the Colonel's wife had had her clothes torn in shreds from her body; he heard the heartrending cry of anguish with which, under the blows and thrusts of her inhuman torturers, she called for her children. But at all events he was spared the agony of seeing with his own eyes the end of the innocent ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... do the best I can for them—I do that for all prisoners," answered Colonel Lyon, soberly. "I do not believe in making war any more heartrending ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... a heartrending story, to come so late, so bootless now, to the poor boy who had slept all these years in the nameless grave, even ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... As already intimated, the prospects of both had been blighted through oppression and villainy, brought to bear upon them by distant relatives, who were the infamous agents of a still more infamous government. The case of Nick, although sore enough in its way, was not so heartrending as that of Kate. He was of a sex fitted to wrestle with the storms of life, but she, proud and brave as she was, occupied a different position. Fortunately for both, however, through the instrumentality of a small pittance set aside by the Courts in her case, and a kind relation in that of ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... heavenly gates; upon the lurid flame His chariot shall roll, and on the clouds Of sable smoke, down through the stormy sky, Where roar tremendous thunders, mid the cries Of agony and fear, which rise anon, Heartrending, from the lost, in anguish sore, Who call for shelter, but have no reply, Save terrors still more awful than before; Who seek for mercy, when their fearful doom Shall echo in their ear, "Too late! too late!" Then all the earth shall be engrossed ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... the year 1848, was greeted with a storm of mingled approval and disapproval. It was praised by Carlyle and Landor, but some critics attacked it fiercely as a slander on the Manchester manufacturers, and there were admirers who complained that it was too heartrending. The controversy has long since died down, but the book holds a permanent place in literature as a vivid revelation of a dark and painful phase of English life in the middle of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... I can never go-o-o down there!" His natural composure and courage had vanished utterly in a tumultuous storm of fear. Had the danger been less, his distress would have seemed ridiculous. But in this dismal, merciless abyss lay the shadow of death, and his heartrending cries might well have called Heaven to his help. Perhaps they did. So hidden before, he was now transparent, and one could see the workings of his heart and mind like the movements of a clock out of its case. His voice and gestures, hopes and fears, were so perfectly human ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... because they changed their names and wore cheap clothes, that, presto! they were as workers and could pass on to an uninformed reading public the trials of the worker. (Incidentally they were all trials.) I had read in the past those heartrending books and articles and found it ever difficult to hold back the tears. Sometimes they were written by an immigrant, a bona-fide worker. The tragedy of such a life in this business-ridden land of ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... a man without a country. As the one manipulates his joyous, soft, serene rhythms, the other throbs and trembles with obscure meanings and pathetic, heartrending laments, the source of which lies hidden as at the ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... obeyed him, and rowing while he steered, they presently fell astern of the ship, in the midst of the darkness and tumult and terror. Another boat laden with people was near them. For some time they saw the heartrending spectacle of the sinking vessel, and the sea strewn with mattresses, seats, planks, &c, to which people were clinging, floating, and shrieking for succour, in the dark water all round them. But they gradually pulled further and further out of the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We gave a nigger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a cocoanut ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... indeed rushed to do it, but fortunately Agnes contrived to reach it before her. It was evident that Cicely was loth to tell her terrible news, though Dorothy begged her, over Agnes' shoulder, to relieve her heartrending suspense. Was it from one faint throb of womanly feeling in her usually hard heart, that Mistress Winter, in sharp tones, summoned Dorothy within, and left Agnes ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... give seven seats in cabinet, to the whigs and radicals five, to Lord Palmerston one.' In the end there were six whigs, as many Peelites, and one radical. The case of four important offices out of the cabinet was just as heartrending: three were to go to the thirty Peelites, and one to the two hundred and seventy just persons. 'I am afraid,' cried Lord John, 'that the liberal party will never stand this, and that the storm will overwhelm me.' Whig pride was deeply revolted at subjection to a prime minister whom ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the evening twilight, held with a vice-like grip in the hand of a cowardly savage, came down at last with such force as to crush through skull and brain, and all was over. We were powerless to render assistance. The scene was heartrending. The depredations of these savages is too revolting to relate, and after completing their hellish work, they sneaked back as they came, keeping up their sickening yell until distance drowned it entirely. ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... allowing my heart to fill with dreams. The book that had interested me dealt with the complex technique of the art of the Low Countries—a book written by a painter. It has awakened in me memories of all kinds, heartrending struggles, youthful passion, bitter disappointments; it has called into mind a multitude of thoughts and things, and, wearied with admiring many pictures and arguing with myself, I am now glad to exchange my book for the gentle ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... outrage was known, but could not be brought to justice. The Board of Works, to mark its indignation at this murderous attack upon one of its servants, stopped the works in the locality, and the inhabitants, miserably off before, sank into a state of the most heartrending destitution, as is testified by Captain Wynne, writing from the same place a fortnight or three weeks after, to Colonel Jones.[148] "I must again," he says, "call your attention to the appalling state in which Clare Abbey ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... colourless hair contrasted strangely with the sudden havoc in her complexion. Perhaps she was conscious of it, for she tried to turn her face away, so that Greif should not see it. Then all at once, with a heartrending sob, she let her head fall forward upon his shoulder, while her nervous, wasted hands ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Proveditore, who was seated on a ledge of the cliff, had gazed anxiously and wildly at the youthful stranger. He knew him in an instant, and would have singled him out amidst thousands; but was so overwhelmed by a rushing tide of strong and heartrending emotions, that he could neither rise nor speak, and remained, long after the Turk had disappeared, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... seen; but the water so softened the gesso, and caused the wood to swell in such sort, that all the lower part that was soaked has peeled off too much for the picture to give any pleasure; nay, it is a grief and a truly heartrending sorrow to behold it, for it would certainly have been one of the most ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... on the sacred sea of the old poets and philosophers, on the sea whose voice has rocked the thought of the world, that he cast into the shadow that long lament, so heartrending and sublime, that posterity will long shudder at the remembrance of it. The bitter strophes of this lament seem to be cadenced by the Mediterranean itself and to be in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... sorry you don't like it!" said the Inca princess, with a little look of humble disappointment which was infinitely more heartrending than the smile; "but do you know, father, I have ridden so long in this costume, and in the gentleman fashion, that I feel quite sure—at least, I think—I should be utterly knocked up the first day if I were to begin a long hard journey in the ladies' position. Then, you know, I could ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... It is quite heartrending about my letters. I have 'got the eye' evidently. The black slave of the poor dragoman who died in my house is here still, and like a dog that has lost his master has devoted himself to me. It seems nobody's business to take him away—as ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... would have sunk had he allowed all to remain. As it was, they were already too deeply laden for safety. The sailors had literally to lift out those who had last got in, and to place them on the shore, ere we shoved off into deep water. It was heartrending to see the whole shore lined with fugitives: some rushing into boats which had already come up, some waving frantically to other boats which were approaching. Here, Spanish troopers charging the unhappy people with lances, or sabring them ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... with great earnestness. Hermeline and her orphans are fetched from Malpertuis, and the widow makes heartrending moan, as does Cousin Grimbart when the news is brought to him. The vigils of the dead are sung, and all the beasts who have hated Renart, and whom he has affronted in his lifetime, assemble in decent mourning ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... youths and old men, the sick and maimed, could have been eliminated from the Boer forces, eighty per cent, would probably have been found to be a low estimate of the number thus subtracted from the total force. It would have been heartrending to many a continental or American general to see the unmilitary appearance of the Boer burgher, and in what manner an army of children, great-grandfathers, invalids, and blind men, with a handful of good men to leaven it, could be of any service whatever would have ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... providers and, when they found that it was the intention to destroy that on which their very existence seemed to depend, their appeals to be permitted to have some of the flour before the mill was burned, were heartrending. Worse than all else, in spite of the most urgent precautions, enjoined upon the officers in charge, the flames extended. The mill stood in the midst of a group of wooden houses and some of them took fire. Seeing the danger, I rode across and ordered every ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... increased, and Uncle Joseph grew more and more delirious his cries for Sarah were heartrending, making Jessie weep bitterly as ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... on, and Jeanne gave way more and more to an insuperable hopelessness; it was no longer a keen, heartrending grief that she felt, but a dull, gloomy melancholy. There was nothing to rouse her from it, no one came to see her, and the road which passed before her door was almost deserted. Sometimes a gig passed by driven by ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... the Celtic Tartarus. It is plain that the Seigneur of Jauioz by his purchase of their countrywoman became so unpopular among the freedom-loving Bretons that at length they magnified him into a species of demon—a traditionary fate which he thoroughly deserved, if the heartrending tale concerning his victim has any ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... sand, and some have been carried down and hidden in sand banks and slews. Many will be destroyed by dynamite, and some will have disappeared long before the great flood of rubbish can be removed. Of all the horrible features of this dreadful story none is more heartrending than the story of that fire. It began about five o'clock that afternoon and went on all night and all the next day, and smouldered until Monday noon. Its progress was retarded somewhat by the rain and by the soaking of the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... death struggle, and the distracted attempts to find a place of concealment for the victim, are too heartrending to be repeated here. James fell, it is said, with sixteen wounds in him, hacked almost to pieces, yet facing his murderers so desperately that some of them bore the marks of his dying grip when they were brought to the scaffold to be killed in their turn with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... alive. Lovely weather we're having. Yes, indeed. Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling. I'll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion. Most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
