"Tragic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sorrowing. So, at least, Farrell had often seen it, among even the most loving and passionate of women. Nelly's renascence in the quiet Westmorland life had been a fresh instance of it; and he had good reason for thinking that, but for the tragic reappearance of George Sarratt, it would not have taken very long,—a few months more, perhaps—before she would have been persuaded to let herself love, and be ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... application for special leave in case the ordinary leave should be cut off. I think I'm almost certain to arrive by the 11th. Won't we have a time? I wonder what we'll want to do most—sit quiet or go to theatres? The nine days of freedom—the wonderful nine days—will pass with most tragic quickness. But they'll be days to remember as long as ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... there is exceedingly little comedy in the sagas. The roughest horse-play in practical joking, the most insolent lampoons in verbal satire, form, as a rule, the lighter element; and pieces like the Bandamanna Saga, which with tragic touches is really comic in the main, are ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... close up to her, tragic and terrible, and pulling away her hands with which she had covered her face, he continued: "Well, I call upon you now to tell me which of us two is the father of this young man; he or I, your husband or your lover. Come! Come! ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... he was often summoned, for his verse's sake, and in his capacity as a dramatist. At the ripe age of fifty he took to himself a wife, one Lelia Pavese, by whom he had no children. After a simple and blameless life, during which he produced a vast quantity of verse—epic, tragic, pastoral, lyrical and satirical—he died in 1637, at the patriarchal age of eighty-five. An epitaph was written for him in elegant Latin by Urban VIII.; but on his tombstone are graven two quaint Italian hexameters of his own, in which the gazer is warned from the poet's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... married at seventeen, weren't you?" said Sarah to Lady Mary, in her deep, almost tragic voice—a voice that commanded attention, though it came oddly from her ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... dawning stars are twinkling And the silent dews are sprinkling Fresh the daisies in the dale. How they flood the soul with music Sad as song of nightingale— Tinkling melodies of magic, Vague, uncertain, longing, tragic,— Just the ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... soul it is that is always ready to depart from the body, and is unconcerned as to whether she will be extinguished, scattered, or removed! But she must be prepared upon reasonable grounds, and not out of mere obstinacy like the Christians; her fortitude must have nothing of noise or of tragic ostentation, but must be grave ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Generally it is less tragic. It is there that Alberoni admires Vendome. Royal personages willingly make it their place of audience. It takes the place of the throne. Louis XIV. receives the Duchess of Burgundy there. Philip V. is ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and still too stunned by the swiftness of the calamity to credit a tragic outcome, spent the day in a heavily bewildered condition, wandering, between meals, from his house to the cottage where Hamil lay, and ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... place mutely related the tragic story. It is the homely background of a crime that accents the terrible. On the table was the breakfast of the family, scarcely touched. They had been surprised when just about to eat. An overturned stool told ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... learned to write. Progress? Regress! While history as a whole, from the Cro-Magnon man to the twentieth century, does certainly suggest a great ascent, it has not been an automatic levitation. It has been a fight, tragic and ceaseless, against destructive forces. This world needs something more than a soft gospel of inevitable progress. It needs salvation from its ignorance, its sin, its inefficiency, its apathy, its silly optimisms ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... The tragic fate of President Garfield, following these and other revelations of political corruption, brought public sentiment on civil service reform to a head. A bill prepared by the Civil Service Reform League, and introduced by Senator Pendleton, of Ohio, passed Congress in January, 1883, and on the 16th ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... see you, madam. A young person of the name of Trimble." A pang passed through Mrs. Pett as she listened to his measured tones. It was tragic that so perfect a butler should be a scoundrel. "She says that you desired her to call in ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... American lady, Miss Martin, was studying with Bendel, the rival of Schwarz; and as she lived in the same quarter of the town as Dove and Maurice, the three of them often walked home together. For the most part, Miss Martin was in a state of tragic despair. With the frankness of her race, she admitted that she had arrived in Leipzig, expecting to astonish. In this she had been disappointed; Bendel had treated her like any other of his pupils; she ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... "star-crossed lovers," whose names rise to the mind at the mention of Verona as readily as those of Portia and Shylock are recalled at Venice. Doubtless, there are being enacted around us events fully as interesting, as amusing, as sad, and as tragic as those depicted by our great dramatist, for the world is ever the same—human nature varies little, be time and fashion what they may; lovers love as truly and passionately as ever did Romeo and Juliet; and selfish ignoble feelings mar the beauty of mankind ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... vanity, and personal aspiration, he goes through fire unshielded. In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy; and this poor, laughable, and tragic fool has not yet learned the rudiments; himself, giant Prometheus, is still ironed on the peaks of Caucasus. But by and by his truant interests will leave that tortured body, slip abroad and gather flowers. Then shall death appear before him in an altered guise; no longer ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... savour of nightmare about the whole thing that appealed distinctly to his imagination. The darkness, the strange situation, the vivid streaks of the crimson blinds—the crimson blind that seemed an integral part of the mystery—all served to stimulate him. The tragic note was deepened by the whine and ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... we may teach our teachers to forgive: Our desk be placed below their lofty chairs; Ours be the practice, as the precept theirs. The moral part, at least, we may divide, Humility reward, and punish pride; Ambition, interest, avarice, accuse: These are the province of a tragic Muse. 30 These hast thou chosen; and the public voice Has equall'd thy performance with thy choice. Time, action, place, are so preserved by thee, That even Corneille might with envy see The alliance of his tripled Unity. Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown; But ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... tragic of all the calls of the sea, was coming to them as a frantic appeal sent out through the air to any and all who might hear ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... frequently connected with the pleasures of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... this loneliness of Amiel's. His social difficulties represent rather a dull discomfort in his life, which in course of time, and in combination with a good many other causes, produced certain unfavorable results on his temperament and on his public career, than anything very tragic and acute. They were real, and he, being what he was, was specially unfitted to cope with and conquer them. But he had his friends, his pleasures, and even to some extent his successes, like other men. "He ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... point we lose track of him for a matter of nearly fourteen years, but on the 31st of March 1797, the year which brought his period of service to so tragic a conclusion, he suddenly reappears at the Leith rendezvous as a Quota Man for the county of Perth. Questioned as to his past, he told Brenton, then in charge of that rendezvous, "that he had been a petty officer or acting lieutenant on board the Mediator, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... to keep the same savage dispositions alive. It was but the other day that they caused this very massacre to be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descendants of those who committed it. In this tragic farce they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of function, ordering general slaughter. Was this spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor persecution and loathe the effusion of blood? No: it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; it was to excite them, by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the right thing is, and one of these days he's going to write a great work. Think of it, there are a hundred and forty-seven great works reposing in the bosoms of a hundred and forty-seven great men, and the tragic thing is that not one of those hundred and forty-seven great works will ever be written. And yet the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... He often engages a troupe of wandering players for months at a time, and he himself and his retinue form the entire audience. They are allowed to come on the stage uncombed, drunk, their parts not half learned, and half dressed. The prince is not for the serious and tragic, and he enjoys it when the players, like Sancho Panza, give loose reins to ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... in embarking: the little bark rides at anchor in the stream; the boat quietly glides to her; they are safely on board. A few minutes more, and the little craft moves seaward under the pressure of a gentle breeze. There is no tragic pursuit of slave-hunters, no tramp of horses to terrify the bleeding victim, no howlings of ravenous bloodhounds,—nothing that would seem to make the issue freedom or death. No! all is as still as a midsummer night in the same clime. The woman—this daughter ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... as the grave. My heart stood still. Before me was Jondo, big, strong, self-controlled, inured to the tragic deeds of the epic years of the West. No pen of mine will ever make the picture of Jondo's face at these ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... Esau, in a tragic way. "I don't quite see through it all, but I do through some of it. Look here, Mr Gordon, sir, you mark my words, he's one of that gang we met at 'Frisco, only he plays the respectable game. He'd got me into their hands, and had me robbed, and then ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... keen discernment utterly failed, at this early stage of the affair, to anticipate its actual magnitude and tragic possibilities. ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... be tragic! The matter is of no consequence to me, only Bess makes such a point of it; besides that, I dread to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... her story to wipe away the tears that were now rolling down her cheeks. In a flash I realised what was to be the tragic close of her tale, and I tried to spare her the details. But she refused to be spared, and, forcing back the tears, went on to ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... shaking her head constantly to the left—never to the right. Mrs. Maldon had recognized Rachel, and had seemed to implore with agonized intensity her powerful assistance in some nameless and hopeless tragic dilemma. The sight—especially of the destruction of the old woman's dignity—was dreadful to such an extent that Rachel did not realize its effect on herself until several hours afterwards. At the moment she called on the immense reserves of her self-confidence to meet the situation—and ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... the idea that it would be unwise to wind up the British Columbia end of the business. The colonel's speech in reply was a triumph of diplomacy. He began by giving a detailed and graphic account of his trip through the province, lighting up the narrative with incidents of adventure, both tragic and comic, to such good purpose that before he had finished his hearers had forgotten all their anger. Then he told of what he had seen of Ranald's work, emphasizing the largeness of the results he had obtained with his very imperfect equipment. He spoke of the high ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Mrs. Douglas in her room; but she had replied that she would meet us in the dining room. She entered now, a tall and beautiful woman of thirty, reserved and self-possessed to a remarkable degree, very different from the tragic and distracted figure I had pictured. It is true that her face was pale and drawn, like that of one who has endured a great shock; but her manner was composed, and the finely moulded hand which she rested upon the edge of the table was as steady as my own. Her sad, appealing ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... conjecture and no suspicion to emphasise the tragic nature of Scipio's death. He was but fifty-six; he was by far the greatest general that Rome could command, a champion who could spring into the breach when all seemed lost, make an army out of a rabble and win victory from defeat; he was a great moral ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Parisian theatre men, their wives, and their families laughing unrestrainedly at a piece, that if exhibited before an American audience would simply disgust some, and make others morbidly attentive. This kind of literature, comic or tragic, disseminated as it everywhere is among impulsive and passionate Russian readers, has been anything but morally healthful. One might as rationally go about and poison wells. And the Russian youth are sophisticated to a degree that seems to us almost startling. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... gave him a description of the whole affair, declaring how horrible, how tragic, the thing had been from its very commencement. "Don't you remember, Frank, down at Portray, they never really cared for each other? They became engaged the very time you ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Thackeray had adopted hers for one which she promised to write. But he represents himself as playing at first with the idea; and as leading the listener's mind, from the suggestions of white night-caps to those of the red one: and null the outward calmness of the neighbouring country, to the tragic possibilities ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... clasped round her knees. She wore a pale yellow dress, and there was a yellow band in her dark hair, which was arranged in such a way that it looked, Claude thought, like a careless cloud, and which gave to her face a sort of picturesquely tragic appearance. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... same baleful fires as Francesco Cenci looked on Beatrice, but the height of horror, harrowing the soul with pity and anguish, culminates in Ford's terrible scenes Tis Pity She's a Whore (4to, 1633), so tenderly tragic, so exquisitely beautiful for all their moral perversity, that they ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... something has occurred out of historical necessity - that is, a necessity springing from the very laws of cosmic evolution - does not save it from having a character which, in view of its consequences, must needs be called tragic. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... of "haunted," families that have moved in have as quickly moved out, giving as their excuse that no happiness was to be found there and that sleep was impossible under its roof. That there was some reason for this lack of rest within walls which were not without their tragic reminiscences, all must acknowledge. Death had often occurred there, and while this fact can be stated in regard to most old houses, it is not often that one can say, as in this case, that it was invariably sudden and invariably of one character. A lifeless man, lying outstretched ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... gardener's lodge, while the cuckoo clock in the hall was muffled under several layers of rugs. A notice, "Please do not Knock or Ring," was posted on the front door at Bertie's suggestion, and guests and servants spoke in tragic whispers as though the dread presence of death or sickness had invaded the house. The precautions proved of no avail: Lola added a sleepless morning to a wakeful night, and the bets of the party had to be impartially divided between Nursery Tea and ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... to the inevitable lady, had seen in the incident only the anxiety of a man for his beloved, and just a hint of the ungenerous in his treatment of Mr. Stocks. They were not prepared for the silent tragic figure ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... without saying a word, and as for the assistant chief-of-staff, seeing that he was caught in the act and knowing the fate which awaited him, he went to his house and blew his brains out with a pistol shot. This tragic event was hushed up by the Austrian government and not many people knew about it; it was announced that the assistant chief-of-staff had died of apoplexy. The French ambassador was said to have paid him ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... before the poor old woman and her donkey had managed to crawl to the top of it; and seeing them under a different light, I saw them very differently. Black against the sun, they had seemed comic; but bright against greenwood and grey cloud, they were not comic but tragic; for there are not a few things that seem fantastic in the twilight, and in the sunlight are sad. I saw that she had a grand, gaunt mask of ancient honour and endurance, and wide eyes sharpened to two shining points, as if looking for that small hope on the horizon ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... hands drew Hannibal closer to her side as she felt the surge of her terrors rise within her. Who were these men—where could they be taking her—and for what purpose? The events of the past weeks linked themselves in tragic ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Such was the tragic story related by the skipper of the ill-fated Wyvern, a story that was replete with every element necessary for the weaving of a thrilling romance; yet it was told baldly and concisely, without the slightest attempt ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... mean, nothing tragic. It's only this, Dad's lost a lot of money all at once. He did have a little income, enough so we never have had to depend on the farm entirely, but now, even that has been swept away. I suppose it will come back some ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Edda the tragic tale of Balder is hinted at rather than told at length. Among the visions which the Norse Sibyl sees and describes in the weird prophecy known as the Voluspa is one of the fatal mistletoe. "I behold," says she, "Fate looming for Balder, Woden's ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... it up and glanced over it as I sat there; but, you know, Mag, the heavy-weight plays never appealed to me. I don't go in for the tragic—perhaps I saw too much of the real ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... melancholy event of the violent and tragic death of Abraham Lincoln, late President of the United States, having occurred during the recess of Congress, and the two Houses sharing in the general grief and desiring to manifest their sensibility upon the occasion of ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... 1574, after the violation of the Ghent treaty, he had returned to, his piratical pursuits, and having prospered again as rapidly as he had done during his former cruises, had been glad to exchange the ocean for more honorable service on shore. The result was the tragic yet almost ludicrous termination which we have narrated. He left a handsome property, the result of his various piracies, or, according to the usual euphemism, prizes. He often expressed regret at the number of traders whom he had cast into the sea, complaining, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... closing years of this unworldly dreamer. Blow succeeded blow. One by one, his friends dropped off; his brothers, his beloved wife, his four sons—he survived them all; he stood alone at last, a stricken figure, in tragic and sublime isolation. Over eighty years old, he crawled thrice a week to deliver his lectures at San Demetrio; he still cultivated a small patch of ground with enfeebled arm, composing, for relaxation, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... efforts, had resorted to all manner of means to accomplish their object, and frequently allied themselves with the oppressors. The Slavuta publishing house, it is claimed, was closed, and the Schapiras met with their tragic end, because "as printers they scrupulously abstained from publishing Haskalah literature." Maskilim were employed by the authorities as tax collectors, and these, as is ever the case with rapacious farmers of taxes, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... ranks of the police, so little recognised, so meagrely rewarded, have at length found their commemoration in an historical act. History, which will represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of Mr. Forster, and Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise, will not forget Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his defenceless hands, nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its tender years: she called it by his name, she kissed, embraced and dandled it, rocked it on her knees; and when she thought it should be tired, sang those lullabies which had soothed the slumbers of him who was now no more. I have witnessed the horrors of war, I have heard many a tragic story, but never has my heart been more touched with feelings of profound grief than the day on which I first met this poor creature—this widowed mother, then seventy years of age—singing and walking in the forest, carrying and dandling in her shrivelled arms a shawl rolled ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... destroyed the physical advantages he had possessed over other men at the time of his marriage. The death of his child, to whom he had given as much affection as his nature possessed, the stern arraignment of the neighbor who helped him to his ranch and later brought him the tragic news, and the consciousness of his own responsibility in the accident, all combined to drive him almost immediately away from the scenes which reminded him of it; and as time passed the bitterness turned ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... The only favorable place for these necessary accidental meetings is the cafe; but is the game worth the candle, or, to speak more exactly, the blinding gas-jets? Is it worth while, for the pleasure of exchanging words, to accept criminal absinthe, unnatural bitters, tragic vermouth, concocted in the sombre laboratories of the cafes by ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... about his neck. He knew that she expected him in even so slight a thing as this to keep true to his undertaking and march straight ahead. She realized nothing of the struggle which checked him. Tragic triviality—the problem of how to cross a brook with a maid! There was but one way even when it involved the mauling of a ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Greek Tragedy, a response to the Prize question of the year 1862-1863, and on December 31, 1862, had finished the Introduction, which was published for the first time about six years later, under the title The Idea of Tragic Fate. Appended to this was a laborious piece of work dealing with the conceptions of Fate recorded in all the Greek tragedies that have come down to us. This occupied the greater part ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... her aching head against Mr. Cobb's homespun knee and recounted the history of her trouble. Tragic as that history seemed to her passionate and undisciplined mind, she told it truthfully ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is the book of Job: the vast Arabian landscape, the picturesque pastoral details of Arabian life, the last tragic immensity of Oriental sorrow, the whole over-arching sky of Oriental piety, are here. But here also the inevitable 'indecency.' Out ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... the Sacred Veil,"—he said gayly, addressing himself to the King—"Your Majesty considers this venerable gentleman with too much gravity! I recognize in him one of my craft,—a poet, tragic and taciturn of humor, and with a taste for melodramatic simile, . . marked you not the mixing of his word-colors in the picture he drew of Al-Kyris, foundering like a wrecked ship in a blood-red sea, whilst overhead trembled a white sky set thick with ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... we see the tragic results of botched work. Wooden legs, armless sleeves, numberless graves, fatherless and motherless homes everywhere speak of somebody's carelessness, somebody's blunders, somebody's habit of inaccuracy. The worst crimes are not punishable by law. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Glasgow persons, especially women, dressed in dirty, wretched tatters, worse than none, and with an expression of listless, unexpecting woe upon their faces, far more tragic than the inscription over the gate of Dante's Inferno. To one species of misery suffered here to the last extent, I shall advert in speaking ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... robbery? And her "perfect lover," whom Amidon habitually thought of as "that fellow Brassfield"—all the perfections which Elizabeth had learned to attribute to him, would no longer be credited to Amidon. It was tragic! ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... offended patriotic journalists. They seemed to his audience reckless; what was this reference to the Treaties of Vienna but an imitation of Napoleonic statesmanship? They had the consciousness that they were making history, that they were involved in a great and tragic conflict, and they expected the Minister to play his part seriously and solemnly; instead of that they had listened to a series of epigrams with no apparent logical connection. We know how dangerous it is, even in England, for a responsible statesman ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... the necessity of thinking. There was not much of melody in it; little of the dance movement and very little of the lighter and gayer manifestations of life. It has been described as a sort of harmonious discord, typifying mysterious, tragic and awe-inspiring things. The people sat and ate their heavy food and drank their beer, their ears engaged with the strains of the orchestra, their eyes by the movements of the conductor, while their tired brains rested ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... in all situations, truly, and, in a high sense, tragic, such as the Tragedy of the ancients brings before our eyes. Where blindly passionate forces are aroused, the collected Spirit is present as the guardian of Beauty; but if the Spirit itself be carried away, as by an irresistible ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... day that the most tragic thing in the world is a sick doctor. I was wrong. The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not also ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... what is best to do," Madame Michaud said, with a gesture of tragic despair. "Who could have thought that such a ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... gone and each has had a conspicuous effect upon the town. The tragic era of 1861-65, binding our great nation into an indissoluble union, began likewise the process of cementation which steadfastly links Alexandria to the District of Columbia by bands that are basically nonpolitical (maybe stronger for that same reason). Paradoxically, Alexandria is ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... sudden, what a dramatic change in our fortunes! One that easily might have been, might even yet be, tragic. At half-past one, less than two hours before, we were comfortably on board a fine ship, absolutely unsuspicious of the least danger. If any of us had thought of the matter at all, we probably imagined we were in the safest part of the ocean. But, at three o'clock, here we were, having undergone ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... from the scene in 1840, after a famous evening when, before a sympathetic audience, she mourned on account of the ruin of her voice. She married a financier, M. Malencon, and is now a grandmother. Mme. Falcon has given, in the provinces, her name to designate tragic "sopranos." "La Vierge de l'Opera," interestingly delineated by M. Emmanuel Gonzales, reveals—according to ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... became intensely interested, though he had no intimation of what this second meeting portended. That Mr. Green Hat was destined to play a highly tragic role in his life, Darrin, of course, had ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... frenzied man to such a fire of questions as might have sublimated pre-natal knowledge. And I stood back listening and pieced the distracted, broken answers into some sort of coherency till the whole tragic scene at the Chateau on that spring day of the year 1815, became ineffaceably stamped ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to think this intimate religion as tragic as a great love. There came back into my mind a relic that I have in my house. It is a panel of the old door of my college, having carved on it my college arms. I remembered the Lion and the Shield, Haec fuit, Haec ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... is not published for the entertainment of its readers. It has a more serious purpose. It speaks for races who have suffered grievous wrongs, and for peoples whose condition is exceedingly sad. It has to do with tragic facts, and much of what it has to say must excite compassion, and must appeal both to the consciences of our readers and to their sense of duty. To call upon those whom God has blessed, to insert themselves ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... as a writer of "lite comidy" if you continue to weave such tragic spells. "The Lean Larder" would not be an attractive ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... epoch, the fashion of ingeniously constructed conversations, and hazardously dangerous recitals, so prevailed, that, where, in modern times, a whole company assembled in a drawing-room would begin to suspect some scandal, or disclosure, or tragic event, and would hurry away in dismay, Madame's guests quietly settled themselves in their places, in order not to lose a word or gesture of the comedy composed by Monsieur de Saint-Aignan for their ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be high comedy without? But except that one battle the tragedy was not—eh—crude, like grandpere's; was not physical. Once he said to me: 'There are things in life, in the refined life, very quiet things, that are much more tragic than bloodshed or death or ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... lost his impression of the triviality of the occasion: they all seemed desperately searching for that something he had lost and which was overwhelmingly important to him; and all the while the music stuttered and mocked and confused a tragic need. Or it was like a momentary release from deadly confinement, a respite that, by its rare intoxication, drove the participants into forms of incredulous cramped abandon. Positively, he thought, they were grasping at light, at ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... forward girl from a land of barbarians. Finding his deities failed to respond, he threatened to cast his unworthy body upon the point of a sword, if Zura cut another bud. But I knew, if Ishi's love of flowers failed to prevent so tragic an end, his love of ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... cast an eye after him, and a very big Guard, in a cocked hat, and uniform, and sword, who hitherto had hardly been awake, seemed evidently to be interested by his movements. If there is to be a tragedy at these places,—and tragedies will sometimes occur,—it is always as well that the tragic scene should be as far removed as possible from the salons, in order that the public eye ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... are the mizzerble kind, that don't split," said Lady Magnifico, in tragic tones; "I told you so ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... A tragic fidelity, an inherited loyalty to the Armagnacs recommended my Lord Regnault to the Dauphin, who entrusted him with important missions to various parts of Christendom, Languedoc, Scotland, Brittany, and Burgundy.[616] ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... I suppose," she answered, and her eyes were grave as she looked across the mournful level land towards the west, where the sun was sinking below parallel bars of cloud to the straight line of the horizon. Sunset over a plain is one of nature's tragic moments. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... My remark had been hasty and inconsiderate, and Lord Byron's is the view borne out by all experience. Almost all the tragic and gloomy writers have been, in social life, mirthful persons. The author of the Night Thoughts was a "fellow of infinite jest;" and of the pathetic Rowe, Pope says—"He would laugh all day long—he would do nothing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... bananas, pine-apples, guavas, and oranges. Wild animals are abundant in the hills, including the much-dreaded tiger, which does not confine his operations to the plains. At one of the stations on the mountain railroad, where we stopped for refreshments, a story of the most tragic character was told us of two children carried off and eaten by tigers the previous night. The demoralized condition of one of the poor families bore witness to the truth of the report. We listened to the very harrowing detail of the event, but will not weary the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... come to him as a refugee, as a persecuted woman, with tears in her eyes. She had told him a tragic story of Thugut's tyranny and wanton lust. Because she had refused to submit to the voluptuous desires of the Austrian minister, he had sworn to ruin her, and his love had turned into furious hatred. She further stated the minister ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of time between two other states which, for want of a better word, we may call two eternities; but I must confess that, to me, a human existence beginning with the cradle and ending with the grave is merely a more or less tragic riddle without an answer: in other words, a meaningless absurdity. I find it quite impossible to conceive any deity or presiding genius of the universe who could be guilty of such a colossally useless tragedy as human life would be ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Maids' Paradise;" also the description of "Joppa," by Grace Denio Litchfield, in "Only an Incident." There are others from which it is not possible to make extracts. Miss Woolson's admirable "For the Major," though pathetic, almost tragic, in its underlying feeling, is, at the same time, a story of exquisite humor, from which, nevertheless, not a single sentence could be quoted that would be called "funny." Her work, and that of Frances Hodgson Burnett, as well as that of Miss Phelps and Mrs. Spofford, shine ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... since she had been a baby, see her twin sister Phyllis whom Miss Carter had brought up. Many years before Mrs. Page had insisted that the twins be separated, and because Phyllis bore her mother's name and Mrs. Page cruelly blamed her daughter-in-law for the tragic accident that had resulted in both parents' death, she had chosen to keep Janet with her. Thirteen years had passed, and neither of the girls had dreamed of the other's existence; perhaps they had dreamed, but they had never expected their dream to come true, as it had only a short ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... girl to enjoy the rights of her radiant youth if her mother had not taken the precaution to bring letters. France was full of Californians. Many lived there. Surely she must have met some one she could have made use of. It was tragic to watch a pathetic young thing staring at two or three hundred young men and maidens disporting themselves with the natural hilarity of youth, and but few of them too ill-natured to welcome a young and ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and celebrity of each. The play was, unfortunately for Ormond, a tragedy; and Le Kain was at Versailles. Ormond thought he understood French pretty well, but he did not comprehend what was going on. The French tone of tragic declamation, so unnatural to his ear, distracted his attention so much, that he could not make out the sense of what any ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... done our best to prevent, yes, and to avenge, [renewed cheers,] these intolerable outrages? For my part I say that sooner than be a silent witness—which means in effect a willing accomplice—of this tragic triumph of force over law and of brutality over freedom, I would see this country of ours blotted out of the pages ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... he caught a glimpse of your husband, whom he immediately recognized, but who gave him no opportunity of speaking to him. Knowing he was a friend of Mr. Harland's, he supposed he had come on board to bid him farewell, though he was not aware of his being in the city. When we heard the rumor of the tragic scenes in which he acted so dread a part, and connected it with the time of Mr. Harland's departure, Mr. Brahan recalled Mr. Linwood's unexpected appearance in the ship, and the mystery was explained. But we dreamed not ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... startled him exceedingly. He admitted that he had never liked Braddock, but explained that he had not expected to hear that the fiery little scientist was such a scoundrel. But, as Don Pedro confessed, it was an ill wind which blew him some good, when the upshot of the whole mysterious tragic business was the restoration of at least one emerald. Sir Frank brought the gem to him on the afternoon of the day succeeding Mrs. Jasher's death, and while the whole village was buzzing with excitement. It was Random who gave all details to Donna Inez and her father, leading from one revelation ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... The most tragic consequence of all venereal disease is the part it plays in the infection of innocent children, and innocent wives and mothers. Often a pure and chaste woman is thus deprived in the most cruel and brutal manner of the fruit ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... looking round the room, and not seeing the least trace of the tragic event which ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... nothing more remarkable in the Gorgias, than the manner in which. Sokrates not only condemns the unmeasured, exorbitant, maleficent desires, but also depreciates and degrades all the actualities of life—all the recreative and elegant arts, including music and poetry, tragic as well as dithyrambic—all provision for the most essential wants, all protection against particular sufferings and dangers, even all service rendered to another person in the way of relief or of rescue—all the effective maintenance of public organized force, such as ships, docks, walls, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... youthful Alfonso of Aragon was by far the most tragic deed committed by the Borgias, and his fate was more terrible than even that of Astorre Manfredi. If Lucretia really loved her husband, as there is every reason to suppose she did, his end must have caused her the greatest anguish; and, even if she had no affection for him, all her feelings ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... cast a look of tragic appeal and get no response. In vain she tried to persuade him to reconsider his decision. His only concession was that he would remain at the apartment with her if she would give up the expedition, a ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... is it?" his wife demanded of March's share of their common ignorance. A young fellow passing stopped, as if arrested by the tragic note in her voice, and explained that the woman had left three little children locked up in her tenement while she came to bid some friends ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... good people! There, now, Charlotte, don't look like that," rushing up to the tall girl and standing on tiptoe to drop a kiss on the sallow cheek—"we won't go; we'll stay at home and be martyrs," and she began to tear off her hat with a tragic air. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... help laughing again at his mock-tragic and absurd way of taking things, and as I honestly felt that if matters were unpleasant it was all his own fault, he leaned toward me now with his eyes half shut and his teeth pressed together as he whispered ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Lane of Kansas from the ranks of the most radical Republicans caused great surprise to the country. He had been so closely identified with all the tragic events in the prolonged struggle to keep slavery out of Kansas, that he was considered to be an irreconcilable foe to the party that tolerated or in any way apologized for its existence. The position he had taken in voting against the Civil Rights Bill ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of his history. Rosamund had a great art in drawing from people the story of their troubles when she cared to do so. Her genial and warm-hearted sympathy was an almost irresistible lure. Mr. Thrush's present fate had been brought about by a tragic circumstance, the death of his only child, a girl of twelve, who had been run over by an omnibus in Oxford Circus and killed on the spot. Left alone with a peevish, nagging wife who had never suited him, or, as he expressed it, "studied" him in any way, he had ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... unprepared for Mrs. Earle's sentimentality. "Surely," she exclaimed with tragic earnestness, "you wouldn't have me live with him after what occurred? Contrition? He said everything he could think of to get me to stay, but I made ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... that he had sold a carp half an obol too cheap. His patience indeed that evening was so near to exhaustion that after cursing inwardly the "match-maker" who had saddled this Amazon upon him, he actually found courage for an outbreak. He threw up his arms after the manner of a tragic actor:— ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the view which I first took of you was rather a tragic one. You see, when I saw a man lying prone on the grass I said to myself: 'H'm! What is that?' Next I saw a young fellow roaming about the cemetery with a frown settled on his face, and his breeches bulging; and again ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... father. She had some stealthy interest in the Cedars and the Blackburns. She was about the right age. Ten to one she was Silas Blackburn's niece. So for me, many hours before Silas Blackburn walked in here, the presence of the other Blackburn about the Cedars became a tragic and threatening inevitability. Had Silas Blackburn been murdered or had his brother? Where was the survivor who had committed that brutal murder? Maria had come here hysterically to answer those questions. She might know. The light in the deserted house! She might be ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... best the verbal neatness only gives to the satire or the scorn a ring of finality such as is given by rhyme. For rhyme does go with reason, since the aim of both is to bring things to an end. The tragic necessity of puns tautened and hardened Hood's genius; so that there is always a sort of shadow of that sharpness across all his serious poems, falling like the shadow of a sword. "Sewing at once with a double thread a shroud as well as a shirt"—"We thought her dying when she slept, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the Red Cross series the four American girls spent six months in tragic little Belgium. There, in an American hospital in Brussels, devoted to the care, not of wounded soldiers, but of ill Belgians, three of the ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... "The tragic interlude" in this little war-time comedy of the affections really happened as I have described it. The men who went to their death beside the Housatonic in Charleston harbor were Lieutenant George F. Dixon of the Twenty-first Alabama Infantry, ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... man," said I, "but only a good specimen of some sort of man. That, I think, would be the outcome of Emerson's 'Representative Men,' or of those most tragic 'Memoirs ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... state of siege, whatever its inconveniences, is exceedingly convenient for a critic and observer of the town. It concentrated all that impression of being something compact and what, with less tragic attendant circumstances, one might call cosy. It fixed the whole picture in a frame even more absolute than the city wall; and it turned the eyes of all spectators inwards. Above all, by its very abnormality it accentuated the normal divisions and differences ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... English sonnets were two very romantic and gallant men of action, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,—both destined to brief brilliant lives and tragic deaths. They were followed by Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney and a host of Elizabethan poets, courtly and otherwise. But it is Shakespeare whose Sonnets (though not conforming to the Petrarchan model) show the most force and fire of any in our ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... was very much shocked and provoked by this, but held her tongue magnanimously. And what do you think, my dear reader, was the cause of all this hysteric tragic nonsense on the part of Mary? Simply this. The poor soul had been put out of temper. Her son Charles, as I mentioned before, had had a scandalous liason with one Meg Macdonald, daughter of one of the Donovans' (now Brentwood's) shepherds. That morning, this brazen hussy, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... intended to be a personification of the evils caused by the social system, nor is he put forward as the inevitable product of that system. The reader's attention is chiefly absorbed by the extraordinary contest between Caleb Williams and Falkland, and in the tragic situations that it involves. Compared with these the denunciation of the social system is a matter of secondary interest; but it was natural that the author of the "Political Justice," with his mind preoccupied by the defects of the English social system, should make those defects the, evil ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... be ignorant of all that passed; but there was a merry sparkle in his eyes which testified that not a detail of this tragic comedy ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Latium, and is said to have taken a census of the people of the city, which was found to have eighty-three thousand inhabitants. To strengthen his power he married his two daughters to two sons of Lucius Tarquinius, a well-intended act which led to a tragic and ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... step to the strong fortress. 'Trust in Him at all times.' Build your house under the walls of the Eternal Help. Live in the Presence. Find the attitude of faith, and the act of faith will be simple. Trust in Him through every hour, and when a tragic hour comes one step shall take ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... matter?" asked Sophie. "Are you in your elegiac mood? You look as I imagine Victor Hugo when he has not made up his mind about the management of his tragic catastrophe!" ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Jones was bunkered. Having been bunkered many times in the past, and knowing that she would be bunkered upon many occasions in the future, Miss Jones was not disposed to take a tragic view of the situation. The little white ball was all too secure down there in the sand; as she had played her first nine, and at least paid her respects to the game, she could now scale the hazard and curl herself into ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... him the third time on Arkansaw river for five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him into the hand of his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled the tragic scene and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of secrecy, as a game of that kind will not do unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity. He sold that negro for two thousand dollars, and then put him for ever out of the reach of all pursuers; and they can never graze ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... known as the "Christian Carrier" had lived, and was buried, overcame every difficulty. The walk covered three miles. At length we ascended a knoll, and, lo, the monument stood before our eyes, and almost at our feet. Now we were on ground, where one of the most tragic scenes of Scotland was transacted. Cargill very beautifully said, "The moors are flowered with martyrs' graves." Here is one of these flowers; a century plant it is, watered with precious blood, and abloom in ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... so tragic in the words of the boys that Mr Rogers and his sons seized their guns, and telling Coffee and Chicory to lead, they went straight for the forest-land towards which Coffee said he ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... is wide and varied. With unfailing faith and cheerful courage and a habit of seeing the humorous side of tragic catastrophes, she has done her work among the sick and forsaken, with no appeal to others save a certain few; and only those who have been steadied by her strong hands, and heartened by her buoyant spirit, and fed from her scant store, have knowledge or understanding of what ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... momentarily on the little opera bouffe which these child-like people were so continually enacting in their attempts at self-government. But it was a play that at times approached dangerously near to the tragic. The passions of this Latin offshoot were strong, if their minds were dull and lethargic, and when aroused were capable of the most despicable, as well as the most grandly heroic deeds. And in the present instance, when the fleeting sense of the absurd ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... skilled artists with costly stones, such as lapis lazuli and malachite, crystals, blood-stone, jasper, agates and chalcedony, to represent fruit-pieces and magnificent groups of game or of musical instruments; while the pilasters were decorated with masks of the tragic and comic Muses, torches, thyrsi wreathed with ivy and vine, and pan-pipes. These were wrought in silver and gold, and set with costly marbles, and they stood out from the marble background like metal work on a leather shield, or the rich ornamentation on a sword-sheath. The figures ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... go with you. And don't look so tragic, darling. The boy will certainly be found. There will nothing else be done at San Leon until he is. Both my husband and myself agree on that point—that Jim Barlow's safety is our first consideration. He will probably be found near at ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... at Syracuse, And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse, Her voice their only ransom from afar: See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins Fall from his hands—his idle scimitar Starts from its belt—he rends his captive's chains, And bids him thank the bard ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... table were the twenty storiettes which had been rejected by the newspaper short- story syndicate. He read them over in order to find out how not to write newspaper storiettes, and so doing, reasoned out the perfect formula. He found that the newspaper storiette should never be tragic, should never end unhappily, and should never contain beauty of language, subtlety of thought, nor real delicacy of sentiment. Sentiment it must contain, plenty of it, pure and noble, of the sort that in his own early youth had brought his applause from "nigger ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... always discover his unfitness. He is frequently quite satisfied with himself, and remains so to the end of a career long drawn out, with a persistent contentment which would be amusing if its results were not so tragic. The Central Committee does not invariably "find out for itself" the facts we are afraid to communicate, and, as a consequence, the candidate goes successfully through, and in after years, as like as not, becomes a Conferential problem. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Baron Harnier was exceedingly tragic. Having wounded a buffalo, the animal charged a native attendant and threw him to the ground; Baron Harnier was unloaded, and with great courage he attacked the buffalo with the butt-end of his rifle to rescue the man then beneath the animal's horns. The buffalo left the man and ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... train they're on and let the Ramblin' Kid and me cut across to the Purgatory River bridge and wreck it," Skinny Rawlins, always tragic, darkly advised. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... my youth somehow, of retrieving the past for me, of avenging me at her own cost for an unlucky love affair that I had here twenty years ago. It's pretty of her, but it's terribly pathetic—it's tragic. I know very well that I'm a middle-aged man, and that there's no more youth for me. I'm getting grey, and I'm getting fat; I wouldn't be young if I could; it's a bore. I suppose I could keep up an illusion of youthfulness for five ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... that he brought forth his verses like a bear, and after formed them with licking. Scaliger the father writes it of him, that he made a quantity of verses in the morning, which afore night he reduced to a less number. But that which Valerius Maximus hath left recorded of Euripides, the tragic poet, his answer to Alcestis, another poet, is as memorable as modest; who, when it was told to Alcestis that Euripides had in three days brought forth but three verses, and those with some difficulty and throes, Alcestis, glorying he could with ease have sent forth a hundred in the ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... did Mademoiselle bestow upon that tragic spectacle, then with a shudder she drew back, her face ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... "that if they had only made it a day later, dear Charlie would have been exempt. It's too tragic, Tish." ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and despite the considerable knowledge and experience arrayed before her mental vision, Mercedes Higgins had spread before her a vastly wider panorama. The old woman had verified her own conclusions, given her new ideas, clinched old ones, and even savagely emphasized the tragic importance of the whole problem. Much Saxon remembered of that mad preachment, much she guessed and felt, and much had been beyond her experience and understanding. But the metaphors of the veils and the flowers, and the rules of giving to abandonment ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... friends. We shall see how the restored rule of the Despensers was blighted by the same incompetence and selfishness which had ruined their predecessors in power. The triumph of the Despensers proved but the first act in the tragic fall ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... tale[42] for the November No., and gave a rough design to Andre for the illustration, which will be in colours. I hope you will like that. There is not a tear in it this time! "Laetus" was too tragic! ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... certainly one of the most infamous recorded in history. A great number of women and children, aged and sick persons, had fled from the horrors that reigned on the mainland, and taken refuge in the island of Rathlin. The story of their tragic fate is admirably told by Mr. Froude:—'The situation and the difficulty of access had thus long marked Rathlin as a place of refuge for Scotch or Irish fugitives, and, besides its natural strength, it was respected as a sanctuary, having been the abode at one time of ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... hardly bear out so strong a judgment. There is nothing to show that Branwell's conduct was responsible in any way for Emily's illness and death, and Anne, in the contemporary fragment recovered by Mr. Shorter, gives a less tragic account of the matter. 'During my stay (at Thorpe Green),' she writes on July 31, 1845, 'I have had some very unpleasant and undreamt-of experience of human nature. . . . Branwell has . . . been a tutor at Thorpe Green, and had ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... left behind, this was the one being whom to meet was not disturbing. He wished to encounter no one of that inner circle of his tragic friendship; but he realized that Al'mah had had her tragedy too, and that her suffering could not be less than his own. The same dark factor had shadowed the lives of both. Adrian Fellowes had injured them both ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, and, after setting aside their elements of disagreement, distinguish and admire that which is definitely and for ever admirable in their creations. Do we lack sympathy with the tragic feeling? Do we shrink from it? Then we can be no judges of tragic art, of King Lear or the OEdipus. Have we no sense of humour, or only a gross and vulgar sense of humour? Then we can be no judges of the writings of Cervantes ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... that when we start to pity ourselves. We feel mean, as though we were part of a big deception. We aren't half so ill as we look; if you put sufficient bandages on a wound you can make the healthiest man appear tragic. We're laughing—and then all of a sudden we're crying. We press our faces against the pillow ashamed of ourselves. We won't see the crowds; we're angry with them for having unmanned us. And then we can't help looking; their love reaches us almost as though it were ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... about it. They had no love to give each other, she said sadly, but they were going to be married. I would have laughed at her if she had not been so tragic. But there is something about Alice, in spite of her romantic folly, (which she has adapted from the French to suit her American needs,) which forbids ridicule. Nevertheless I felt, with one of those sudden flashes ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... done by a very ugly little man, but of a blood so highly respected, that all forms were dispensed with, in the fear lest it should be brought home to him; and, after the first excitement, everybody ceased to speak of this tragic history. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the State and influential in the councils of their party. The Chancellor, some years younger than Livingston, a large, handsome, modest man, was endowed with a remarkable capacity for public life. The story of his career is a story of rugged manhood and a tragic, mysterious death. He rose by successive steps to be mayor of Albany, member of the Assembly of which he was twice speaker, member of Congress under the Confederation, judge and chief justice of the Supreme Court, and finally chancellor. Indeed, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... not"—"think to shed a tear in all my miseries," shouted Josie, in a stagy and tragic style, and then, 'twixt laughter and song, attempted a series of courtesies ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... strategical estimate, these tests may be searching and extensive; they may then consume much time. Yet, if the commander, in making a quick decision of great urgency in actual battle, does not apply the tests, he may adopt a course of action leading to tragic results. In such circumstances, the competent commander, under pressure of danger, grasps the whole complex situation without loss of time. He is not carried away by any chance impressions. He does not overlook what is significant in the unexpected event. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... more closely at the ethics of love at the time of the Renaissance, we are struck by a remarkable Contrast. The novelists and comic poets give us to understand that love consists only in sensual enjoyment, and that to win this, all means, tragic or comic, are not only permitted, but are interesting in proportion to their audacity and unscrupulousness. But if we turn to the best of the lyric poets and writers of dialogues, we find in them a deep and spiritual passion ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... that, when he lives at all, lives for ideals. Something must be found to occupy his imagination, to raise pleasure and pain into love and hatred, and change the prosaic alternative between comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between happiness and sorrow. Now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull, when religion for the most part is so vague and accommodating, when even war is a vast impersonal business, nationality seems to have slipped into the place of honour. It has become the one eloquent, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana |
