"Dejection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with some remorse and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been ill, produced an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose which kept him from proceeding to extremities. Moreover, he could not help having some scruples upon his mind, whether the spirit which he had seen was indeed his father, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with that of the meanest slave in my own country. When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little I found some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who brought me on board, and had been receiving their ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... along with me, I rode back until I had placed him beyond the danger of the straggling plunderer, when we shook hands and parted. As he left me, I turned to look after him. He still sat in that attitude that betokens deep dejection, his shoulders bent forward over the neck of his mule, while he gazed vacantly on the path. My heart sank at the spectacle, and, sad and dispirited, I rode at a lagging pace towards ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... carrying with him a crushed and broken spirit He threw himself into a chair in a torpor of dejection. When the servants spoke to him, he lifted to their faces two clouded eyes, heavy with suffering, and answered their questions in few words. The maid laid the supper, and told him it was ready. When she returned to clear the cloth, the supper was untouched. Paul stepped up ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... chanceth, from the might Of joy in minds that can no farther go, As high as we have mounted in delight In our dejection do we sink as low, To me that morning did it happen so; And fears, and fancies, thick upon me came; Dim sadness, & blind thoughts I knew ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.... The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.... The lines in Coleridge's "Dejection" exactly describe my case:— ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... different stages of spleen, dejection and listlessness. The essence of these lies in the passiveness and neutrality of the intellectual powers. In as far as the unhappy sufferer could be roused to act, the disease would be essentially diminished, and might finally be expelled. But long days and months are spent by ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... xliii.). Therefore he who is in extreme ignorance of himself, and consequently of all virtues, acts least in obedience to virtue; in other words (IV. Def. viii.), is most infirm of spirit. Thus extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme infirmity ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... were all so kind and hearty that I could no more give way to dejection than to chill and cheerlessness before a genial wood fire. They seemed in truth to have taken me into the family. Barely was I now addressed formally as Richard Morton. It was simply "Richard," spoken with ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... debouches. It contains many magnificent buildings, and an extensive square or plaza, which is planted with trees. I observed several vessels in the harbour; and the population, which is rather numerous, exhibited none of those marks of misery and dejection which I had lately ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the Ode is broken up and quoted in parts or fragments, illustrative of the mind and feelings of the writer. 'Sickness,' he explains, 'first forced me into downright metaphysics. For I believe that by nature I have more of the poet in me. In a poem written during that dejection, to Wordsworth, I thus expressed the thought in language more forcible than harmonious.' Then follow lines 76-87 of the text, followed by lines 87-98 of the text first published in Sibylline Leaves ('For not to think of what I needs must feel,' &c.). He then reverts ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... characteristic of Giotto's rational and human view of all subjects admitting such aspect, that he has insisted here chiefly on the dejection and humiliation of Christ, making no attempt to suggest to the spectator any other divinity than that of patience made perfect through suffering. Angelico's conception of the same subject is higher and more mystical. He takes ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... suffered. One day he came into the room where I was fitting a dress on Mrs. Lincoln. His step was slow and heavy, and his face sad. Like a tired child he threw himself upon a sofa, and shaded his eyes with his hands. He was a complete picture of dejection. Mrs. Lincoln, observing his ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... these vain imaginations; that it is an over-curious thing, a dangerous thing, to come to that tenderness, that rawness, that scrupulousness, to fear every concupiscence, every offer of sin, that this suspicious and jealous diligence will turn to an inordinate dejection of spirit, and a diffidence in thy care and providence; but keep me still established, both in a constant assurance, that thou wilt speak to me at the beginning of every such sickness, at the approach of every such sin; and that, if I take ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... it happens sometimes that man suffers without any expectation of a cure, he necessarily finds pleasure in the complete certainty of the end of his life; for the worst, in all cases, must be either a sleep arising from extreme dejection, during which we have the consolation of happy dreams or the loss of all sensitiveness. But when we are happy, our happiness is never disturbed by the thought that it will be followed by grief. Therefore pleasure, during its active period, is always complete, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to smile in feigned surprise at his surprise; but her muscles relaxed. Richard's words and looks reflected more vividly than any mirror the dejection of her person; and this, the misery of her soul. She felt herself growing faint. She staggered back to a sofa ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... greater energy, misrule would hardly have come to the present pass. But the debility, constitutional or induced by hardships, bodily and mental, of the Spanish captain, was too obvious to be overlooked. A prey to settled dejection, as if long mocked with hope he would not now indulge it, even when it had ceased to be a mock, the prospect of that day, or evening at furthest, lying at anchor, with plenty of water for his people, and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... morning; but it was reported, that they still lay near the mouth of the river, probably to intercept the return of La Tour. The day passed away, and he did not arrive, nor were any tidings received from him. Mad. la Tour's page remarked the unusual dejection of his lady, and, emulous perhaps of her braver spirit, resolved, if possible, to obtain some information, which might relieve her anxiety. With this intention he left the fort soon after sunset, attended only by a large Newfoundland dog, which was his constant companion, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... minds of some there lie deep dejection and discouragement. Some, surrounded by their growing families, though they abhor the tyranny of the government, acquiesce wearily, and even dread change lest something ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... voiding them. The influence of constipation upon the functions of the liver, is indicated by the sympathy displayed between that organ and the mind. The patient manifests apprehension, mental depression, taciturnity, and melancholy, all indicative of hypochondriac dejection, induced ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Levin's face, with his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking out in dark dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father, and glancing at her and at Vronsky. And she felt so sorry for him that tears came into her eyes. But immediately she thought of the man for whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his manly, resolute face, his noble self-possession, and the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... description of the terrible sweep of the late pestilence; the wild dismay and temporary desolation it had produced; the scenes of family and individual suffering and woe he had witnessed during its ravages; the mental dejection, approaching despair, which he himself had experienced, on account of the entire failure of his original mode of practice in it, and the loss of his earliest patients (some of them personal friends); the joy he felt on the discovery of a successful mode of treating it; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... by so formidable a prospect, and was very near abandoning my plan of crossing the mountains, and so go back again and round about, the Lord knows where; but considering this step would be quite unheroical, I resolved to attribute my fears to the gloom of the moment, and the dejection it occasioned. It was almost nine o'clock before my kind adviser ceased inspiring me with terrors; then, finding myself at liberty, I retired to bed, not under the most agreeable impressions; and after ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... showed it very soon. The very next day he became a changed man, as if Henrietta's refusal had withered the very roots of his life. In his carriage, his gestures, and his tone of voice, he betrayed the utmost dejection. He looked as if he had grown taller and thinner. A bitter smile curled on his lips; and his magnificent whiskers, usually so admirably kept, now hung down miserably on his chest. And this intense melancholy grew and grew, till it became ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... palms, sitting quiet and motionless as a carven statue. No sob shook his great frame, there was no outward indication of the terrible grief that racked him inwardly—only in the pose was utter dejection ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unfinished writing, his elbow rested on the parchment, and he shaded his eyes from the light. The brilliancy was gone from his face and was succeeded by an almost earthy pallor, while his attitude expressed both lassitude and dejection. He had done what had been required of him, he had fired the passion of the hour, and one hour had shown him how completely it was to be beyond his control. He remembered how Peter the Hermit had led the vast advance-guard ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... failed, no one could have failed, to observe the dejection that had for some time ruled every feature and expression of the girl's countenance. Again and again he had asked himself whether she might not be fancying him displeased with her; for he knew well that, becoming ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... like a trumpet. "Must!" she exclaimed; "is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! thy father, if he had been alive, durst not have used that word." Then, as her anger spent itself, she sank into her old dejection. "Thou art so presumptuous," she said, "because thou knowest I shall die." She rallied once more when the ministers beside her bed named Lord Beauchamp, the heir to the Suffolk claim, as a possible successor. "I will have no rogue's son," she ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... with the solemn joy of sacrifice. There is neither haste nor lagging. An infinite on the march. As they pass, the Chaldeans gaze at them with astonishment. Strange folk, whom no one can understand, whether in their dejection or their exultation! ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... white rosettes in her hair, she melted into tears, to the amazement of her companions. It was the reverse of the scene of Jephtha on the mountain. The courtesan was afraid of being understood; she ascribed this dreadful dejection to the joy with which she looked forward to the function. As there is certainly as wide a gulf between the habits she had given up and the habits she was acquiring as there is between the savage state and civilization, she ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... went over to the dining-table, he felt that he creaked from weariness and dejection. Babs looked at him solicitously, and then jumped up to get him something to eat. Everybody else was again watching out the ship's ports at the new, strange world of which they ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... thirty-two months from England, in which long period no supplies, except what had been procured from the Cape of Good Hope, had reached us. Famine was approaching with gigantic strides, and gloom and dejection overspread every countenance. Still, we were on the tiptoe of expectation. If thunder broke at a distance, or a fowling piece of louder than ordinary report resounded in the woods, 'A gun from a ship!' was echoed on every ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... lines of confirmed optimists—her ancestors on the paternal and maternal sides. She did not know how to brood, but, if she had, she might well have been led to do so. And even as it was she had been reduced to so unusual a condition of dejection that, a week before the evening we are describing, she had been obliged to order a box at the Gaiety Theatre, she, who, like all optimists, habitually frequented those playhouses where she could behold gloomy tragedies, awful melodramas, or those ironic pieces called ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... profound dejection and abysmal solemnity: 'I don't know, Willis. Don't you see that it must have been—that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his hands and sullenly threw the towel upon the rocks. His attitude was one of deep dejection. The light seemed gone out of the day and the glory from the golden sun. Even the keen mountain air was devoid of relish, and the early morning no longer yielded its ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... Bozzy's spirits were cheered by the climate and the weather, but 'had I not had Dr Johnson to contemplate, I should have been sunk into dejection, but his firmness supported me. I looked at him as a man whose head is turning giddy at sea looks at a rock.' Everywhere they met signs of the parting of the ways in the Highlands. The old days of feudal power were merging ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... envelope and tore it open. Pennell knocked his pipe out with feigned dejection. "The fellow makes me sick, padre," he said. "He gets billets-doux every hour of the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... implore, You would not argue him of arrogance: Howe'er that common spawn of ignorance, Our fry of writers, may beslime his fame, And give his action that adulterate name. Such full-blown vanity he more doth loth, Than base dejection; there's a mean 'twixt both, Which with a constant firmness he pursues, As one that knows the strength of his own Muse. And this he hopes all free souls will allow: Others that take it with a rugged ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... a ragged, lank, starved-looking man, whose appearance was on this occasion rendered ludicrous by the feathers sticking all over him, and by an expression of dejection which would draw down the corners of his miserable mouth and roll up his piteous eyes, notwithstanding his efforts to appear, what ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... and his voice quivered as he spoke. He stood motionless for a minute or so until the heavy door slammed, and then he threw open the window and gazed sorrowfully down the street at the disappearing cab. His whole attitude expressed such dejection that his ward, who had just entered the room, felt more drawn towards him than she had ever done before. Slipping up to him she placed her warm tender hand upon ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of dejection swept over him. At first he could not account for it. By and by, however, a malicious little voice began to repeat and repeat within him, "Oh, the futile impression you must have made upon her! Oh, the ineptitudes you uttered! Oh, the precious ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... warfare of ambush and surprise, their midnight onslaughts, their butcheries, their burnings, and all their nameless atrocities, had been for years the theme of fireside story; and the dread they excited was deepened by the distrust and dejection of the time. The confusion in the camp lasted through the afternoon. "The Indians," says Bougainville, "wanted to plunder the chests of the English; the latter resisted; and there was fear that serious disorder would ensue. The Marquis de Montcalm ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... to be noted that Mr. Hardy, although one of the most profoundly tragic of all modern writers, is neither effeminate nor sickly. His melancholy could never have dictated the third stanza of Shelley's "Lines written in Dejection in the Bay of Naples." His pessimism is involuntary, forced from him by his experience and his constitution, and no analysis could give a better definition of what divides him from the petulant despair of a poet like Leopardi than the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... dropped into a chair and sat staring blankly before her, the image of limp dejection. The very stars in their courses seemed conspiring to fight against her, for no ordinary, every- day reason could explain the extraordinary happenings of this afternoon! She was so stunned and bewildered that ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... went down to the cabin, where Jack threw himself, in a state of great dejection, on a couch; but the teacher seated himself by his side, and laying his hand ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... reason to be joyful and thankful; for they had finished the rear. In the rebel camp all was discord and dejection. The Highlanders blamed Cannon: Cannon blamed the Highlanders; and the host which had been the terror of Scotland melted fast away. The confederate chiefs signed an association by which they declared themselves ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... traversed was still thickly strewn with the dead of both armies, though all the wounded had been collected in the hospitals. In the village of Beaumont, we stopped to take a look at several thousand French prisoners, whose worn clothing and evident dejection told that they had been doing a deal of severe marching ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... of silence were marked by the heavy beats of Elisaveta's heart. She felt intensely vexed by these sad words of weakness and of dejection, and she did not believe them. But Trirodov went on speaking, and his beautiful but hopelessly sad words sounded like ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the cowpens just then. Full, clear, and quivering, it seemed suddenly to still everything else into silence. In a flash, Bob's grin settled into a look of sullen dejection, and, with his ear cocked and drinking in the song, and with his eye on the corner of the barn, he waited. From the cowpens was coming a sturdy negro girl with a bucket of foaming milk in each hand and a third balanced on her head, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... same things as you do." He gave a long sigh that was something of a groan, slipping down in his chair into an attitude, not of informality, but of dejection. For the moment neither was equal to facing the great subjects that ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... when Clotilde would leave the room on tiptoe to give an order downstairs or to go on some errand, he would assure himself by a furtive glance that she was gone, and then let his head drop on the table, with an air of profound dejection. It was a painful relief from the extraordinary effort which he compelled himself to make when she was present; to remain at his table, instead of going over and taking her in his arms and covering her face with sweet kisses. ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the Arab. "Al-Ashkhakh," plur. of "Shakhkh" and literally "the stales" meaning either dejection. [I read: "bi 'l-Shakhkh," the usual modern word for urine. "'Alayya Shakhkh" is: I want to make ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... leaning on the arm of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. She came from the hall as if she had been listening to the person who was still speaking near the door, and her handsome face wore a look of profound dejection and disappointment. She had evidently seen the dwarf, for she walked directly towards him, and at half a dozen paces she stopped and dismissed her companion, who bowed low, kissed the tips of ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... accomplished the bold projects which lay so near his heart? Why did not calmness succeed the agitation in his ardent mind? Would not one suppose that, when he had accomplished this end, Hatteras would fall into a sort of dejection, and that his over-stretched nerves would seek repose? After succeeding, it would seem natural that he should be seized with the feeling of sadness, ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... "Something told me." He sank into a chair at the side of her desk, a picture of mock dejection. "And I chose it. Deliberately. I had black ones, and blue ones, and green ones. And I chose—this." He covered his face with a ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... studies and remained with my father, who, naturally, was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he now fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention, yet anything—a footfall, the sudden closing of a door—aroused in him a fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any small surprise of the senses ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... The Hindoo soldiers were in a state of deep dejection, and poor Sir Arthur seemed hardly to ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a day or a decade, and this ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... deserted. For a while, nothing was seen at the great outlets of the city but carts, carriages, and other vehicles, filled with goods and movables, on their way to the country; and, as may be supposed, the departure of their friends did not tend to abate the dejection of those whose affairs compelled them ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... writes from Nohant to Barbes at Vincennes, November 1848: "Since May, I have shut myself up in prison in my retreat, where, though without the hardships of yours, I have more to suffer than you from sadness and dejection, ... and am less in safety." Threatened by the violence and hatred of the people, she had painfully realized that she and her party had their most obstinate enemies among those whom they wished and worked to ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... travelling over a vast wilderness and inhospitable mountain, as St. Athanasius mentions. This tillage was not the only manual labor in which St. Antony employed himself. The same venerable author speaks of his making mats as an ordinary occupation. We are told that he once fell into dejection, finding uninterrupted contemplation above his strength; but was taught to apply himself at intervals to manual labor, by a vision of an angel who appeared platting mats of palm-tree leaves, then ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... towards him and the disrupted partnership. Hitherto, for no reason whatever, all had agreed to put the blame upon Billy—possibly because he was present to receive it. As days passed that slight reticence and dejection in his manner, which they had at first attributed to remorse and a guilty conscience, now began to tell as absurdly in his favor. Here was poor Uncle Billy toiling though the ditches, while his selfish partner was lolling in the lap of luxury in San Francisco! Uncle Billy's glowing accounts ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... wrong in little boys to make game o' their grandfathers, an't it, mum?' said Mr. Weller, shaking his head waggishly, until Tony looked at him, when he counterfeited the deepest dejection and sorrow. ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... complete in its kind than any of the foregoing, the Mar'echale de Luxembourg.(939) She has been very handsome, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty is gone, her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming. This dejection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for she has wit and good-breeding; but you would swear, by the restlessness of her person and the horrors she cannot conceal, that she had signed the compact, and expected to be called upon in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... She brought with her to this habitation, the novel of Mary, which had not yet been sent to the press, and the commencement of a sort of oriental tale, entitled, the Cave of Fancy, which she thought proper afterwards to lay aside unfinished. I am told that at this period she appeared under great dejection of spirits, and filled with melancholy regret for the loss of her youthful friend. A period of two years had elapsed since the death of that friend; but it was possibly the composition of the fiction of Mary, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... however, and more particularly the distant ones, stole out of the blue atmosphere to the sunshine with so complete a resemblance to the lifting canvas of ships that I would catch myself staring fixedly, my heart beating fast. But there was no dejection in these disappointments; the ecstasy that filled me on beholding the terrible island, the hideous frozen prison whose crystal bars I had again and again believed were never to be broken, now lying at a distance with its northern cape imperceptibly opening to our subtle movement, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... me and inundated me with a sudden sense of wistful regret for all that I had lost and also with an acute realization of the precarious hold I had on life, of the peril I was in from hour to hour. This unexpected and unwelcome dejection possessed me until the whole line of floats displaying the images of the gods had passed and the ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... could say the same," I replied with appropriate dejection, as I swung in beside her, for she had evinced her ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... deep sigh, and Dorothea rose to go up to him and to say to him some sincere word of affection; but just then the dogs in the yard barked, and the agonized father said softly—in deep dejection, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... true that as a remedy against the dejection caused by myrrh we may apply the 'hymelsloszel' (Himmelschluessel), which is—or appears to be—Primula officinalis, the cowslip, whose bunches of fragrant yellow blossoms are to be seen in moist woods and meadows. This plant is ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... doing. Happy the man, you would have thought, whose eye will rest on her in the pauses of his fireside reading—whose hot aching forehead will be soothed by the contact of her cool soft hand who will recover himself from dejection at his mistakes and failures in the loving light of her unreproaching eyes! You would not, perhaps, have anticipated that this bliss would fall to the share of precisely such a man as Amos Barton, whom you have already surmised not to have the refined sensibilities ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... meeting, strong and powerful, as sound in body as in mind. On the contrary, now she worried herself, wondering how she would find him on the occasion of each visit. Would the sadness, melancholy, and dejection still remain? Would he be thinner and paler? It was her care, her anguish, to try to divine the causes of the change in him, which manifested itself as strongly in his sentiments as in his person. Was it not truly extraordinary ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... year, must necessarily be a season of joy: in bringing home his sheaves he is requited for his long and anxious labours. Yet if the old Egyptian farmer felt a secret joy at reaping and garnering the grain, it was essential that he should conceal the natural emotion under an air of profound dejection. For was he not severing the body of the corn-god with his sickle and trampling it to pieces under the hoofs of his cattle on the threshing-floor? Accordingly we are told that it was an ancient custom of the Egyptian corn-reapers to beat their breasts ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... with indignation over Bob's disclosures when Roberta Lewis knocked on the door. Roberta was wrapped up in a fuzzy red bath-robe, a brown sweater and a pink crepe shawl, and she looked the picture of shivering dejection. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... and superb. Nothing more magnificent could be seen than her black, sad eyes, her disdainful mouth, her smile at once bewitching and haughty. She was called Maria, I believe. In a tableau which represented "A Slave Market," she displayed the imperial despair and the stoical dejection of a nude queen offered for sale to the first bidder. Her tights, which were torn at the hip, disclosed her firm white flesh. They were, however only poor girls of London. All ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... age, Cardan declares to be the most cruel and irreparable evil with which man is cursed, and to talk of old age is to talk of the crowning misfortune of humanity. Old men are made wretched by avarice, by dejection, and by terror. He bids men not to be deceived by the flowery words of Cicero,[293] when he describes Cato as an old man, like to a fair statue of Polycleitus, with faculties unimpaired and memory fresh and green. He next goes ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... to search into the royal motives or attempt to escape. The fate of all the inhabitants of Alpha, the wonderful Land of the Changing Sun, is in the hands of its ruler. Beware! My death-torture is to be lingering and horrible. I sink into deepest dejection. I was eager to return to my native land and tried to escape. Behold my punishment! Even my bones and flesh will not be allowed to rest or decay. Beware, the king is just and good, but ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... his head; "I have been unfortunate." When she, with the most enchanting sweetness of benevolence, expressed her concern to hear he had been unhappy, and her hope that his misfortunes were not past remedy; he lifted up his eyes, and fixing them upon her again, with a look of tender dejection, "Cut off," said he, "from the possession of what my soul held most dear, I wished for death, and was visited by distraction. I have been abandoned by my reason—my youth ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... a long time before Bob could make head or tail out of what she told him, but eventually he learned that in the hour of her deepest dejection she had confided her secret to others, and the result of this confidence had now arisen to thwart ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... time; for though her cousin Oliver, as she usually called him, had stormed, and perchance carried the outworks, yet the citadel was impregnable and unapproached. But she knew not that it was love. A soft and pleasing impression stole insensibly upon her, then dejection and melancholy. Her heart was vacant, and she sighed for an object, and for its possession. It was a silly wish, but so it was, gentle reader; and beware thou fall not in love with thine own dreams, for sure enough it was but a vision, bright, mysterious, and bewitching, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... distinguished genius whom perhaps we are justified in regarding as a true epileptic. Dostoievsky appears to have been an epileptic from an early age; he remained liable to epileptic fits throughout life, and they plunged him into mental dejection and confusion. In many of his novels we find pictures of the epileptic temperament, evidently based on personal experience, showing the most exact knowledge and insight into all the phases of the disease. Moreover, Dostoievsky in his own ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... subjects overpressed; for he knew an Englishman would do as much as any man upon hopeful terms; but where he sees he is overpressed, he despairs soon as any other; and, besides that, they have already such a load of dejection upon them, that they will not be in temper a good while again. He heard my Lord Chancellor say to the King, "Sir," says he, "the whole world do complain publickly of treachery, that things have been managed falsely by some of his great ministers."—"Sir," ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... firmament; Our umpire Time shall have his way, With Care I let the creature stay: Let business vex him, avarice blind, Let doubt and knowledge rack his mind, 90 Let error act, opinion speak, And want afflict, and sickness break, And anger burn, dejection chill, And joy distract, and sorrow kill, Till, arm'd by Care, and taught to mow, Time draws the long destructive blow; And wasted Man, whose quick decay, Comes hurrying on before his day, Shall only find, by this decree, The Soul flies sooner ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... service of Miss Wardour, and offered her, on every possible opportunity, those marks of attention which Lovel would have given the world to have rendered, and was only deterred from offering by the fear of her displeasure. With forlorn dejection at one moment, and with irritated susceptibility at another, he saw this handsome young soldier assume and exercise all the privileges of a cavaliere servente. He handed Miss Wardour's gloves, he assisted her in putting on her shawl, he attached himself to her in the walks, had ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of the day he spoke little; and I could tell from his expression and general air of dejection that he was still brooding over the incident. The following morning—we stayed the night in a wayside inn—Kniaz informed me that the route we had intended taking to Skaravoski—the town I meant to make the head quarters for my daily excursions—was blocked (a blood feud had ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... consent to accept rather than to detach myself from them through disdain; no, I do not want to believe that my country and my race are struck to death, I feel it in my suffering, in my mourning, in my hours of pure dejection even, I love, therefore I live; let us ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... For what is there profitable, abiding or stable therein? Nay, in very existence, great is the misery, great the pain, great and ceaseless the attendant care. Of its gladness and enjoyment the yoke-fellows are dejection and pain. Its riches is poverty; its loftiness die lowest humiliation; and who shall tell the full tale of its miseries, which Saint John the Divine hath shown me in few words? For he saith, 'The whole ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... peculiar conduct, and quite fell to the ground when La Trape, making cautious inquiries, ascertained that no lady hunting that day had worn a yellow feather. Again, therefore, I found myself at a loss; and the dejection of the King and the Queen's ill-temper giving rise to the wildest surmises, and threatening each hour to supply the gossips of the Court with a startling scandal, the issue of which no one could foresee, I went so far as to take into ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... interval of calmness of mind, occasioned only by her so sudden escape from the terrors of pursuit, returned to her former dejection, and for some time incessantly wept at the dismal thought, that the princess seemed now, by this reverse of fate, to be for ever excluded all hopes of being seated on her father's throne; and, by a strange perverse way of adding to her own grief, she afflicted herself the more, because ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... say discourages me," said Helen, in a tone of deep dejection. "Such perfection was only meant for a few favored ones, and I do not dare so much as to aim at it. I am perfectly sure that I must be satisfied with the low state of grace I am in ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... of death and suffering should be clothed in beauty. The gathering of the friends at the commencement of the Dialogue, the dismissal of Xanthippe, whose presence would have been out of place at a philosophical discussion, but who returns again with her children to take a final farewell, the dejection of the audience at the temporary overthrow of the argument, the picture of Socrates playing with the hair of Phaedo, the final scene in which Socrates alone retains his composure—are masterpieces of art. And the chorus at the end might have interpreted the feeling of the ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... warned you how your hang-dog look betrays you at brag—And then, when you would fain brush up your courage, and put a good face on a bad game, your bold looks always remind me of a standard hoisted only half-mast high, and betraying melancholy and dejection, instead ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... see the British troops march past on the day of the surrender, looking down the ranks of Americans, some trim and soldierly, as were the Continentals, and others clad in homespun or the skins of the forest. And in the ranks filing past in dejection Rodney saw the sneering face of Mogridge. The flower of the British aristocracy, sons of nobility and members of Parliament, had been subalterns under Burgoyne. Mogridge, as ever, had followed in the wake of those having money so that he might ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... doubtfully. The look of dejection came back to his face. He frowned as if something puzzled and hurt him. "Yes and no! That is the strange thing. It made me thankful—that goes without saying. But it did not make me any stronger in my heart. Perhaps ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... disconsolate. A castaway, he had drifted on to its welcome shores, and all that it could offer was loneliness, cold water, the raw flesh of a strange animal, and denial of the solace of sleep. Out of the depths of his misery and dejection he called imperatively on his God, and taking from the lining of his belt a thumb-sized purse, of netted silver, displayed a glorious pearl, which he held aloft, and with an admixture of supplication and imprecation proffered it to the Most High as grudging ransom ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... to the effect. Others have imagined it to arise from grief and indignation at the neglect which she began to experience from the venal throng of courtiers, who were hastening to pay timely homage to her successor. By others, again, her dejection has been regarded as nothing more than a natural concomitant of bodily decay; a physical rather than a mental malady. But the prevalent opinion, even at the time, appears to have been, that the grief or compunction for the death of Essex, with which she had long maintained ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... apprehensions, and this dejection, I have been unexpectedly delivered. But, oh, my dear marquis, what is the exchange I have made? I reside under the same roof with the adorable Matilda. I see every day, I converse without restraint with her, whom I can never hope to call my own. Can I thus ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... me that I loved even as Djama did. The very thought of her put new blood into my heart. The words of yielding and submission died unuttered on my lips. I raised my head, which I had bowed down in dejection, and looked at him steadily again. Then I said slowly, and in the voice of a man who does not ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... of it makes me giddy. I came up it fast enough with death behind me. But to face it now in cold blood!—(He sinks on the ottoman.) It's no use: I give up: I'm beaten. Give the alarm. (He drops his head in his hands in the deepest dejection.) ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... words on the Essay on Exile, which I read with attention, as a subject that touched me. I found the most abject dejection under a pretended fortitude. That the author felt it, can be no doubt to one that knows (as I do) the mean submissions and solemn promises he made to obtain a return, flattering himself (I suppose) he need ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... sense of approaching Fate is never absent from him, even in his most genial moments; and the strange fascination which he exercises over his readers is largely due to the thrilling sweetness of some passage which ends in a note of dejection and anguish. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... barnyard scene The lonely old negro at the supper table A new immigrant gazing out upon the ocean he has crossed The downtown section at closing hour A scene of quietude A scene of bustle and confusion A richly colored scene A scene of dejection A scene of wild enthusiasm A scene of ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... him and for some moments encountered Jeff's steady regard. Then he looked away, and slowly all its simple delight dropped from the strong weather-tanned face, to be replaced by an almost painful dejection. Presently he turned again, and, in a moment, Jeff found an added interest in the wonderful scene that ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... detected the outline of the schooner sharply defined against the light limestone rock of the headland near which she lay. To escape was not to be thought of. The boat was coming towards them, filled with armed men. Zac stood quite overwhelmed with dejection; and thus he stood as the Parson was boarded and seized by the lieutenant of his French majesty's Vengeur, who took possession of her in ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... clangor of the trumpets, announced the triumph of the victors and the defeat of the vanquished. The former retreated to their pavilions, and the latter, gathering themselves up as they could, withdrew from the lists in disgrace and dejection, to agree with their victors concerning the redemption of their arms and their horses, which, according to the laws of the tournament, they had forfeited. The fifth of their number alone tarried in the lists ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... plants and flowers, and spoke often of the reminiscences of his departed youth with no shadow of desire or regret. At first the grateful coolness of the place revived Hugh; but the soft, moist climate brought with it a fatigue of its own, an indolent dejection, which made him averse to work and even to bodily activity. He took, however, one or two lonely walks among the mountains. In his listless mood, he was vexed and disquieted by the contrast between the utter peace and beauty of the hills, which seemed to uplift themselves, half ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fire-arms, which had frightened them horribly, for they had not expected any opposition. The frightened men never drew rein till they galloped their exhausted horses into Chard camp, where they gave another touch of dejection to the melancholy Duke. As for the prisoner, he was sent off under guard to Honiton gaol; I don't know what became of him. He was one of more than three thousand who came to death or misery in that war. They said that he was a young farmer, in a small way, from somewhere ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... have to do is to describe a series of social spheres, all exercising a somewhat sluggish pressure upon each other, a general state of inactive dejection, a limitation which recognizes itself as much as it misunderstands itself, squeezed within the framework of a governmental system, which, living on the conservation of all meannesses, is itself nothing less ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... temperament, strained to the utmost by the dead weight of Florentine affairs that pressed upon him, became more irritable day by day. Vision succeeded vision; trance followed upon trance; agonies of dejection were suddenly transformed into outbursts of magnificent and soul-sustaining enthusiasm. It was no wonder if, passing as he had done from the discipline of the cloister to the dictatorship of a republic, he should make extravagant mistakes. The tension of this abnormal situation in the city grew ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... away more than six months, and when they returned they were in the deepest state of dejection, for King James had been banished, the Prince of Orange was on the throne, and the direst persecutions of those of the Catholic faith were apprehended by my lady, who said she did not believe that there was a word of truth in the promises of toleration that Dutch monster ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a demeanor more suggestive of expectation than alarm or dejection, a young girl reclined upon a divan ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... still sternly and stoutly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the charmer, while dejection drew him deeper and deeper into its depths until one day he found he could not write. His pen seemed suddenly to have lost its power. He sat at his desk in the office of the Messenger with paper before ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... did they return? What were their feelings as they rose to pursue their way? Had we not been told far otherwise, we should have imagined them to have been those of deep dejection. We should have pictured to ourselves a weary, weeping, troubled band; their countenances shaded with a sorrow too profound for words;—the joyous melodies of that morning hour, all in sad contrast with those hearts which were bowed down with ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... with them, they could not contain their delight; they endeavored to scramble upon their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands, and we understood they knew we had come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads in apparently hopeless dejection: some were greatly emaciated; and some, particularly children, seemed dying. The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odor so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... their custom was. They each looked up at her as she passed, and smiled in the slight measure of recognition which people permit themselves in church. Putney was sitting with his head hanging forward in pathetic dejection; his face, when he first lifted it to look at Annie in passing, was haggard, but otherwise there was no consciousness in it of what had passed since they had sat there the Sunday before. When his glance took in Idella too, in her sudden finery, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... his eyes are fixed on his daughter, his hands are folded, and his whole appearance expresses the utmost dejection.] ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... preserved an appearance of deep dejection, Terence tugging his hair as if in utter despair, till ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... but he seems rather to have enjoyed even the remorse. It is needless to say that the complacency was its own reward, and that the resolution vanished like other more eccentric impulses. Music, he once told Johnson, affected him intensely, producing in his mind "alternate sensations of pathetic dejection, so that I was ready to shed tears, and of daring resolution so that I was inclined to rush into the thickest of the [purely hypothetical] battle." "Sir," replied Johnson, "I should never hear it, if it made me such a fool." Elsewhere he expresses a wish ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... said, and by his eloquent gesture of dejection announced what he had some difficulty in ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... so that the Body may be lessened and weakened, but it cannot increase and be strengthened by it. We see this by common Experience; the first Time persons drink it, if they are full grown, it generally gives them a Pain at the Stomach, Dejection of Spirits, Cold Sweats, Palpitation at the Heart, Trembling, Fearfulness; taking away the Sense of Fulness though presently after Meals, and causing a hypochondriac, gnawing Appetite. These symptoms are very little inferiour to what the most poisonous Vegetables ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... passed her last days in a state of deep dejection. As she was now in the decline both of her favor and of her reign, she no longer had friends; even the king himself, though still submitting to her guidance, loved her no more. The Jesuits, too, whom she had driven from court, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... struck. At the third stroke, Fantine sat up in bed; she who could, in general, hardly turn over, joined her yellow, fleshless hands in a sort of convulsive clasp, and the nun heard her utter one of those profound sighs which seem to throw off dejection. Then Fantine turned ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo |
