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Woefully   /wˈoʊfəli/   Listen
Woefully

adverb
1.
In an unfortunate or deplorable manner.  Synonyms: deplorably, lamentably, sadly.  "It was woefully inadequate"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Woefully" Quotes from Famous Books



... and life is earnest" wrote the poet. He who does not take life seriously has woefully failed to comprehend its significance. Toil, service, sacrifice—these are the words which tell the true story of a life. Willingly, it should be, but if not so, then reluctantly man must toil, serve, sacrifice. For noble ends, it should be, but if not ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... Miss Maggie was speaking very gravely now. "They matter—woefully. I never say 'It doesn't matter' to war, or death, or sin, or evil. But there are ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... Father and Mother, hath been to me as an angel of God. For had she not stopped me in my madness, where and what had I been to-night? I can scarce bear to think on it. Perchance I feel it the more, sith I am ever put in mind thereof by the woefully changed face of poor Blanche—Blanche, but three months gone the merriest of us all, and now looking as though she should never know a day's merriment again. Her whole life seems ruined: and Dr Bell, the chirurgeon at Keswick, told Mother but yesterday that ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... With the same woefully desolate look, it constantly comes back in my dreams. I went farther down the valley. The full-rushing stream went with me like a dog. It made no murmur, only a low gurgle as it shot along. It seemed to draw me with it to its last leap. As I looked at its swiftness, I thought how hard ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... heard of Eormanric Of the wolfish heart: a wide realm he had Of the Gothic kingdom. Grim was the king. Many men sat and bemoaned their sorrows, 25 Woefully watching and wishing always That the cruel king might be conquered at last. That has passed ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... made a contemptuous gesture.—"I have seen rows aboard ship before some of you were born," he said, slowly, "for something or nothing; but never for such a thing."—"The man is dying, I tell ye," repeated Belfast, woefully, sitting at Singleton's feet.—"And a black fellow, too," went on the old seaman, "I have seen them die like flies." He stopped, thoughtful, as if trying to recollect gruesome things, details of horrors, hecatombs of niggers. They looked at him fascinated. He was old enough to remember ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... a tribe of nieces. I could see her marshalling a household in the family pew, or riding serenely in the family coach behind fat bay horses. But here, on an inn staircase, with a false name and a sad air of mystery, she was woefully out of place. I noted little wrinkles forming in the corners of her eyes, and the ravages of care beginning in the plump rosiness of her face. Be sure there was nothing appealing in her mien. She spoke with the air of a great lady, to whom the world is matter only for an afterthought. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... the common praises of the Art of Persuasion, to remind you how sacred truths may be most ardently promulgated at the altar—the cause of oppressed innocence be most woefully defended—the march of wicked rulers be most triumphantly resisted—defiance the most terrible be hurled at the oppressor's head. In great convulsions of public affairs, or in bringing about salutary changes, every one confesses how important an ally eloquence must be. But in peaceful ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... however, were quite distinct from the real business of that great Consulate, which is now woefully fallen off. The technical details I left to the treatment of two faithful, competent English subordinates. An American has never time to make himself thoroughly qualified for a foreign post before the revolution of the political ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... will be all roses, or you will be woefully disappointed. I do not go out at all; my health is bad—so is my temper very often. I am what people who never had any trouble are fond of calling peculiar. Still, if you are in earnest, and not merely ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... like a seagull, the sun bright upon her sail. Bronze, left upon the rock, lifted his head and gave one long, low wail. It echoed woefully and terribly over the wide, quiet waters. They gave back no answer—not even the poor ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... at breakfast he went on to say that he found Wisconsin woefully unprogressive. "These fellows back here are all stuck in the mud. They've got to wake up to the reform movements. I'll be glad to get back to Dakota ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... Ireland, as will be pointed out a little later, and in a few Italian cities, was there anything of consequence of the old Roman learning preserved. On the Continent there was little general learning, even among the clergy (R. 64 a). Many of the priests were woefully ignorant, [4] and the Latin writings of the time contain many inaccuracies and corruptions which reveal the low standard of learning even among the better educated of the clerical class. The Church itself was seriously affected by the prevailing ignorance of the period, and incorporated ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... are confronted by the fact that the majority of girls do marry, and that many of this majority are woefully lacking in the knowledge and training they should have. Nor are these girls exclusively from the poor and ignorant classes. There is no question about the responsibility of the school in the matter. The state which "trains for citizenship" ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... that!" she cried woefully, and peered, fascinated, at the boiling torrent rushing down a kloof that but yesterday was an innocent gully they had crossed in their walks, in some places so narrow as to allow a jump from bank ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... of tennis which England and France foster, and in which America is woefully lax, is the indoor game. Unfortunately the majority of the courts abroad have wood surfaces, true but lightning fast. The perfect indoor court should retain its true bound, but slow up the skid of the ball. The most successful surface I have ever played upon is battleship ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... to the question of what is meant by the phrase "A Fleet in Being." "To Be or Not to Be" (in Being) is a phrase that has been woefully misinterpreted, especially by those who insist on a distinction between Being and Doing. There is no such distinction at sea. For a fleet to exist as a recognisable instrument is not necessarily for it to be in Being. Only by exhibiting a desire to dispute ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various

... to the wreck, for there were still things he wished to know. And as he glanced about him he became more fully aware of the havoc of the storm. Even in the brilliant sunshine the whole prospect looked woefully jaded. Everywhere the signs told their pitiful tale. All along the river bank the torn and shattered pines drooped dismally. Even as he stood there great tree trunks and limbs of trees were washed down on the flood before his eyes. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... seemed to have no other sponsor in this plodding, whip-cracking, complaining caravan. So I lacked, woefully lacked, kindred companionship. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... life into harmony with this great principle; and in so doing he adopted the best means,—the only means to secure that which countless numbers seek and strive for directly, and every time so woefully fail in finding. ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine

... dissolution would have carried everybody away," said Lord Montfort rather woefully. "I wish the Queen of Mesopotamia were a candidate for some borough; I think ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... the Good Intent made the Channel he was woefully undeceived. His first interview with the captain opened his eyes. Captain Barker was a small, thin, sandy man, with a large upper lip that met the lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot. His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind. He browbeat ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... They say Buckingham is beside himself for love of her. He has a wife at home, if I am right, and is old enough to be her father. Is he not?" I assented; and Brandon continued: "A man who will make such a fool of himself about a woman is woefully weak. The men of the court ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... undoubtedly filthy, fishing-smack bound from Le Havre to whatever port it could make on the English south coast. The two days' voyage was rough, the accommodation and company to match. Mr. Verity spent a disgusting and disgusted forty-eight hours, to be eventually put ashore, a woefully bedraggled and depleted figure, in the primrose, carmine, and dove-grey of a tender April morning on the wet sand just below the sea-wall ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... races in sexual relationship was sapping the vitality of the Negro race and, in fact, was slowly but surely exterminating the race. It demonstrated that the fourth generation of the children born of intermarrying mulattoes were invariably sterile or woefully lacking in vital force. It asserted that only in the most rare instances were children born of this fourth generation and in no case did such children reach maturity. This is a startling revelation. While this intermingling was impairing the vital force of ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... in the deepest mystery. Joseph Smith Jr., who read through the wonderful spectacles, pretended to give the scribe the exact reading of the plates, even to spelling, in which Smith was woefully deficient. Martin Harris was permitted to be in the room with the scribe, and would try the knowledge of Smith, as he told me, saying that Smith could not spell the word February, when his eyes were off the spectacles through which he pretended to work. This ignorance of Smith ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... then in France—loved as a natural parent, a real mother. On hearing that she was turned adrift by fire, seeking woefully for a home, everyone grieved and wept; and that, not only in the country about Chartres; in the Orleans country, in Normandy, Brittany, the Ile de France, in the far north, whole populations stopped their regular work, left their homes to fly to Her help, the rich giving money ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... notwithstanding, I doubt whether critics are either omnipotent or utterly depraved. Indeed, I believe that some of them are not only blameless but even lovable characters. Those sinister but flattering insinuations and open charges of corruption fade woefully when one considers how little the critic of contemporary art can hope to get for "writing up" pictures that sell for twenty or thirty guineas apiece. The expert, to be sure, is exposed to some temptation, since a few of his ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... fire; for my rifle's gone with the horse," deplored the old man woefully; for mule and bronchos had galloped along the trail with the clatter of a cavalcade through the canyon. Wayland handed the old man his own rifle and took the six shooter from his ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... a success. Larry could cook, even if he did lack many of the qualities that should be found in a woodsman; and was woefully ignorant as to the thousand and one things connected ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... was living with a man on terms of equality whom, when measured up with the standards she was accustomed to, failed impossibly. And yet, did he? That is, did he, in the larger sense? That he was woefully deficient in all the little niceties of life, that he was illiterate and ignorant could not be denied. But he was no man's fool, and, as far as his light shone, he certainly lived up to it. That was just it. He had a standard of ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett

... before, leaving his lieutenants to carry on his campaign amongst the young Indian students. The Indian Sociologist itself continued to be openly published in London and to advocate assassination until the tragedy at the Imperial Institute led the authorities to take woefully-belated action in prosecuting successively two printers of the sheet, which was then ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... comrades watched the approach of the lone horseman. He had come up through the valley—the pass that, like the neck of a bag tied about the middle with a string, connected two great lands—Mexico and the United States. But one land represented law and order to a degree, while the other was woefully lacking in ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker

... as a whole the Scratch Team was woefully weak. Hugh's players had things pretty much their own way. Before more than half of the first twenty-minute period had been exhausted the score stood five goals for Scranton High, and none to the credit of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson

... before the time of the Mohammedan invasion the Vandals had done their work of devastation, or that the African Church had been woefully weakened and rent by wild heresies and schisms, or that the defection of the Monophysite or Coptic Church of Egypt was one of the influences which facilitated the Mohammedan success. But making due allowance for all this, vandalism and schism could not have destroyed so soon the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... a cold in my head and pages of Virgil translations," Angela replied, woefully. "You and Betty won't be serious for a minute. It'll mean I have to sit up the night before the concert with a wet towel around my head and write a song ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill

... really," said Priscilla with sudden vehemence. "Oh, it's a shame!" she added, her face reddening up woefully; "I ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... astonishment the next day to receive a visit from the widow Zuma! who appeared, however, woefully changed, being clad in very humble apparel of country cloth. Having quarrelled with the ruler of Wawa, she had made her escape over the city wall in the night, travelling on foot to Boussa, where she had since taken ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... it is not because we have exhausted the list of things most woefully wasted, mainly from want of thought, but because we have not space to enumerate more of them. We can only add that the importance of small household savings cannot well be overrated, both because of the principle involved and because of the substantial sum they represent together. There ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper

... smile to Agnes's face and so the matter rested for that day. However, it was a subject which could not be allowed to rest for very long as the time was fast approaching when the parts must be given out for the girls to study. "And there will have to be ever so many rehearsals," said Agnes woefully to Celia as they were talking it over together on the ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... had been watching for it, scanning every inch of type for the news it brought, but now that account of Young Denny's first match, with a little, square picture of him inset at the column head, fell woefully flat so far as he ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... said she woefully, "there's no such place as Hottetot-sur-Mer, and we are going on ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... of good statesmanship to blurt out everything at once? Only a craven time-server would say wait and see. Waiting was a contemptuous proceeding wherever practised, and seeing required eyes, which Heaven knows the PREMIER woefully lacked. (Cheers.) What right had an incorrigible hoodwinker such as Mr. ASQUITH to advise anyone to see? It was monstrous. Let the people get rid of this impostor without a twinge of compunction, and the sooner the better. As to swapping horses in mid-stream being unwise, perhaps it was, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various

... were crouching as close as possible to the parapet, which, though it had seemed only quite a short time before so complete, now suddenly felt most woefully inadequate, with those beastly shells dropping their bullets down from the sky. Another boom. This time the shell burst well, and the whole ground in front of the trench was covered with bullets, one man being ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton

... course of our talk Admiral Allyn had admitted that the United States was woefully unprepared for conflict with a great power, either ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... despaired many times during the weary struggle with her mental affliction. She felt herself woefully changed; and not only had the light gone out of her life, but it seemed as if it never would return. When she awoke in the morning, she usually felt better for awhile, but the terrible torment in ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... assessment: poorly developed domestic: Turkmenistan's telecommunications network remains woefully underdeveloped; Turkmentelekom, in cooperation with foreign investors, is planning to upgrade the country's telephone exchanges and install a new digital switching system international: country code - 993; linked by cable and microwave ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... brought to her bedside. But she, too, grew pale and thin; and the nervous activity of the poor little hands and arms only emphasized the pitiful motionlessness of the once active little feet and legs now lying so woefully quiet ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... so." He groaned woefully. "Thought you'd need a cabin boy, sir, but I'll never do ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... clinging girl is lacking in the very virtues you find so woefully missing in me. She won't take a risk. I cannot say I blame her," she added, ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... it stinks of brimstone!" said Jupiter, "we'll give poor Cerberus a meal though, for he looks woefully thin; I should not think Pluto gave him much from his appearance." So down they sat, Cerberus and Jove's eagle being installed under the table, while Minerva's owl, Juno's peacock, and the proteges of the other immortals were left to pick ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various

... and their comrades in the United States bitterly blamed Stephens and O'Mahony for the fiasco. Consequently the majority in America revolted, and seceded from the Stephens faction, claiming that he had woefully misrepresented the state of affairs that existed in Ireland, both as regarded preparations for a successful issue, and also the enthusiasm that was said to sufficiently dominate the people there to induce them to take up arms when the ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... went on, "isn't that I don't get woefully weary of the eternal French thing. What's THEIR sense ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... his beautiful home. He was woefully changed. He was thinner, and there were lines on his face which I had never seen before. He was manifestly distressed by my coming. He plucked nervously at his sleeve as we talked; and his eyes were restless, fluttering here, there, and everywhere, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... She looked at me woefully sad, and I had a queer, heartrending prevision I would never see her more. Garry was supporting her, and she seemed to have suddenly grown very frail. He was pale and quiet, but I could see he ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... and an occasion supervened requiring a cool and calculating deliberation in the forming of future plans, and a steady adherence to them when formed, the character and resources of Pyrrhus's mind were found woefully wanting. The first summons from any other quarter, inviting him to a field of more immediate excitement and action, was always sufficient to call him away. Thus he changed his field of action successively from Macedon to Italy, ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... this we are far from blaming him. Indeed, we feel that the personal note imported by the author's intellectual bias gives some flavour to a book which, owing to the complete absence of charm or distinction, would be otherwise insipid. It is a competent, but woefully uninspiring, piece of work. Above all things, Mr. Roberts lacks humour—a quality indispensable in a writer on Ibsen. For Ibsen, like other men of genius, is slightly ridiculous. Undeniably, there is something comic about ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... standpoint of modern mathematics, Sir Henry Savile and the Bushman are both woefully backward; and in both cases the backwardness is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of the state of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... Gradgrind's stock of facts in general was woefully defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had 'no nonsense' about her. By nonsense ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... in the Durham matter. This report would ordinarily have gone no farther than the district office, where it might have been acted on by the officers in charge to the great detriment of the Service. At that time the evil of sending out as inspectors men admirably trained in theory but woefully lacking in practice and the knowledge of Western humankind was one of the great menaces to effective personnel. Fortunately this particular report came into the hands of the Chief, who happened to be touring in the West. A fuller ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... Ulster Loyalists watched with something akin to dismay the dissensions in the Unionist party in England over the question of Tariff Reform, which made impossible a united front against the revived attack on the Union, and woefully weakened the effective force of the Opposition both in Parliament and the country. Public opinion was diverted from the one thing that really mattered—had Englishmen been able to realise it—from an Imperial ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... entwined about me, my arms entwined about her. With her head hidden upon my bosom, in sweet confusion, and with tears of thanksgiving coursing adown her cheek, she made it clear to my understanding—oh, so sweetly clear—that I, most woefully, had been misled. As yet my delighted intellect can scarce grasp the purport of her disclosures, but from the rest these salient, these soothing, these beautiful ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... another disillusioning jolt. Could it be that this practiced woodsman's eye actually appraised me as being as heavy as my mate, or even heavier? Surely he must be wrong in his judgments. The point was that I woefully was wrong in mine. How true it is that we who would pluck the mote from behind a fellow being's waistcoat so rarely take note of the beam which ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... been drinking ginger-ale all day, and in copious draughts. It must be confessed that he lost his temper woefully, and so vociferously that Sir Elphinstone this time descended from the platform, and strode across the meadow to demand what the devil he meant by it. Nor was even this the last drop in the cup of Mr. Gavel's ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... survey of our ground, somewhat more detailed than the first, but woefully sketchy. Everyone who has studied MSS. of any class or period would detect omissions in it which for him would vitiate the whole story. The best I can hope is that the assertions in it are not incorrect, and that it gives a true notion of the general course ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... dog that scents out the game of which the sportsman is in pursuit. In this respect, however, it not unfrequently happens, that even those who are most confident in the penetration with which they make such selections, are woefully mistaken in ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Nairne was in command of a portion of the Highland Emigrants, who were the vanguard of the British pursuing force, and was among the first to occupy the American batteries. On that very ground he had fought, victorious in 1759, woefully beaten in 1760; now, a victor again, he helped to drive back a force, some of whose members had been his companions in those earlier campaigns. That night the relieved British slept secure in Quebec, while the bedraggled American force was making ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... meal, for the fat was rancid, and although tired and not very strong, Major Denham could not refuse an invitation about nine at night, after he had laid down to sleep, to eat camels' heart with Boo Khaloom; it was woefully hard and tough, and the major suffered the next morning from indulging too much ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... forked glen into which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded by giant toads, who spat poison, and were icy as the land they lived in, and were cold and foul and savage. At Sliav Saev he encountered the long-maned lions who lie in wait for the beasts of the world, growling woefully as they squat above their prey and crunch those terrified bones. He came on Ailill of the Black Teeth sitting on the bridge that spanned a torrent, and the grim giant was grinding his teeth on a pillar stone. Art drew nigh ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... and I believe that Jesus Christ, my Lord, has come in the flesh to save His people from their sins. Many things have led me to this opinion, in regard to which I will not speak. I have thought and heard much for some years past, and woefully have I been staggered, as well as helped on, by the men who have been sent to Greenland with the Good News. Some have, by their conduct squaring with their profession, led me to believe. Others have, by their conduct belying their profession, hindered me. But the Lord ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... the French population of Quebec numbered something over six hundred. The fur company continued to drive a fair trade in peltries, but the prosperity of the city itself was woefully retarded by the constant menace of the Iroquois. The Baron d'Avaugour held the office of Governor, and his strong sense of military authority brought him into conflict with the Church, by this time become the real controller of the State. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... discovery I made in regard to myself was that I was woefully out of my sphere. I studied the girls of my age around me, and compared myself with them. We had been reared side by side. They had had equal advantages; some, indeed, had had greater. We all moved in the one little, dull world, but they were not only in their world, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... uncle in so rough a temper. Poor man! I believe that all the time he sat there on the brewhouse steps, he was calculating woefully the cost of these visitors; and it hurt him the worse because he had a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... Douglass, look at Booker Washington, know that wonderful Presbyterian Missionary, William H. Shepherd, consider the African Methodist Bishops, strong men, leaders of their fellows, against whom no murmur of scandal is raised. Surely among our own men in the Church, or our system is woefully at fault, we can find one or two honest, true, able, pure men, fit to be Bishops to their own race." Such a man would be a Bishop indeed to his race, such a Bishop as no white man can possibly be. He will enter, as only ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange

... hotels of Buffalo had expected so much and were so woefully disappointed. Vast arrays of figures had been compiled showing that within a radius of four hundred miles of Buffalo lived all the people in the United States who were worth knowing. The statistics ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... affrightedly and shrank back from the window. He seemed to have woefully expected a reception of this kind for his question. He gave her instantly ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... woefully sick and dejected, far too physically exhausted to run the risk of exposing himself to the scorn and laughter of the excavator, who was speaking to him in a manner which unconsciously betrayed to the hypersensitive Michael that he considered the traveller rather too odd to waste much ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... household word. His personal friends were deeply affected—none more so than his attached friend, Charles Dickens. Writing at the time to Forster, in reference to his coming book, "Our Mutual Friend," he said, "I have not done my number. This death of poor Leech (I suppose) has put me out woefully. Yesterday, and the day before, I could do nothing; seemed, for the time being, to have quite lost the power; and am only by slow degrees getting back into the track to day." Mr. John Tenniel heard of the loss of his valued confrere that same Sunday, 30th October, and "was stunned at ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... this noise, in a rhythm which in itself is full of joy, it is to mark the gladness of Easter morn, to celebrate the resurrection of Christ—and a little, too, no doubt, to distract the little ones, some of whom are woefully put out. But their mammas do not prolong the proof—a mere momentary visit to this venerable place, which is to bring them happiness, and they carry their babes away: and others are led in by the dark, narrow staircase, so low that one ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... all he said, and Kennedy snatched his battered felt headgear down over his eyes and tacked woefully after his swift-striding master, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... ..." God's word, however, still stood against him. But he just had not seen it. The "penny had not dropped!" If the Publican is beating upon his breast and confessing his sins, it is not because he has sinned worse than the Pharisee. It is simply that the Publican has seen that what God says is woefully true of him, and the Pharisee has not. The Pharisee still thinks that outward abstinence from certain sins is all that God requires. He has not yet understood that God looks, not on the outward appearance, but on the heart,[footnote7:1 ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession

... with him in this matter, but I am free to confess that I feel woefully far short of the standard to which he attained. Perhaps a soft and somewhat undecided nature had something to do with my failure. I say not this by way of excuse but explanation. Whatever the cause, I felt so very far below my friend ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... Roland's burst temples cause him intense pain. Nevertheless, he once more puts his horn to his lips, and draws from it this time so pitiful a blast that, when it reaches the ears of Charlemagne, he woefully exclaims: "All is going ill; my nephew Roland will die to-day, for the sound of his horn is ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... at last into one of the East Side cross streets, and her guide halted finally on a corner in front of a little shop that was closed and dark. She stared curiously as the man unlocked the door. Perhaps, after all, she had been woefully mistaken. It did not look at all the kind of place where crimes that ran the gamut of the decalogue were hatched, at all the sort of place that was the council chamber of perhaps the most cunning, certainly the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... last hand. When I hint that a violent rupture with our hostess would be the best thing in the world for him he gives me to understand that if his reason assents to the proposition his courage hangs woefully back. He makes no secret of being mortally afraid of her, and when I ask what harm she can do him that she hasn't already done he simply repeats: 'I'm afraid, I'm afraid! Don't enquire too closely,' he said last night; 'only believe that I feel a sort of ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James

... Helen had been living for the last few days had laid a heavy hand upon her. Her cheeks were thin, and had been woefully pale until the sudden excitement of this visit had called up a faint hectic flush which had no kindred with the color of health. Her form, too, seemed to have shrunken, and the loose tea-gown which she wore enhanced the fragility of her appearance. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that none of them at all understood the situation, and it was so wonderfully clear, in my own mind, so enormous and astounding in its menace, that I was woefully puzzled to see how they could have missed it. But I was to learn no more until the following day, when, lying in bed, stiff and sore, with every muscle in my arms and shoulders aching, father came in with that unwontedly grave and puzzled face that the poor dear had worn so ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... across a lawn so woefully neglected that the big body sagging between us, though it cleared the ground by several inches, swept the dew from the rank growth until we got it propped up on some steps at the base of the tower, and Raffles ran up to open the door. More steps ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... frequently called a "mystic," and mystagogue he certainly is—a man who interprets mysteries. If the average reader urge that his interpretation is too oft an obscurum per obscurius, he might reply, in the language of that other woefully "undignified" and shockingly impolite human being, Dr. Johnson: "I am bound to find you in reasons, Sir, but not in brains." Carlyle was regarded by those writers of his day who clung to and revered the time-worn ruts, as ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... instead. I feel as if I was dressed in a bruise, and that's appropriate—for I also feel as if I had been beaten all over. Merely the hail—I give you my word. Nothing more than that. I'm never ill." Poppy paused, dropped the little dogs on the floor. They cowered against her, looking up woefully at her. "No, I don't want you," she said. "You're heavy. I'm ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... what chance was there of seeing that luggage again? There were so many 'mights.' I couldn't even swear that I had seen it on the coach at Inverness. Oh dear! oh dear! What was to be done? I walked about the streets; I glanced woefully at door-steps, whereon to pass the night; I gazed piteously through the windows of a cheap cook's shop, where solid wedges of baked pudding, that would have stopped digestion for a month, were advertised for a penny a block. How rich should I have been if ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... nothing that lives by bread! Now just look at that policeman at the corner, for instance; not only is he stark naked—everybody is like that—but he's perfectly different from the sturdy, good-humoured, red-faced, puzzled man you and I know. He is thin, woefully thin, and his ears are long and perpetually twitching. He pricks them up at the least thing; or lays them suddenly back, and we see them trembling. His eyes look all ways and sometimes nothing but the white is to be seen. He has a tail, too, long and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... discuss the New York police; Woodrow Wilson to pass in review the several elements that made the Nation; Booker T. Washington to picture the awakening of the Negro; John Muir to enlighten Americans upon a national beauty and wealth of which they had been woefully ignorant, their forests; William Allen White to describe certain aspects of his favourite Kansas; E.L. Godkin to review the dangers and the hopes of American democracy; Jacob Rues to tell about the Battle ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... back turned towards the side of the stage at which Olivia enters—Olivia pauses suddenly, and measures Helen with a long look. What passes in Lady Olivia's mind at this moment I do not know, but I guess that she was disappointed woefully by my appearance. After some time she was recovered, by Leonora's assistance, from her reverie, and presently began to admire my vivacity, and to find out that I was Clarissa's Miss Howe—no, I was Lady G.—no, I was Heloise's Clara: but I, choosing to be myself, and insisting ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... shall never have while the present corrupt system lasts. However," said the clergyman to me, "my young friend, do nothing hastily; but should you go into any of the yeomanry corps, with your zealous feeling and patriotic love of country, I fear you will be woefully disappointed if you expect to find any of your comrades acting under a corresponding impulse. Their main object appears to be to secure their corn ricks, and to keep up the price of their grain; and their landlords, who are the officers of these their tenants, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... Director General for the Dutch West India Company in their colony of New Netherlands, walked up and down the Governor's chamber in the fort at New Amsterdam woefully perplexed. The Heer Governor was not a patient man, and a combination of annoyances was hedging him about and making his government of his island province anything ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... I was always devoted to her, and she had an almost uncanny power of reading my thoughts. I don't feel there can have been a shade of bitterness in death for her, though she loved life; but there is something woefully pathetic in its circumstances, the pain, the loneliness, the misery ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... present orthodox creed of kissing, it would most woefully spoil the sport of many a gallant youth, who, with the most polite officiousness, extinguishes (by pure accident of course) while professing to snuff, the candles, only that he may snatch a hasty, unobserved kiss of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various

... be thinkin'," said old Duncan McKay, one fine evening as he sat in his invalid chair, beside Duncan junior, who was woefully reduced and careworn, despite the attentions of the sympathetic Jessie Davidson, who was seated near him on a rustic seat ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... golden sunshine has fled away, The clouds o'erhead hang heavy and gray, The world is woefully sad to-day; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... was woefully done up by this sudden extinction of all my hopes. They had been extravagant, no doubt, but they had sustained me through all my haps and mishaps, trials and dangers, till now, here, they ended with the one inexorable ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... forethought. It is ignoring and disbelieving the fact that nothing can be accomplished by one's own vexed effort. No human wisdom has power to foresee the future. If we looked back at the examples furnished by history, we should learn how woefully human wisdom is deceived when it relies upon itself. The results are not what was expected, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... was great joy for me to be in school, I was woefully unprepared to remain there. Really, I am unable to tell the many obstacles that confronted me while in school. But one of my many difficulties was to get sufficient clothing, for when I entered, I had on all that I possessed and day after ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... roads" of Britain come next, though in some parts of the country they are woefully inadequate to accommodate the fast-growing traffic by road, notably in London suburbs, while some of the leafy lanes over which poets rhapsodize are so narrow that the local laws prevent any automobile traffic whatever. As one unfortunate ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... bag after me to Bevisham,' he said Rosamund, and announced to the woefully astonish colonel that he would have the pleasure of journeying in his company as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... he responded, woefully eyeing the garment spread on her knees, "and I may as well admit right now that I made a mess of the whole thing. To think of my wasting the only decent suit I had on a Fletcher—after saving up a year ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... Napoleons. He had just married an interesting woman, about his own age, twenty-two, and had professedly taken up his degree in the practice of play, as an elegant and honourable mode of subsistence. A few weeks after I met him and his wife, on the Italian Boulevards; in dress he was woefully changed, and in his countenance a ghastly stare, sunken eye, and emaciated cheeks, bespoke some strong reverse of fortune: his wife too seemed dimmed by sorrow, and suffering might be traced in every lineament of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various

... Pollock in the middle of August, who immediately advanced from Jellalabad; and his troops having concentrated at Gundamuk, he marched from that position on 7th September, his second division, commanded by M'Caskill, following next day. Pollock was woefully short of transport, and therefore was compelled to leave some troops behind at Gundamuk, and even then could carry only half the complement of tentage. But his soldiers, who carried in their haversacks seven days' provisions, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... everything in couleur de rose, but to most people Galvaston Terrace would have appeared woefully dingy. Two or three of the houses had cards in the sitting-room windows, with "Desirable apartments for a single gentleman" affixed thereon, and at the farther end a French dressmaker ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... from another church—split because the people quarrelled about the Thirty-nine Articles, whatever they be, one party wanting thirty-eight or forty, and the other perhaps the original number. She knew that the minister was woefully in debt; that no one would trust him any further; that he had met and told her nothing at all of it; that he was duly polite to her, and mentioned none of his affairs at all. (O Barbara! how thee shielded him!) But she had questioned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... starving serfs of France, in their hopeless misery and despair, rose in insurrection and swept like a flame over the land. Froissart, who writes from the distorted stories told him by the seigneurs, has woefully exaggerated the atrocities of the Jacquerie."[84] There was much arson and pillage, but barely thirty of the nobles are known to have perished. Of the merciless vengeance taken by the seigneurs there is ample confirmation: ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... the pathetic stories from members of our family, I deem Mary's far in excess of others though all, without exception, are woefully sad ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... one word here to my Irish fellow countrymen of all political persuasions. If they imagine they can stand politically or economically while Britain falls they are woefully mistaken. The British fleet is their one shield. It if be broken Ireland will go down. They may well throw themselves heartily into the common defence, for no sword can transfix England without the point reaching behind her." (Sir Arthur ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... I open shining ways to thee — Of every inner portal make thee free: O child, I may not bar the outer door. Go from me if thou wilt, to come no more; But all thy pain is mine, thy flesh of me; And must I hear thee, faint and woefully, Call on me from ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... you, Monsieur Fouquet," replied D'Artagnan, moved to the depths of his soul, "that you are woefully exaggerating. The king ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... wand bent more and more, and, just as the greatest strain occurred, the line divided about two feet above the float, the wand gave a smart rebound, and poor Harry, the picture of disappointment, stood with a short piece of line waving about at the end of his stick, gazing woefully after his ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... believe that you would stand an hour at a pillory, and see full justice done to a delinquent of that caste; and would as willingly, in your own person, receive the missiles that you would attempt to ward off from the contrite wretch, whose sins might not have been woefully against human kindness. Could you choose your seat in the eternal mansions, it would be among the angels that rejoice over one sinner that repenteth. You can distinguish in another the feeblest light of conscience that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... the children had gone Anne dropped wearily into her chair. Her head ached and she felt woefully discouraged. There was no real reason for discouragement, since nothing very dreadful had occurred; but Anne was very tired and inclined to believe that she would never learn to like teaching. And ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was ready for the start the one pair of snow-shoes was tried on 'Weary Willy' with magical effect. In places where he had floundered woefully without the shoes he strolled round as if he was walking on hard ground. Immediately after this experiment Scott decided that an attempt must be made to get more snow-shoes, and within half an hour Meares and Wilson had started, on the chance that the ice had not ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... is to give less and less prominence to his work in science and philosophy; but criticism of his Instauratio, in view of his lofty aim, is of small consequence. It is true that his "science" to-day seems woefully inadequate; true also that, though he sought to discover truth, he thought perhaps to monopolize it, and so looked with the same suspicion upon Copernicus as upon the philosophers. The practical man who despises philosophy has ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... his plan, that he did not feel any repulsion as he opened the warrior's deerskin shirt and took his totem from a place near his heart. It was a little deerskin bag containing a bunch of red feathers. This was his charm, his magic spell, his bringer of good luck, which had failed him so woefully this time. Henry, not without a touch of the forest belief, put it inside his own hunting shirt, wishing, although he laughed at himself, that if the red man's medicine had any potency it should be on his ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... we have been "doing" New York, and are woefully disappointed in the size of the streets. Fifth Avenue I expected to find a Parisian Boulevard with trees lining the "side walks," instead of houses of all shapes and sizes, which are good inside, judging by one of the large ones we went to see, but nothing much from the outside. ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... old cronies started for the door of the tent. Van followed, prepared to get a dinner under way, since his system was woefully empty. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... for Englishmen that their greatest organ in the Press maintained a fine tradition of independence, and thus did much to redeem the good name of Britain when "the Black and Tans" were dragging it woefully in the mire. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan



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