"Pathetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... actually gave me the idea that he was about to commit suicide. Flinging himself into a chair, and plunging his hand deep into his bosom, from which I almost expected to see him draw the fatal weapon, he extracted a paper, and held it forth to me. "Read!" he exclaimed, with the most pathetic tones of Talma in tragedy—"read my ruin!" I read, and found that it was a letter from his domineering little Jewess, commanding him to throw up his commission on the spot, and especially not to go to France, on penalty of her eternal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Caesar. 'It is the most brutal and the most pathetic scene that profane history has to record; it was, as Goethe has said, the most senseless deed that ever was done. It was wholly useless, for it did not and could not save Rome from monarchy. The deed was done by a handful of men, who, pursuing ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... champagne? He was, in fact, an object of the greatest pity—for I know of no greater than a gentleman of his habits without the means of gratifying them. He must live well, and he has not the means. Is there a more pathetic case? As for a mere low beggar—some labourless labourer, or some weaver out of place—don't let us throw away our compassion upon THEM. Psha! they're accustomed to starve. They CAN sleep upon boards, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of her success, Mrs. Tarbell was by no means satisfied with herself, and the pathetic note in Mrs. Stiles's voice proved too much for her. "Mrs. Stiles," she said, turning round quickly, "perhaps I have been putting one side of the matter too strongly before you. If you will bring your daughter here some morning, we can discuss ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... surely have found other and more interesting forms telling the same tale. If light falling through loose foliage does indeed make upon the garments of a lad lying beneath spots at a little distance wonderfully like mildew, then rather let the boy sit for us under a tree of denser foliage, where a pathetic subject will not risk an unintentionally comic treatment. If a stone-breaker's face corrupts in purple spots at a certain period after death, we would prefer him painted before corruption, and consequently hideousness, had begun. If women will wear gowns ugly in color and form, and will sit or stand ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... tell you that, did he? He always lets you know all the bothers I get into. You'll think I do nothing but fight and kick up rows; and," added the speaker, with a pathetic look of injured innocence, "I've been ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... beautiful:—that she could go no where without finding other Bellfleurs; and she might judge, by the danger she had just now so narrowly escaped, of the probability of being involved again in the same:—he represented to her, in the most pathetic terms, that her innocence could have no sure protection but in the arms of a husband, or the walls of a convent; and on his knees beseeched her, for the sake of that virtue which she so justly prized, since she would not accept of him for the one, to permit him to place her in that ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... this whole matter: it is neither height of thought that is discommended, nor pathetic vehemence, nor any nobleness of expression in its proper place; but it is a false measure of all these, something which is like them, and is not them: it is the Bristol-stone, which appears like a diamond; it is an extravagant thought, instead of a sublime one; it is roaring madness, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... PAINTERS The Earth-Veil The Mountain Glory Sunrise on the Alps The Grand Style Of Realization Of the Novelty of Landscape Of the Pathetic Fallacy Of Classical Landscape Of Modern Landscape ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... interesting to watch normal children in these concentrations, because from their habits we may learn so much which may improve our own sadly different manner of living. It is also interesting but pathetic to see the child gradually leaving them as he approaches boyhood, and to trace our part in leading him ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... this who may think me a trifle too fond and may doubt the great glory to which I testify here. They will remember how singularly the things we no longer possess rise upon the imagination and enlarge themselves, and they will quote that pathetic error whereby the dead become much dearer to us when we can no longer smile into their faces or do them the good we desire. They will suggest (most tenderly) that loss and the enchantment of memory have lent a thought too much of radiance and of harmony to what was certainly a noble creation ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... "infidel," a hater of humanity, grossly ignorant and wholly indifferent to the decencies, we now view Girard as a lonely and pathetic figure, living out his long life in untiring industry, always honest, direct, frank, handicapped by physical defects, wistful in his longing for love, helpless to express what he felt, with a heart that went out to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... but rather pathetic belief of the old dying Duke in the courtesy with which he and his States would be treated by the French, see Beugnot, tome 1. p. 80: "I feel sure that there is a courier of the Emperor's on the road to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... horrible stories to tell of the ravages of the Bulgar and the atrocities of the Bolsheviki. At one place the Serbian women and children got the breakfast of my men, the Tommies refusing to eat until the kiddies had been satisfied. And the pathetic homage they paid to our flag when they discovered it was the flag of England! I shall never forget some of the scenes which showed us also the wonderful trust the struggling nationalities of the world have in the power, humanity and honour of our country. It is a priceless possession ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... tight at the clasp of her waist, and letting her chin fall on her throat, shook her body fretfully, much as a pettish little girl might do. Wilfrid grimaced. "Tick-tick" was not a pathetic elegy in his ears. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on a camp stool, with his back leaning against the dresser, his face lighted up by the blaze of a splendid fire, which burned in a most comfortable-looking kitchen range, and his hands drawing forth most pathetic music from a violin, sat his old friend Joe Dumsby, while opposite to him on a similar camp stool, with his arm resting on a small table, and a familiar black pipe in his mouth, sat that worthy son of ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... this time as if nobody loved him. As a song, it was not a very pathetic song, being all about coons spooning in June under the moon, and so on and so forth, but Gussie handled it in such a sad, crushed way that there was genuine anguish in every line. By the time he reached the refrain I was nearly in tears. It seemed such ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... smiled. "Her tender heart," said Mr. Erwyn, "is affected by the pathetic and moving spectacle of the poor hungry swans, pining for their native land and made a raree-show for visitors in the Pantiles; and she has gone to stay them with biscuits and to comfort ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... to Burke more than life. The old man's grief was agonizing and inconsolable. "The storm has gone over me," he wrote in words which are well known, but which can hardly be repeated too often for any who have an ear for the cadences of noble and pathetic speech,—"The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours; I am torn up by the roots and lie prostrate on the earth.... I am alone. I have none to meet my ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a pathetic ring in his tone, and tears rise to her eyes. Can anything be so hopeless as ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... a little pathetic. Neatness, rather than the gloss of novelty (though other gloss there was), characterised the garments of the men. The toilettes of the women were modest; that amount of praise (and it is a good deal) ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... another of the name, was commonly called Butterwood Harvey, as he lived on Butterwood Creek. Mr. Henry, it is believed, understanding that the people were on their guard against his faculty of moving the passions and through them influencing the judgment, did not resort to the pathetic as much as was his usual practice in criminal cases. His main object appeared to be, throughout, to cast discredit on the testimony of Tom Harvey. This he attempted by causing the law respecting riots to be read by one of his assistants. It appeared in evidence ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Roxholm a great attraction—his voice, his bearing, and his gentle gravity all seemed to convey a thing which reached the boy's heart. On his own part the childless man had from the first felt for his little kinsman a pathetic affection. Had fate been kind, instead of cruel, the son of his own Alice might have so bloomed and grown stalwart and fair. He liked to talk with the child even when he was but a few years old, and as time passed, and he shot ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... seized the dead body, and the numerous expences in which he had been involved, by petitions he could not withstand, from the meaner and more clamorous of those whom his late brother-in-law had left unpaid. He concluded with a pathetic prayer for her happiness, and a declaration that his own was lost for ever, since now he was even deprived of her sight. Cecilia wrote an affectionate answer to Mrs Harrel, promising, when fully at liberty, that she would herself ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... a lovely land, and around the burg of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely of all. Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the characterless plain in wearying repetition, and, save by some gaunt gray tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's fagot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amid the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment with the tedium and the endlessness ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... been implored by the Sisters to moderate the rigor of her austerities, in order to prolong her life for the sake of the community, she answered them by an instruction on the Christian's obligation of leading an austere and penitential life, and so pathetic were her words that the Sisters burned with a desire to ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... writer who has so thoroughly understood the wonderful eloquence of Napoleon as Lord Brougham. He has pronounced the address to the Old Guard, at Fontainebleau, "a masterpiece of dignified and pathetic composition"; and the speech at the Champ de Mars, he says, "is to be placed amongst the most perfect pieces of simple and majestic eloquence." Napoleon certainly knew well the people with whom he had to deal, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... to imagination that Robert Elsmere makes its main appeal, undoubtedly a powerful and pathetic one. It bids us ask ourselves what, with the phenomena before us, we can conceive possible and real. It implies, of course, much learning, with claims of victory in the spheres of history and science, with names ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... with someone that she had never even thought of pursuing. Mr. HALIFAX gives me an impression of almost cinematographic and gramophonic exactness in his portraiture. George Shadd, Ruth's father, who worked in the gasworks and was one of the very best, delighted me particularly, with his pathetic little garden, his battle with the slugs and black-fly, and his fine patience with Mrs. Shadd, who put her washing before his fire and her props among his choicest seedlings—a difficult woman indeed. The author writes with humour and sympathy; and that is the way to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... those centuries for this night; who has given up to the coming hour all the freedom of eternity, won in the old way, in hope of a new life in a new world such as she longed for...!" She stopped suddenly. As she had gone on speaking there had come with her words a strange pathetic, almost pleading, tone which touched me to the quick. As she stopped, I could see, before she turned away her head, that her eyes were ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... raised her lustrous eyes A beast peeped at the door; When she downward cast her eyes A fish gasped on the floor; When she turned away her eyes A bird perched on the sill, Warbling out its heart of love, Warbling, warbling still, With pathetic pleadings low. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... him a hearty fright; what had happened to her in the early night might very well happen to him before morning. And he so young! And with such immense possibilities of disorderly amusement before him! He felt quite pathetic over the notion of his own fate, as if it had been some one else's, and made a little imaginative vignette of the scene in the morning when they ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... mankind—generosity, self-denial, chastity, frugality, patience, protection to the feeble, the downtrodden, and the oppressed; the love of daring adventure, devotion to a pure religion and a lofty purpose, most admirably pathetic, even when in the eyes of the vulgar most fantastic—had been the proudest and most poetical of Spanish characteristics, never to be entirely uprooted from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... marvellous Iambes (in alternate lines of 12 and 8 syllables), which hiss and stab like poisoned bullets, and which were transmitted to his family by a venal gaoler. There he wrote the best known of all his verses, the pathetic Jeune captive, a poem at once of enchantment and of despair. Suffocating in an atmosphere of cruelty and baseness, Chenier's agony found expression almost to the last in these murderous Iambes which he launched against the Convention. Ten days before ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... Halicarnassus, thinking to correct me and avenge himself. Now I knew quite well that America loved him, and did not love his brother, but with the mention of his name came into my mind the tender, grieved surprise of that pathetic little appeal, and I just said thought it aloud,—assuming historic knowledge enough in my listeners to prevent misconception. But to this day Halicarnassus persists in thinking or at least in asserting, that I tripped ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... and Sublime.—What a world of reasonings, not immediately obvious, did the sage of old open to our inquiry, when he said that the pathetic was the truest source of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... her kind in trying to create here in this room a piece of England. Through the window he looked out upon a lawn which was being watered by a garden-sprinkler, and where a gardener was at work attending to a bed of bright flowers. There, too, she had been making the usual pathetic attempt to convert a half-acre of this country of yellow desert into a green garden of England. Coulson had not a shadow of doubt in his mind Stella Ballantyne would exchange this room with its restful colours and its outlook on a green lawn for—at ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... in which the question was asked, the pathetic look that accompanied it, convinced Captain Winstanley that, if he valued his domestic ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... then got Oxo for the men, many of whom had had nothing to eat for two days. They are a nice-looking lot of men and boys, with rather handsome faces and clear eyes. Their absolute exhaustion is the most pathetic thing about them. They fall asleep even when their wounds are being dressed. When all was made straight and comfortable for them, the nurses turned the lights low again, and stepped softly about the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... chapter in which the boy and the girl are lost in the cave, and Tom, seeing a gleam of light in the distance, discovers that it is a candle carried by Indian Joe, the one enemy he has in the world. In 'Pudd'nhead Wilson' the great passages of 'Huckleberry Finn' are rivaled by that most pathetic account of the weak son willing to sell his own mother as a slave "down the river." Altho no one of the books is sustained thruout on this high level, and altho, in truth, there are in each of them passages here and there that we could wish away (because they are not worthy of the association ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... written to Dickens on the appearance of his fourth number (early in April): "Chuffey is admirable. . . . I never read a finer piece of writing: it is deeply pathetic ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... she shrank back at sight of him. "That man there," pointing to Miller, "is Karl von Mueller, captain in the Secret Service." A low moan broke from Kathleen, and she looked anywhere but at Miller, who had stepped forward to stand between her and the pine table with its pathetic burden. "Von Mueller," continued ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... deposited, and there have passed hours in silent meditation. Influenced by this sublime and holy feeling, the sachem whose mother's tomb had been violated gathered his men together and addressed them in the following beautifully simple and pathetic harangue—a curious specimen of Indian eloquence, and an affecting instance of filial piety ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... few more pathetic words in the New Testament than that short sentence which tells of his rejection, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Another pathetic word is that which describes the neglect of those ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... me that Felicia that night was in her most charming mood. She wore a dress of some soft white material, and a large black hat, under which her face—a little paler even than usual—wore almost a pathetic aspect. Her fingers touched my arm as we entered the restaurant together. She seemed, in a way, to have lost some of her self-control,—the exclusiveness with which she had surrounded herself,—and to have become ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... between men and women arrived at an age to discriminate beyond mere physical charm, nevertheless physical charm is the most powerful, though not always acknowledged, motive of their choice. 'Because of this,' says the pathetic Hilda Donne in A Marriage Ceremony, touching her cheek, which is terribly disfigured by a birth-mark, 'I have never had love. Can you think what that means? You can't. Once I thought I was not ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... perceives that the hero is softened, and then only in such a manner as to flatter the pride of the conqueror. The ego d'eleeinoteros per, and the apusato aecha geronta, are not exactly like the tone of the earlier parts of the Iliad. They are almost too fine and pathetic. The whole passage defies translation, for there is that about the Greek which has no name, but which is of so fine and ethereal a subtlety that it can only be felt in the original, and is lost in an attempt to transfuse it into ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... quite pathetic in the tones in which this declaration of renunciation was made. It was evidently a supreme effort of repentance, and Reginald felt almost uncomfortable ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... woman she was. Her tailor-made gown of dark green cloth fitted her to perfection; she was turned out with all that delightful perfection of detail which seems to be the Frenchwoman's heritage. Her smile, half pathetic, half appealing, was certainly sufficient to turn the head of a dozen young ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... relaxed when Winny flung herself from side to side again and over, and lighted on her feet in the little curtseying posture, perfunctory and pathetic. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... besought him on her knees, but his fear of losing an army made all pleadings vain. In fact, as I ascertained by the following cablegram which came into my hands, Napoleon's instructions for the French evacuation were in Mexico at the very time of this pathetic scene between him and Carlotta. The despatch was in cipher when I received it, but was translated by the telegraph operator at my headquarters, who long before had mastered the key of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... vaudevilles: she could not represent her own character,—an actress's talent and heart being as widely separated, in general, as yours are. She could bring upon the stage in her body the presentment of a naive, innocent, pathetic nature, and use the influence such nature might have on the people outside the orchestra-chairs there. It was not her own nature, we know. She dressed and looked it. A timid little thing, in her fluttering white slip, her light hair cut close to her head, in short curls. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... London slums, I had occasion to observe that among the women of the poor, and more especially in those who had lost the first bloom of youth, modesty consisted chiefly in the fear of being disgusting. There was an almost pathetic anxiety, in the face of pain and discomfort, not to be disgusting in the doctor's eyes. This anxiety expressed itself in the ordinary symptoms of modesty. But, as soon as the woman realized that I found nothing disgusting in whatever was proper and necessary ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... city of Antibes is at once a type of the old regime and of the new. Lying on the sea, with a background of snow-capped mountains, it has not entirely escaped the fate of Nice; neither has it yet lost all its old Provencal characteristics. It is a pathetic compromise between the quaint reality of the old and the blatancy of the new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the roast-horse and roast-mule which the garrison seems to have been chiefly living on for the past five or six weeks, and find both pretty good, quite equal, if not superior, to the old trek-ox. Some people tell us pathetic stories of the hardships to women and young children and babies, owing to the difficulty of getting proper food, especially milk. On the other hand, many seem to have actually enjoyed the siege, and two or three young ladies have assured me that they found it infinitely diverting and enjoyed ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... Drinkwater, he lay calm and sensible, like a man just recovering from some long illness, and there was a look of pathetic wonder in his eyes that he was still alive which was pitiful ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... consideration for the boxes which he was handing down in a manner expressive of energy and expedition, rather than any regard for their contents. A resounding "thump" on the ground, caused by the sudden descent of one of her precious charges, elicited a cry of agony from the Frenchwoman, accompanied by the pathetic appeal: ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... forth question after question, I could not help noticing and wondering about the pathetic wistfulness in her eyes and the nervous eagerness of her manner. Presently she said she hoped to visit the Yosemite herself some time, and then hurriedly asked if I had seen any of the people who live there during the winter, and if ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... Colonel Morden.— Compliments him on his pathetic narratives. Farther account of ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... There is something almost pathetic in the history of these efforts which were made during the progress of secession, to avert, if possible, the coming shock. The great peace conference, assembled by the action of Virginia, belongs to these painful and wasted endeavours. On February 4, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... seen New York disintegrate, and Arthur's explanation sounded like some wild dream of an imaginative novelist. Not one person in all the gathering could actually realize that his home might yet be waiting for him, though at the same time he felt a pathetic anxiety for the welfare ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... taste for "demonstrations" of any sort had gone out of the people. Sympathetic crowds met the trains from Switzerland that contained the first of the "grands blesses" the militarily useless wounded whom Germany at last concluded to give back to their homes. And I recall one pathetic sight which I witnessed by accident—the arrival of one of the long trains from the front bringing back the first "permissionnaires" those soldiers who had been given a three or four days' leave after nine months in the trenches. In front of the Gare de l'Est a great ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the general list of attractions calculated to reconcile a young lady to a parental roof with which she had no practical acquaintance. At all events, when I feared the embarrassment and dismay of a pathetic parting with darling grandmamma and the aunties, and the sweet cat and the dear vicar and all the other objects of affection, I ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... said Mr. Puttock, spreading out his plump hands in pathetic fashion, "as you might conjecture, Mr.—" he glanced at the visitor's card—"Benham, my influence at the present juncture is less than nil. I am powerless. I can only look on at what I conceive to be a course of conduct fraught with peril to the true interests ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... kindle charity than the most elaborate arguments. The fullest exposition of Mr. Tryan's doctrine might not have sufficed to convince Janet that he had not an odious self-complacency in believing himself a peculiar child of God; but one direct, pathetic look of his had dissociated him ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... conflicting impulses, that we teach people this indirect and tactical procedure in life, and to judge by remote consequences instead of the immediate face of things. The very desire to act as our own souls would have us, coupled with a pathetic disbelief in ourselves, moves us to follow the example of others; perhaps, who knows? they may be on the right track; and the more our patterns are in number, the better seems the chance; until, if we be acting in concert ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... published in Sydney in 1862. It was not long before he recognised the extreme weakness of most of its contents, and did what he could to suppress the book. He sent specimens of his best work to the London 'Athenaeum', and wrote a pathetic letter to the Editor, which was printed in the issue of 27th September, 1862, together with some of the poems and a most kindly comment. Kendall soon wrote again, sending more poems, and received encouraging notices in 'The Athenaeum' on 19th September, 1863, 27th February, 1864, and 17th February, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... Mr. Webster knew the chord to strike, and he touched it with a master hand. This was the "something left out," of which we know the general drift, and we can easily imagine the effect. In the midst of all the legal and constitutional arguments, relevant and irrelevant, even in the pathetic appeal which he used so well in behalf of his Alma Mater, Mr. Webster boldly and yet skilfully introduced the political view of the case. So delicately did he do it that an attentive listener did not realize that he was straying from the field of "mere ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... for it," replied his tormentor; "but the best thing you can do is to write an apology at once: pitch it pretty strong in the pathetic line, - say it's your first offence, and that you'll never be a naughty boy again, and all that sort of thing. You just do that, Giglamps, and I'll see that the note goes ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... but instantly throwing a tone of pathetic appeal into his voice: "Why, Capt'n, look a' here! It's hard seein' any diff'rence between young babbies in broad sunlight and a smooth sea; but down in the ragin' waves, an' in the night time, ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... how pathetic, when you come to think of it! I should really like to make her acquaintance. Don't you think it's too silly? There is my father, spending half his lifetime with a person who is probably very attractive—and I don't ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... the officer who caught him when falling, he implored him to support him, saying, "Do not let my brave soldiers see me drop, the day is ours, keep it!" A death attended with circumstances more pathetic or incidents more picturesque the annals of war do ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... if challenging that lady to take a 'set to' with him; while Bloody Mike stumbled over the prostrate form of the lady's maid, who occupied a temporary bed upon the floor. Forgetting his assumed part, he yelled out for something to drink, and forthwith began to sing in tones of thunder, the pathetic ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... and obtained control over him in the deciding days that were to follow. Guided by the duke, and attended by his brothers, but without the ceremonious glories of regality, Lewis XVI. went down to the Assembly and made his submission. In the pathetic solemnity of the scene, the deputies forgot for a moment their righteous anger and their more righteous scorn, and the king returned to the palace on foot, in a sudden procession of triumph, amnestied and escorted by the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... between the brother-officers was boisterous, but there was something almost pathetic in the warmth with which they grasped hands, for they had first met in the same ship as middies, and many a time during Captain Lawrence's visits Nic had sat and listened to their recollections of the dangers they had gone ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... her two companions had to laugh at this, but the laughter was close to tears, after all. It was really pathetic that this waif of the streets should suspect the sanity of anybody who desired to do her ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... touchingly subdued and apologetic, nestling close to his sister's side and whispering to her how he had tried to get ma to wait and come down to the Settlement, and hungrily begging with his pathetic childish eyes for her to say that this thing which had come upon them was not, after all, the calamity he feared. Snub-nosed, nine-year-old Pony, whose two front teeth had come in quite too large for his mouth, Pony, with the quick-expanding pupils, and the temperament ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... hand nervously clutching a branch of rhododendron, one foot twisting in the moss, Lescott was seeing an altogether new Sally. There was a renunciation in her eyes that in contrast with the child- like curve of her lips, and slim girlishness of her figure, seemed entirely pathetic. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... work "with an expression of satisfaction on his face that indicated a sense of happiness and content that his boy, born in that distant, humble home in Ohio, had risen to fame and brought such honor upon the name. It was, indeed, a pathetic sight to see a father venerate his son as the elder Edison did." Not less at home was Mr. Mackenzie, the Mt. Clemens station agent, the life of whose child Edison had saved when a train newsboy. The old Scotchman was one of the innocent, chartered libertines ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... a strolling fiddler and his dog. The fiddler has been ruined by drink, and his monologue is one of the most pathetic and effective pieces in ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... never before in his hitherto easy going life had he so earnestly needed it. A sense of humour in a queer abstract way provides a quality of companionship—it gives a man the power to be a pal to himself—to talk to himself aloud—to laugh at adversity—to spot the comic side in the most pathetic predicament. Each day provided something new in the matter of discomfort or alarm. The calls he was obliged to make upon his resources of humour were therefore severe and exacting. Over and over ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... than out of it? There was not one of their number who did not inwardly rejoice at Mrs. Pelham's going, but they clouded their gentle faces in decorous mourning; they grouped about her on the piazza when the hour for parting came, looking infinitely pathetic and picturesque, and the soft voices were touching in their subdued sorrow; there were even eyes that glistened with unshed tears, and both Mrs. Raymond and Mrs. Turner begged that she would write to them, and heaven only knows what all. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the eternal Lheureux, who swore he would arrange matters if the doctor would sign him two bills, one of which was for seven hundred francs, payable in three months. In order to arrange for this he wrote his mother a pathetic letter. Instead of sending a reply she came herself; and when Emma wanted to know whether he had got anything out of her, "Yes," he replied; "but she wants to see the account." The next morning at daybreak Emma ran to Lheureux to beg him to make out another account for not more ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... it with a small, pathetic sigh, and took a step towards the fireplace, as if to entreat his pardon. But before he could be aware of this his attention was claimed by a sound without. The latch of the back door was lifted with a click, and, almost before ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... china, delf, glass, and plate in the establishment. He made us go into the cellar, and told us how much wine he had got there, and how much beer. "It's all paid for, Mrs Greenow, every bottle of it," he said, turning round to my aunt, with a pathetic earnestness, for which I had hardly given him credit. "Everything in this house is my own; it's all paid for. I don't call anything a man's own till it's paid for. Now that jacket that Bellfield swells about with on the sands ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... before long, manage to arrive. The good Suhm, who had been Saxon Minister at Petersburg to his sorrow this long while back, got in motion soon enough; but, alas, his lungs were ruined by the Russian climate, and he did not arrive. Something pathetic still in those final LETTERS of Suhm. Passionately speeding on, like a spent steed struggling homeward; he has to pause at Warsaw, and in a few days dies there,—in a way mournful to Friedrich and us! To Duhan, and Duhan's children afterwards, he was punctually, not too lavishly, attentive; in like ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... from the roof, while looking-glasses, chandeliers, and girandoles decked the walls, the whole enlivened by garlands of flowers and festoons of silk and ribbons. Here we were waited upon by twenty-four negroes in blue and white turbans and party-coloured clothes and sashes, whilst the most pathetic music was performed by a concealed band. Toasts to the king and queen, the royal family, the army and navy, with their respective commanders, the knights and their ladies, and the ladies in general, were drunk in succession, each followed by a flourish ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... removed from earth. He was even driven out from the Unitarian body. But he was none the less steadfast and bold, and the great mass of men and women who thronged his audience room at Boston and his lecture rooms in other cities spread his ideas. His fate was pathetic. Full of faith and hope, but broken prematurely by his labours, he retired to Italy, and died there at the darkest period in the history of the United States—when slavery in the state and the older orthodoxy in the Church seemed absolutely ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the first time that she had a pivot on which to hang her quadrennial plea, and that pivot was Wyoming, the men of that equal-minded State in both conventions holding up her hands. Miss Anthony's pathetic eyes reveal that she has attained to loneliness—the guerdon of great spirits who struggle from any direction toward the mountain tops of human liberty. But on the heights such souls meet God, and one day all women shall ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... ingratitude in 65 A.D., when the emperor seized upon a plot against himself as the pretext for sentencing Seneca to enforced suicide. In the vivid pages of the historian Tacitus, there are few more pathetic descriptions than that recounting the slow ebbing of the old philosopher's life after his veins had been opened. Seneca had known many vicissitudes of fortune. He was banished from Rome in 41 A.D., but, after his recall, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... to them that do succeed; But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound To such as fail. They all our loss expound; They comfort us for work that will not speed, And life—itself a failure. Ay, his deed, Sweetest in story, who the dusk profound Of Hades flooded with entrancing sound, Music's own tears, was failure. Doth it read ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... erect as a confidante on the stage of the Francais; nothing will persuade me that she has not been impaled and the shaft broken off in her body. Miss Stevens is, however, fair enough to be not too unpleasing if I must positively marry her. But—and this to me is truly pathetic—she has the hands of a woman as immaculate as the sacred ark; they are so red that I have not yet hit on any way to whiten them that will not be too costly, and I have no idea how to fine down her fingers, which are like sausages. Yes; she evidently belongs to the ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... the supreme value of this last essay is made by the fact that in its pathetic statement of uncertainties and probabilities one can discern something very much resembling a declaration of faith. Though assured that we have yet no foundation for any belief in the persistence of consciousness after the death of the brain, we are bidden to remember that the ultimate ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... kiss it; then checked himself, apparently terrified at his own boldness and the chasm he had been on the point of bridging. There was the merest suggestion of all this, but I understood it and smiled, for nothing is more pathetic than to see the frank impulse of an inferior checking itself abashed. The love of a plebeian for a girl of noble ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Lady Beauchamp's "comprehending" Everett in this matter. There was something almost pathetic in her mingled anger, perplexity, and disappointment. She could only look on him as a headstrong young man, suicidally bent on his own ruin,—turning obstinately from every offered aid, and putting the last climax of wretchedness to his isolated and fallen position ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... Cragsnook, with its joys of new-found interest, however, soon erased the picture of the pathetic little child and her caretaker from the minds of the three scouts, and when next morning Mrs. Harris bade them good-by and started back to New York, she had no idea what part that first incident of their ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... resistless as a blade. Had she said to me: "Sir, you are an upstart, and I, sitting quietly at the same table with you, and inviting you to eat of the same dish of marmalade, am a descendant of the Blands and the Fairfaxes,"—her words would have stabbed me less deeply than did the pathetic "Can this be ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... outside the pale of organized religion of today. George Santayana is a materialist and sceptic who, in his "Reason in Religion," reveals his scepticism and frowns upon personal immortality. "It is pathetic," he comments, "to observe how lowly are the motives that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity, and from what a hard-pressed and bitter existence they have been drawn. To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the honor of the men. When a woman is inconsistent the husband must be, according to me, minotaurized. If the minotaurized man is a fine fellow, if he enjoys a certain esteem,—and many husbands really deserve to be pitied,—then in speaking of him, you say in a pathetic voice, 'M. A—- is a very estimable man, his wife is exceedingly pretty, but they say he is not happy in his domestic relations.' Thus, madame, the estimable man who is unhappy in his domestic relations, the man who has an inconsistent wife, or the husband who ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... interesting inasmuch as it assists us to appreciate the pathetic condition of Irish affairs at the time. The very fact that the petition of the Irish parliament could be so handled, proves how strong had been the hold over Ireland by England, and with what daring insistence the English ministers ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... off the sloppy marsh to stand under the trees, and old Ladrone edged close to the big fire to share its warmth. This caused us to bring in the other horses and put them close to the fire under the big branches of the fir tree. It was deeply pathetic to watch the poor worn animals, all life and spirit gone out of them, standing about the fire with drooping heads and half-closed eyes. Perhaps they dreamed, like us, of the beautiful, warm, grassy hills of ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... still that little foreign accent that made it so pathetic, although, in spite of some odd blunders, she had become almost fluent in the English tongue. There was still no indication of tears in either her voice or her eyes, as she leaned back in the padded chair, her head supported by its ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... seem self-contained and equal to his troubles, Anna telling Lillian not to mind, and the latter staring dumbly into the future, not knowing what to think. Surely a brilliant sun had set on their local scene, and in a very pathetic way. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... music, and not necessarily sad music either, has the same effect. Why this particular emotion should be aroused is certainly an enigma. "Crying because you are so happy" is similar {514} but itself rather inexplicable. In many other cases, the emotional appeal of art is easily analyzed. The pathetic appeals straightforwardly to the grief impulse, the humorous to the laughter impulse, the tragic to fear and escape. The sex motive is frequently utilized in painting and sculpture as well as ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... frequently told me that she liked Angus from the start because he seemed so robed in health and draped in a kind of pathetic modesty, with eyes whose colour she was certain would not fade. How women do love the metaphors of millinery! How better than the sage of Chelsea they understand the philosophy of clothes! But she also ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Brandy Station, Gettysburg and other engagements. At the cavalry engagement of New Baltimore he was taken prisoner, and soon thereafter made the acquaintance of the inside of Libby Prison. We get many glimpses of life in that well-known Prison-Pen, and are treated to numerous pathetic and humorous incidents that fell under Glazier's notice. All have read of what was endured by such of the Union soldiers who passed that ordeal, and the reader can, therefore, imagine what fell to the lot ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... The appeal was pathetic and sincere. It fell on adders' ears. His scheme found favour neither with Brethren nor with Utraquists. To the Brethren Augusta was a Jesuitical juggler. To the Utraquists he was a supple athlete trying to dodge his ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... effect. They are kept in perfect order, and the inscriptions, though not always eloquent, are almost always full of feeling, and sometimes extremely touching. There is one near the entrance, which is pathetic in its native language, and though it loses much in the translation, I ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the mirth there was a pathetic passage between a couple of impecunious players, Johnny Brinkley (played by Mr. GEORGE ELTON, who had many good things to say and said them well) and Effie, his wife, on the theme of the precariousness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... A pathetic incident happened one day. We were transporting eight prisoners to Boma and when we stopped these carried wood on to the steamer. One of them was the son of the Chief of a large village at which we stopped, who thus had the mortification of seeing his ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... too. It is a dear room, with something pathetic about its simple sweetness, and the kind thought to give me pleasure which shows in every little innocent detail. The floor is covered with a white straw matting, and there are no two pieces of furniture that match. There's a wide, wooden bed of no particular period that I can recognise, ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... destroy almost everything before he went, except at Douchy, where there was some good dug-out timber. Needless to say, the famous Mary of that village was not to be found. The French were immensely pleased at regaining part of their lost territory, though it was a pathetic sight to see some of the old people coming to look at the piles of bricks which had once been their homes. Two ladies came to Gommecourt with a key, little thinking that so far from finding a lock they would find not even a door or door-way—there was not even a brick wall more than two ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... of the most humorous passages; of the most pathetic. In the humorous passages is the author laughing at her characters, or laughing with them? Compare in this respect her treatment of Mrs. Jamieson, Miss Barker, and Miss Pole with Scott's treatment of Prior ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... them, says: "Almost all their songs were thoroughly religious in their tone, however quaint their expression, and were in a minor key both as to words and music. The attitude is always the same, and, as a commentary on the life of the race, is infinitely pathetic. Nothing but patience for this life—nothing but triumph in the next. Sometimes the present predominates, sometimes the future; but the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... down from the Bunker Hill Monument, and the Stars and Stripes raised in its place; every now and then, also, the shrieks and groans of the wounded, were heard from the corn-patch, which added, of course, the pathetic element to the scene. At last, when all the ammunition was exhausted, peace was declared, and the American forces assembling around the monument, listened to General Stark, as he vehemently burst forth into "To be, or not to be," pointing ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... her guitar, commences a song, the first that occurs to her, which chances to be "Lucy Neal," a negro melody, at the time much in vogue on the plantations of the South. She has chosen the pathetic strain without thought of the effect it may produce upon her sister. Observing it to be painful she abruptly breaks off, and with a sweep of her fingers across the guitar strings, changes to the merrier refrain of "Old Dan Tucker." Helen, touched by the delicate consideration, rewards it with ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of something which is awful, even dreadful to remember—something which bears with searching force on all men's ways and hopes and plans—something before which he knew himself to be as it were continually arraigned—something which it was strange and pathetic to find so little recognized among other men." But, alas! this is how we refuse to live. We thrust the thought of judgment from us; we treat it as an unwelcome intruder, a disturber of our peace; we block up every approach ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... romantic interest. Legends are afloat concerning the King's later days which would not be altogether unworthy the closing hours of a great Roman emperor. George had his melting moments, it would seem, and not long before his death, being in a pathetic mood, he gave the Duchess of Kendal a pledge that if he should die before her, and it were possible for departed souls to return to earth and impress the living with a knowledge of their presence, he, the faithful and aged lover, would come back from the grave to his mistress. When ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... among all those who knew him best, it had long come to be recognised that his skill as an impersonator was only second to his genius as a creator of humorous and pathetic character. His success in each capacity sprang from his intense sympathy and his equally intense earnestness. Whatever with him was worth doing at all, was worth doing thoroughly. Anything he undertook, no matter what, he went in at, according to the good old ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... at me with so touching an expression in his dark eyes—he might have been making some most pathetic request—that I really could not resist him. Besides which, to confess the truth, the proposal found great favour in my own eyes. I looked consideringly at the ready-cut slices of ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... previous letter had meant? Was Anthony Leverett nearing the end, counting his days, finishing up his earthly work, and delegating it to other hands? There was something pathetic in it, and the trust in the uprightness and honor that Anthony Leverett reposed in him touched him keenly. But this part surprised and, at first, annoyed him. He drew his fine brows in ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Dialogues issued by this writer, Dr Johnson remarked, with his usual pointed severity, 'Here is a man telling the world what the world had all his life been telling him.' His 'Monody' expresses real grief in an artificial style, but has some stanzas as natural in the expression as they are pathetic in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... things)—knowing as I did that Miss Rose Delaine and Miss Wright had both refused him. I did not realise in my intolerant youth that the anxiety of some middle-aged bachelors still to appear eligible, the way their minds hover round imaginary conquests, has its pathetic side. Looking back, I believe now that Miss Collett was not by any means poor Uncle Tom's first choice, but his last chance. And perhaps he was her last ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... the hall light. She stood there, blinking, a bent, pathetic little figure. Her eyes were averted. "Are you all right, Ma? We began to worry ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... discover that the corpse, God forgive him, is that of a brother and friend and that the Powers of Darkness threatening humanity are advancing upon him ... out of Moscow. I muse ... yes, it was a good war. War is never pathetic, never wholly a waste. Maturity no less than childhood must have its circuses. But the Jabberwock ... Ah! the Jabberwock ... the soul of man celebrating the immortal triumph of righteousness ... the good Don Quixote has valiantly slain another windmill and your Sancho Panza shakes ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... began to tell his story over again to her, and she stayed so long listening to it, that her companions had turned the corner of the street, and were out of sight. She looked about in great distress; and I never shall forget the pathetic voice with which she said, 'Oh! what will become of me? every body will be angry with me.' I assured her that nobody should be angry with her, and she gave me her little hand with the utmost innocent ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... moment the light in her eyes changed. The look there was an appeal, and it expressed confidence, too. Prescott felt a strange tremour. Her glance rested full upon him and it was strangely soft and pathetic. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... attempt to gleam, is admired and recorded by its well-disciplined constituency. Not only that, but at the first timid blink of the sun the true Scotsman remarks smilingly, 'I think now we shall be having settled weather!' It is a pathetic optimism, beautiful but quite groundless, and leads one to believe in the story that when Father Noah refused to take Sandy into the ark, he sat down philosophically outside, saying, with a glance at the clouds, 'Aweel! the day's just aboot the ord'nar', ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... action, of course, excited a good deal of criticism amongst the older dignitaries of the order, and among the members of the government and court, it was heartily approved of by the world at large, as being not only well deserved, but also a singularly pathetic demonstration on the part of the dying monarch of his profound sense of obligation to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... he swept his fingers over the strings, and a burst of harmony arose and filled the marble room; and, as it died away in softest echoes, his sweet, clear, pathetic voice sang ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... strand me, Hester!" replied her brother. "How you could see anything pathetic, or pitiful as you call it, in that disreputable old humbug, I can't even imagine. A more ludicrous specimen of tumble-down humanity it would be impossible to find! A drunken old thief—I'll lay you any thing! Catch me leaving a sov where he ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... although she would have had fine eyes but for her red lashless lids. She wore her thick hair cropped short, like a boy, and was pasty and sallow in complexion, hollow-cheeked, thick-featured, and overgrown, with long thin hands and feet, and arms and legs of quite pathetic length and tenuity; a silent and melancholy little girl, who sucked her thumb perpetually, and kept her own counsel. She would have to lie in bed for days together, and when she got well enough to ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... hers. There was something almost pathetic in the worshiping light which shone there. He was, as he had always been, ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his wife," that "Nikitin was one of the most remarkable men in the world," that "only his intimate friends could know how remarkable he was"; partly too upon the dog-like capacity of Andrey Vassilievitch to fetch and carry for his friend, to put himself indeed to the greatest inconvenience. It was pathetic to see the flaming pleasure in the man's eyes when Nikitin permitted him to wait upon him, and how ironically, upon such an occasion, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... message in Scotland as elsewhere. It seems to us now as if the burden which it laid on the individual—on frail and feeble women, for example, in that time of persecution—was overwhelming. It is most pathetic to find Knox, when sitting down to write tender and consoling messages to those in such circumstances, pre-occupied with urging the obligation of each one of them individually to hold fast, against possible torture ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... self-repression, would probably give her a death-blow. He felt literally like a murderer before her, but he had to answer. Talbot's own letter, General Washington's command, and the promptings of his own affection had made him an actor in this pathetic drama. He had no choice but to proceed. The truth must be told. Nerving himself to the inevitable, he replied ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... so!" cried Suzette. "You think that because you would have done it for any one! But you have done it for us; and as long as I live I shall remember that! Oh"—She broke off; and dropped her face with a pathetic, childlike helplessness on her lifted arm; and now he was less than ever able to leave her. They all sat down again, after they had risen to part; Matt felt the imperative necessity of encouraging them; of rescuing her from the conjecture ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... firm had been that mighty hero's grasp upon the national imagination, that the Franks accepted as matter of course that his family should bear rule, and rallied round the various worthless members of it with rather pathetic loyalty, fighting for them one against the other, reuniting and redividing the various fragments of the empire, until the feeble Carlovingian race died ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... and refined as she was, she went into rough bar-rooms, and knelt on their floors, and prayed what her sad heart wus full of,—for pity and mercy for her boy, and other mothers' boys,—prayed with that fellowship of suffering that made her sweet voice as pathetic as tears, and patheticker, so ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... be nothing at all remarkable or remorseful about Ralph Rackstraw. But Ralph immediately begins to sing about a nightingale and a moon's bright ray and several other things most inappropriate to the occasion, and winds up with "He sang, Ah, well-a-day," in the most pathetic manner. The other sailors repeat after him, "Ah, well-a-day," also in a very pathetic manner, and Ralph thanks them in the politest, most heartbroken manner, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... said Patty, squeezing his hand, "you are always so wise and good. That's just the point; we must not spoil the happiness by the sorrow, though that is what Marian is always trying to do. Poor Marian, she's such a pathetic creature; I wish ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... started. Impossible for her to speak in that first moment. But when she had dried her eyes, she said, with a pathetic childish air— ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... sad ones—sentimental an' romantic, with a bad case o' chronic lonesomeness; an' one twilight he told her a pathetic little love story about a girl back in England what had had sense enough to cut him out of her assets when he had trooped over to this country to punch a fortune out o' beef cattle. This had been about five years previous; but his heart still ached about it—though it hadn't ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... hour passed. Then the door opened slowly. Peggy came in. She was pale, and her eyes were red. She smiled—a pathetic little smile. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... as the Captain was on all ordinary occasions, he proved, on the present, eloquent and almost pathetic; for the tears came into his eyes when he recounted the various quarrels which had become addled, notwithstanding his best endeavours to hatch them into an honourable meeting; and here was one, at length, just chipping the shell, like to be smothered, for want of the most ordinary ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... grace, from the cross. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." The death of Christ is an expression of God's free grace. If we regard Christ, in his life and character, as a manifestation of God's will, then his pathetic and tender death reveals to us that God loves us even when we are sinners, before reparation or repentance; "for, while we were sinners, Christ ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke |
