"Melancholy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed to receive its impressions. Climates that breathe amorous secrets and futile regrets may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself; but they must always prove fatal to a temperament which is ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... I know your anger And why you prate thus: I have found your melancholy: Ye all want mony, and you are liberal Captains, And in this want will talk a little desperately: Here's gold, come share; I love a brave Commander: And be not peevish, do as Caesar does: He's merry with his wench now, be you jovial, And let's all laugh ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to rich strum of harp and strings, with its note of sensuous melancholy. Other, more external signs there are of Eastern melody, as in the graceful curl of quicker notes. Intermediate strains between the verses seem gently to rouse the slumbering feeling,—still more when they play between the lines of the song. The passion that is lulled in the languor of main ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... battleships, and Pigot caused himself to be rowed out to it, introduced himself to Admiral Marin-Dabel, Maritime Prefect of Toulon, who had taken personal charge of the rescue work, and spent half an hour inspecting the melancholy scene. Then he landed again, and listened for a time to the reports of his lieutenants. There was among them not a single ray of light—not the slightest evidence to show that the disaster had been anything but an accident. ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the matter! When people talk about the Celtic race, I feel as if I could burn down London. That sort of rot does more harm than ten Coercion Acts. Do you suppose a man need be a Celt to feel melancholy in Rosscullen? Why, man, Ireland was peopled just as England was; and its breed was crossed by just the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... one of his dearest friends from Harrow, Edward Long; he also made acquaintance with the amiable Eddlestone, and his melancholy disappeared in the genial atmosphere of friendship. As long as these dear friends remained near him he was happy, even at Cambridge. But they were called to different careers, and destiny separated them. Long, with whom ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... knocks sounded, and the curtains were drawn aside to reveal a battered set that was partly garden, partly forest, in which Climene feverishly looked for the coming of Leandre. In the wings stood the beautiful, melancholy lover, awaiting his cue, and immediately behind him the unfledged Scaramouche, who was anon ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as 'Rule Britannia', or 'Away with Melancholy'; when they wouldn't stand still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother's needle through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... never doubted; more it was impossible to divine. But the cool northern isle, with its dark fringe of pines; its wonderful moss, its fragrant and dewy ferns, its graceful sumacs, just putting on their scarlet-lipped leaves, the morning stillness broken only by the faint unearthly cry of the melancholy loon, the spar-dyked cliffs of limestone, and the fantastic couch, with its too lovely occupant, never faded from his memory and remained to the last as realities which indeed they have become likewise to me, through the intensity with which they ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... we heard the ghosts, Who jibber in low melancholy sounds, With wide-stretch'd nostrils snort, and on themselves Smite with their palms. Upon the banks a scurf From the foul steam condens'd, encrusting hung, That held sharp combat with the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... struck by the fact that nearly all the songs were of an extremely melancholy nature—the chief objects celebrated by the Muse being withered flowers, little coffins, the corpses of sweethearts, last farewells, and hopeless partings on the lonely shore. Tears flow; ladies sigh; voices choke; hearts break; children die; lovers prove untrue. It was tragic, and I confess ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... visitor after the last curtain has been drawn, a strange bird with a harsh yet melancholy note, that reminds me of the night-jar of the fen lands in our own country. The hills make a semicircle round the camp, and the visitor seems to arrive at the corner nearest Spartel about one o'clock in the morning. It cries persistently awhile, ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... member of the congregation he began to preach; and his sermons produced a powerful effect. He was indeed illiterate; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe training through which he had passed had given him such an experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious melancholy as he could never have gathered from books; and his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, enabled him not only to exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to extort the half-contemptuous admiration of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... days of the penny Life) Tommy, looking back to this year, was sure that he had never really tried to work. But he had. He did his very best, doggedly, wearily sitting at the round table till Elspeth feared that he was killing himself and gave him a melancholy comfort by saying so. An hour afterwards he might discover that he had been far away from his books, looking on at his affecting death and counting ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... and little boded the premature and melancholy fate which awaited them in foreign climes. We believe," says the editor of the 'Literary Gazette,' "that it was the example of the literary pursuits of Miss Landon which stimulated Miss Roberts to try her powers as an author, and we remember having the gratification to assist ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... mourning for their kindred, the deepest privation in a property sense. Everything the loss of which would make them poor was sacrificed on the graves of their relatives or distinguished warriors, and as melancholy because of removal from their old homes caused frequent deaths, there was no lack of occasion for the sacrifices. The widows and orphans of the dead warriors were of course the chief mourners, and exhibited their grief in many peculiar ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Feemy remained in the same melancholy desponding way; saying nothing to Mrs. McKeon, and little to the two girls, who, in spite of Feemy's sin in having a lover, did everything in their power to cheer and ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... irritability. Nay, if we compare Pope to some of the later writers who have wrung still princelier rewards from fortune, the result is not unfavourable. If Scott had been as true to his calling, his life, so far superior to Pope's in most other respects, would not have presented the melancholy contrast of genius running to waste in desperate attempts to win money at the cost of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... these volumes a mine of wealth inexhaustible. I learned from Mrs. Wilson that this scholar was a younger brother of Lord Hilton, who had died about twenty years before. He had led a retired, rather lonely life, was of a melancholy and brooding disposition, and was reported to have had an unfortunate love-story. This was one of many histories which she gave me. For the library being dusty as a catacomb, the private room of Old Time himself, I had often to betake myself to her for assistance. The good lady had far more ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... and the sad story of the expedition was related, the Victorian Government sent a party to bring the remains of Burke and Wills to Melbourne, where they received the melancholy honours of a public funeral amid the general mourning of the whole colony. In after years, a statue was raised to perpetuate their heroism and testify to the esteem with which the ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... mine—you recollect them, Kate, my love—how they used to sparkle, you know—but your papa, your poor dear papa—ah! there never was anything so cruelly sacrificed as those jewels were, never!' Overpowered by this agonising thought, Mrs Nickleby shook her head, in a melancholy manner, and applied her handkerchief to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... bass voice and a musical ear; but I cannot positively say whether these alone had sufficed to inspire him with the rich chant in which he delivered the responses. The way he rolled from a rich deep forte into a melancholy cadence, subsiding, at the end of the last word, into a sort of faint resonance, like the lingering vibrations of a fine violoncello, I can compare to nothing for its strong calm melancholy but the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... whom Death holds by the hair, are destined to be punished, without doubt; but are the blind man, the beggar, the madman, the poor peasant, recompensed for their long life of misery by the single reflection that death is not an evil for them? No! An implacable melancholy, a ghastly fatality, overshadows the artist's work. It resembles a bitter imprecation ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... "misery-threshold," and find it quickly overpassed by the consciousness of some individuals, but lying too high in others to be often reached by their consciousness. The sanguine and healthy-minded live habitually on the sunny side of their misery-line, the depressed and melancholy live beyond it, in darkness and apprehension. There are men who seem to have started in life with a bottle or two of champagne inscribed to their credit; whilst others seem to have been born close to the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... sixteenth year; but to all appearances she was much younger. Unlike others of her years, her cheeks did not display the bloom of maidenhood, and her countenance lacked the vivacity natural to her age. Her features wore an expression of melancholy, which was perfectly in keeping with the pallor of her cheeks, the pearly whiteness of which vied in brilliancy with the hue of ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... in another, as the inhabitant of a certain street in Padua. The traditions of some remote spots about Italy still connect his name with a ruined tower, a mountain glen, a cell in a convent. In the recollections of the following generation, his solemn and melancholy form mingled reluctantly, and for a while, in the brilliant court of the Scaligers; and scared the women, as a visitant of the other world, as he passed by their doors in the streets of Verona. Rumor brings him to the West—with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and we soon saw that a few of the bolder of them had summoned up courage to settle among our oysters, despite the scarecrow which we had set up; but they took to flight immediately upon our approach, and hovered over us all day, uttering their melancholy cries with such persistency, and creating such a volume of sound, that we could scarcely hear ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... and bilious. They acted languid and listless. As my squash bugs, currant worms, potato bugs, etc., were all doing well without care, I devoted myself almost exclusively to my cut-worms. They were all strong and well, but they seemed melancholy with nothing to eat, day ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... her, that he had expected much but had found her moneyless; and after this he had but small faith in woman. His wife died and he went into contented mourning, and out of gratitude to his satisfied melancholy, swore that he would pay his rent, but failed. Upon the Major he held a strong hold, and this was a puzzle to the neighbors. Their characters stood at fantastic and whimsical variance; one never in debt, the other never out of debt; one clamped ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... iii., cap. viii.) seems to have gauged the feelings of the Governor when he says: 'Temblo de susto Bucareli considerando en riesgo una conquista, que debia aumentar su gloria y su fortuna.' 'Su fortuna' is delicious, and shows your true conqueror's melancholy. *3* The Tebicuari forms the northern boundary between the territory of Misiones and the rest of Paraguay. It is a large river, and in my time (1872-1875) was bridgeless, and had to be crossed in canoes, whilst ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Marianna, emphatically, "and that for the best of reasons. I never was possessed of any but an empty purse—a melancholy truth, to which my husband here can bear witness. That I may have promised gold to La Voisin is just possible, but that she ever saw any in ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... an expression of anxiety and awe which yet more alarmed the others. "Heavy must be the burden of a soul," added she, as no one answered her—"heavy indeed! for the mere approach of mine over-shadows me with anxious melancholy. And ah! how light-hearted, how joyous I used to be!" A fresh burst of weeping overcame her, and she covered her face ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... of consolation, but in vain: all she requested was that I would find out where her sister was, and let her know. I set off upon my melancholy task, and met the people hearing in the body of Don Florez. I shuddered as it passed by, when I recollected how principal a part I had acted in the tragedy. I soon gained the information, and brought it to Donna Teresa. She ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... oppressed class, and so hopelessly degraded in the statute laws and Constitution. After the meeting we had a long talk with the clerical assailant, and were happy to find that the good man's pen had done his heart great injustice. He is rather morbid on the question of logic; but the most melancholy symptom of his disease is his hatred of The Revolution. He says it is a very wicked paper, that he had felt it his duty to warn his congregation against taking it, thus depriving us of, at least, five hundred subscribers, though he read it himself (under ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her ladies whom she loved, the Countess of Nottingham: but soon it could not be concealed that the Queen herself was seized with a dangerous illness: sleep and appetite began to fail her: she showed a deep melancholy. 'No,' she replied to one of the kinsmen of her mother's house, Robert Cary, who at that moment had come back to court and addressed friendly words to her about her health, 'No Robin, well I am not, my heart has been for some time ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... Fellow-Soldiers; Generals pull off their Hats to them; and no Artifice is neglected that can flatter their Pride, or inspire them with the Love of Glory. The Clergy themselves take Care at such Times, not to mention to them their Sins, or any Thing that is melancholy or disheartning: On the Contrary, they speak chearfully to them, encourage and assure them of God's Favour. They take Pains to justify, and endeavour to encrease the Animosities and Aversion, which those under their Care have ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... camp was too exciting to let the children fall asleep early. Fires were kept briskly burning, and some of the wagoners feeling in a musical humor, shouted songs or hummed melancholy tunes which sounded like a droning accompaniment to the rain. The rain fell with a continuous murmur, and evidently in slender threads, for it scarcely pattered on the tent. It was no beating, boisterous, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... but nine dollars per week. Three children were born to him in quick succession, and he found it no easy task to provide food, shelter and clothing for his little family. The light heartedness for which he had formerly been noted entirely deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform his daily task. His strength was so slight that he would frequently return from his day's work too exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed, and in his agony he wished 'to lie in bed forever and ever,' Still he worked ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... distressed, that he would have said he could never smile again. What was he ever to do about it? Of course, there was but one manly thing to do: confess the whole matter to General Bradshaw. But he felt sure he'd rather die than do this. He went over to where Aunt Silvy was barbecuing the deer, the most melancholy-looking boy, perhaps, that ever was at a barbecue with a cotton-bloom in his button-hole. To her he told the truth, and felt better the instant he had spoken it. But when he asked ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... weep while she sung; and the words impressed on Edward a melancholy belief, that the alliance of Mary with his brother might be fatal ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... been, are the opinions of the Roman Catholics consistent with a Protestant throne? is their divided allegiance perilous or not to a Protestant government? are their religious prejudices consistent with the rights of the national religion? We have now the melancholy proof of the shallowness of all the declamation on the subject. We see that power has been used only for public disturbance; that pledges are scoffed at; and that, in the fifteenth year of this boasted conciliation, Ireland is more turbulent, faction more violent, prejudice more ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... a pride in the ruinous old edifice; its very dreary and dismantled state, addressed itself to his poetical imagination, and to that love of the melancholy and the grand which is evinced in all his writings. "Come what may," said he in one of his letters, "Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot. I have fixed my heart upon it, and no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... higher on his temples. His face was not yet thin, yet in some way the lines of the mouth and jaw seemed stronger, more deeply out. It was a face not sullen, yet absorbed, and above all full, now, of a settled melancholy. ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... Salagua and Hell's Hip Pocket bars the river's sweep, he saw that vague, impalpable haze—a smoke, a dust, a veil of the lightest skein, stirred idly by some wandering wind, perhaps, or marking the trail of sheep. And as he looked upon it his melancholy gaze changed to a staring, hawk-like intentness; he leaned forward in the saddle and Chapuli stepped eagerly down the slope, head up, as ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... study, years of struggle are part of the biography of almost every one who has attained real greatness. What a pity to destroy time-old illusions! Some prefer to think of their artist heroes dreaming their lives away in the hectic cafes of Pesth or buried in the melancholy, absinthe and paresis of some morbid cabaret of Paris. As a matter of fact, the best known pianists live a totally different life—a life of grind, grind, grind—incessant study, endless practice and ceaseless search for means to raise their artistic standing. In some ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... to another part of the umbrageous canopy overhead, where the face of a still smaller monkey was visible, engaged, like the previous one, in an earnest scrutiny of the party, but with a melancholy, rather than a ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... brain. In more complex characters and under more complex conditions, the moral and the mental lives come to be less healthily combined. They co-operate, they help each other less. They come even to stand over against each other as antagonists; till we have that vague but most melancholy notion which pervades the life of all elaborate civilization, that goodness and greatness, as we call them, are not to be looked for together, till we expect to see and so do see a feeble and narrow conscientiousness on the one hand, and a bad, unprincipled intelligence on the other, dividing ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... from the river drew mournful perspectives into view. It was late October. We heard the omnibuses thundering across the bridge. The monotony of that broad, characterless street seemed more than usually depressing. Even in June sunshine it was dead, but with autumn its melancholy soaked into every house between King's Road and the Embankment. It washed thought into the past, instead of inviting it hopefully towards the future. For me, its easy width was an avenue through which nameless slums across ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... on the look of melancholy it had worn so often of late, despite his triumphs. That look was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... only comment. And so they joined the column which moved slowly down toward the valley and as they passed the cottage of Father Claude, Norman of Torn saw that the door was closed and that there was no sign of life about the place. A wave of melancholy passed over him, for the deserted aspect of the little flower-hedged cote seemed dismally prophetic of a near future without the beaming, jovial face of his friend ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... pen, without any delay, in order to express to you my warmest and most heartfelt thanks for the infinitely gracious and affectionate way with which you and the Prince have treated me during my stay in London.[25] It was a melancholy time, that of my arrival. By the sympathetic view which you took of my situation, most gracious Cousin, it became not only bearable, but even transformed into one that became proportionately honourable and dignified. This graciousness of yours has undoubtedly ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... external signs of feeling, makes feeling more intense. The deepest grief is silent grief. Why? Because the nervous excitement not discharged in muscular action, discharges itself in other nervous excitements—arouses more numerous and more remote associations of melancholy ideas, and so increases the mass of feelings. People who conceal their anger are habitually found to be more revengeful than those who explode in loud speech and vehement action. Why? Because, as before, the emotion is reflected back, accumulates, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... sob. Lane looked down at her, at her glistening auburn hair, and slender, white, ringed hand clutching the cushions, at her lissom shaking form, at the shapely legs in the rolled-down silk stockings—and he felt a melancholy happiness in the proof that he had reached her shallow heart, and in the fact that this was ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... moved, but not lightly appeased. We use to call her at home Dame Coy, A pretty gingerly piece, God save her and St Loy! As dainty and nice as an halfpenny-worth of silver spoons, But vengeable melancholy in the afternoons. She useth for her bodily health and safeguard To chide daily one fit to supperward; And my master himself is worse than she, If he once thoroughly angered be. And a maid we have at home, Alison Trip-and-go: Not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... Dierick Bouts (1410-1475) established a school at Haarlem. He was Dutch by birth, but after 1450 settled in Louvain, and in his art belongs to the Flemish school. He was influenced by Van der Weyden, and shows it in his detail of hands and melancholy face, though he differed from him in dramatic action and in type. His figure was awkward, his color warm and rich, and in landscape backgrounds he greatly advanced the painting of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... head. "Judge for yourself, Ivan Grigorievitch. I am fifty years old, yet never in my life had been ill, except for an occasional carbuncle or boil. That is not a good sign. Sooner or later I shall have to pay for it." And he relapsed into melancholy. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... letter on the melancholy occasion to the King of Spain, concludes thus: "I am without a house, in a tent, without servants, without subjects, without ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... thoughts; no; I will not go to Florence. As I always distrust first impulses, which so often run reason to a standstill, I had recourse to a favorite device of mine. I asked myself: What would Lampron advise? And at once I conjured up his melancholy, noble face, and heard his answer: "Come back, ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the third Russian defensive line. Przasnysz was flanked in the course of twenty-four hours and could no longer be held. A fine rain was falling as the German columns marched through the deserted, smoke-blackened city, a melancholy ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... 1618, and the nobleman Carl von Endern, who copied out the entire manuscript of the Aurora. These friends frequently encouraged Boehme to break his enforced silence, and he himself was restless and melancholy, feeling that he was "entrusted with a talent which he ought to put to usury and not return to God singly and without improvement, like the lazy servant." "It was with me," he writes, describing his years of silence, "as when a seed is hidden in the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... filled with the latest conveniences and surrounded with the latest litter, till he could see approaching down the long perspective that long ungainly figure, with the preposterous stove-pipe hat and the rustic umbrella and deep melancholy eyes, the humour and the hard patience and the heart that fed upon ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... exposed all kinds of the richest dainties; but on our entering the city we found, contrary to all we had seen in the other world, that the suburbs were infinitely pleasanter than the city itself. It was indeed a very dull, dark, and melancholy place. Few people appeared in the streets, and these, for the most part, were old women, and here and there a formal grave gentleman, who seemed to be thinking, with large tie-wigs on, and amber-headed canes in their hands. We were all in hopes that our ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... Amalia A Funeral Fantasie Fantasie—To Laura To Laura at the Harpsichord Group from Tartarus Rapture—To Laura To Laura (The Mystery of Reminiscence) Melancholy—To Laura The Infanticide The Greatness of the World Fortune and Wisdom Elegy on the Death of a Young Man The Battle Rousseau Friendship Elysium The Fugitive To Minna The Flowers The Triumph of Love (A Hymn) To ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Nature flamed through him—in him—like presences, potently evocative as the presences of persons, and with meanings equally various: the woods with love and tenderness; the sea with reverence and magic; plains and wide horizons with the melancholy peace and silence as of wise and old companions; and mountains with a splendid terror due to some want of comprehension in himself, caused probably by a spiritual ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... than peace or war inquire; Fully content, and unconcern'd, to know What farther passes in the world below. The bravest of mankind shall now have leave To die but once, nor piece-meal seek the grave: On gain or pleasure bent, we shall not meet Sad melancholy numbers in each street (Owners of bones dispers'd on Flandria's plain, Or wasting in the bottom of the main); To turn us back from joy, in tender fear, Lest it an insult of their woes appear, And make us grudge ourselves that wealth, their blood Perhaps preserv'd, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... home from Great Britain to Madam Hensler, the wife of the good professor who had befriended him in college, "Your letter has made me so wild with delight, that I have felt full of affection to every creature that has come in my way." The melancholy heart and dismal lot of Gerald Griffin, the Irish novelist, found almost their solitary human alleviation and brightness in the sustaining kindness and admiration of a lady, designated in his brother's biography of him ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... they came to fish for sturgeon. They brought disastrous accounts of the Tonquin, which were at first treated as fables, but which were too sadly confirmed by a different tribe that arrived a few days subsequently. We shall relate the circumstances of this melancholy affair as correctly as the casual discrepancies in the statements that have reached us ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... from her reverie with a flush, and after a pause struck slowly a few simple chords, then began one of those strangely sweet, yet intensely pathetic Russian airs, which give one a curious revelation of the profound, endless melancholy lurking in the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... heart, was that he wanted to be near her, very near her; and that he was miserable when this was not the case. If she was out of his sight for a moment the virtue seemed to have gone from him and he fell into the pathetic melancholy which he enjoyed in the days when he wrote a great deal of indifferent verse, and was burdened with the conviction that his mission in life was to make rhymes ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... well remember,' says a naval surgeon, 'the above melancholy event, and particularly from one of the survivors being drafted on board the ship to which I belonged, (the Thunderer, then in the Dardanelles.) The poor fellow became my patient; he complained of no pain but that which arose from the horrible recollection ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... and for spacious halls and gorgeous canopies the eye may search in vain within. But for the warm cheer of the little oak library,—for the quaint carvings, the tracery of other times, which abound therein,—for the awful note of the blood-hound, baying upon his midnight chain,—and the pleasing melancholy of the hooting owl from his hereditary chamber in the roof,—and for the tunefulness of the cooing wood-quests, and the morning rooks which bustle and caw, and of the high winds that pipe and roar, daily and nightly, through the boughs,—and for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... whose ravings are recorded above, was a melancholy instance of the baneful results of energies misdirected in early life, and excesses prolonged until their consequences could never be repaired. The thoughtless riot, dissipation, and debauchery of his younger days produced fever and delirium. The first effects of the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... world, and his absolute indifference to spiritual things, and was content to describe himself as Achan. The sign that he had entered the second was a recurring reference to apostacy, and then you had the melancholy satisfaction of meeting the living representative of Simon Peter. When he passed into the last zone of the Purgatorio, Donald was beyond speech, and simply allowed one to gather from allusions to thirty pieces of silver that he was ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... he unfortunately lodged the contents of the saucer on her pink skirt and lace flounces. Gertrude retired to the dressing-room with the afflicted Miss Jane, offering her all the sympathy that such a melancholy occasion called for. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... Shakspere had read Montaigne, though the peculiar coincidence of one word in Edgar's speech with a word in Florio, above noted, would alone raise the question. But even had Shakspere not passed, as we shall see cause to acknowledge, beyond the most melancholy mood of Montaigne into one of far sterner and more stringent pessimism, an absence or infrequency of suggestions of Montaigne in the plays between 1605 and 1610 would be a very natural result of Jonson's gibe in VOLPONE. That gibe, indeed, is not really so ill-natured as the term "steal" is ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... here stated will excite less surprise if it be remembered that Egypt was the land where this mode of life had its origin. For that country, from some law of nature, has always produced a greater number of gloomy and hypochondriac or melancholy persons than any other; and it still does so. Here it was long before the Savior's birth, not only the Essenes and Therapeutae—those Jewish sects, composed of persons with a morbid melancholy, or rather partially deranged—had their chief residence; but many others also, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... past unknown, His death was instant, and without a groan. O grant me thus to live, and thus to die! Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I. O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine! Be no unpleasing melancholy mine: Me, let the tender office long engage, To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep a while ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... annual wake only twenty-four cows had been killed, when but a few years previously ninety-four had been slaughtered on a similar occasion. Perhaps you will permit me to state in your columns that this year the festival, in this particular, has afforded as melancholy and unquestionable proof of distress as the last, while it bore other evidence, which though trivial in itself, is not unworthy of notice. Last year two theatrical shows visited us, displaying their "Red Barn" tragedies, and illuminated ghosts, at threepence per head, at which they did well; ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... a whole morning; and the results, though private (that is the worst of an apple-pie bed), were beyond expectation. After wrestling for half an hour the Countess spent the night in a garden hammock, composing a bitter Ode to Melancholy. ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... are not common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth;—whilst in Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the freshness of spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening. This unity of feeling and character pervades every drama ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... he reached the highest point, from whence he looked down earnestly, as if his eyes sought to single out some particular object among the wilderness of roofs. At first his countenance was sad, but at last the melancholy look changed to an expression of cheerful surprise, for his eye had found what it was seeking among those once familiar objects. He knew the old house, for memory keeps the record of early days most faithfully, although its appearance was much changed. The ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... yet my experience leads me to look for the twain together. Here and there I have been to Temperance Hotels in which water is used for other purposes than that of drinking, but these are, I regret to say, the exceptions to a melancholy rule. ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... theory of it, however unphilosophic, which Zoroasterism supplied, carried with it a creed not of tears but of smiles, a religion of lofty tolerance, one in which the demonology barely alarmed, for redemption was assured, and so fully that on earth melancholy was ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... been a mistake here, alumnus. This egg never was meant to be dropped—it was meant to be thrown. Kindly remove the melancholy evidences." ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... I was speaking of," said Flemming, as the boatmen rested on their oars. "The melancholy and singular event it commemorates happened more than two centuries ago. There was a bridal party here upon the ice one winter; and in the midst of the dance the ice broke, and the whole merry company were ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Morn of youth, With freaks of graceful folly,— Life's temperate Noon, her sober Eve, Her Night not melancholy; Past, present, future, all appeared, In harmony united, Like guests that meet, and some from far, By ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... made a resolution to indulge himself in such carnal delights and pleasures as he was accustomed to, or that fell in his way. 'His neglecting his business, and following gaming and sports, to put melancholy thoughts out of his mind, which he could not always do, had rendered ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... character in other respects improves; for the habit of defeat weakens the exercise of the will in this particular direction, and gradually diminishes the hope or the effort of acquiring a victory over the indulged failing. It is a melancholy consideration, if it be, as I believe, really the case, that a Christian may increase in love to God and man, while at the same time perpetually inflicting severe wounds on the peace and happiness of those who are nearest ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... commissary in the purchasing line in this camp, and with him this melancholy and alarming truth, that he had not a single hoof of any kind to slaughter, and not more than twenty-five barrels of flour! From hence, form an opinion of our situation, when I add that he could not tell when ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... sure that the occupant of the waiting-room was asleep. On the threshold stood a man of middle height, who carried himself with a certain grace and quiet dignity. He was pale almost to sallowness, a broad face with a kind mouth and melancholy eyes, without any light in them. The melancholy must have been expressed rather by the lines of the brows than by the eye itself, for this was without life or expression—the eye of a man who is either very short-sighted or is engaged in looking through that which he actually ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... corruptions are also noticed in this century by other writers. Cyprian complained of them, as they existed in the middle, and Eusebius, as they existed at the end of it, and both attributed it to the peace, or to the ease and plenty, which the Christians had enjoyed. The latter gives us a melancholy account of their change. They had begun to live in fine houses, and to indulge in luxuries. But, above all, they had begun to be envious, and quarrelsome, and to dissemble, and to cheat, and to falsify their word, so that they lost the character, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the family of great famished lords in their feudal castle. With Chateaubriand I return in the twinkling of an eye to the Niagara that we have both seen. In the fall of the waters I find the deep and melancholy note that he himself found; and after that I think of that dark cathedral of Dol that evidently suggested to the author his Genie ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... preserver, whose table adjoined mine. He was a Frenchman, a melancholy-looking man. He had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle; of one whom the clenched fist of Fate has smitten beneath the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... call to mind and commemorate by a letter the pleasant days I passed in the North this time five years. Five years has a melancholy sound to me now, for it is like a passing-bell, knolling away time. I hope it is not wrong to say that the passage of time is now sad to me as well as awful, because it brings before me how much I ought to have done, how much I have ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... he lay awake on the morning of his twentieth birthday, were not altogether self-congratulatory. He was painfully aware that he was what he himself would have styled a poor creature. He was as weak, physically, as a girl; he was not particularly clever; he was given to a melancholy which made him pass for dull in society. Ill-health dogged him whenever he tried to achieve anything out of the commonplace. His tenantry regarded him still as a boy, and very few of his few friends set much store by him for his own sake ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... with excitement. For the moment I felt nothing but a sense of exultation, strangely out of harmony with the grave melancholy with which Ascher spoke. I suppose the soldier instinct survives in me, an inheritance from generations of my forefathers, all of whom have worn swords, many of whom have fought. We have done our part in building up the British ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... the willows, listening, with a melancholy impossible to describe, to the murmur of the water that flowed at his side. All at once he started; the noise of cannon was brought distinctly ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... accomplish all vast mechanical undertakings, and release souls out of Purgatory. They could influence the passions of the mind, procure the reconciliation of friends or of foes, engender mutual discord, induce mania, melancholy, or direct the force and objects of human affection. Such was the Demonology taught by its orthodox professors. Yet other systems of it were devised, which had their origin in the causes attending the propagation of christianity; ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... matter of a strong-jawed stoicism or a submissive patience but rather the quickening bread and wine of an intense and high-keyed life. This is why the Saints, be the provocation ever so great, never develop nerves, or experience those melancholy and humiliating reactions which are the natural ebb-tide of spiritual energies. This is why Saints can fast and keep their temper sweet, can wear hair-shirts without cultivating wry faces, can be passed by in the distribution of honors without being ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... returned home I wrote down this curious conversation and this debate about supremacy. To what a degradation is the highest rank in my unfortunate country reduced when two such personages seriously contend about it! I collected more subjects for meditation and melancholy in this low company (where, by the bye, I witnessed more vulgarity and more indecencies than I had before seen during my life) than from all former scenes of humiliation and disgust since my return here. When I the next day mentioned ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and the name of Angus McNeill. Sir Tancred had far more trouble with the women who fell in love with him; and many women fell in love with him or thought themselves in love with him, for his handsome, melancholy face, his reputation for recklessness, and above all for his cold insensibility to their charm. In ten years of the strenuous, smart life, his name was never coupled with that of any woman. All and each of these made a pet of Tinker, since they found ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... on the morrow. It was a holiday, and as Carlotta was at home, making ready for the marriage, Tonelli consented to take his place at the table from which he had been a long time absent. But it turned out such a frigid and melancholy banquet as never was known before. The old notary, to whom all things came dimly, finally missed the accustomed warmth of Tonelli's fun, and said, with a little shiver, "Why, what ails you, Tonelli? You are as moody as ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... needs these innocent stimulants of bright and cheering prospects to keep off melancholy and superstition. Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treeless waste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... The morbid melancholy into which Maurice had fallen, and which deepened with his vain pondering over the mysterious fate of Madeleine, rolled from his spirit before the breath of hope,—hope breathed through sunshine, from the lips of a woman whose sympathetic ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... that whoso enter'd in Disrobed was of every earthly thought, And straight became as one that knew not sin, Or to the world's first innocence was brought; Enseem'd it now, he stood on holy ground, In sweet and tender melancholy wrapt around. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with other eyes, than once, I gaze, The ever-varying charm your round displays, Than when, ere-while, I taught, "a happy child," The echoes of your rocks my carols wild: Then did no ebb of chearfulness demand Sad tides of joy from Melancholy's hand; 1793. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... a weariness." I will next take the case of young persons when they first enter into life. Here I may appeal to some perhaps who now hear me. Alas! my brethren, is it not so? Is not religion associated in your minds with gloom, melancholy, and weariness? I am not at present going so far as to reprove you for it, though I might well do so, if I did, perhaps you might at once turn away, and I wish you calmly to think the matter over, and bear me ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... tranquil lake, its source still is ever the same that lies deep down in our heart; and the unhappiest man of all men can conceive an idea of great joy. It is true that in love there is ecstasy that he doubtless never will know; but this ecstasy would leave deep melancholy only in the earnest and faithful heart, if there were not in veritable love something more stable than ecstasy, more profound and more steadfast; and all that in love is profoundest, most stable and steadfast, is profoundest in noble lives too—is most stable and steadfast in them. Not to ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "it'll be something grand—brother-in-law to the farmer in a way! Oh, fie, Kalle Karlsson! You and I'll be giving ourselves airs now!" He went a little way along the path with them, talking all the time. Lasse was quite melancholy over it. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... unbending spirit, violent temper, as poor as a church-mouse, and as proud as the proudest of Church dignitaries; endowed with the strength of a coal-heaver, the courage of a lion, and the tongue of Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was melancholy almost to madness, "radically wretched," indolent, blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry poverty that does not know where to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... walls was dark and still; near to the vestibule a couple of ancient cypresses made a natural arch overhead, and in the tender branches of a group of acacias close by, the evening breeze sighed with gentle, melancholy ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the lake there rose a great rock, whereon dwelt an aged hermit, who by reason of his loneliness was afflicted with a spirit of melancholy; so that when the fit was on him, he was constantly tempted to throw himself into the water, for his life was burdensome to him. But one day, when this gloomy madness had driven him to the edge of the rock to cast himself down, the Neck rose at the same moment, and sitting upon a wave, began ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the church door and peeped in. The dusky glow from the western sky, entering through a narrow window, illuminated the shafts and arches, the old oak carvings, and the discoloured monuments, with the melancholy glare of ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... was visited by General James Wilkinson about the first of February, 1792. An officer who was present relates the following: "The scene was truly melancholy. In my opinion those unfortunate men who fell into the enemy's hands, with life, were used with the greatest torture—having their limbs torn off; and the women had been treated with the most indecent cruelty, having stakes, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... The universal aspiration with all its profound and melancholy meaning assailed heavily Razumov, who, amongst eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no heart to which ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... you were to fight, you would this day elect your consuls, to whom your children are to swear allegiance, at whose command they are to assemble, and under whose protection and care they are to serve. The Trasimene Lake and Cannae are melancholy precedents to look back upon, but form useful warnings to guard against similar disasters Crier, call back the younger century of the Amen tribe to give ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... fragmentary manhood finds its own perfecting, and not its transmutation to another fashion of man, in being conformed to Him. Some of us are naturally fainthearted, timid, sceptical of any success, grave, melancholy, or hard to stir to any emotion. To such there will be an added difficulty in making quiet confident joy any very familiar guest in their home or in their place of prayer. But even such should remember that the 'powers of the world to come,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... afterwards and he stayed in the library until dinner, which was a melancholy function. It was necessary to appear undisturbed while the servants were about, and he envied his friends' fine self-control. These people had courage and when they talked carelessly about things of no importance he did his best to play ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... you think, Melhuish?" he asked, and then they all turned to me as if I might be able in some miraculous way to save the situation. Even old Jervaise paused in his melancholy pacing ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... objection to what he wrote. He was the Carlyle of poetry. By his Lives of Schiller and Sterling, Carlyle showed that he could write beautiful and pure English, but that he should descend to the style of some of his later works was a melancholy example of misdirected energy. . . . Charles Dickens was perhaps the most extraordinary genius of those who had endeavoured to deal with fiction as illustrative of the actual experiences of life. With Dickens there stood ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... popular education has no place for the heart in all of its splendid equipment. This is not a reflection on the fine system. It is merely the statement of a melancholy fact. The average state school, high or low, is absolutely colorless as to religion. Even the morality that is taught is not the morality of the Christian religion, but of philosophical ethics that differ but little from the ethics ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... that much anxiety and melancholy intruding on the sacred mind of his Majesty, the Asylum of the World, and also on the breast of this loyal servant," their attention was turned towards the English alliance, which had been in abeyance for some years. On the 23rd of September, 1783, Mirza Shaffi, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... aslant in the saddest of faces. Mrs. Raften said, "Come, Sam, and shake hands with Yan." Sam came sheepishly forward, shook hands in a flabby way, and said, in drawling tones, "How-do," then retired behind the stove to gaze with melancholy soberness at Yan, whenever he could do so without being caught at it. Mr. and Mrs. Raften were attending to various matters elsewhere, and Yan was left alone and miserable. The idea of giving up college to go on a farm had been a hard one for him to accept, but he had sullenly bowed to his ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... good beginning by emptying at a draught the glass which the waiter had just now filled. Then he relapsed into melancholy. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... of native pith and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, their expression: yet I could imagine that most observers would call them attractive, handsome, imposing; while they would pronounce Mr. Rochester at once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking. I saw them smile, laugh—it was nothing; the light of the candles had as much soul in it as their smile; the tinkle of the bell as much significance as their laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester smile:—his ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother, for a child can hardly be born with cheerful views of living whose mother's life has been, for its sake, a double burden. From this root spring melancholy, insanity, suicide. The production of human souls is the highest production of all, the one which requires most preparation, truest worth, gravest care and holiest consecration. If the girl of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... body and soul continually toward another; makes it one of the dearest enjoyments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty? The attention is fixed upon a well-defined object, and all the effects it produces in the mind are easily regarded as powers or qualities of that object.... To a certain extent this kind of interest will ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... especial guests, that she takes up to her sanctum, and is seen no more until the dinner-bell summons her. Eugene is in an uncomfortable mood and teases Cecil. Violet seems always a little afraid of this handsome young man, who has a way of making inscrutable remarks. Her music is melancholy this evening, and Cecil is difficult to please, so she is glad when bedtime comes and with it a resume of the times of the wonderful Haroun al Raschid. But when Cecil falls asleep an intense feeling of loneliness seizes her. It seems as if she was somewhere ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... would be rung out in a few hours, in company with our Utopian expectations. All our hopes of a rare New Year were, like our Christmas phantasies, dashed to the ground. The morrow promised to be rare enough in a melancholy sense, but it would not be New Year's Day. There was but one ray of comfort to sustain us, namely, the approach of the hero of Candahar; for although a certain period of waiting had yet to be endured—ere another famous march could be accomplished—the coming of Roberts ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... at once that we did not sleep any last night. Jack told us at dinner, and we spent the evening making a melancholy tour of places where we had been with you. If you had only been with us! The roof gardens are particularly desolate without you. The whole of the city seems to realize it. The watering carts weep from dawn to dark. All the lamp-posts are wearing black. It is sad at one extreme ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... 1845 from Lady Elizabeth Blachford, and the palace was finished in 1851. Since that time many additions have been made. The main gates are about three-quarters of a mile up the hill from the ferry, and the Prince of Wales's Gate further south, opposite the hotel. Osborne House has a melancholy interest attached to it, for here, on January 22, 1901, Queen Victoria breathed her last. A portion of every year was spent by the Queen at her seaside home, which had many associations of her happy life there ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... angry. His curiosity concerning facts and realities of every description led him to seek an interview with Samson the executioner. Calling one day to see the Director of Prisons, he found himself in presence of a pale, melancholy-looking man of noble countenance, whose manners, language, and apparent education were those of one polished and cultured. It was Samson. Entering into conversation with this strange personage, the novelist listened to the particulars of his life. Samson was a royalist. On the morrow ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... off another runner with a telegram and quite a mail of letters from officers and men for their mothers', wives, and lovers over seas. He was a bony young Kaffir, with a melancholy face, black as sorrow. At six o'clock I saw him start, his apish feet padding through the crusted slush. One pocket bulged with biscuits, one with a tin of beef. Between his black chest and his rag of ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... cocks, and now and then the shouts of boys and the laughter of children. These audible tokens of active life were a comfort to Barbara. A moment before, on parting with her father, she was aware of a new and disturbing loneliness, but now she felt no longer with the same melancholy that she was ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... bellowing on the ice and gradually went to sleep, unconscious that their minutes were numbered. Nansen says that it seemed like murder to shoot them, and that he never forgot their brown, imploring, melancholy eyes as they lay supporting their heads on their tusks and coughing up blood. Then the great brutes were flayed, and their flesh, blubber, and hides carried into the hut. When they brought out the sledges and knives, Nansen thought it might be as well to take the kayaks with them also. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and, as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what may be called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... dark flowing gown, was the subtle, monastic-looking Walsingham, with long, grave, melancholy face and Spanish eyes. There too, white staff in hand, was Lord High Treasurer Burghley, then sixty-five years of age, with serene blue eye, large, smooth, pale, scarce-wrinkled face and forehead; seeming, with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Durtain, two rivers of Brie, narrow, sluggish, and deep; a town of inns, shops, retired merchants; filled with diligences, travelling-carriages, and waggons. The two towns, or rather this town with its historical memories, its melancholy ruins, the gaiety of its valley, the romantic charm of its ravines filled with tangled shrubbery and wildflowers, its rivers banked with gardens, excites the love of all its children, who do as the Auvergnats, the Savoyards, in fact, all French folks do, namely, leave Provins to ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... faces and hands were to have flesh-color, and lips were to be painted red. It had always been that way; otherwise, why was it called flesh-color? On account of this arrangement Hamlet came off rather badly, receiving a much more animated countenance than was suited to his melancholy. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... philosophy of life. There is no rhetoric in it, no rhodomontade. It is the melody of a man's voice singing for the pleasure of singing, now vehemently, from the sheer delight in things physical and outward, now sadly, as some evanescent object induces melancholy, now in a naively reflective way, as past or future brings memories or expectations. He never reaches quite the exquisite melodies of Herrick, but when he writes of love he is as simple as Herrick, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... Danes were an honourable foe; they were of English mould as well as English blood; and now that the battle had ceased, he regarded them rather as brethren than as enemies. There was another reflection also which mingled with these melancholy thoughts, and predisposed him to receive them. He was not here master of his own movements, as at Egypt; he had won the day by disobeying his orders; and in so far as he had been successful, had convicted the commander-in-chief of an error in judgment. ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... Austrian commanders upon the Inn formed a melancholy contrast to the activity of the mountaineers. In spite of the delay of three weeks in opening the campaign, Davoust had still not effected his junction with the French troops in Southern Bavaria, and a rapid movement of the Austrians might even now have overwhelmed his isolated ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... observed camel nature tell us it is never known to play or frolic like lambs or colts, or like most young creatures of the earth, in fact; but that in its babyhood it is as grave and melancholy as in its old age, born apparently with a deep sense of its own ugliness, and a mournful resignation to ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was working away and thinking often of Florence. He was greatly worried about his Uncle Solomon, for the business of the old instrument maker was in a bad way, and Old Sol himself was melancholy. ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... farewell song which wailed over the water as we approached. As they boarded the steamboat they kissed their friends on both cheeks, and crowded to the side as we got under way again, repeating their melancholy song and waving adieus; while all along the tops of the hills which flank both sides of the harbour figures silhouetted against the sky, waved in response, and stood watching the boat as long ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... land perhaps disgraced with violence and stained with blood. But if, as I hope, you return a verdict of Not Guilty, you will check that spirit of bigotry and fanaticism which is fully aroused and eagerly awaiting the signal to begin its evil work; you will close a melancholy and discreditable chapter of history; you will proclaim that henceforth the press shall be absolutely free, unless it libel men's characters or contain incitements to crime, and that all offences against belief and taste shall be left to the great jury of public opinion; you will ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... to sea again. But the European conditions which had created such immense profits for the Yankee skipper in 1805, 1806, and 1807 had passed away. Foreign ships now bid for the carrying trade of the Atlantic, and their competition cut down freight rates to a point which caused melancholy forebodings in the homes of Boston and ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... was surprised at this, for only the day before Eva had announced in melancholy tones that she had spent her last penny, and could buy no more pictures, for which she had developed ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... resolution, however, or, as their historian asserts, a miracle from heaven changed the king's mind. They expected to be trampled to death in the hippodrome by furious elephants; but after some delay they were released unhurt. The history of their escape, however, is more melancholy than the history of their danger. No sooner did the persecution cease than they turned with Pharisaical cruelty against their weaker brethren who had yielded to the storm; and they put to death three hundred of their countrymen, who in the hour of danger ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... for Zuitburg, in Zealand, where the fleet which was to convoy him had orders to assemble. In his way thither he passed through Ghent, and after stopping there a few days, to indulge that tender and pleasing melancholy which arises in the mind of every man in the decline of life on visiting the place of his nativity, and viewing the scenes and objects familiar to him in his early youth, he pursued his journey, accompanied by his son Philip, his daughter the archduchess, his sisters the dowager Queens ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... divided between two great parties. Matters proceeded with constantly increasing friction, and at last the struggle developed into civil war. Macaulay's summary of it, and Knight's picture of its culmination in that most melancholy tragedy, the execution of the King, cover the subject in its essential aspects, without unnecessary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... and have tears in your eyes. Better take me for a model, who, as a consumptive, have far more reason to be melancholy ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... all grieving or melancholy over past failures, or, if you must be occupied with them, let it be without mingling bitterness ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... preferred him now to their own presidents and chairmen. There was an enthusiasm for Moggs among the labouring men of Percycross, and he was always happy while he was addressing them. But the hours in the morning were long, and sometimes melancholy. Though all the town was busy with these electioneering doings, there was nothing for him to do. His rivals canvassed, consulted, roamed through the town,—as he could see,—filching votes from him. But he, too noble for such work as that, sat there alone in the little upstairs parlour ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... temptation, and roused up themselves and their resolution, yield not to passion; whether the temptation be somewhat pleasant or somewhat painful. The Precipitate form of Imperfect Self-Control they are most liable to who are constitutionally of a sharp or melancholy temperament: because the one by reason of the swiftness, the other by reason of the violence, of their passions, do not wait for Reason, because they are disposed to follow whatever notion is impressed ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... rather melancholy smile Anstice admitted that there was no one waiting for him at home; and since Iris seconded her father's invitation with a kind little entreaty on her own account, he accepted their ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... man with a more unsuitable name could hardly be found. The first two or three days out he was the life of our party. We all liked him, in fact, nobody could help liking him; but, as the voyage progressed, he grew more and more melancholy, and, what was really serious, took little food, which is not natural in an Englishman. I thought somebody had been telling him what a fool he had been to pay away his hundred pounds before leaving England, but young Smith of Rochester, who sat at my left, ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... path explore,— Where the cold blast has struck with deadly chill The sturdy dweller on the storm-swept hill, Where by the stagnant marsh the sickening gale Has blanched the poisoned tenants of the vale, Where crushed and maimed the bleeding victim lies, Where madness raves, where melancholy sighs, And where the solemn whisper tells too plain That all his science, all his ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... melancholy of watering places, the monotony of days that are all alike, proves hourly an incentive ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... writings as antidotal to the levity and merriment with which your rivals endeavour to attract the favour of the publick; or fancy that you have some particular powers of dolorous declamation, and warble out your groans with uncommon elegance or energy; it is certain, that whatever be your subject, melancholy for the most part bursts in upon your speculation, your gaiety is quickly overcast, and though your readers may be flattered with hopes of pleasantry, they are seldom dismissed but with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... where the lake's margin, black-rimmed with cypresses, lapsed into a watery horizon, and the sun was going down in melancholy splendor, ran unseen that northbound railway by which four years earlier they had set off for the war with ranks full and stately, with music in the air and with thousands waving them on. Now not a note, not a drum-tap, not a boast nor a jest ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable |
