"Morose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other hand, life was nothing but endless work, an incessant strain, having no other objective than war. She was gloomy, austere, strict, morose, almost ascetic, an enemy to everything that excuses man's presence on this earth, a nation of spoilers, looters, incendiaries and devastators, a nest of wasps beside a swarm of bees, a perpetual ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... evidently of wild blood—a half-breed, if his swarthy skin and high cheek bones meant any characteristics of race—scarcely more than a savage by nature, and rendered even more decadent by the ravages of drink. He was sober enough now, but this only left him the more morose and sullen, his bloodshot eyes ugly and malignant. The girl shrank from him as a full realisation of what the man truly was came to her ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... What do you want here?" harshly demanded this woman, whom Capitola instinctively recognized as Dorkey Knight, the morose housekeeper of ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... rejoicing, however, for John Judson followed his wife to the grave before Veronica had reached her tenth year, leaving her and her half-sister, Cora, to the guardianship of a crabbed old bachelor who had been his father's lawyer. This lawyer was morose and peevish, but he was never positively unkind. For two years the sisters seemed happy enough when, suddenly and somewhat peremptorily, they were separated, Veronica being sent to a western school, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... eastward, rapt with vain imaginings, squat, swollen figure blending into the deeper, meaner shadows of the Tenderloin; and so on toward Maitland's rooms—morose, misunderstood, malignant, coddling his fictitious wrongs; somehow pathetically typical ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... plotting revolt, Comrade of criminals, brother of slaves, Crafty, despised, a drudge, ignorant, With sudra face and worn brow, black, but in the depths of my heart, proud as any, Lifted now and always against whoever scorning assumes to rule me, Morose, full of guile, full of reminiscences, brooding, with many wiles, (Though it was thought I was baffled, and dispel'd, and my wiles done, but that will never be,) Defiant, I, Satan, still live, still utter words, in new lands duly appearing, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... became clear to little Claus; but he never could understand their sulky and morose tempers. Only the squirrels, the mice and the rabbits seemed to possess cheerful and merry natures; yet would the boy laugh when the panther growled, and stroke the bear's glossy coat while the creature snarled and bared its teeth menacingly. The growls and snarls were not for Claus, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... the purchase of the best animals and implements led to economy, though it was said he seldom paid the full market price for them. He had walked home because it was impossible to keep warm driving, and felt tired and morose. The man had passed his prime and was beginning to find the labour he had never shirked more irksome than it had been, while he dispensed with a hired hand in winter, when there was less to be done. Clarke neglected no ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... styles are different, so are their dispositions—these rather contrasting. Crozier is of a serious, sedate turn and, though anything but morose, rarely given to mirth; while, from the countenance of Cadwallader the laugh is scarce ever absent, and the dimple on his cheek—to employ a printer's phrase—appears stereotyped. With the young Welshman a joke might ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Second looked very thoughtful, even morose. He poured out another glass of champagne, drank it slowly in sips, and when the glass was empty ran the forefinger of his right hand slowly round and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... neither unsocial, nor morose. He welcomes the stranger as heartily as the most hospitable patriarch. He receives the sojourner at his fireside without question. He regales him with the best the house affords: is always anxious ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Caroline was. Since the interview in the library, when the girl had, as she considered it, humiliated herself by asking her guardian for money to help the Moriartys, she had scarcely spoken to him. Stephen, taking his cue from his sister, was morose and silent, also. Captain Elisha found it hard to forgive his dead brother for bringing all this trouble ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... but do not let the word alarm you. I fear that I must have appeared in your eyes the most morose and disagreeable of husbands. Permit me to explain. Since we came here, I have gone about my own affairs, I have gone out early and returned extremely late, and sometimes three days have elapsed without our even setting eyes ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... even his nearest relation, who doted on the very ground which he hallowed with his footstep, was banished from the haunted sanctuary of the painter; from the most placid of human beings, Warner seemed to have grown the most morose. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with a morose look, then he went on: "Yes, I laughed at Cassy. While she was out here at Lumley's getting cured, accordin' to the doctor's orders, things seemed to get a move on in the West. But it didn't suit professing Christians like you, dad." He jerked his head toward the old man and drew ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the productions of the looms lacked their accustomed elegance. Under Madame de Maintenon, the spirit of a morose religion pervaded the court. All France was suffering under it, and in its name unbelievable horrors were perpetrated in every province. Paris was not too well informed of these to interfere with bourgeois life, but at court the hypocritical soul of Madame ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... those old morose houses in lower Lexington Avenue, each had lived there until he obtained his degree of LL.D. from a state university. It had been a sedate, a mildly prosperous, even an historic home. A Vice President of the United States had once owned it. Then a Major O. Higginbothom, and finally, for fifteen ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to the Abbey, where he shut himself up to brood over his disgraces; grew gloomy, morose, and fantastical, and indulged in fits of passion and caprice, that made him the theme of rural wonder and scandal. No tale was too wild or too monstrous for vulgar belief. Like his successor the poet, he was accused of all kinds of vagaries ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... He was morose with his mates, and withdrew from their company as much as possible. He shared the supper beer with Jane, but he constantly spoke sharply to her and especially resented the least inattention to Harry's wants, so that it seemed ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... express her ideas in English. She is extremely shrewd and intelligent, very satirical, and a great mimic. She very cleverly burlesques the way in which white people express their admiration of scenery, and, in fact, ridicules admiration of scenery for itself. She evidently thinks us a sour, morose, worrying, forlorn race. "We," she said, "are always happy; we never grieve long about anything; when any one dies we break our hearts for some days, and then we are happy again. We are happy all day long, not like white people, happy one moment, gloomy another: we've no ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... very sad. He became taciturn, morose, and one fine morning bolted from the house, feeling the rabies on him and resolved not to bite his masters; so he fled, and we have every reason to believe that he was killed as a mad dog, for we never ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... with jealousy and anger when he heard those ill-bred fellows calling her "Sophia Tiralla," plain and simple Why couldn't they say "Mrs. Tiralla"? That would have been the proper thing for them to do. The schoolmaster continued to bite his lips and stare in front of him, pale and morose. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... warn you," she added, lowering her voice and evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared." ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... with all the causes of it, ever made him a melancholy, a morose, a despairing, or even a desponding man. Far from that. The man of sorrows Himself sometimes rejoiced in spirit. Not sometimes only, but often He lifted up His heart and thanked His Father for the work His Father had given Him to do, and for the success that ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... upon the walls, nicks in the glasses and plates at table, scratches upon the furniture, and defects and misfortunes every where. He went to bed without saying good-night, and came down without a good-morning. He sat at breakfast morose and silent; or he sighed, and frowned, and muttered, and went out without a smile or a good-by. There was a profound gloom in the house, an unnatural order. Nobody dared to derange the papers or books upon the tables, to move the chairs, or to touch any thing. If May appeared in a new dress ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... gamester," said Mr Monckton, "depends solely upon his luck; his disposition varies with every throw of the dice, and he is airy, gay and good humoured, or sour, morose and savage, neither from nature nor from principle, but wholly by ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... had been thrown from his horse and killed. Edith had not in so many words devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood; but that was the outcome of the great sorrow of her youth. She had remained single without growing morose, and her sweet and gentle moods endeared her to all ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... condition of the dear people's intellects. To the Protestant, on the contrary, they are childish in the sense of being idiotic falsehoods. He must stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Catholic to shudder at his literalness. He appears to the latter as morose as if he were some hard-eyed, numb, monotonous kind of reptile. The two will never understand each other—their centres of emotional energy are too different. Rigorous truth and human nature's intricacies are always in need of a mutual interpreter.[305] So much for the aesthetic diversities ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... India of Dutch parents, and had a strong natural capacity which had been improved by assiduous application to his studies. His dark brow, and morose air, shewed the cruelty of his disposition: Yet he loved and protected the Indians, either from a natural disposition, or because he deemed them fit instruments to forward his designs. In order to gain the natives in his interest, he preferred ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... About three o'clock we were roused by the shrill police whistles giving the alarm. The telephone notified us that a Zeppelin had crossed the Danube, and all the church bells began to peal. Suddenly darkness and silence reigned, and the whole town, like some great angry animal, sullen and morose, prepared for the enemy attack. Nowhere was there light or sound. The town, with a wonderful starry firmament overhead, waited in expectation. Fifteen, twenty minutes went by, when suddenly a shot was fired and, as though it were a signal, firing broke ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... chose, the hope, the despair, the torture of the miserable beings peopling this unfortunate ship, for he had mounted its accursed timbers, led on and guided by the hand of some enamored Undine, who, when the guest of her forest of coral and palace of pearl rose more morose, more satirical, more bitter than usual, offered for the amusement of his ill humor between the repasts, some spectacle worthy of a lover who could create more wonders in his dreams than ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Thompson," the Major said; "he believes himself to be one of the most cynical and morose ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... subject of our present narration, was born towards Wapping of parents honest and willing to give him education, though their condition in the world rendered them not able. He was thereupon put to the charity school, the master of which being of a morose temper and he a boy of very indifferent disposition, the discipline with which he was treated was so severe that it created in him an aversion towards all learning; and one day, after a more severe whipping than ordinary, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Parley, that so sensible a man as you are so deceived. This is mere prejudice. He knows we are cheerful, entertaining people; foes to gloom and superstition; and therefore, he is so morose, he will not let ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... previous agitation and misgivings, shook her very much; she did not come down-stairs till near dinner-time; and both her father and Falcon, who came as a matter of course to spend his Sunday, were struck with her appearance. She was pale, gloomy, morose, and had an air ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of the moonlight silhouetted the figures of the three men in grotesque shapes against the cemetery wall and the crumbling tombs. The morose call of a toucan floated weirdly upon the heavy air. The faint wail of the frogs in the shallow waters below rose like the despairing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mountain is a challenge he never refuses, but scales it by bounds, like a deer when pursued by the hunter and the hound. He is not tonic, but bracing air and perfect health and youth, which makes labor a holiday and care a jest. Shakespeare is never morose. Dante is the picture of melancholy, Shakespeare the picture of resilient joy. Tennyson beheld "three spirits, mad with joy, dash down upon a wayside flower;" and our dramatist is like them. Life laughs on greeting him; the grave ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... must not be quite so particular. There is, on a cursory glance, enough of the appearance of pussy about the head of this curious animal to explain how the title came to be applied to it. It strikes one as being rather a morose and surly creature, an impression that is fully borne out when one learns that it will fight ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... out of the earth from Brunnens of Nassau, I got home as thin as a snake, and was forced to deny myself even the poor consolation of a Frankfort cigar. So matters went on for nearly a year. I became a morose and melancholy man. This will account for all the bitter and ill-natured things I said of the Germans in some of my sketches, every word ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... play with him; but our cousins had to go home, and soon left us, taking the deck with them. But the fatal act had been done. That night my brother was in the city until a late hour, which was a thing that had never occurred before. When he came home, he seemed morose; and to our inquiries for the cause, his ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... of Charley and Bert as the trio returned from repairing the fences wrecked by the flood that had swept over the east bottom-lands of the Quarter Circle KT. All morning he had been silent and morose. Only when necessary had he spoken while he directed the cowboys at their labor, helped them reset posts, or untangle twisted wires and build up again that which the rush of water had torn down. The damage had not been great and by noon the fence was as good ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... person of this minute, who calls me names and refuses to reciprocate kindness for kindness. I think my friends will say that I tell lies, which they would not think of me, when I tell them that you have become morose and disobliging. They will stare and say that my judgment has been deceived. But to show my trust in you, nevertheless, I will, as I have said, give you two-thirds cash, and the other third you will be paid at your destination. No other man in Gibraltar would do the same; ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... my friend my brother! Oh, I knew you again, though, to say the truth, you look more like a wild animal than a man. Embrace me. Do you remember the time when we studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy together? You were, even then, of a morose and wild character, but I liked you because of your complete sincerity. We used to say that you looked at the universe with the eyes of a wild horse, and it was not surprising you were dull and ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... in a morose and sullen mood. He wanted bracing up and he adopted Rofflash's suggestion. The coach rattled to Mrs. King's notorious tavern in Covent Garden, where thieves and scoundrels, the very dregs of London, mingled with their betters; and amid ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... condition of wandering uncertain suspicion, it had been recalled into the glad security of individual hate. Although up to this time Kerkel had borne an exemplary reputation, it was now remembered that he had always been of a morose and violent temper, a hypocrite in religion, a selfish sensualist. Several sagacious critics had long "seen through him"; others had "never liked him"; others had wondered how it was he kept his place so long in Lehfeldt's shop. Poor fellow! his life and actions, like those of every one else when ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... came home grave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight all alone, the hushed, dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow round, he ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... he always was a morose old man; and now I dread nothing more, father, than that in his displeasure he'll be doing something to ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... till eleven o'clock, when the large family party, for so our French fellowship may be called, breaks up. These socialities, giving as they do the amiable aspect of French character, will not perhaps constitute an extra charm of Grardmer in the eyes of the more morose English tourist. After many hours spent in the open air most of us prefer the quiet of our own rooms. The country, too, is so fresh and delicious that we want nothing in the shape of social distraction. Drawing-room amenities seem a waste of time under such circumstances. Nevertheless ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... whom I now have the honor of addressing have thought to recall the great in rank and power filling the gaze of the world as the Mayflower with her company fared forth on their adventurous voyage. The foolish James was yet on the English throne, glorying that he had "peppered the Puritans." The morose Louis XIII, through whom Richelieu ruled, was King of France. The imbecile Philip III swayed Spain and the Indies. The persecuting Ferdinand the Second, tormentor of Protestants, was Emperor of Germany. Paul V, of the House of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... an ounce of flesh upon my bones, did you know how careful are my days, and how sleepless my nights, under the perpetual harassments of civil war!—The haughty burgesses of Ghent, whom I could hate from my soul but that they are townsmen of my illustrious father, the low-minded Walloons, the morose Brugeois, the artful Brabancons—all the varied tribes, in short, of the old Burgundian duchy, seem to vie with each other which shall succeed best in thwarting and humiliating me. And for what do I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... man was Aaron Stark, — Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose. A miser was he, with a miser's nose, And eyes like little dollars in the dark. His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark; And when he spoke there came like sullen blows Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close, As ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... different friends who needed servants, but he looked them over and then refused. I don't know where he came from, don't know anything about his history: I only know that he is a very faithful boy, with some grievance against life that leaves him morose ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... burgomaster of Mockern wore a cloth cap, and was enveloped in a cloak. He sat down heavily on the bench. He was a corpulent man, about sixty, with an arrogant, morose countenance; and he frequently rubbed with his red, fat fist, eyes that were still swollen and blood shot, from his having been suddenly ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart. Your sad, or morose, or embittered, or preoccupied heart settles heavily into the saddle, and the poor beast, the body, breaks down the first mile. Indeed, the heaviest thing in the world is a heavy heart. Next to that, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... teeth hard together to keep back the tears of sympathy. Suffering of any sort always wrung the tender heart of her. But suffering like this—never in her life had she seen anything like it. She had seen her father angry, discouraged, morose. She had seen men fight. She had soothed her mother's grief, which expressed itself in tears and lamentations. But this hidden hurt, this stoical suffering that she had seen often and often in Ward's eyes and that sent his head down now ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... for Dave. He discharged his duties automatically, taking no interest whatever in his work; his nights he spent in morose meditation. Unable to sleep, he tramped the hot streets in an effort to fight off his growing nervousness. He became irritable, despondent; his eyes took on the look of an invalid's; his face aged and grayed. Physically, too, he grew very ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... and tossed aside—and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose. At night, when supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: I, sometimes dozing over a book; Nares, sullenly but busily drilling sea-shells with the instrument called a ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... took delight therein, as did now our trio; for, at his word, seven of his people went headlong, and drove silver tridents into the steaming cave at random, and speared a kid, a cygnet, and a flock of wildfowl. These presently smoked before Gerard and company; and Peter's face, sad and slightly morose at the loss of the savage hog, expanded and shone. After this, twenty different tarts of fruits and herbs, and last of all, confectionery on a Titanic scale; cathedrals of sugar, all gilt painted in the interstices of the bas-reliefs; castles with moats, and ditches imitated to the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... gladness, and pleasure. Happy he should be, as happy as the day is long. Kindness should be lavished upon him. Make a child understand that you love him; prove it in your actions—these are better than words; look after his little pleasures—join in his little sports; let him never hear a morose word—it would rankle in his breast, take deep root, and in due time bring forth bitter fruit. Love! let love be his pole-star; let it be the guide and the rule of all you do and all you say unto him. Let your face, as well as your tongue ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... for Uncle James. When they returned, they found a new face among the Rancheros—that of Pierre Costello, a man for whom Frank at once conceived a violent dislike. Pierre was a full-blooded Mexican, dark-browed, morose, and sinister-looking, and he had a pair of small, black eyes that were never still, but constantly roving about, as if on the lookout for something. His appearance was certainly forbidding; but that was not the reason why Frank disliked him. It was because Marmion regarded him ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... grandfather. It was indeed a house of mourning. My mother's grief I respected, and tried all I could to console her; that of my father was so evidently worldly, and so at variance with his clerical profession, that I must acknowledge I felt more of anger at it than sorrow. He had become morose and sullen, harsh to those around him, and not so kind to my mother as her state of mind and health made it his duty to be, even if inclination were wanted. He seldom passed any portion of the day with ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... had the peace of the martyr who has chosen his course. Mr. Baron also sat on his veranda with head bowed upon his breast. He too had chosen his course, and now in consequence was sunk in more bitter and morose protest than ever. Events were beyond his control and he knew it, but he would neither yield nor change. This was the worst that had yet befallen him. Black ruin stared him in the face, and he stared back with gloomy yet resolute eyes. "I will go down with my old colors flying," ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... He considered, and still considers, Pierre Corneille to be a blind enthusiast of the ancients, whom we deem great since we do not know them. In his eyes, this declamatory poet was a republican more by virtue of his head than his heart or his intention,—one of those men more capricious than morose, who cannot reconcile themselves to what exists, and prefer to fall back upon bygone generations, not knowing how to live like friendly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... across the room of an electric message from Aunt Victoria protesting against her perversity; and she reflected with a morose amusement that however delicately phrased Aunt Victoria's protests might be, its substance was the same as that of Helene, crying out on her for not adding the soupcon of rouge. She took a sudden ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... without her. He availed himself of an invalid's privilege to be disagreeable, and nothing Mammy Peggy could do now would satisfy him. Indeed, between the two, the old woman had a hard time of it, for Mima was tearful and morose, and would not speak to her except to blame her. As the days went on she wished to all the powers that she had left the Harrison pride in the keeping of the direct members of the family. It had proven a dangerous ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... knew full well, and I sometimes thought they knew it; for while no rude treatment marked their intercourse with me, yet few sought me as a friend. My weak attempts to become companionable had failed and had left me more morose. But for the Captain and for Joe Bellot, I should ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... of her married life passed away, when the young wife found herself mated to one wholly unsuited to her character. She was beautiful, witty, and frivolous; he jealous, dull, and morose. The incompatibility of their dispositions became as discernible to him, as they had become intolerable to her; and, as if to avenge the fate which had united them, he lost no opportunity of thwarting her desires, by such means striving to bend her lissom quality ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... been spinning to suit the taste of Constance Palliser. For one thing Wayward was morose. Besides he appeared physically ill. She shrank from asking herself the reason; she might better have asked him for her ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... upon the part of all that the huge trapper, whom young Brainerd had met at night, would make his appearance. Should he do so, it would be certain to precipitate a difficulty of the worst kind, as he was morose, sullen, treacherous, ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful, and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association, but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority. Such is the effect of having ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... morose, for months made hostile of mood by the shortage of help, now bubbled with a strange vivacity. At her desk in the Arrowhead living room she cheerfully sorted a jumble of befigured sheets and proclaimed to one and ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... of March, as the captain's letter had said, a Danish dog was sent by rail from Edinburgh to Liverpool, to the address of Richard Shandon. He seemed morose, timid, and almost wicked; his expression was very strange. The name of the Forward ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... quitted the apartment, when this cynic, attending him to the door with a look of morose disdain, "Were I an absolute prince," said he, "and that fellow one of my subjects, I would order him to be clothed in sackcloth, and he should drive my asses to water, that his lofty spirit might be lowered to the level of his deserts. The ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... is least, As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere That sharpen all the needles of the East, Had been to him like death, Accustomed to draw Europe's freer breath In a more stable element; Nay, even our landscape, half the year morose, Our practical horizon, grimly pent, 380 Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close, Our social monotone of level days, Might make our best seem banishment; But it was nothing so; Haply this instinct might divine, Beneath our ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... propensities in every form. It was in part owing to these excesses that he became so hateful in manners and character, the habitual indulgence of his animal appetites and propensities having had the effect of making him morose and capricious in mind. ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... have told it all, and Lady Merrifield was glad to see that the sense of deceit was what weighed most heavily upon her niece, and seemed to have depressed her all along. Indeed, the aunt came to the conclusion that though Dolores alone might still have been sullen, morose and disagreeable, perhaps very reserved, she never would have kept up the systematic deceit but for Constance. The errors, regarded as sin, weighed on Lady Merrifield's mind, but she judged it wiser not to press that thought on an unprepared ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against the pretensions of the superior class, without availing to eradicate their inbred instincts of servility in the presence of the very men they hated. Precisely this self-contemptuous recognition of his own servile feeling, operating on a morose temper, was the key to Hubbard's special bitterness toward the silk stockings. That Perez had none of this peasant's instinct, must, after all, be partly ascribed to the fact that his descent, by his ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... Morose, a rich old codger whose humor is a horror of noise. He lives in a street so narrow that it will admit no carriages; he pads the doors; plugs the keyhole; puts mattresses on the stairs. He dismisses a servant who wears squeaky boots; makes all the rest go about ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... evening. She was dressed in what was called a Queen Mary's ruff and farthingale; not the falling ruff with which the unfortunate Mary of Scotland is usually painted, but that which, with more than Spanish stiffness, surrounded the throat, and set off the morose head, of her fierce namesake, of Smithfield memory. This antiquated dress assorted well with the faded complexion, grey eyes, thin lips, and austere visage of the antiquated maiden, which was, moreover, enhanced by a black hood, worn as her ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 'generous'. Many, however, fall under the 'alias' rule, as 'ingenious', 'odious', while those which have i in the penultimate run the two last syllables into one, as 'pernicious', 'religious', 'vicious'. A few late introductions, coming straight from the Latin, retained the Latin stress, as 'morose', 'verbose'. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... early, and, after breakfast, visited the dog. He was quiet; but morose, and refused to leave his kennel. I wish there was some horse doctor near here; I would have the poor brute looked to. All day, he has taken no food; but has shown an evident desire for water—lapping it up, greedily. I was relieved ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... darkness, which it permeates, but does not destroy. It is a newer evangel, which does not seek to rebuild the world, but simply takes it as it is and fills it with clear fire, adding to its rough vigor purity of motive. I do not see how anyone who loves moonlight can be bad, or even morose and melancholy. Its light drowns all these in ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... he fell silent again, and even morose; and I think it possible he may have had some suspicions of me; for he suspected everyone, I think. But he brightened wonderfully when I said with a very innocent air that I would like my servant to be fetched, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... her condition; and every day had therefore lessened the hold Rina had over them; until now Garth felt, should it be necessary, he could bring the patient safely back to health unaided. Rina knew this too; and became daily more morose and sullen in her demeanour. To separate her longer from Mabyn would be, Garth felt, simply to promote an explosion. Besides, sufficiently housed now, well armed, and with the food safely stored, he felt strong enough to be merciful. On the night they moved into ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... too heavy for their draft. It was by no means a solid and compact army, after all, this west-bound wave of the first men with plows. All these things sat heavily on the soul of Jesse Wingate, who daily grew more morose and grim. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... man wakes up, the deep blue sky of early morning is peeping in at the cracks and at the little uncovered window. He feels unbearably cold, especially in the back and the feet. The train is standing still; Yasha, sleepy and morose, is busy ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was very feverish. His head ached, and the pain of his wound was very severe. His moral condition was, if possible, worse than on the preceding night. He was fretful, morose, and unreasonable towards those kind friends who kept vigil around his bedside. Strange as it may seem, and strange as it did seem to himself, his thoughts seldom reverted to the little angel. Once, when ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... imperfect history of the apostle James; and I do not know that I could adduce any fact specifically recorded concerning him in disproof of his absolute moral perfection, if any of his Jerusalem disciples had chosen to set up this as a dogma of religion. Yet no one would blame me, as morose, or indisposed to acknowledge genius and greatness, if I insisted on believing James to be frail and imperfect, while admitting that I knew almost nothing about him. And why?—Singly and surely, because we know him to be a man: ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... be blind." But no one says, "I would rather die than lose my hearing." As a matter of fact, the person who is totally blind generally appears to be more cheerful, happier, than one who is totally deaf. Deaf mutes are often dull, morose, quick tempered, obstinate, self-willed, and difficult to get along with, while the blind are not infrequently distinguished for qualities quite the reverse. It is worthy of remark that the eye is that organ of sense which is most ornamental as well as useful, and the deprivation of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... rogue had intentionally remarked to Paulita that, as there was so much more beautiful a woman close at hand, he did not care to strain his eyes looking beyond her. Paulita had blushed, covered her face with her fan, and glanced stealthily toward where Isagani, silent and morose, was abstractedly ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... jostling against each other. They would stand nonplussed for a while, exchanging in fierce whispers all the infamous names they could call to mind, and go at it again. Three times this occurred. He described it to me with morose thoughtfulness. He hadn't lost a single movement of that comic business. "I loathed them. I hated them. I had to look at all that," he said without emphasis, turning upon me a sombrely watchful glance. "Was ever there any one so ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... coarse woollen stockings, or in preparing, in the dirtiest manner in the world, the poorest and most insipid cheese that ever was made. The youths and maidens are by no means Estelles and Nemourins. I am aware that this account will be considered profane, and the writer of these facts, a morose, disagreeable person; but the truth is, nevertheless, better than false enthusiasm, which causes misrepresentation; and, having always before our eyes so much that is glorious and sublime, it cannot be necessary to inflate the imagination for ever a ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... World" troupe of strollers began very promptly to exhibit its kind. Albrecht, who was making money, retained his coarse good-nature unruffled by the hardships of travel; but the majority of the stage people grew morose and fretful,—the eminent comedian, glum and unapproachable as a bear; the leading gentleman swearing savagely over every unusual worry, and acting the boor generally; the ingenue, snappy and cat-like. Miss Norvell alone among them all ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... the living tufa above those narrow alcoves, where the chisel-marks are still fresh, and where the vigilant lamps still hang suspended from the roof by leaden chains. Or, in the Museum, he may read on basreliefs and vases how gloomy and morose were the superstitions of those obscure forerunners of majestic Rome. The piazza offers one of the most perfect Gothic facades, in its Palazzo Pubblico, to be found in Italy. The flight of marble steps is guarded from above by the bronze griffin of Perugia and the Baglioni, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... daily life, with outward monotony and internal variety, was a pleasant miscellany on which to comment. He was of a middle temperament, "between the jovial and the melancholic"; a lover of solitude, yet the reverse of morose; choosing bright companions rather than sad; able to be silent, as the mood took him, or to gossip; loyal and frank; a hater of hypocrisy and falsehood; a despiser of empty ceremony; disposed to interpret all things to the best; cheerful among his children; careless of exercising authority; incapable ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... be any cold-blooded and morose mortals who really dislike this book, I will give them a story to apply. When the great Duke of Marlborough, accompanied by Lord Cadogan, was one day reconnoitring the army in Flanders, a heavy rain came on, and they both called for their cloaks. Lord Cadogan's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... another, let him who will call in a warden of the city, if he be in the city, or if he be in the country, a warden of the country, and let him obtain a decision determining what each of them is to do. And he who will not abide by the decision shall suffer for his malignant and morose temper, and pay a fine to the injured party, equivalent to double the value of the injury, because he was unwilling ...
— Laws • Plato
... not show her letter to her girl friends. Jennie had received no news from Henri, and this disaster troubled her more than her bruised flesh. She went around with a sober face for at least an hour—which was a long time for Jennie Stone to be morose. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... morose disposition soon find themselves left alone in a mighty solitude; they are avoided like thistles which prick whoever touches them. Our Blessed Father always spoke with the highest praise of the ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... of the question, and he did not even attempt to take the final examinations. The parents felt distressed, but were unable to do anything for him. The least attempt at interference on their part, any attempt to console him, to induce him to pull himself together, made him more irritable, more morose; so that they finally left him alone. He was practically a total abstainer, but one evening he went out and came home drunk; and after that he drank frequently and heavily. His parents could do ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... had been asked to stay to dinner, but it happened that they had a conversazione already included in the day's programme, and so they took their departure soon after the others, the Professor, it must be confessed, in a somewhat morose frame of mind. Like all men of similar mental constitution, he hated to be mystified, and now, for the first time in his long career of investigation into apparently abstruse phenomena, he had been absolutely stumped by this perfect-mannered, quiet-spoken gentleman from the East who performed ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... finding that they could not rival the gentry, or even the middling rank of men, in opulence and plenty, were necessitated to betake themselves to other expedients for supporting their authority. They affected a furious zeal for religion, morose manners, a vulgar and familiar, yet mysterious cant; and though the liberality of subsequent princes put them afterwards on a better footing with regard to revenue, and thereby corrected in some degree those bad ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... seemed to be proud to wear the poet's double name, and was particularly great in all that author's plays that were usually performed, viz "Wasp," in Bartholomew Fair; "Corbaccio;" "Morose," in The Silent Woman; and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... slut's vivacity, but could not get rid of the uneasy annoyance peculiar to misunderstood people. Perhaps I had been taken for a robber—perhaps something I had said in my broken Italian had been thought insulting. I grew quite morose; thought of nothing else all the afternoon; was set down as an ill-tempered fellow at dinner; and on retiring to bed, could not help perpetually stating this question—"Why should that pretty girl, toward whom my heart had expanded, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... knitting at father's words, and rose and walked feebly to the window, where she stood a long time looking out at the death-white waste, shut in by the morose, ominous sky. Then, turning slowly, her face alight and beautiful with that beauty which is fairer than youth, she said, "It puts me in mind of the Great Snow, Ephraim,—it puts me in mind of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... character I conceived much respect and little enthusiasm. If there is anything more remarkable than the hard-working powers of the Scottish farmer it is his capacity for hard drinking. But that only makes him offensive in his brief conviviality and morose in the long subsequent sulkiness. Whereas I defy you to be seriously angry with a drunken Irishman, if you have a due sense of humour—and without that you have lost the salt of life. To my mind there is something austere in the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... with its banks white with snow. Before me stretched the Kirghiz Steppes. I was lost in thought, and my reverie was tinged with melancholy. Garrison life did not offer me much attraction. I tried to imagine what my future chief, Commandant Mironoff, would be like. I saw in my mind's eye a strict, morose old man, with no ideas beyond the service, and prepared to put me under arrest for the ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... how she strove to do right, her inexorable cousins always found something to reprove in whatever she did. In the course of two years Pierrette never received the slightest praise, or heard a kindly word. Happiness for her lay in not being scolded. She bore with angelic patience the morose ill-humor of the two celibates, to whom all tender feelings were absolutely unknown, and who daily made her feel ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the friendly feeling which prevails among them may be judged by the fact that, when one of the males becomes lost or is driven away from its associates, it does not seem to be able to join any other tribe, but becomes a "rogue," or solitary individual, and in this state develops a morose ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... supplied a voice which was wanting in the Queen's chapel, she asked the ambassador to let him enter her service. Riccio was not a blooming handsome man; though still young, he gave the impression of advanced years: he had something morose and repellent about him; but he showed himself endlessly useful and zealous, and won greater influence from day to day. He not merely conducted the foreign correspondence, on which all now depended and for which he was indispensable,—it became ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... into our school we had a new interest and for a time we forgot that tantalizing river wall below town. Jean was irregular in his attendance and his temper. He learned quickly, for an Indian. Sometimes he was morose and silent; sometimes he was affable and kind, chatting among us like one of our own; and sometimes he found the white man's fire-water. Then he murdered as he went. He was possessed of a demon to kill, kill the moment he became drunk. Every ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... their sides, except the sergeant, who was gloomy and morose. He was afraid the prisoners would rise and break out—which would have been a bad example. But there was no fear of that, and I stood myself before the window with my drawn sword. When sufficiently tamed by the strength of Gaspar Ruiz they came up ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... other subtle changes in her father. He had long since ceased to be the jovial, carefree companion who had shared with her her every girlish joy and sorrow and in whom she had confided both the trivial and momentous secrets of her childhood. He had become not exactly morose, but rather moody and absorbed, so that she had of late never found an opportunity for the cozy chats that had formerly meant so much to them both. There had been too, recently, a strange lack of consideration for herself that had wounded her more than she had imagined. Today there had been a ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... atmosphere in which I lived as a child. It could not have been more restricted, and yet its impressions live on to the present day. Still the merry joiner looks at me over the hedge, the morose minister over the board fence. Still I see the strapping, corpulent dairy-man standing in his doorway, with his hands in his pockets, in token that they are not empty; still I look upon the dresser of white leather, with his bilious ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... out with candle in hand and napkin on shoulder. Whether or not Petrushka was glad to see the barin return it is impossible to say, but at all events he exchanged a wink with Selifan, and his ordinarily morose exterior seemed momentarily ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... from the strange life that had thrown him amongst men whom safety itself made it necessary to command despotically, partly from the habit of power and disdain of the world, his nature was incrusted with a stern imperiousness of manner, often approaching to the harsh and morose, though beneath it lurked generosity ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of a Broadway hotel he was obliged to wait some minutes for the fulfillment of his orders and he spent the time in reading and studying the little grey note. When his luncheon was served he ate with an expression of morose dignity. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... appointed time I presented myself, and was received very pleasantly in a little drawing-room at his house in the Latin Quarter. His appearance, to me, was prepossessing; and though I had heard French artists speak of him as morose and bearish, I must say that his whole manner was most kindly and sympathetic, though not demonstrative. He was small, spare, and nervous-looking, with evident ill-health in his face and bearing, and under slight provocation, I should think, might have been disagreeable, but had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... morose suspicions, which were directed against everything of the kind, were a cruel addition to the sufferings of the unhappy persons who were accused ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... liberal to those that were under Necessity, especially to studious and hopeful Youths, and to such as were destitute in their Journey: In his Conversation he was very pleasant and affable, free from peevish and morose Humours, but very witty and satyrical. It is related, that when Erasmus was told, that Luther had married and gotten the famous Catharine Bora with Child, he should in a jesting Manner say, that, if according to the popular ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... clergyman. "I got permission to see him before he was taken away. He did not seem particularly pleased or disposed to see me. I begged him to tell me what the real truth was. He was, I think, somewhat dazed by the sentence—but he was also sullen and morose. I asked him where his wife and two children—one, a mere infant—were. For I had already been to his private address and had found that Mrs. Brake had sold all the furniture and disappeared—completely. ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... of future years, even then, fell across his mind. It would have been difficult to find two natures more unlike than were those of Mr. Judson and his wife. The former was stingy, even to miserly niggardliness, as well as ill-tempered, sullen and morose, while the latter was one of the most kind-hearted and motherly old ladies imaginable, that is, had her kindly nature been allowed to exhibit itself. As it was, not daring to act according to the dictates of her own kind heart, through fear of her stern companion, she had in the course ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... together. Even now it thrills me to think of those moments. For my father's sake I tried hard to learn my lessons, for I could see that he was spending his last kopeck upon me, and himself subsisting God knows how. Every day he grew more morose and discontented and irritable; every day his character kept changing for the worse. He had suffered an influx of debts, nor were his business affairs prospering. As for my mother, she was afraid even to say a word, or to weep aloud, for fear of still further angering him. Gradually she sickened, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of injury in which he recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point on which we must come to an understanding ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens |
