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Morose   Listen
adjective
Morose  adj.  
1.
Of a sour temper; sullen and austere; ill-humored; severe. "A morose and affected taciturnity."
2.
Lascivious; brooding over evil thoughts. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Sullen; gruff; severe; austere; gloomy; crabbed; crusty; churlish; surly; ill-humored.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Morose" Quotes from Famous Books



... brother! Oh, I knew you again, though, to say the truth, you look more like a wild animal than a man. Embrace me. Do you remember the time when we studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy together? You were, even then, of a morose and wild character, but I liked you because of your complete sincerity. We used to say that you looked at the universe with the eyes of a wild horse, and it was not surprising you were dull and moody. ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... Pompeius which produced the civil wars, but their friendship rather, inasmuch as they first combined to depress the nobility and then quarrelled with one another. Cato, who often predicted what would happen, at the time only got by it the character of being a morose, meddling fellow, though afterwards he was considered to be a wise, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... observed to clutch at the rail before him to steady himself, and his colour changed so much at this part of the evidence that one of the turnkeys offered him a glass of water, which he declined. He is a man of a strongly-built frame, and with rather a morose and sullen ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell

... was reading the letter to which we have referred, Keona suddenly placed his left leg behind surly Dick, and, with his unwounded fist, hit that morose individual such a tremendous back-handed blow on the nose, that he instantly measured his length on the ground. John Bumpus made a sudden plunge at the savage on seeing this, but the latter ducked his head, passed like an ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... the whites of his eyes and the enamel of his teeth, under his brown moustache, gleamed vaguely in the lights of the Back Bay. I made out that he was sunburnt, as if he lived much in the open air, and that he looked intelligent but also slightly brutal, though not in a morose way. His brutality, if he had any, was bright and finished. I had to tell him who I was, but even then I saw how little he placed me and that my explanations gave me in his mind no great identity or at any rate no great importance. I foresaw ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... much in favour of this gentleman, from his conduct in the late Assembly and all we had heard of him. I confess I had not represented him to myself as a great, fat, heavy-looking man, with the manners of a somewhat hard and morose Englishman: he is between thirty and forty, I imagine; he had been riding as far as to the cottage Mr. Malthouse had mentioned to him—l'asile de jean Jacques(44)—and said it was very near this place (it is at the foot of Leith Hill, Mr. Locke has ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... when she returned them," continued Colonel Musgrave, with morose confusion of persons. "Patricia doesn't even know who the girl was—her name, somehow, was ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... Scud—more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside—and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose. At night, when supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: I, sometimes dozing over a book; Nares, sullenly but busily drilling sea-shells with the instrument called a Yankee Fiddle. A stranger ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... in my box, at home," said Ezra, gloomy and morose, leaning against the white marble mantelpiece. "The Lord knows what they are worth! We'll be lucky if we clear as much as they cost and a margin for my expenses and Langworthy's. A broken head is all that I have ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... bid her good-night with a cordial and friendly kiss, but, in the presence of her ladies, he dismissed her with a cold salutation. The next day the emperor expressly avoided her society; and when at rare moments he was with her, he was so taciturn, so morose and cold, that the empress had not the courage to ask for an explanation, or to reproach him, but, trembling and afraid, she bowed under the iron pressure ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... She was morose, grumbling, peevish, but for a long time she said nothing; she did not hinder the thin, gray-haired mother, nor the youth, beautiful as a dream, from rejoicing and imagining; till at last she spoke when alone ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... is a capricious master, seldom setting the same task twice, nor directing his slaves into similar pathways. He delights, moreover, in reversing the edge of a person's disposition, making good-natured people pettish or morose, while he sometimes improves those of naturally evil temper. Often under his sway the somber and the stoical become gay and impulsive, while the joyful sink into despondency. But with Robert Wharton, liquor intensified a natural ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... into country schools, it was wonderful how much more equable and comfortable she became. The return to the true bent of her nature softened her on every side; and without the least attempt to show off, she was so free from the morose dignity with which she had treated her own family since going abroad, that Mr. Hugh Martindale could hardly believe the account of her strange ungovernable character, as it was laid before him by her father, in his ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sire, Was six feet high, and look'd six inches higher; Erect, morose, determined, solemn, slow, Who knew the man could never cease to know: His faithful spouse, when Jonas was not by, Had a firm presence and a steady eye; But with her husband dropp'd her look and ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... the beasts they drove quenched their thirst at the trough. But these men seemed with one accord to leave him in possession of the bench at which he sat; nor did I wonder much at this when I saw the morose and savage glance which he shot at me as I approached. Whether he read my first impressions in my face, or for some other reason felt distaste for my company, I could not determine. But, undeterred by his behaviour, I sat down beside him and called ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... with his bed on a borrowed pack-horse, morose, his mind occupied with divers plans for punishing the cowpunchers who had spoiled his evening and made him ridiculous before the Schoolmarm, "Babe" came upon something in a gulch which caused him to rein his horse sharply and swing ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... did Pitt expostulate with him. At last he persuaded him to consult Thurlow, who advised him to do nothing so foolish, seeing that Pitt would be compelled at some future time to confer the Great Seal upon him. With this parting gleam of insight and kindliness, the morose figure ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... looked upon the attenuated creature, with a morose reflection of his loss, the latter, with a rebellion which she could not control, selected with trembling fortitude a thick slice of bread, which she buttered liberally and began to devour with pathetic ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... book is like listening to a humorous lecture by Marshall P. Wilder, full of wit and brightness, and it will cheer and comfort the most morose man or woman just to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... though not entirely unclouded, recollections of my relations with Semper, whom I also met in London, where he had been settled for some time with his family. He had always seemed to me so violent and morose when in Dresden that I was surprised and moved to admiration by the comparatively calm and resigned spirit with which he bore the terrible interruption to his professional career, and by his readiness ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... sides, except the sergeant, who was gloomy and morose. He was afraid the prisoners would rise and break out—which would have been a bad example. But there was no fear of that, and I stood myself before the window with my drawn sword. When sufficiently tamed by the strength of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... so, let him tell thee his dream. But Joseph hung his head and pushed his plate away; and seeing him so morose they left him to his sulks and fell to talking of dreams that had come true. Joseph had never heard them speak of anything so interesting before, and though he suspected that they were making fun of him he could not do else ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... atrocities which he had been induced by his mother and brother to sanction, were equally lasting and disastrous. The change was startling even to those who were its chief cause: from a gentle boy he had become transformed into a morose and cruel man. "The king is grown now so bloody-minded," writes one who enjoyed good opportunities of observing him, "as they that advised him thereto do repent the same, and do fear that the old ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... He had no associates; indeed from his earliest days he had kept aloof from boys of his own age. It was not that he was morose, or proud or ill-tempered, but he appeared to have no sympathy with them, and thus, though possessed of many qualities which would have won him friends, he had not a single friend of his own rank or age in the neighbourhood. Whenever he was not out fishing, he was engaged with his ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... Even Bernie misapprehends me; he thinks I'm frivolous and light-minded, but I'm not. I'm really very serious; I'm—I'm almost morose." ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... and seclusion, however, there was nothing repulsive in Mr Mowbray's manners or habits. He was grave without being morose, taciturn without being churlish, and sought quietness and retirement himself, without any expression of impatience with, or sign of peevishness at, the stir and bustle ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... and had pleasant friendly intercourse with the notable French authors of the time, Alexandre Dumas the Great, most prolific of romance writers; and Scribe of the innumerable plays; and the poets Lamartine and Victor Hugo; and Chateaubriand, then in his sad and somewhat morose old age. And in Paris too, with the help of streets and crowded ways, he wrote the great number of Dombey, the number in which little Paul dies. Three months did Dickens spend in the French capital, the incomparable city, and then was back ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... himself home-bred. In general, he is a wonderfully silent animal. But there are talking ones; and their talk is of bullocks. Talking or silent, the indigenous English bore is somewhat sulky, surly, seemingly morose; yet really good-natured, inoffensive, if kindly used and rightly taken; convivial, yet not social. It is curious, that though addicted to home, he is not properly domestic— bibulous—said to be ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... with the respectability of a married man, Martial was married twice. His first wife was Cleopatra, [44] of whose morose temper he complains, [45] and from whom he was divorced [46] soon after obtaining the Jus trium liberorum. His second was Marcella, whom he married after his return to Spain. [47] Of her he speaks with respect ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... most ferocious and cruel cannibals on earth, according to the accounts heard in Goyaz. My men were already beginning to lose heart. With the sleepless night due to the mosquitoes, and the heavy atmosphere caused by a fast-approaching thunderstorm, they were morose in the morning. With the exception of Alcides and the negro Filippe, the others came insolently forward and refused to go any farther. They shoved the muzzles of their rifles under my nose; they wished to be paid up instantly and go back. With a little patience it was easy to get out of difficulties ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... morose stare. "Why don't you ever put your shoulder to the wheel, Lanyard? Why leave it all to me? Come on; be a sport, cut a caper, crack a wheeze, do ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... United States decides to go off its collective rocker," Boyd finished. "Exactly." He stared down at his cigarette for a minute with a morose and pensive expression on his face. He looked, Malone thought, like Henry VIII trying to decide what to do about ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... reminding himself of the vulgarity of their minds which suited them so exactly to one another. He watched the play with an abstracted mind, trying to give himself gaiety by drinking whiskey in each interval; he was unused to alcohol, and it affected him quickly, but his drunkenness was savage and morose. When the play was over he had another drink. He could not go to bed, he knew he would not sleep, and he dreaded the pictures which his vivid imagination would place before him. He tried not to think of them. He knew he had drunk too much. Now he was seized ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... less and less chance of life remained for those not yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three hundred paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and the same mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely heard in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of a successful shot and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of the time, by their officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One, having taken off his shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its lining and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... was born in London on the 2nd day of September, 1694. It was remarkable that the father of a man so vivacious, should have been of a morose temper; all the wit and spirit of intrigue displayed by him remind us of the frail Lady Chesterfield, in the time of Charles II.[23]—that lady who was looked on as a martyr because her husband was jealous of her: 'a prodigy,' says ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... accustomed to finding Professor Kennedy's remarks quite unintelligible, and this one seemed no odder to her than the rest, so that she was astonished that Aunt Victoria was not ashamed to confess as blank an ignorance as the little girl's. The beautiful woman leaned toward the morose old man with the suave self-confidence of one who has never failed to charm, and drew his attention to her by a laugh of amused perplexity. "May I ask," she inquired, "what kind of a husband is that? It is a new ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... a negress of the dignified type, was the general house-servant, an aged, forbidding, harmlessly morose soul, often recalled by my mother in her references to Lenox, when talking, as she did most easily and fascinatingly, to us children of the past. The picturing of Mrs. Peters always impressed me very much, and she no doubt stood for a suggestion of Aunt ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... were no better satisfied than Raymond had been; and though they performed their duty in setting sail with entire precision, they were sour and morose. The sting of an overwhelming defeat thorned them. They were mortified, humiliated, and crest-fallen. They were enraged at the conduct of their rebellious companions of the milder stripe, who had deserted them, and they were reaping the general consequences of evil-doing. They ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... Fisher minor began to feel dreadfully compromised by his company. Rollitt's clothes were wet and muddy; his hands and face were dirty with his scramble along the tree; his air was morose and savage, and his stride was such that the junior had to trot a step or two every few yards to keep up. What would fellows think of him! Suppose Ranger were to see him, or, still ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... great recommendation in the correspondence amongst men; 'tis the first means of acquiring the favour and good liking of one another, and no man is so barbarous and morose as not to perceive himself in some sort struck with its attraction. The body has a great share in our being, has an eminent place there, and therefore its structure and composition are of very just consideration. They who go about to disunite and separate our two principal ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... of the controversy turned upon the fundamental principles, of all religion, and virtue. It is not at all surprising, that this steadiness and constancy of the Lutherans, was branded by the opposite party, with the epithets, of morose obstinacy, supercilious arrogance, and such like odious denominations. The Lutherans, were not behind hand with their adversaries, in acrimony, of style; they recriminated with vehemence, and charged ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... somewhere that awakening must come. To ensure they do not awaken too soon or in a fetid atmosphere among ugly surroundings is not enough. They cannot awaken in a void. An ignorance kept beyond nature may corrupt into ugly secrecies, into morose and sinister seclusions, worse than the evils we have suppressed. Let them awaken as their day comes, in a sweet, large room. The true antiseptic of the soul is not ignorance, but a touch of the heroic in the heart and in the imagination. ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... on that journey to Yorkshire by the pretty dark-eyed girl who was his daughter Lola, and by his valet, a very silent, stiff-necked, morose individual, whose personality did not attract me. He seemed, however, to be an exceptionally efficient person, so far as his duties were concerned, and on our arrival at the little wayside station about twelve miles beyond ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... be envied than dreaded, and that we were only doomed to undergo a somewhat prolonged picnic. This example and conversation had ultimately a great influence with the doctor, who had been inclined to repine and to become morose, looking with gloomy apprehension as ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... small watcher on the bank, that the boat upset, and that, when his uncle reached the shore, it was to work unavailingly for hours over his father's silent form, which never moved again. The boy was sent away for a while, but came back to find his uncle a silent, morose shadow, pacing the lonely garden in unassailable solitude, or riding his horse for hours in the great woods. Sometimes the little fellow would sit with his grandmother in the library window, where she watched and waited. Always, as he went about the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... which the Massacre of St. Bartholomew called forth from combined Europe fell like the knell of death on the ear of the depraved and cowardly Charles. Disease began to ravage, with new violence, his exhausted frame. He became silent, morose, irritable, and gloomy. He secluded himself from all society, and surrendered himself to the dominion of remorse. He was detested by the Protestants, and utterly despised by the Catholics. A bloody sweat, oozing from every pore, crimsoned his bed-clothes. His occasional ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... before had he known his old friend and partner to act in this strange way. Could anything be amiss? Now he came to think of it, he had noticed a great change in his associate directly he saw him. He had seemed to lack his customary cordiality and frankness. He appeared moody and morose, as if he had on his mind some weighty responsibility he was unwilling to share. Evidently there was nothing to be gained by displaying impatience, so, in more conciliatory tones, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... tomb of love.' While I am writing, it is not too much to aver that 99 persons out of 100, taken at random, under forty years of age, smoke habitually every day of their lives. How many in Melbourne injure wealth and brain, I leave to more skilled and morose critics. But my mind misgives me. Paralysis ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... extensive skin eruptions occur on all parts of the body and the patient gradually becomes anemic and physically and intellectually feeble. The nervous system seems to be affected by the parasite, either directly or by the action of the toxins it produces. The patient becomes more debilitated and morose with an increasing tendency to sleep, hence the name sleeping sickness. As the stupor deepens the patient looses all desire or power of exertion and as little food is taken he rapidly wastes away and finally ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... Even though he had been relieved of the greater part of his work, Anthony Dexter did not seem to be improving. He was morose, unreasonable, and given to staring vacantly into space for hours at a time. Ralph often spoke to him when he did not hear at all, and at times he turned his head from left to right and back again, slowly, but with the maddening ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... periodically to be withdrawn and replaced. An epithet which is complimentary in one generation is ironical in the next and eventually offensive. Moody, with its northern form Mudie, which now means morose, was once valiant (Chapter I); and pert, surviving in the name ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... away, and again Ray Bland found himself beneath the roof of his former friend. He was received by George and Amelia with the cordiality that had ever marked his intercourse with them; but the father was, if possible, more morose and ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... Song, it seems you speak this to oppose The saying of a sister Song of mine: This lowly Lady whom you call divine, Your sister called disdainful and morose. Though Heaven, you know, is ever bright and pure, Eyes may have cause ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... roan, I wheeled him north at a slow walk, preoccupied, morose, sadly absorbed in this new order of things where an Oneida now must needs answer a Mohawk as an Iroquois should once have answered an Erie or an Algonquin. Alas for the great League! alas for the mighty dead! Hiawatha! Atotarho! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... expansive, merry, ardent, enthusiastic, young in heart and mind, a thoroughly open nature. Her husband, on the other hand, was of a morose, sombre, melancholy, reserved nature. In spite of her superior intelligence Hortense had a sort of childlike air; but Louis, though young in years, had the character and appearance of an old man. As much as Hortense loved liberty, her suspicious ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... account of it—Magda's spirits lightened curiously after that first interview with him. The mere fact of his presence had stilled the incessant ache at her heart—the ache to see him again and hear his voice. And the morose cynicism of his thrusts at her was just so much proof that, although he had forced himself to remain out of England for a year and a half, yet he had not thereby achieved either peace of mind or indifference. Magda was too true a daughter of Eve not to know that ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... same Christmas Day Sergeant Hooper was feeling morose and discontented; not because he was alone in the world (a situation comprising many advantages), nor on the score of his wages, which were extremely liberal; nor on account of the "old blighter's"—that is, Mr. Saffron's—occasional ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... when he had the misfortune to kill a peculiar bird, resembling a sea-gull, which is reputed to possess poisonous qualities of singular virulence. By his contact with the dead bird his mind was affected. He became morose and cruel, and at the same time obtained the power of destroying men and other creatures at a distance. Three sons of Hiawatha were among his victims. He attended the Councils which were held, and made confusion ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... affliction in a jaunty debonair fashion, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as herself, then morose and irritable, and finally ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... consisted in trifles, and he was never happier, than when hid from the world. Few people pleased him in conversation, and it was a proof of his liking them, if his behaviour was tolerably agreeable. He was a great dissembler of his natural temper, which was fallen, morose, and peevish, where he durst shew it; but he was of a timorous disposition and the least slight or neglect offered to him, would throw him into a melancholy despondency. He was apt to say a great many ill-natur'd things, but ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... succeeded, and by Adams's account, everything went on smoothly for a short time; but it was clear enough that this misguided and ill-fated young man was never happy after the rash and criminal step he had taken; that he was always sullen and morose; and committed so many acts of wanton oppression, as very soon incurred the hatred and detestation of his companions in crime, over whom he practised that same overbearing conduct, of which he accused his commander Bligh. The object he had ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow

... differ? They differ endlessly, like the faces you meet on the street. Thus, one man is born to an open, frank, friendly, and courteous manner; another is cold, reserved, and suspicious. One is prompt, hilarious, and provocative of every good feeling, whenever you chance to meet; the other is slow, morose, and fit to waken every dormant antipathy in your soul. An able buyer is, or becomes, observing to the last degree. He knows the slightest differences in quality and in style, and possesses an almost unerring taste,—knows the condition of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... easeless with knobs of gold, Beneath a canopy of noonday smoke, I saw a measureless Beast, morose and bold, With eyes like one from filthy dreams awoke, Who stares upon the daylight in despair For very ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... urgently, and even prescribing my route, and bidding me come straight to Germany and to Sarkeld. The summons was distasteful, for I had settled into harness under my scientific superiors, and had proved to my messmates that I was neither morose nor over-conceited. Captain Martinitz persuaded me to return, and besides, there lay between the lines of Ottilia's letter a signification of welcome things better guessed at than known. Was I not bound to do her bidding? Others had done ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... apparently took no notice of the boulder—which still remained on the roadside, thanks to the later practical explanation of the stage-driver's vision—and curtly refused to talk about it. But, more significant to Duchesne, and perhaps more perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which took the place of his former vacuity of contentment, and an intolerance of his attendants, which supplanted his old habitual trustfulness to their care, that had been varied only by the occasional querulousness of an invalid. His daughters sometimes found him regarding ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... completely ignored by Thalassa that other people were apt to forget its existence. The couple did the work of Flint House between them, but apart from that common interest Thalassa gave his wife very little of his attention, leading a solitary morose life, eating and sleeping alone, and holding no converse with her apart from what was necessary for the management of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... made to the United States government for his release, but, as in the case of Lafayette, it could do nothing. This seeming neglect kindled the ire of Paine, who had, at this time, become an habitual drunkard. He had, in consequence, also become morose in disposition, and dogmatical in his opinions to an insufferable degree. Monroe sympathized with him; and under his roof, in Paris, Paine wrote the virulent letter alluded to, and sent it to Bache, of the Aurora, to print and disseminate. The following extract will be sufficient ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... for both felt morose and weak, their growing sense of hunger making them more and more silent ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was frankly a derelict, frankly regretted her maiden condition and railed with bitterness against her enforced childlessness. The near approach of Christmas had for years found her morose and resentful. There are, here and there, such women, essentially mothers but not necessarily wives, their ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... seemed to be laden with the scents of summer, and Miss Gabriel had not lived all her life in Garland Town without learning the subtle aromas of the wind, to distinguish those that were harmless or beneficent from those that warned, those that threatened, those that were morose, savage, malignant, those that piped a note of madness and meant a hurricane. Nor did the fog in itself appear to her very formidable. To be sure, she had never known a thicker one; but the Lord Proprietor (saving his presence) had probably exaggerated its terror. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... ever blacker and heavier to his mental vision as one by one his projects failed. A sullen and morose outcast for ever from civilisation, he sailed out into the unknown seas with his little band of desperate followers, to find if possible some solitary island, some unknown spot, where they might be lost for ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... his confederates had drawn together a considerable body of these sectaries, amounting to a hundred horse and about fifteen hundred foot, clouded and severe in aspect, morose and jealous in communication, haughty of heart, and confident, as men who believed that the pale of salvation was open for them exclusively; while all other Christians, however slight were the shades of difference of doctrine ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... some people who cannot laugh, but these are not necessarily either morose or stupid. They may laugh in their heart, and with their eyes, although by some unlucky fatality, they have not the gift of oral cachinnation. Such persons are to be pitied; for laughter in grown people is a substitute devised by nature for the screams and shouts of boyhood, by which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... the widow quit Leamington, but very soon afterwards the 120th received its marching orders, and left Weedon and Warwickshire. Haggarty's appetite was by this time partially restored, but his love was not altered, and his humour was still morose and gloomy. I am informed that at this period of his life he wrote some poems relative to his unhappy passion; a wild set of verses of several lengths, and in his handwriting, being discovered upon a sheet of paper in which a pitch-plaster was wrapped up, which Lieutenant and Adjutant ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gashed and his back lacerated, as a result of the cruel punishment inflicted upon him because he had dared to beat the overseer of the plantation for brutally assaulting the slave's wife. Because of becoming morose, disobedient and intractable thereafter, Henson's father was sold to a planter in Alabama and his relatives never heard of him again. His mother was then brought back to the estate of her owner, a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... talk between them, and occasionally Bill chimed in with a joke. Greaser ate in morose silence. There must have been something on his mind. Buell took very little dinner, and appeared to be in pain. It was dark when the meal ended. Bud bound me up for the night, and he made a good job of it. My arm burned and throbbed, but not badly enough to prevent ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... Morose, a rich old codger whose humor is a horror of noise. He lives in a street so narrow that it will admit no carriages; he pads the doors; plugs the keyhole; puts mattresses on the stairs. He dismisses a servant who wears squeaky boots; makes all the rest go about in thick stockings; and they must ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... Farmer—a man of some thirty-five years of age, whose obscure parentage and want of influential friends had kept him back from promotion, and who in consequence of countless disappointments had grown chronically morose and discontented. My fellow-mids were very enthusiastic in their expressions of admiration for what they were pleased to term "the pluck with which I had tackled the skipper;" and equally profuse in ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... season, where it so happened that I put up at the same lodging-house as that occupied by the Nizam and his suite. We sat opposite each other at table d'hote, and for at least three weeks previous to the losing of his treasure the Indian prince was very morose, and it was very difficult to get him to speak. I was not supposed to know, nor, indeed, was any one else, for that matter, at the lodging-house, that the Nizam was so exalted a personage. He like myself was travelling incog and was known to ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... contemptible as well as uncertain; and the preachers, finding that they could not rival the gentry, or even the middling rank of men, in opulence and plenty, were necessitated to betake themselves to other expedients for supporting their authority. They affected a furious zeal for religion, morose manners, a vulgar and familiar, yet mysterious cant; and though the liberality of subsequent princes put them afterwards on a better footing with regard to revenue, and thereby corrected in some degree those bad habits, it must be confessed that, while many other advantages attend Presbyterian ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... cousins always found something to reprove in whatever she did. In the course of two years Pierrette never received the slightest praise, or heard a kindly word. Happiness for her lay in not being scolded. She bore with angelic patience the morose ill-humor of the two celibates, to whom all tender feelings were absolutely unknown, and who daily made her feel ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... taken possession of that dilapidated cottage upon the Hanger, which used to be occupied by Lord Pontifex's gamekeeper, and I believe he oscillates between the cart and the cottage. I have hardly seen him, for he is such a morose personage that he always hides when any of the gentry approach ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... reduced his breakfast to two eggs, and he left one of these for his old servant, to whom he had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. And often his breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his infantile smile, he had grown morose and no longer received visitors. Marius did well not to dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hour when M. Mabeuf was on his way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man and the young man passed each other on the Boulevard de l'Hopital. They did not speak, and only exchanged ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... character thoroughly, and the "Heart of the World" troupe of strollers began very promptly to exhibit its kind. Albrecht, who was making money, retained his coarse good-nature unruffled by the hardships of travel; but the majority of the stage people grew morose and fretful,—the eminent comedian, glum and unapproachable as a bear; the leading gentleman swearing savagely over every unusual worry, and acting the boor generally; the ingenue, snappy and cat-like. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... my mortal enemy. But it was carried against him by the whole board, and confirmed by the emperor. That minister was galbet, or admiral of the realm, very much in his master's confidence, and a person well versed in affairs, but of a morose and sour complexion.[11] However, he was at length persuaded to comply; but prevailed that the articles and conditions upon which I should be set free, and to which I must swear, should be drawn ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... mutual understanding, and giving a spirit of concession. The location is marked Har. for Harmony. It embraces a group of organs of harmonious tendency, such as Friendship, Politeness, Imitation, Humor, Pliability and Admiration, as the Combative group is hostile, stubborn, morose and censorious. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various

... then continued: "Agellius, I once had a slave who belonged to your religion. She had been born in a Christian family, and came into my possession on her master's death. She was unlike any one I have seen before or since; she cared for nothing, yet was not morose or peevish or hard-hearted. She died young in my service. Shortly before her end she had a dream. She saw a company of bright shades, clothed in white, like the hours which circle round the god of day. They ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... however, for John Judson followed his wife to the grave before Veronica had reached her tenth year, leaving her and her half-sister, Cora, to the guardianship of a crabbed old bachelor who had been his father's lawyer. This lawyer was morose and peevish, but he was never positively unkind. For two years the sisters seemed happy enough when, suddenly and somewhat peremptorily, they were separated, Veronica being sent to a western school, where she remained, seemingly without a single visit east, till ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... went into the streets, though he no longer felt any desire to meet his acquaintances, and twice crossed the Haymarket to avoid them. As he strolled about, thinking of all that had been said to him that afternoon, he grew morose. Twice he calculated his expenditure on the American trip, and the difference that an increment of ten thousand pounds would make in his property. Suddenly, in turning out of Air Street into Piccadilly, he found himself face to face with ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... Huysmans, Merrill, and Lord Leighton, had been asked to stay to dinner, but it happened that they had a conversazione already included in the day's programme, and so they took their departure soon after the others, the Professor, it must be confessed, in a somewhat morose frame of mind. Like all men of similar mental constitution, he hated to be mystified, and now, for the first time in his long career of investigation into apparently abstruse phenomena, he had been absolutely stumped by this perfect-mannered, quiet-spoken gentleman from the East who performed wonders ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... then became a schoolmaster and a poet on occasion in the island capital. Williams described himself with some pertinence as "a white man acting under a black skin." His contempt for his fellow negroes and particularly for the mulattoes made him lonely, eccentric, haughty and morose. A Latin panegyric which is alone available among his writings is rather a language exercise than a poem.[25] On the continent Benjamin Banneker was an almanac maker and somewhat of an astronomer, and Phyllis Wheatley of Boston a writer ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, and prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humor of man. Now that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... aquiline nose. His limbs are heavy and large, but since his residence here he has lost all his flesh. He dresses in the common dress of Ottoman functionaries. I often found him chatty and facetious, but sometimes he was sulky and morose, and would not speak for hours together. He had a fine horse, but rarely could be prevailed upon to go out and ride for his health. Every great man has his shadow, his echo, the expression of himself more or less in his fellow ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... quem dominus noster Iesus Christus sedendo suis discipulis vel populis praedicauit. Vnde, et Christiani olim super hunc locum construxerunt Ecclesiam in nomine Saluatoris. Peregrinus vero qui ab hoc loco vult peregrinari, morose sciat, quod ad octo leucas a Tyro in orientem est Sarepta Sydoniorum, vbi olim Elias Propheta filium viduae suscitauit a morte. Itemque sciat, quod a Tyro in vnica dieta pergere potest in Achon, siue Acharon supra scripta. [Sidenote: Achon, olim Acharon. Mons Carmeli.] Circa Acon versus ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... Still they kept on, and every day the husband brought home a little money. Several times they seemed on the point of an engagement, but as often something came between, until at length Franks almost ceased to hope, and grew more and more silent, until at last he might well have appeared morose. The wonder to me is that any such as do not hope in a Power loving to perfection, should escape moroseness. Under the poisonous influences of anxiety, a loving man may become unkind, even cruel to the very ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... England, all the martyrs for religion in the century did not amount to a thousand, on both sides; in France, twenty thousand at least were slain in a few days' orgy of fanaticism. And the new Pope Gregory sang Te Deum in solemn state; and the morose monarch of Spain laughed aloud in unwonted glee; but Charles of France, men said, was haunted to the hour of his death by red visions of that ghastly carnival ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... filled with sailors, who, far from indulging in the well-known careless gayety of their class, seemed morose and sulky, talking together in low murmurs, and showing, unmistakably, signs of discontent and dissatisfaction. The reason was soon apparent: the press-gangs were out to take men off to reinforce the blockading force before Genoa, a service of all others the most distasteful to a seaman. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... the treacherous heartlessness and sat the dance out—stood it out, rather, among the superfluous men on the side-lines. A morose and ridiculous gloom possessed him at seeing still a fourth stranger with his arms about Mamise, her breast to his and her procedure obedient to his. Worse yet, when a fifth insolent stranger cut in on the twin stars, Mamise abandoned ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... did his master, in a way Frank did not fancy. It was a morose, menacing, savage grin—a very appropriate prelude, Frank thought, to a shot from behind out of that two-barrelled fowling-piece. But it was too late now to retreat. So, putting on a bold and confident air, he started for the woods, followed by the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... from his maternal grandfather, Lord Culpeper, of unsavory Restoration memory. It was a piece of great good-fortune which threw in Washington's path this accomplished gentleman, familiar with courts and camps, disappointed, but not morose, disillusioned, but still kindly and generous. From him the boy could gain that knowledge of men and manners which no school can give, and which is as important in its way as any ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... excellent mistress, Mrs Dacre, departed this life for a better, it seemed as if nothing ever prospered in the family, whom I had the honour of serving in the capacity of confidential housekeeper. Mr Dacre became morose and careless of his affairs; his sons were a source of great misery to him, pursuing a course of reckless extravagance and heartless dissipation; while the five young ladies—the youngest of whom, however, had attained the age of twenty-four—cared for little ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various

... unsocial, nor morose. He welcomes the stranger as heartily as the most hospitable patriarch. He receives the sojourner at his fireside without question. He regales him with the best the house affords: is always anxious to have him "stay another day." He cares for his horse, renews his harness, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... conversational, watched him in abstracted silence. Rallied on this morose humor, he rose, shook himself like a retriever, yawned, and sauntered to the piano that occupied a dim corner of the saloon, and began to play with that delicate, subtle touch, which, though it does not always ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... It was indeed a house of mourning. My mother's grief I respected, and tried all I could to console her; that of my father was so evidently worldly, and so at variance with his clerical profession, that I must acknowledge I felt more of anger at it than sorrow. He had become morose and sullen, harsh to those around him, and not so kind to my mother as her state of mind and health made it his duty to be, even if inclination were wanted. He seldom passed any portion of the day ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... possible that I cannot speak to my own wife without bringing such an accusation upon myself! Well, well! And I'm slaving for you morning, noon, and night, to keep you in some sort of decency and comfort; and when I come home, and do my best to be cheery and amuse you, instead of being morose after the strain of the day, as most men are, all the thanks I get is a speech like that! ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... bones, did you know how careful are my days, and how sleepless my nights, under the perpetual harassments of civil war!—The haughty burgesses of Ghent, whom I could hate from my soul but that they are townsmen of my illustrious father, the low-minded Walloons, the morose Brugeois, the artful Brabancons—all the varied tribes, in short, of the old Burgundian duchy, seem to vie with each other which shall succeed best in thwarting and humiliating me. And for what do I bear it? What ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... exclusively composed of the male sex, glared furiously at them and one another—but principally at them—as they came up the gangway, and departed in search of the purser. All the stairs down to the dining saloon were occupied by morose passengers, and an enlivening altercation was in progress between two elderly gentlemen of ferocious aspect anent the remnants of what had once been a cushion. A mild-looking being, closely clutching a tired deck-chair, was descending to the dining ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... there is any boy or man who loves to be melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away. It is not ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... morose husband of mine says we must leave tomorrow. But in some things I rule; this is one of them. Therefore we remain and go with you to the mountains when we are tired of the gay life here. So smile and submit, Gilbert, else these friends will count your society no favor. ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... 102-103; ll. 161-169. Tell the story of Tristram and Iseult of the White Hands. What is shown by the fact that Tristram's mind dwells on Iseult of Ireland even at the time of battle? How account for his wanderings? For his morose frame of mind? What change has come over nature when Tristram awakes? Why this change? What is his mood now? Account for his addressing Iseult of Brittany as he does. Why his order for her to retire? What is her attitude toward ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... mention the sad incident which occurred during that same lecture. At the moment when the excitement reached its height and the hearts had already opened, ready to unburden themselves, a certain youth, looking morose and embittered, exclaimed loudly, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... a very decent man, a printer; he had lived for years beyond reproach; he was both a good workman, husband and father. But he lost his right arm, the result of an accident at his work, and his character changed from that day. He became morose, violent and cruel, and obsessed with altogether false ideas. He could not reason as other men, and he became dangerous and explosive. Time after time I have seen him committed to prison, until he became a hopeless prison habitue. My experience has also shown me that physical ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes



Words linked to "Morose" :   moody, glum, dark, sour, glowering, saturnine, moroseness, sullen, ill-natured



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