"Poignant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poetical, Epilogue to Lessing's Laocoon leads us to one of the most remarkable of all Mr Arnold's poems, Bacchanalia, or the New Age. The word remarkable has been used advisedly. Bacchanalia, though it has poignant and exquisite poetic moments, is not one of the most specially poetical of its author's pieces. But it is certainly his only considerable piece of that really poetic humour which is so rare and delightful a thing. And, like all poetic humour, it oscillates between ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... room For memories of greatness, and high pride In what sects cannot kill nor seas divide. The Light hath led thee, on through honoured days And lengthened, through wild gusts of blame and praise, Through doubt, and severing change, and poignant pain, Warfare that strains the breast and racks the brain, At last to haven! Now no English heart Will willingly forego unfeigned part In honouring thee, true master of our tongue, On whose word, writ or spoken, ever hung All English ears which knew that tongue's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... son's death, as may well be imagined, was received by Sir Alexander and Lady Moncton with the most poignant grief; and six years elapsed before she and her husband revisited ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... understand that, my child? Ah, no, very likely not. But I think it's much best for you, all your first life should be wholly forgotten." He paused for a second. Then he added slowly: "If you remembered it all, the sense of the tragedy would be far more acute and poignant even ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... was inconveniently vivid, and for a few poignant weeks his wife's horrible end haunted him. But after a while he forced himself to take a long holiday in Greece, and from there he came back with his nerves in better order than they ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... no title to demand that we should be slaves to their guilt and insolence; or that we should serve them in spite of themselves. Minds, sore with the poignant sense of insulted virtue, filled with high disdain against the pride of triumphant baseness, often have it not in their choice to stand their ground. Their complexion (which might defy the rack) cannot go through ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Cathedral. Being in red stone, and very dusty, like Ghiberti's doors (which want the hose regularly), the lines of the tomb are much impaired. Donatello is also represented here by a Mary Magdalene in wood, on an altar at the left of the entrance door, very powerful and poignant. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the presupposition and basis of his advice. It may be said generally that his book is merely the theoretical statement and consistent and systematic exposition of the practice prevailing in his time. It is the novel statement of it in a complete theoretical form that lends it such a poignant interest. The same thing, I may remark in passing, applies to the immortal little work of La Rochefaucauld, who, however, takes private and not public life for his theme, and offers, not advice, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... off into a day dream of wonderment as to how they might feel in a similar plight, and one ended up with the reflection, 'Ja, es ist halt jetzt die Zeit der Maertyrer' (it is indeed the time of the martyrs once more)." Surely there is something strangely poignant about the convinced and steadfast martyrdom and self-sacrifice of both sides. Surely the peoples who can thus offer themselves in destroying each other must both have noble gifts to give together one day ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... deposited his every-day thoughts and feelings, without any order or plan,—reminding us of "Tristram Shandy" or of "Don Juan," although not so whimsically delightful as the former, nor so brilliant and poignant as the latter. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... keep the stain of falsehood from my mind. But hasten, and the moving pomp survey, (The light-wing'd moments brook no long delay), To try if any form your notice claims Among those love-lorn youths and amorous dames."— With poignant grief I heard his tale of woe, That seem'd to melt my heart like vernal snow, When a low voice these sullen accents sung:— "Not for himself, but those from whom he sprung, He merits fate; for I detest them all To whose ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... cried out; and at the word she first knew, with a poignant pang of mingled bliss and anguish, ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . . We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray, ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... scattered about with lavish hand; for wealth administered to refined luxury, and affection crowned him with blessings which gold can never buy. A mother hid from him her bitter tears, and spoke the words of cheerfulness; sisters pressed around him with the poignant grief an only brother can inspire; a beautiful betrothed betokened to him in irrepressible tears her depth and purity of love. Letters came to him hurried on the wings of friendship, and impressed on all their seals with sentiments which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... it was so long ago; he felt young still! Of all his thoughts, as he stood there counting his cigars, this was the most poignant, the most bitter. With his white head and his loneliness he had remained young and green at heart. And those Sunday afternoons on Hampstead Heath, when young Jolyon and he went for a stretch along the Spaniard's Road to Highgate, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... what he had anticipated that it amazed him to have such a disappointing reply. Then, recovering somewhat:—"Very well!" with great deliberation, while his voice sounded unnaturally strained. Then the effort failing, and his pride breaking down: "Oh, Mysie, Mysie," he burst out in poignant agony again relapsing into the pleading wooing tones that were so difficult to withstand, "How I hae loved you! I thocht you cared for me. I hae built mysel' up in you, an' I'll never, never be able to forget you! Oh, think what it ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... not been so keen and so poignant Mary Burton would not have fought so long against the idea which seemed ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... melody. The melodies of "Steal Away to Jesus," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Nobody Knows de Trouble I See," "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray," "Deep River," "O, Freedom Over Me," and many others of these songs possess a beauty that is—what shall I say? poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime the Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen response to the sheer joy of living; in the "spirituals" he voiced his sense of beauty and his deep ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... paint, so many cabinets full of Dresden china, that it recalled, by the very extremity of the contrast of its bright hideousness, that other ugly, dismal little room, also filled with false gods, of a cheap and very different kind, in which he had had so much poignant happiness. ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... did not dare put the question squarely, for he dared not confess to himself that he could not give her up. This, then, was the key to Mrs. Denham's cold rejection of his suit; it explained, also, Ruth's unwillingness to have him speak to her of his love. How poignant must have been her anguish that day on Montanvert if she cared for him! She loved him—how could he doubt it?—but she had accepted the hopelessness of the position. In his own mind he had accused her of coquetry in their ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... He winced under the poignant rebuke. He knew in his heart that she was right. He had not clung to the good, despite the roars of Satan. He had not "resisted unto blood." Far from it; he had fallen, almost invariably, at the first shower of the adversary's darts. And now, was he not ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... his anxiety about those at home who had no doubt long mourned him as dead grew more poignant, and remembering his uncle's affection for his sister, he regretted not having confided in him and begged him to get a letter conveyed to some point sufficiently civilised to have a post. He tried to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... tendencious, if I may Anglicize a very necessary word from the Spanish tendencioso. That is, they dealt with very obvious problems, and had very distinct and poignant significations, at least in the case of "Dona Perfecta," "Leon Roch," and "Gloria." In still later novels, Emilia Pardo-Bazan thinks, he has comprehended that "the novel of to-day must take note of the ambient truth, and realize the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... they are impersonal. We cannot identify ourselves with what moves us in painting or sculpture or architecture: on the contrary, it lifts us out of ourselves, away from our griefs and cares, instead of giving them a more intense and poignant expression, which at some moments is all the divinest music seems to do. Their influence is always benign and serene, and we may always have recourse to it, while the secrets of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... to take in these general features. Then my attention was riveted upon the floor, and this told a silent, poignant story which it would be difficult to parallel. The promenade was less than nine feet—in fact, it was only two full paces—and barely twelve inches in width. Consequently the occupant, as he paced to and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... reach seems only to intensify the fact of individual littleness and isolation. She felt that she stood alone, not merely in the world, but in the universe; and the thought that Oliver slept there in the next room made more poignant this feeling, as though she were solitary and detached in the midst of limitless space. Even if she called him and he came to her, she could not reach him. Even if he stood at her side, the immeasurable distance ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Danton Hall home, but she spends most of her time with Kate. It is not so sumptuous, of course, as at Ottawa, in the rising young Doctor's home; but she is not galled every moment of the day by the poignant regrets that lacerate her heart at Eeny's. She hears of her husband occasionally, as he wanders through the Continent, and the chain that binds her to him galls her day and night. Little Reginald, able to trot about on his own sturdy ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... je n'aie aucun enfant pour recueillir mon horrible heritage et qui soit charge du poids de mon nom!"— [Footnote Extract from the poignant letter to his wife written on this night.—See Lanfrey ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... his victim. Admetos has asked his father, mother, relations and servants to die instead of him. None will do it; but his wife, Alkestis, does. Admetos accepts her sacrifice. Her dying, her death, the sorrow of Admetos is described with all the poignant humanity of Euripides. In the meantime Herakles has come on the scene, and Admetos, though steeped in grief, conceals—his wife's death and welcomes his friend to his house. As Alkestis is the heroine of self-sacrifice, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... certain English novels that sell because they are offensive, and for no other reason in the world. Aus guter Familie, by Gabrielle Reuter, is another remarkable novel, and I believe it has never been translated into English. It presents the poignant tragedy of a woman's life suffocated by the social conditions obtaining in a small German town where a woman has no hope but marriage, and if she is poor no chance of marriage. It is one of the most sincere ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... deals skilfully with a people still uncivilised, still swayed by primeval passions. His characters are well defined, and the tragedy which underlies the lives of the three principals is poignant and impressive by reason of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... would not live another day, and the mother sat down to the sad task of writing the mournful news to her soldier son. Meanwhile beyond the Rappahannock, a scene was on the eve of being enacted, which was destined to inflict upon her a pain as poignant as that she was, now ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... forget that he was lame. If his enemies had but possessed the wit, they might have given him "the sobriquet of Le Diable Boiteux" (letter to Moore, April 2, 1823, Letters, 1901, vi. 179). It was no wonder that so poignant, so persistent a calamity should be "reproduced in his poetry" (Life, p. 13), or that his passionate impatience of such a "thorn in the flesh" should picture to itself a mysterious and unhallowed miracle of healing. It is true, as Moore says (Life, pp. 45, 306), that "the trifling ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... wrought into a faultless strain of music. Stepping out of a paradise in which pain becomes so lovely, he can see the beauty which is the other side of madness, and, in a sonnet, "To One in Bedlam," can create a more positive, a more poignant mood, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... shining above its glowing core, it raced toward us. The hurricane of bells of diamond glass were jubilant, joyous. I felt O'Keefe grip my arm; Yolara threw her white arms out in a welcoming gesture; I heard from the tier a sigh of rapture—and in it a poignant, wailing ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... is more terrible yet, for all jealousy seems tyrannical, and tyranny leads to revolt; but a confiding husband is like a victim strangled in his sleep, and inspires, by his very calmness, the most poignant remorse. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a private character following his remains to their last resting place; for though the station and the character may be less ostensible, less prominent, yet the feelings of the heart will not therefore be the less poignant, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... when the guns are silent the brief order which will ring out above the huddled men will hold their promise of death. Yet those men talk quietly, and there are some of them who in this time of danger find some poignant satisfaction, softening their anguish, in calling up the memory of those dear beings whom perhaps they will never see again. With my own ears I have heard a great fair-headed lad expatiate to all his neighbours ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... well-looking, dressed as an Oriental, but with an affected, jerking air, more French than Syrian, moved jauntily about the room, speaking to several persons for a short time, shrugging his shoulders and uttering commonplaces as if they were poignant originalities. This was Hillel Besso, the eldest son of the Besso of Aleppo, and the intended husband of Eva. Hillel, too, had seen the world, passed a season at Pera, where he had worn the Frank dress, and, introduced into the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... He seemed asleep. The conies crying from their runways suddenly took on poignant pathos. They appeared to be grieving with her; but the eagles spoke ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... the desire to end his Indian captivity and return home. Uncertain as he was of the time that had passed since starting on his hunt, he knew that it was long enough to awaken the most poignant anguish on the part of his loved mother, who must suffer far more, before, under the most favorable ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... were inextricably combined. To-night, either because he was very tired or for some other reason, the mystery of the sadness of this music, which floats through all its triumph, appealed to him more than usual, and in a strangely poignant way. The monotonous pulsation was like the pulse of life, that life in which he and the man beside him were for a time involved, from which presently they would be released, whether with or against their wills. The pulse of life! Suddenly from the general his mind passed to the particular. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... his word of honor, sides with the primitive lover. The tragedy seems foreordained, for Innocencia makes spirited resistance, while Manacao avenges himself by killing the doctor. A comic figure of a German scientist adds humor and a certain poignant irony to the tale. Such a bare outline conveys nothing of the mysterious charm of the original, nor of its poetic atmosphere. Comparing Innocencia with what has been termed its sister work, Maria, I believe that Maria is the ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... foregoing chapter gives a general idea of the intensity of the great battle from the impersonal and official viewpoint, with data checked and balanced. But the following account introduces the personal and human element with poignant effect. Some of the very minor facts are a little inaccurate, but that is inevitable when an individual soldier describes a general action from his own viewpoint. Nevertheless the editors consider that ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... through Nick's mind: there was something quaintly poignant in the sight of the brisk and efficient Mr. Buttles reduced to a limp image of unrequited passion. And what a painful surprise to the Hickses to be thus suddenly deprived of the secretary who possessed "the foreign languages"! Mr. Beck kept the accounts and settled with the hotel-keepers; but ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the people's strength; and like the Philistines, the enemy struck at the supposed bond of power. Terrible as was the blow of the fearful fatality, the Church soon emerged from its despairing state of poignant grief, and rose mightier than before. It is the faith of this people that while the work of God on earth is carried on by men, yet mortals are but instruments in the Creator's hands for the accomplishment of divine purposes. The death ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... some hasty and ill-considered act, and in consequence suffer some measure of inconvenience, or perhaps experience a veritable disaster and overthrow of my hopes. But in either case, though I may feel poignant regret, I am as far as possible from the experience of remorse, save in so far as my blunder may have involved neglect of some duty, or a carelessness morally culpable. But when I have committed a sin, then it would be a most inadequate ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... even suspect his feelings of the previous night, what a tragedy he would be at once involved in! The very splendor of Hermione's nature, the generous nobility of her character, would make that tragedy the more poignant. She felt with such intensity, she thought she had so much. Careless though his own nature was, doubly careless here in Sicily, Maurice almost sickened at the idea of her ever suspecting the truth, that he was capable of being strongly drawn towards a girl ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... still light enough to see. The last hymn was announced. Cameron was conscious of a deep, poignant emotion. He glanced swiftly about him. The eyes of all were upon the preacher's face while he read in slow sonorous tones the words of the old ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... sang for the last time before him one of those liturgical chants which long ago at Milan had touched him even to tears, and now, since the siege, in the panic caused by the Barbarians, they dared not sing any more. Augustin, guarding himself even now against the too poignant sweetness of the melody, attended only to the sense of the words. And ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... those whom they reach, intolerable to good and generous minds, worse than persecution, than even death itself, how do you apply it? Why you propose to sear this brand high upon the forehead, and deep into the heart of your very prince, while you render the scar more visible, and the insult more poignant, by making him the solitary individual, whose hereditary rank must be held and transmitted by the disgraceful tenure which you have stigmatized as the badge of slavery. Freedom of conscience to all subjects, but none to your king! Throw open the portals of legislation, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... more poignant than anything she had yet felt, sent a pricking of tears to her eyes. She turned her face away, longing in sudden misery for some one to whom she could speak plainly, some one who once had felt as she did now. For the first time she wished that there was another woman in the train. Her instinct ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... It was one of the most poignant memories of my life. The look she gave him and the look he gave ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... no answer; and those subtle movements—shadows of movements I might almost call them—recommenced. Then there came a sudden cry, shrill and poignant—had Grandfather been in his room he would surely have heard it—and the flash coming almost simultaneously with its utterance, I saw what has haunted my sleep from that day to this, my father pinned against the wall, sword still in hand, and before him my mother, fiercely triumphant, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... can bring no new affliction; the world is to them a theater, in which only comedies are acted. All the bustle of heroism, or the aspirations of ambition, seem only to heighten the absurdity of the scene, and make the humor more poignant. They feel, in short, as little anguish at their own distress, or the complaints of others, as the undertaker, though dressed in black, feels sorrow at a funeral. Of all the men I ever read of, the famous Cardinal de Retz possessed this happiness in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the sounds of night began to rise in their poignant summoning of memory and hope. The past and the present seemed one to her in a beautiful dream; yet it was not so much a dream as life itself, a warm reality. Presently there came the slow thud of horse's feet, and the chaise turned in at the yard. Old lady Knowles was in it, sitting ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... origin. The flood of foreign immigration has not engulfed it. Its memories, like its names, are still of England, New and Old. The spirit of America, eagerly looking forward, cruelly acquisitive, does not seem to fulfil it The sentiment of its beginning has outlasted even the sentiment of a poignant agitation. It resembles an old man thinking of what was, and turning over with careful hand the relics of days gone by. If in one aspect Boston is a centre of commerce and enterprise, in another it is a patient worshipper of tradition, It regards the few old buildings which have survived ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... the various works have been chosen with care. It was evidently by no means an easy task. The passage chosen to show Colonel Newcome in the 'Cave of Harmony' gives in one poignant incident his character; the selection from 'Pendennis' does much the same. In the passage from 'Esmond' the story of the duel is a fine selection; the chapter on 'Some Country Snobs' is an apt choosing; the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... obey. It divorces knowing and doing, Kennen and Koennen, a separation which the Greeks could not conceive because for them knowledge ended in skill or was exemplified in precepts and proverbs that were so clear cut that the pain of violating them was poignant. Ideas must be long worked over till life speaks as with the rifle and not with the shotgun, and still less with the water hose. The purest thought, if true, is only action repressed to be ripened to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... to his man that he was going away, alone, and though the accomplished Molton had regrets, they were not as poignant as they would have been some weeks earlier. Most valets, if not all, are human, and have a weakness for a master whose social popularity is as unbounded as ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to Jimmie Dale seemed one of more poignant anguish than he had ever heard before, the old gentleman caught her in his arms and supported her to a chair; then running quickly to the hall, called loudly for ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... satisfactory completion—false mating. It is not a difficulty peculiar to woman. Man knows it as often. It is the heaviest curse society brings on human beings—the most fertile cause of apathy, agony, and failure. If the woman's cry is more poignant under it than the man's, it is because the machine which holds them both allows him a wider sweep, more interests outside of their immediate alliance. "A man, when he is vexed at home," complains Medea, "can go out and find ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... could it inspire nothing but passion? Could her face inspire passion at all now? Oh, it inspired suffering, grief, overwhelming grief of the soul! A poignant, agonizing memory ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the width of nature to indulge in the luxury of self-pity. But the sudden death of his gallant roadster, his proud pacer through the streets of Barbie, touched him with a sense of quite personal loss and bereavement. Coming on the heels of his other calamities it seemed to make them more poignant, more sinister, prompting the question if misfortune ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... politician was now sworn of the privy council, and gratified with the office of lord-chamberlain, which had been resigned by the earl of Dorset, a nobleman of elegant talents and invincible indolence, severe and poignant in his writings and remarks upon mankind in general, but humane, good-natured, and generous to excess, in his commerce ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... letters has suffered irreparable losses by shipwrecks. Guarino Veronese, one of those learned Italians who travelled through Greece for the recovery of MSS., had his perseverance repaid by the acquisition of many valuable works. On his return to Italy he was shipwrecked, and lost his treasures! So poignant was his grief on this occasion that, according to the relation of one of his countrymen, his hair turned ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... time in his short life she felt no response in her child. Indeed, she recognized his withdrawal from her, more poignant in its effect upon her because it was unconscious on his part. In that one moment the instinct of motherhood leapt full within her, a sudden bewildering emotion, totally new to her in its aliveness, its vividness. And then ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... darling Georgy, I do not know how to write or what to say to you in such poignant grief. I think this is the most terrible blow that could have happened to Maria (Lady Stisted) and you. I do not grieve for Minnie, because, as I told Dick in my letter, her pure soul has known nothing but religion and music, and is certainly in its ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... point of view, seemed amongst the chosen ones of the world. The contrast was in itself amazing. And then the woman! Francis looked at her but seldom, and when he did it was with a curious sense of mental disturbance; poignant but unanalysable. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... With such feelings of poignant anguish he plodded through the echoing streets. Mechanically he made his way back to Westminster. By the time he got there the moon and stars had gone and the chill of daybreak was in the air. He saw and heard nothing, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the clock chimes forth the hour—the hour of fluted peace, of dead desire and epic love. Oh not for aye, Endymion, mayst thou unfold the purple panoply of priceless years. She sleeps—PRISCILLA sleeps—and down the palimpsest of age-old passion the lyres of night breathe forth their poignant praise. She sleeps—eternal Helen—in the moonlight of a thousand years; immortal symbol of immortal aeons, flower of the gods transplanted on a foreign shore, ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... her arm, the toe of her boot tapping the floor nervously, Laura stood motionless in the centre of the room, her lips tight pressed, the fingers of one gloved hand drumming rapidly upon her riding-crop. She was bewildered, and an anxiety cruelly poignant, a dread of something she could not name, gripped suddenly at ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Her mother saw it, and her mother was right. She would trust her mother's judgment in this as she had always trusted it in all things. The fire of him was no longer warm, and the fear of him was no longer poignant. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... conceal his disapproval of foreign food. The sorrows of the beef-eating Englishman among the continentals were always poignant. Dallington is only one of the many travellers who, unable to grasp the fact that warmer climes called for light diet, reproached the Italians especially for their "parsimony and thin feeding." In Henry the Eighth's time there was already ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... to the bleak Labrador coast and there in saving life made expiation. In dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic etching of a sturdy fisher people, and above all in the echoes of the sea, Doctor Luke is worthy of great praise. Character, humor, poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes a note of ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... uttered a poignant short bark and leaped heavily to one side. His bared teeth traced a line of whiteness through the gloom. The next instant he dashed past his master's legs, almost upsetting his balance, and shot ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... sudden queer craving. The knowledge of the hopeless helplessness of that little girl throbbed through him. The memory of the spectacle of what he had left on the canal bank made the pathos of this little scene in the garret doubly poignant as he looked into the child's eyes. Never, in his memory, had he invited a child to ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... existence had been forgotten. But time had taken its toll even from the stubborn oak, and at last it had yielded under a child's light weight. Joel knew it as he ran, but the sight of the splintered irregular opening, across which the clover heads nodded serenely to one another, gave a poignant anguish to his realization. He tore the rotting planks aside, and looked as it seemed, down into unrelieved blackness. Then his sun-dazzled vision adjusted itself to the gloom and he saw the dank, slime-covered ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after some years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to themselves and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child groping benighted. Her presence, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... advice to the young man about to be married—don't. There is a jest nearly half a century old, and yet ever fresh and poignant. Why? Can it be that the secret, serious voice of mankind proclaims the jest truth in masquerade? Can it be that marriage, as an institution, has indeed proved itself in experience such a ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... one of two subjects: politics or women. In the present instance the party was not political; and it was the fair sex, and particularly the most charming portion of it, in the good metropolis of England, that were subject to the poignant criticism or the profound speculation of these practical philosophers. There was scarcely a celebrated beauty in London, from the proud peeress to the vain opera-dancer, whose charms and conduct were not submitted to their ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... with Pompilia, though not in the same degree as with Mildred, for here the truth is with us—Pompilia is a living soul, not a puppet of the theatre. Yet even here the same strange errors recur. She has words indeed that reach the inmost heart—poignant, overpowering in tenderness and pathos; but she has, also, words that cause the brows to draw together, the mind to pause uneasily, then to cry "Not so!" Of such is the analysis of her own blank ignorance with regard to the marriage-state. This, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the years of my professorship in the city. The value of the opportunity is enhanced by all that has since befallen our nation and the world. The Great War invested the experience of the Prophet, who is the subject of this Lecture, with a fresh and poignant relevance to our own problems and duties. Like ourselves, Jeremiah lived through the clash not only of empires but of opposite ethical ideals, through the struggles and panics of small peoples, through long and terrible fighting, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... back now on that day I find the memory of my suffering has dimmed slightly. The passage of weeks and months has served to soften the harsh outlines of poignant recollection. What now in retrospect most impresses me is the heroism I displayed, the stark fortitude, the grandeur of will power, the triumph for character. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... thou touchest my most poignant pain, My ill-starred father's piteous disgrace, The taint of blood, the hereditary stain, That clings to all of Labdacus' famed race. Woe worth the monstrous marriage-bed where lay A mother with the son her womb had borne, Therein I was conceived, woe worth the day, Fruit of incestuous ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... be no further haste about the making of the picture, "The Long Lane's Turning." Although most of the big scenes were already shot, those that remained to do held in them the more poignant action of the piece and must be rehearsed over and ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... had the palace seemed so silent or so vast. He had not a friend to turn to. De Crucis was in Germany, and Trescorre, it was reported, had privately attended the Duchess in her flight. The waves of destiny seemed closing over Odo, and the circumstances of his past rose, poignant and vivid, before ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... under the early sun which slowly withers it away, the great silver sea with its dark islands of redwood seemed to me the most wonderful of things. With my wonder and delight, perhaps making them more poignant, was the fear lest the glory should mount too high, and lay its attractive hand on my beloved. The fog has been dear to me ever since. I have often grumbled at it when I was in it or under it, but when I have seen it from above, that first ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the house. Sulkily he waited for her to come out again, but the girl did not appear. He gave her a full half hour before he swung to the saddle and turned the head of his pony toward the Valdes' hacienda. A new and poignant bitterness surged in his heart. Had this stranger, who was bringing trouble to the whole valley, come between him and little Juanita, whom he had loved since they had been children? Had he stolen her heart with his devilish wiles? The hard glitter in the black ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... from within the soul itself, and are not necessarily or for all inflicted as a torment or punishment from without. Rather they arise from the soul's own action upon itself, from its own pangs of shame and self-abasement, all deepened and made more poignant by the ever increasing sense of the love of Jesus Christ, then as never before apprehended, and by the holy vision of His perfections. Thereby, as they gaze on Him, they are changed by the influence of the sight of Him, into greater ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... why do you torture so With such keen beauty till the day appears? Why touch to life things buried long ago, Whose aching cries trouble the heart to tears; Ghostly—like wind tossed sea gulls calling low Out of the poignant vistas ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... bell, and from another room issued a lady with a face of rare and delicate loveliness. Her soft, clinging black gown, with a touch of white at her throat, served to emphasise the sweet purity of her face, but cast over it a shade of sadness at once poignant ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... night's scene, nor did his tutored companion, but spoke of different and lighter subjects, in a manner which at once proved his experience of society, the liveliness of his talents, and the cultivation of his taste. He told many stories, all short and poignant, and always about princes and princesses. Whatever was broached, he always had his apropos of Vienna, and altogether seemed an experienced, mild, tolerant man of the world, not bigoted to any particular opinions upon any subject, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... still a boy. It was easy to see him freezing, soaking, falling, lying in distress. She busied herself behind a great plate-glass window on a frequented thoroughfare—a window heaped with battered helmets and emptied shells that drew the idle curiosity or the poignant interest of the passer-by. Bandages, sweaters, iodine-tubes filled her thoughts and her hands. And Althea, in company with several sprightly and entertaining young girls of her own set, began to pick up some elementary ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... attention with the paintings of fauns and nymphs that adorned the walls. That youth of yesteryear has come to grizzled hair. There are crow's feet about the eyes, and the world is one of vastly changed values, and the game at which the heart is throbbing is a more poignant one than that which involved touchdowns and goals from the field and desperate stands on the two-yard line. But it is the same old-time spirit, that then expressed itself in the call, "Hold them, Yale," or "Hold them for Old Nassau!" that, passed on to ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... tired. Even now, when he had begun to consider his self-mastery complete, it had required no more than the unexpected mention of Martel Savigno's name and that of his murderer to awaken pangs of poignant distress, the signs of which he could ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... whom the main interest of the narrative gathers, we have fewer incidental touches to guide us in giving individuality to his character. This, however, we may infer, from the poignant sorrow of the twin hearts that were so unexpectedly broken, that he was a loved and lamented only brother, a sacred prop around which their tenderest affections were entwined. Included too, as he was, in the love which the Divine Saviour bore to ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... in her. She was altogether lovely to him, and his delight was the more poignant as he recognised in her one of the girls he had seen on the stage a couple of weeks ago. That being true, nothing could keep her from being glorious in his eyes,—not even the grease-paint which adhered in unneat patches to her ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... her memory to make to recover the traces of her earliest impressions of life,—the strangeness of the events unfolded to her,—the duration of the recital itself, which is considerable,—and, above all, the poignant personal interest of its details, are quite sufficient to account for the sudden utter prostration of her overstrained faculties and feelings, and the profound sleep that falls on the young girl. Perhaps Shakspeare knew this, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... unique rocking-chair with a sturdy strength which promised well for his muscle when he should be as old as his great, strong brother Solomon. He had been as quiet, hitherto, as if he were dumb, but now he lifted up his voice in a loud and poignant wail, and after he was put to bed, he resurrected himself from among the bedclothes, ever and anon, with a bitter, though infantile, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... only to be silent now, she believed, and the success of her efforts to win him from Jennie Burton would be complete. If left to himself in this wild, distracted mood he would indeed break every tie that bound him to her rival; but after time had blunted his poignant self-condemnation he would inevitably come back to her. The conscience whispered: "Who forgave you here? What did you promise here? What does that tree mean with its branches reaching out towards ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... She has found another issue. She wants to forget now. And no wonder. She wants to persuade herself that she had never known such an ugly and poignant minute in her life. "After all," I conceded aloud, "things are not ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... tend to a simpler rendering of life, and the cold intellect of Strindberg had rejected the "symmetrical dialogue" of the French drama in order "to let the brains of men work unhindered." But Hauptmann carries the same methods extraordinarily far and achieves a poignant verisimilitude that rivals the pity and terror of the most memorable drama of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the symphony of bird and brook and soughing wind. So still did she sit that the tinker, returning, thought for a moment that she had gone, and stood, knee-deep in the brakes, laden to the chin and covered with the misery of poignant disappointment. For him all the music of the place had turned to laughing ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... desperate, keen face was coldly still as he regarded the powerful frame of his challenger. Then his retort came swift and poignant. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... for my guest increases every day. He excites at once my admiration and my pity to an astonishing degree. How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery without feeling the most poignant grief? He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence. He is now much recovered from his illness and is continually on the deck, apparently ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... of his from the shelf, and when thirty years are past, find a play or two that I missed before. Their number is very great, but perhaps those that I fancy I have not read, I have really read once or more and forgotten. That might very easily be, for there is seldom anything more poignant in any one of them than there is in the average course of things. The plays are light and amusing transcripts from life, for the most part, and where at times they deepen into powerful situations, or express strong emotions, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the making of this modern mood of self-complacency. New knowledge has helped, by which disasters, such as once awakened our fathers' poignant sense of sin, are now attributed to scientific causes rather than to human guilt. When famines or pestilences came, our fathers thought them God's punishment for sin. When earthquakes shook the earth or comets hung ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... end my story now. There are phases more vivid in the commonplace lives of these men and women, I do not doubt: love, as poignant as pain in its joy; crime, weak and foul and foolish, like all crime; silent self-sacrifices: but I leave them for you to paint; you will find colours enough in your ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... had pierced a more poignant grief, as he had learnt how Ralph's hand was in this too and had taken once more the wrong side in God's quarrel. But still he had no resentment; the conflict had passed out of the personal plane into an higher, and he thought ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... and Sir Toby. The critics neglected to note what the Duke says about "Come away, come away, Death," and they prattled in their blindness as to whether this must not really have been sung by Viola, all the while insensible to the poignant dramatic value of it as warbled by the ironic Clown in the presence of the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of Twelfth Night is burdened with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... He knew that he could never forget, and that the old memories of the wilderness and of the woman he had loved would force themselves upon him, year after year, with their old pain. But these new thoughts and plans for the child made his grief less poignant. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... smell, and taste, I make many excursions into the borderland of experience which is in sight of the city of Light. Nature accommodates itself to every man's necessity. If the eye is maimed, so that it does not see the beauteous face of day, the touch becomes more poignant and discriminating. Nature proceeds through practice to strengthen and augment the remaining senses. For this reason the blind often hear with greater ease and distinctness than other people. The sense of smell ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... with the poignant consciousness of the wildness of the scene, of the significant rattling of the stones and of the bell-tongued hound baying incessantly, sending warm joy through my veins, the absorption in sensations new, yielding only to ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... suffering and sorrow my rashness has brought to your innocent heart; but you fly from my approach, and banish me from your presence. No mercy for one, who, though he may have erred, is surely atoning for his errors by anguish as deep, as poignant as your own. Night after night I walk the piazza beneath your windows. I know you hear my step and feel that I am near. But you will not open the casement and let me for a moment behold your features and crave your forgiveness. O, Louise, am I to die without ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... was missing, things he was letting work supplant. He wished that boy of theirs could have lived. All might have been different. He had almost forgotten that disappointment, had never understood until this moment what a misfortune it had been, and here he was being gripped by a more poignant sense of loss than he had ever before felt, even when he had lost ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... once what was happening in the curate's lodgings. As he paused, gazing at the dark house, he knew that the miserable Marcus Harding was within, constrained to endure the observation which, to use his own hideous but poignant phrase, was "eating him away." It was he who had appeared at the window, like a tortured being endeavoring to escape into the freedom of the night. It was Henry Chichester who had followed him, who had drawn him back, who had ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... aflame with the joy of the springtime. The perfume from the great clusters of yellow daffodils and violets floated up from the flower sellers' baskets below; the fresh, warm air seemed to bring him poignant memories of crocus-starred lawns, of trim beds of hyacinths, of the song of birds, of the perfume of drooping lilac. Grim and motionless, as a figure of fate, Wingrave looked down from his window, with cold, yet discerning eyes. He was still an alien, a denizen in another world ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... difference in Jacqueline's voice since she had heard it last in that Song of the Hill; clear and expressionless, then, as a boy's; so throbbing now, so poignant with understanding, that the mother's eyes filled with tears. Jemima's, too, were a little moist, and she blinked them hard, and steeled herself to say to Jacqueline that day what she had come ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... and Walters were apparently accepting him at face value in the fashion of socially inclined travelers who meet in inns. To Archie's consternation the Governor began describing Hoky's funeral, which he did without neglecting any of its poignant features or neglecting to mention the few remarks he had offered to relieve the bleakness ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... himself, he afforded at least as much exercise to Sampson as he extracted amusement from him. When the man of law began to get into his altitudes, and his wit, naturally shrewd and dry, became more lively and poignant, the Dominie looked upon him with that sort of surprise with which we can conceive a tame bear might regard his future associate, the monkey, on their being first introduced to each other. It was Mr. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was Shakspere. Laberius played in his own dramas. Shakspere did the same. Laberius' name corresponds etymologically, as regards meaning, to the root-syllable in Shakspere's name. Could Jonson, who was so well versed in classics, have made his satirical allusion plainer or more poignant? In Crispinus, both Shakspere's curly hair and the offence of application, plagiarism, or literary theft, with which he is charged by his antagonist, are manifestly marked; St. Crispin being noted among the saints for his filching habits. He made shoes for the ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... more widely. It has touched even puritanical and non-episcopal bodies, and it is sometimes combined with extremely latitudinarian opinions. There is, indeed, a type of mind which finds in such services a happy anodyne for half-suppressed doubt. Petitions which in their poignant humiliation and profound emotion no longer correspond to the genuine feelings of the worshipper, seem attenuated and transformed when they are intoned, and creeds which when plainly read shock the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... tempestuous "obsession of violence" in the moods of certain highly-strung and exquisitely wrought-upon women; and it is possible that the heavy, dull, thick, self-complacent brutality of Nature and average human nature is itself so hurting and rending a thing to the poignant susceptibilities of a noble spirit, that, out of a kind of desperate revenge upon it, it goes to the extreme limit itself and, so to speak, out-Tamberlaines ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... now, then I hadn't." As I uttered the words I was conscious of a sudden depression, of a poignant realisation of what this "time to think" signified in my life. The smart of my failure was still there, and I had known hours of late when my balked ambition was like a wild thing crying for freedom within me. The old lust of power, the passion for supremacy, still haunted my dreams, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... I can scarcely believe in it. Lately the—it has been so ceaseless, so poignant. Lily, I have had a fancy that you alone could be my saviour. If it is so! Ah, but how ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... come over to claim the crown of his ancestors—to win it, or to perish in the attempt! Locheill—who, my father has often told me, was our firmest friend—may stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the fate of his Prince!' 'No!' said Locheill, stung by so poignant a reproach, and hurried away by the enthusiasm of the moment; 'I will share the fate of my Prince, and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune has given me any power.' Such was the juncture upon which depended the civil war ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... You need dusting. I will perform that kind office presently, and, believe me, I will do it well. Jacker, I intend to leave you standing here for a few moments to cool. You may have noticed, boys, that the youthful form when over-heated or possessed with unusual excitement has not that poignant susceptibility which might be thought necessary to the adequate appreciation of a judicious lambasting. Has that ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Poetry, sympathy, it is like living in a dream." He asked himself if he liked her better than Georgina, and answered himself that he did; but deep down in his heart he knew that the other woman had given him deeper and more poignant emotions, and he knit his brows, for ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... could experience the luxury of pity for them. The filthy rags that caricatured them, their sick or sodden faces, always frowsed with a week's beard, represented typical poverty to her, and accused her comfortable state with a poignant contrast; and she consoled herself as far as she could with the superstition that in meeting them she was fulfilling a duty sacred in proportion to the disgust she felt ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... his thoughts. He daydreamed a thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was unable to carry out any of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction in imagining discomfitures for her which remained imaginary. With a yearning so poignant that it hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her what she really was. "Just once!" he said to Fred Mitchell. "That's all I ask, just once. Just gimme one chance to show that girl what she really is. I guess if I ever get the ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington |
