"Dreary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... naturally turned to the future. How were we to support life in this dreary region? or, supposing it to be inhabited, what would be the character of, and disposition shown towards us by, the people we might encounter? I had read of the Arabs of the Desert, and of their generous hospitality to strangers, and I had hopes that such might be the people we should ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... is the date that will linger in history after many a dreary record of battle and coronation has been swept away. For on that date the first permanent colony of English speech made its landing on the soil of North America. It is fitting that the three hundredth ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... it were, turned the first leaf. The other was connected with the name on the despatch-box. Why did it haunt her? It had produced a kind of indistinguishable echo in the brain, to which she could put no words—which was none the less dreary; like a voice of wailing from a ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... language with the graces of modern poetry. The splendour and ingenuity, which we admire, even when we condemn it, in his Italian works, is almost totally wanting, and only illuminates with rare and occasional glimpses the dreary obscurity of the African. The eclogues have more animation; but they can only be called poems by courtesy. They have nothing in common with his writings in his native language, except the eternal pun about Laura and Daphne. None of these works would have placed him ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nurture constant thankfulness. To-day looking back over whatever dark, dreary, sunless days, we all have bright ones too. Does any thought of God as the Fountain of all our joys and goods rise in our souls? Have we learned to associate a divine hand and a Father's will with them? Do we congratulate ourselves on our own cleverness, tact, and skill, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... I wish to avoid her? If she amuses me, diverts my mind, beguiles my pain, or more dreary apathy, why not let her exert her power to the utmost and make herself useful? Yes, but she will try to do more than amuse. Well, suppose she does; one can coolly foil such efforts. Not so sure of that. If I were dealing with a man I could, but one must be worse than a clod to hear her ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... Prince Albert in 1851, and the Advance with Kane, in 1853, were kept prisoners by the ice for several weeks. The odd form of the Devil's Thumb, the dreary deserts in its vicinity, the vast circus of icebergs—some of them more than three hundred feet high—the cracking of the ice, reproduced by the echo in so sinister a manner, rendered the position of the Forward horribly dreary. Shandon understood the necessity of getting out of it and going ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... made me very happy," Mr. Carrollton said to Madam Conway, as, at a late hour, he bade her good-night—"happier than I can well express; for without Margaret life to me would be dreary indeed." ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... the trees can be studied at any time, even in winter, when the world outside is bare and dreary, and the evenings are long, and afford fine opportunity for such amusement. And what is more important still, the sheets prepared as we have shown can be sent through the mail to distant parts of the ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "It was a dreary night, dark and still and terribly cold; the white flakes were falling slowly to the earth, and covering the mother's footsteps ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was in Chicago when Frohman bought the play, and he cabled her that she was to do the title part. She afterward declared that this news changed the dull, dreary, soggy day into one that was brilliant and dazzling. "To play Chantecler," she said, "is an honor international in ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... we sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the train,—draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm heel-taps with a flavor of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... bodies, or hatchets lop their members, bit by bit; drinking the bitterest poisons, their fate yet holds them back from death. Thus those who found their joy in evil deeds, he saw receiving now their direst sorrow; a momentary taste of pleasure here, a dreary length of suffering there. A laugh or joke because of others' pain, a crying out and weeping now at punishment received. Surely if living creatures saw the consequence of all their evil deeds, self-visited, with hatred would they turn and leave them, fearing the ruin following—the blood ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... Adam the dreams which were very naturally the repetition of her waking thoughts. Petrarch invokes the beauty of Laura. Eloisa, separated from Abelard, is again happy in his company, even amid the "dreary wastes" and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Zephyr read the whole dreary life at a glance. A fleeting thought came to Zephyr. How would it have been with Madame had she years ago chosen him instead of Pierre? A smile, half pitying, half contemptuous, was suggested by an ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... ungyved prance With which his freezing feet he warms, And drag my lady's-chains and dance The galley-slave of dreary forms. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... that night, and when he awoke in the morning it was with a dreary feeling that a great deal was gone. He was the only child now, and as he stood by the little open grave where Mildred's tiny coffin had been lowered, and as he felt the soft, tight clasp of his mother's hand in his, Arthur felt he would ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... the goose hunt seems to elate the Indian more than in anything else. Why, I could never find out. It may be because it is the first spring hunting after the long, dreary winter, and there is the natural gladness that the pleasant springtime has come again. Whatever it may be, I noticed for years more noisy mirth and earnest congratulations on success in the goose ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... just such another dreary day, in just such another December, and not so many years gone by, that the light had gone ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... intellect laid bare to him in all its abject incoherency the thing that was untrue, which thenceforth became for him a thing that was not tenable, that it was perilous and scandalous to attempt maintaining. Twenty years in the dreary, weltering lake of parliamentary confusion, with its disappointments and bewilderments, had not quenched this tendency, in which, as we say, he persevered as by a law of nature itself, for the essence of his mind was clearness, healthy purity, incompatibility ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... going on as it had gone on for ten years, with the omnipresent threat of the Death Bath whipping flagged, tired brains to dreary energy. The work kept going on till they dropped worn out at last in their tired seats. Only in Keston's brain, and in mine, flamed the new hope of release. Tomorrow the work would be done, forever. Tomorrow, we would be released, to take our places in the pleasure palaces. To loll at ease, breathing ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... up and up forever, through the spider's web of glens, till he could see the narrow gulfs spread below him, north and south, and east and west; black cracks half-choked with mists, and above all a dreary down. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... winter slow, Travelling once a forest through Cold and hungry, tired and wet, Began in words like these to fret: "Oh, what a sharp inclement day! And what a dismal, dreary way! No friendly cot, no cheering fields, No food this howling forest yields; I've nought in store or expectation! There's ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... desolation of the place. The palette and a few worn brushes were scattered on the floor, where the artist had laid them down for ever. There was one living creature in the room, a young girl, not more than sixteen, sitting on a stool by the open window, looking out listlessly on the stretch of dreary fenland, shrouded in the cold and heavy mist. It was a day on which the scenery of the fen country looked desolate, cheerless, and chill. These green meadows and flat stretches have need of the sunshine to warm them ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... much afflicted at seeing her ill, and I often exclaimed: "Life is so dreary!" "Life is not dreary"—she would immediately say; "on the contrary, it is most gay. Now if you said: 'Exile is dreary,' I could understand. It is a mistake to call 'life' that which must have an end. Such a word should be only used of the joys of Heaven—joys that are unfading—and in this true ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... altogether selfish, Sherbrooke—and you have no cause to say I am so—if, as you know too well, there is deep, and permanent, and pure and true affection for you at the bottom of my heart, judge what the after-hours of life will be, judge what a long dreary lapse lies before me, between the present ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... the dreary weather, I am told that thousands of London people were assembled in the streets to catch a last glimpse of the popular Princess Royal. They could hardly recognize her pleasant, rosy, child- like face—it was so sad, so swollen with weeping. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... that inhospitable island, and kept six years a close prisoner, and that Sir Hudson Lowe was his executioner. He concluded with these words: "You will end like the proud republic of Venice; and I, dying upon this dreary rock, away from those I hold dear, and deprived of everything, bequeath the opprobrium and horror of my death to the reigning ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... might be. Sears had pondered a good deal concerning it and tried to guess in what possible way the boy could be "in the same boat" with Egbert. There was little use in guessing, however, and he had given up trying. And another week passed, another fruitless, dreary, hopeless week. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... labyrinth of sluggish and narrow channels of the morass. It was a gloomy journey. The leafless trees frequently met overhead; the long rushes in the wetter parts of the swamp rustled as the cold breezes swept across them, and a slight coating of snow which had fallen the previous night added to the dreary aspect of the scene. At last they ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... miles around, myriads of troops, cavalry, artillery, everything, all camped in the open—no concealment. Mud? Why, everyone is mud, up to the eyes, and so are the horses. This big movement has quite dislocated the ordinary trench warfare, and now all over the dreary uplands are trenches hurriedly dug by the Hun and then abandoned. Trenches that often barely shelter you above the knees. Chaos, chaos. Rifles lying to rust in the mud, duds everywhere, men sitting in dug-outs, not knowing what they are expected to do next. Others in mere scratched-out ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... become very oppressive, and at half-past seven we stopped to breakfast and to water the horses. Half-past eight found us in the saddle again, and we commenced to traverse a dreary plain of yellowish white pumice-stone, interspersed with huge blocks of obsidian, thrown from the mouth of the volcano. At first the monotony of the scene was relieved by large bushes of yellow broom in full flower, and still larger bushes of the beautiful Retama blanca, quite covered ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... should be regarded as the unlimited future, for which no man can be responsible. But such philosophy will too frequently be insufficient for the stoutest hearts. Mountjoy's heart would occasionally almost give way, and then his thoughts would be dreary enough. Hunger, absolute hunger, without the assured expectation of food, had never yet come upon him; but in order to put a stop to its cravings, if he should find it troublesome to bear, he had already provided ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... a girl's stomach should plague her. A single woman; that's it. When she has a man to plague, it will have something besides itself to prey upon. Knowest thou not moreover, that man is the woman's sun; woman is the man's earth?—How dreary, how desolate, the earth, that the suns shines ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... New England, a stranger will be struck with the variety, in taste and feeling, respecting burial-places. Here and there may be seen a solitary grave, in a desolate and dreary pasture lot, and anon under the shade of some lone tree, the simple stone reared by affection to the memory of one known and loved by the humble fireside only. There, on that gentle elevation, sloping green ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... live with young Freshleigh, with whom you are already chums, and whose apartment has the morning sun; but the first room is a foundation stone in your house of memories. Your trunk is brought in by the Student Transfer man (first lesson in self-help) and put down near the dreary-looking beds with their mattresses doubled on the foot-rail. Then, sitting down by the bare, shining table where, later on, theses are to be written and punches brewed, you stake out claims for the decorative material in your trunk. Certainly decorations ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... goodness, wickedness. A god or a genius could have risen above his fearful isolation. Xerxes was neither. The iron ceremonial of the Persian court left him of genuine pleasures almost none. Something novel, a rare sensation, an opportunity to vary the dreary monotony of splendour by an astounding act of generosity or an act of frightful cruelty,—it mattered little which,—was snatched at by the king with childlike eagerness. And this night Xerxes was in an unwontedly gracious mood. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... little grating in the door through which Prince Arthur called. A hollow, dreary, murmuring voice replied. It was the voice of the Red Cross Knight, which, when the champion heard, "with furious force and indignation fell" he rent that iron ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... me in its wrath and broke all records sprinting. At noontide I sat down to rest, and rose depressed and dizzy; I'd sat upon a hornet's nest, and all the birds got busy. My whiskers now are full of hay, my legs are lame and weary; it's been a-raining every day, and all the world is dreary. The road will do for those who like a pathway rough and gritty; I've had enough—just watch me hike back to the ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... gone, Louise came down, and found Maxwell in a dreary muse over his manuscript. He looked up at her with a lack-lustre eye, and said, "Godolphin is jealous of Salome now. What he really wants is a five-act monologue that will keep him on the stage all the time. He thinks that as it is, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... many weeks his letters were of comfort to those who feared I might not rise again. His hand was out in help for those who needed help, and in kindness for those who needed kindness. There remains in my mind the dreary sense of a long, long drive to the uttermost bounds of the South End at Boston, where he went to call upon some obscure person whose claim stretched in a lengthening chain from his early days in Missouri—a most inadequate person, in whose vacuity the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... belonged to the deceased Keraunus now dwelt an Egyptian without wife or children—a stern and prudent man who had done good service as house-steward to the prefect Titianus, and the living-room of the evicted family now looked dreary and uninhabited. The mosaic pavement which had indirectly caused the death of Keraunus, was now on its way to Rome, and the new steward had not thought it worth while to fill up the empty, dusty, broken-up place which had been left in the floor ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... proceeded from the cloisters or the universities, even the metaphysical disquisitions of the Nominalists and Realists, and the boundless subtleties of the contending schools of the "Divine Doctors," Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, fall under this description. Dull, dreary, unintelligible, and interminable as they are, they are still in reality works of fancy. They are the offspring, almost exclusively, of the imaginative faculty. It ought not to create surprise, to find that this faculty predominated in the minds and characters ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... sameness of desolation exhibited by these gigantic mountains, offer a striking contrast to the glowing and lively tints of the surrounding country. On their lofty summits the clouds appear to have fixed their abode; and in their inhospitable regions no living thing can dwell.—Still barren and dreary they remain, in the very bosom of luxuriance and cheerfulness; throughout the vicissitudes of climate and season they ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far as the combat is concerned, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... times nine the serpent folds embrace The marble walls about—which he must tread Before his anxious foot may touch the base: Long in the dreary path, and must be sped! But Love, that holds the mastery of dread, Braces his spirit, and with constant toil He wins his way, and now, with arms outspread, Impatient plunges from the last long coil; So may all ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... to Hartwell in the afternoon. We had previously taken a walk in the environs of the town, and had met the Duchesse d'Angouleme on horseback, accompanied by a Madame Choisi. At five o'clock we set out to Hartwell. The house is large, but in a dreary, disagreeable situation. The King had completely altered the interior, having subdivided almost all the apartments in order to lodge a greater number of people. There were numerous outhouses, in some of which small shops had been ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... a branch of the great Aryan family, whose original settlements are supposed to have been on the high table-lands of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, probably in Bactria. They emigrated from that dreary and inhospitable country after Zoroaster had proclaimed his doctrines, after the sacred hymns called the Gathas were sung, perhaps even after the Zend-Avesta or sacred writings of the Zoroastrian priests had been begun,—conquering or driving away Turanian tribes, and migrating to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... and dreary law of gravitation made it fall, but the glorious law of life, known only to God, drew it up out of the earth and hung it in all its inexplicable wonder high in ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... stories began to affect me in spite of myself. There were times when I felt very dreary. Perhaps Aunt Philippa was right. Perhaps men possessed neither truth nor constancy. Certainly Mark had forgotten me. I was ashamed of myself because this hurt me so much, but I could not help it. I grew pale and listless. Aunt Philippa ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and we saw the drops fall into plashes, and the plashes were wrinkling under their blows. It was a damp, gray day—a very dreary day. The snow still lay on the roofs, while on the ground, here and there, were dark spots of mud. And the snow on the roofs, too, was covered with a brownish, muddy coating. The rain trickled slowly, producing a mournful sound. ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... afloat, Captain Lascelles carried him off, as well as his own two midshipmen, with, of course, Queerface and the two parrots. The Ranger went away to the southward, where she cruised without much success. Those only who have been long on the coast know what dreary work it often is, how homesick many poor fellows become, how easily, when the coast fever gets hold of them, the destroyer gains the victory. They had been some two or three weeks at sea, when a man-of-war ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... hopeless. Heartsick and discouraged, he rallied from each disappointment, only to face defeat again. He had spent weeks in fruitless journeying, following up every clue that presented itself, waited days at hospitals for chiefs of staff, and made the dreary round of newspaper offices, where knowledge of every conceivable subject is supposedly upon file ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... that I am somewhat of your opinion, Paolo. My father brought me up a Protestant like yourself, and when I was quite young I had a very dreary time of it while he was away, living as I did in the house of a Huguenot pastor. After that I attended the Protestant services in the barracks, for all the officers and almost all the men are Protestants, and, of course, were allowed to have their own services; but the minister, who was a Scotchman, ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... I had married her that I realized what a delightful thing it was to be alive. My former existence, looked back on from that time, seemed but a blank expanse through which I had stagnated as a chrysalis lingers on, half alive, through the dreary months ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... a gale of wind from the southward all night, and next morning such a surf was breaking upon the beach that to have attempted to move would have been madness. Here we were therefore once more kept prisoners upon this dreary coast; the country was exactly similar to that lying immediately to the north of it, with these two exceptions, that the range of sandhills was less elevated, and that we could not here find fresh water. The morning was passed in searching for it; in the middle of the day I read a few appropriate ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... surge through his whole body. "Bud, I want him here. I want to be always around to help him when he gets bumping into potholes. It's that weakness that sets me crazy when I think. He ain't made for the dreary grind of the life we live. That's why he cut it out when I came here. Well there's no grind for him now, and I want to have him come along and share in with me. That's why I'm talking now. From this moment on we're a great proposition in the ranching world, ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... made her stop a moment with her back to him. "Think better of that. You are too young, too beautiful, too much made to be happy and to make others happy. If you are afraid of losing your freedom, I can assure you that this freedom here, this life you now lead, is a dreary bondage to what I will offer you. You shall do things that I don't think you have ever thought of. I will take you anywhere in the wide world that you propose. Are you unhappy? You give me a feeling that you are unhappy. You have no right to be, or to ...
— The American • Henry James
... Very little happened. The Vicar and his wife dined there occasionally, and still more occasionally Father Mahon. Now and then there were vague entertainments to be patronized in the village schoolroom, in an atmosphere of ink and hair-oil, and a mild amount of rather dreary and stately gaiety connected with the big houses round. Mrs. Baxter occasionally put in appearances, a dignified and aristocratic old figure with her gentle eyes and black lace veil; ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Every single soul in this dreary building. Considering he never left the flat, it's wonderful - wonderful; but he knew all the children, and they all knew him. And if you know the children you know the fathers ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... night and several degrees of frost by day were what Thrums began to accept as a revised order of nature. Vainly the Thrums doctor, whose practice extends into the glens, made repeated attempts to reach his distant patients, twice driving so far into the dreary waste that he could neither go on nor turn back. A ploughman who contrived to gallop ten miles for him did not get home for a week. Between the town, which is nowadays an agricultural centre of some importance, and the outlying farms communication was cut ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... know how your health goes on: we are better than we had reason to expect. When we look back upon this Spring, it seems like a dreary dream to us. But I trust in God that we shall yet 'bear up ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... by his experience. It was a dreary story. He would bring home three pounds on Saturday, and on Monday all the clothes would be in pawn. Sick of the useless struggle, he gave up a paying contract, and contented himself with small and ill-paid jobs. "A bad job was as good as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nymphs sat down seven days and waited trembling, till the Nymph came up again; and her face was pale, and her eyes dazzled with the light for she had been long in the dreary darkness; but in her hand was ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary, eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clew to a tremendously fine detective story ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... but in the spring and summer of 1915 it was a beautiful place, where one might fancy that the many British dead rested more easily beneath oaks and among familiar flowers than in most of the cemeteries of this dreary land. The wood was about 1-1/2 miles long, with a maximum depth of 1,400 yards, and its undergrowth, where not cut away, was densely intertwined with alder, hazel, ash, and blackthorn, with water standing ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... to some romantic lay, My flageolet—and as I pensive play, The sweet notes echo o'er the mountain scene: The traveller late journeying o'er the moors, Hears them aghast,—(while still the dull owl pours Her hollow screams each dreary ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... whom Brighton is recommended for change of air and of scene get sadly taken in, for here the air—like that of a barrel-organ—never changes, as the wind is always high. In sunshine, Brighton always looks hot; in moonshine, eternally dreary; the men are yawning all day long, and the women sitting smirking in bay-windows, or walking with puppy-dogs and parasols, which last they are continually opening and shutting. In short, when a man is sick of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... After this, Ambrose's dreary imprisonment took on a new color. True, the hours next day threatened to drag more slowly than ever, but with the hope that it might be the last day he could ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the trees and the roofs of the cottages. Here I could for the first time see the whole extent of the calamity. Many houses had been completely torn down, and the crops, and even the loose alluvial earth swept away; as we glided by each dreary scene of devastation, another yet more dismal ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... I never rested until I too was en route to Siberia! I wanted to take Irene in my arms and to console her as her dead mother would have done. O—— was a fearful place, just a colony of dreary huts by the sea. Behind were the wolf-infested forests; in the midst of it, the frowning fortress prison! When I showed my ukase, and demanded to see my relations, they simply showed me two graves. Irene and Alex rested side by side, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... weather by the moon's quarters, but none of the other fooleries which we find in those that circulate in England among the less educated classes. It is curious to notice how the taste for putting sonnets and other dreary poems at the beginnings and ends of books has survived in these Spanish countries. What used to be known in England as "a copy of verses" is still appreciated here, and almanacks, newspapers, religious books, even programmes of plays ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... round him hung As of a dweller out of doors; In his whole figure and his mien A savage character was seen Of mountains and of dreary moors. 295 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... The way led through a trackless forest, the route merely indicated by blazed trees. Bears, wolves, and wild-cats were numerous. The distance was impossible to be traversed in a single day; these young girls must spend the night in that dreary wilderness. Worse than danger from wild animals, was that to be apprehended from Indians, who might kill them, or capture and bear them away to some distant tribe. But undauntedly they set out on their perilous journey, carrying twenty pounds of powder. They reached Machias in safety, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... approaching the arctic circle, and already near the place where wise men think it is best to turn homeward; for it is close to the Land of the Polar Bear and the Northern Lights—the region of perpetual snow. But dreary as this would seem to us, nest building is going on there this June ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... of the fleece is usually monotonous and dreary in the extreme; and those located here were a fair sample of the general herd. There was a shepherd and a hut-keeper. The duty of the former was to lead out the flocks daily at dawn, to follow and tend them while depasturing, and protect them from the depredations ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Day heard him with a fainting spirit, dreary-eyed. What did she care for paying out Coman, down the street! Her heart was full ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... a dreary scene that met my gaze at break of day. Already the Quharity had risen six feet, and in many parts of the glen it was two hundred yards wide. Waster Lunny's corn-field looked like a bog grown over with rushes, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... and many things about the University which interested me. I sent my card to Professor Fries, and he entirely devoted himself to me: but imagine our conversation—he spoke in Latin and I in French: however we understood each other very well. It is on the whole a dreary country except where enlivened by lakes: some parts are pine forests and birch forests, but others are featureless ground with boulder stones, like the worst part of ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... day! Father is home again! Jupheena will now be happy. The time of thy absence seemed long and dreary; but thou art back again in our ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... animating rod Taught Jacob's sons their wonder-working God, Who led thro dreary wastes the murmuring band, And reach'd the confines of their promised land, Opprest with years, from Pisgah's towering height, On fruitful Canaan feasted long his sight; The bliss of unborn nations warm'd his breast, Repaid his toils and sooth'd his soul to rest; Thus o'er thy subject ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... ashamed to proclaim his pleasure in four hours of uninterrupted, musically inflected speech over a substratum of shifting harmonies, each with its individual tang and instrumental color; but neither should anybody be afraid to say that nine-tenths of the music is a dreary monotony because of the absence of what to him stands for musical thought. Let him admit or deny, as he sees fit, that the principle of symphonic development is a proper concomitant of the musical drama, but let him also say whether or not what to some appears a flocculent, hazy ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... she would have found that State dinner as dreary as it was pompous. The Rajah was occupied with discussing the laws of British sport with Colonel Bradlaw who regarded himself as an authority on such matters, and expressed his opinions ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... had been brought to him, and, as usual, he had made an unsuccessful effort to induce his sullen jailer to inform him why he was confined, and when he should be released. Gloomy and disconsolate, he seated himself on the ground, and leaned his back against the end wall of his dreary dungeon. The light from the window above his head fell upon the opposite door, and illuminated the spot where he had scratched, with the shank of a button, a line for each day of his imprisonment. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do,—and natures like his can realise it. When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, between two policemen,—waited in the long dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... can tether time or tide; The hour approaches Tam maun ride: That hour, o' night's black arch the keystane, That dreary hour he mounts his beast in: And sic a night he tak's the road in, As ne'er poor sinner was abroad in. The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last; The rattlin' showers rose on the blast; The speedy gleams ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... founded this the first regular college in 1284. Of the original buildings of the little hostel nothing remains, and the quadrangle was not commenced until 1424, but the tragedy which befell the college took place in the second half of the eighteenth century, when James Essex, who built the dreary west front of Emmanuel, was turned loose in the court. His hand was fortunately stayed before he had touched the garden side of the southern wing, and the picturesque range of fifteenth-century buildings, including the hall and combination ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... problem more easy of statement than of solution, in face of Dominic's pride, inexperience, and the singular isolation of his position! There followed dreary months wherein his evenings were spent in studying and answerings advertisements; and his days, till late afternoon, in walking the town from end to end for the interviewing of possible employers and the keeping of fruitless ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... through beautiful valleys and pretty hillsides. To the east of Sebsevar you come out into desert country, which, however passes into fertile country with many villages.[2] Then there comes a boundless dreary steppe to the south. At the village Seng-i-kal-i-deh you enter an undulating country with immense flocks of sheep. 'The first stretch of the road between Shurab and Nishapur led us through perfect desert..; but the landscape soon changed its aspect; the desert passed by degrees ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... many of the virtuous people. What was called virtue and piety had something stifling and choking about it, I used to think. I had a tutor at school who was a parson, and he was a good sort of man, too, in a way. But I used to feel suddenly dreary with him, as if there were a whole lot of real things and interesting things which he was afraid of. I couldn't say what I thought to him—only what I felt he wanted me to think. That's a bad answer," I went on, "but I ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... aim, it were all, in sooth, That any soul needs, to climb to heaven, And we would not cumber the way of truth With dreary dogmas, or rites ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... I hate you, I hate you! Because I am a woman, I hate you! Because I would live in a house, and not in this endless dreary waste of a dead world, I hate you! Because your very emptiness and solitude are worse than a prison, because the calls of the living things that creep and fly over your endless bosom are more mournful than death ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... hotel he hailed a passing taxi and was soon speeding through Piccadilly westward. He turned by Hyde Park Corner, skirted the grounds of Buckingham Palace and plunged into the maze of Pimlico. He pulled up before a dreary-looking house in a blank and dreary street, and telling the cabman to wait, mounted the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Bargeton's past life, a dreary chronicle which must be given if Lucien's position with regard to the lady is to be comprehensible. Lucien's introduction came about oddly enough. In the previous winter a newcomer had brought some interest into Mme. de Bargeton's ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... of "Child and Woman in Universal Freemasonry" was hailed with acclamation in the columns of the Revue Mensuelle; it reviewed it by dreary instalments, and when reviewing was no longer possible, had recourse to tremendous citations; as a last effort, it supplied an exhaustive index to the whole work—a charitable and necessary action, for the twelve months' toil of the author had expired without the accomplishment ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... deserted-looking building, surrounded by an immense number of the monuments which the natives call Permessur; while, stretched out at our feet, and forming, as it were, the bottom of a large basin among the mountains, was a dreary desert of glaring, burning sand. The place altogether looked like a city of the dead: not a soul appeared in sight, except one solitary old woman, who was slowly traversing the weary waste of sands, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... up, the thorn that scratches them, the snow that makes their flesh tingle, is an object of their resentment in just the same kind and degree as are the men and women who thwart or injure them. But of duty—that dreary device to secure future reward by present suffering; of conscientiousness—that fear of present good for the sake of future punishment; of remorse—that disavowal of past pleasure for fear of the sting in its tail; of ambition—that begrudging of all honorable results that are not ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... thoughts as she went about the house, hasping windows and bolting doors, with a dreary sense of the futility ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... intellectual type of mind. We cannot tell precisely the reach of his soul, but it was certainly "above buttons." The chopping of the firewood, the providing of food, the state of the weather, the prospects of the advancing spring, and the retrospect of the long dreary winter that was just vanishing from the scene, were not sufficient to appease his intellectual appetite. They sufficed, indeed, for his square, solid, easy-going, matter-of-fact interpreter, Donald Mowat; and ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... four o'clock when they reached the farm-house, and they found the weary, dreary mother of the family cleaning fish at the kitchen sink, one baby pulling at her skirts, another sprawling on ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... a dreary lodging, my poor boy, and no wonder that you weep," said he. "But dry your eyes, and tell me where your mother dwells. I promise you if the journey be not too far, I will leave you in her ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... halts at imaginary clubs, where—imaginary steps being leisurely ascended—imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and—regrettable to say—imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I, crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... the time we got the coffee, rain was falling in sheets, and the evening bade fair to be a most dismal one; but songs and choruses set up by some of my staff—the two young women playing accompaniments on a battered piano—relieved the situation and enlivened us a little. However, the dreary night brought me one great comfort; for General Grant, who that day had moved out to Gravelly Run, sent me instructions to abandon all idea of the contemplated raid, and directed me to act in concert with the infantry under his immediate ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... himself delighted, and shook hands with Babington with a fervour which seemed to imply that until he had met him life had been a dreary blank, but that now he could begin to enjoy himself again. 'I should like to join you, if you don't mind including a friend of mine in the party,' said Richards. 'He was to meet me here. By the way, he's the author of that new ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Doris sat huddled in a corner of the little waiting-room counting the dreary minutes as she waited for her train. No one beside ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... victor, and he assigned to his brothers and cousins the administration of the provinces of southern Russia. Still the ancient annals give us nothing but a dreary record of war. A very energetic prince arose, by the name of Mstislaf, who, for years, strode over subjugated provinces, desolating them with fire and sword. Another horrible famine commenced its ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that my curate and I had set to work steadily at our Greek authors, to show the Bishop we could do something, I put aside my Homer with regret, and faced the frost of November. The concert was held in the old store down by the creek; and I shivered at the thought of two hours in that dreary room, with the windows open and a sea draught sweeping through. To my intense surprise, I gave up my ticket to a well-dressed young man with a basket of flowers in his button-hole; and I passed into a hall where the light blinded me, and I was dazed at the multitude ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... their innings to-night; played a pretty stiff game till, at twelve o'clock, stumps drawn. All about what used to be called the Compensation Bill. Got a new name now; Compensation Clauses dropped; but JOKIM finds it dreary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... such a gain to have the sea quiet! It roars and beats here enough in the best of times. I am sure I hope there will not a storm come while we are here; for I should think it must be dreadfully dreary. It's all sea here, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... far-away mountains was made up of many parallel ranges of rocky hills; which ranges were separated by broad, shallow valleys, where cactus and sage-brush covered the dry ground thickly; and the only trees that broke this dreary monotony were pita-palms, the most dismal thing in all created nature to which the name of a tree ever has been given by man. There was no trail, and travelling through this tangle of briers was very difficult. All of Rayburn's skill, which long practice had developed to ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... present, unless he regards it as being the vestibule of the future, and that this present life is unintelligible and insignificant unless beyond it, and led up to by it, and shaped through it, there lies the eternal life beyond. The low flat plain is dreary and desolate, featureless and melancholy, when the sky above it is filled with clouds. But sweep away the cloud-rack, and let the blue arch itself above the brown moorland, and all glows into lustre, and every undulation is brought out, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... were as idyllic as by day. The queen and her ladies, relieved of the dreary presence of the king who still remained at Paris, revelled in an unwonted freedom. Concerts, suppers and dances were the rule and moonlight cavalcades to the heart of the forest, or promenades on foot the length of the terrace, and by some romantically disposed couples far beyond, gave ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... long dreary weeks that followed I was glad that I had had that dinner at sunset and moonrise with him down in the cove at the spring that was away from all the world. All during the days that never seemed to end, as I went upon my round ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... learned scribe," he added, "and fill every jar and skin that you can gather with sweet water, lest to-morrow you and your company should go thirsty," and he laughed a very dreary laugh. ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... to be closed whenever it was cold or stormy, making the house as dark as night, and had then been placed in a house lighted by glass windows, we would scarcely have found words to express our thankfulness. It would have been like taking a man out of a dreary prison and setting him in the bright world of God's blessed sunshine. After a time men made small windows of stones that were partly transparent; and then they used skins prepared something like parchment, and finally ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... back to Judge Markham," she said to the girl, and then resumed her bouquet-making, wondering if every bride-elect were as wretched as herself, or if to any other maiden of twenty the world had ever looked so desolate and dreary, as it did ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... annoyed while all alert to find A plausible likeness of my own dark thought, I cast me down beneath yon oak's wide boughs, And, shielding with both hands my throbbing brows, Watched lazily the shadows of my brain. The feeble tide of peevishness went down, And left a flat dull waste of dreary pain, Which seemed to clog the blood in every vein; The world, of course, put on its darkest frown— In all its realms I saw no mortal crown Which did not wound or crush some restless head; And hope, and will, and motive, all ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... sorrow to her heart, and feeds her passion by recounting it, and watches away the leaden hours, crying aloud to all who will listen: "He is not dead—he is not dead! he will come back to me! He promised it—he will come back to me! This long, dreary waiting is only a test of my loyalty and love! I will be patient, for he will come back to me! He will come ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Six dreary, anxious months followed. Then the baron, the only person in the whole world who seemed to care whether she lived or died, came to find her. He took her to Paris. There he decided to pass her off as his daughter, declaring he had very grave reasons ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... your own fault," replied Edna, in the same dreary hopeless voice. "There is no trouble so hard to bear as that. To think that I might have been so happy, and that my own temper has spoiled it all. Let me tell you all about it, Bessie; it will be a relief, even though you cannot help me, for to-night ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... first and most natural root of a great city is the labor and populousness of the adjacent country, which supplies the materials of subsistence, of manufactures, and of foreign trade. But the greater part of the Campagna of Rome is reduced to a dreary and desolate wilderness: the overgrown estates of the princes and the clergy are cultivated by the lazy hands of indigent and hopeless vassals; and the scanty harvests are confined or exported for the benefit of a monopoly. A second and more artificial cause of the growth of a metropolis is the residence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the earth ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the cold blue glimmer from here and there a storm window or a skylight. As the conviction of failure grew on him, the ghostly feeling of the place began to invade him. All was vague, forsaken, and hopeless, as a dreary dream, with the superadded miserable sense of lonely sleepwalking. I suspect that the feeling we call ghostly is but the sense of abandonment in the lack of companion life; but be this as it may, Malcolm was glad enough to catch sight of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... there was no animosity; there was nothing at all but a sense of gratefulness. In the dreary picture of his life there was now an illumined corner. He had ceased to blame her; she was doing for her country what he, did necessity so will, would do for his. And after all, he could not war against a woman—a ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... down. He was horribly afraid of rats, so he did not try to sleep, but sat looking distrustfully at the dark, still terrified lest he might have awakened his father. In such reactions, after one of the experiences which made days and nights out of the dreary blanks of the calendar, when his senses were deadened, Paul's head was always singularly clear. Suppose his father had heard him getting in at the window and had come down and shot him for a burglar? Then, again, suppose his father ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... to the power of Russia there, and Raglan has been all for the Crimea and the road to Sevastopol. And no man has known what to believe amongst the divided councils of the Allies. The men amongst the vineyards are plucking and sucking the grapes. The sun grows hotter and hotter, and there is so dreary a silence in these waiting hours that the angry neigh of a horse is heard for a mile along the line. Five o'clock when we began to move, and here is high noon, and impatience all on edge, and nothing done. The staff comes cantering back, and another hour goes by in silence; ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... is not a bit nice and comfortable," she said with an anxious frown: "fancy your spending your days in this dreary room." ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... knowledge acquired as a means of subsistence, it is a comforting reflection that we can thus earn a livelihood in such a satisfactory and congenial manner, especially when bearing in mind that the majority of young women, who toil in this great metropolis, are constrained to pass long and dreary hours at work which is far less lucrative and much more debilitating and unhealthy. Again, the study of stenography requires constant and critical attention, thereby strengthening the mind and doing away with idle day-dreaming. Mental ...
— Silver Links • Various
... stillness all around—a stillness widely different from that peaceful composure which characterizes a calm day in an inhabited land. It was the death-like stillness of that most peculiar and dreary desolation which results from the total absence of animal existence. The silence was so oppressive that it was with a feeling of relief he listened to the low, distant voices of the men as they paused ever and anon in their busy ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... with it a slight disillusionment. The dining-room in Shamrock House is in the basement; chill and dreary of aspect, its windows always dirty and unopenable, because at the slightest excuse of an open window the small boys of the neighbourhood will make it their target for all kinds of filth. Rotting vegetables, apple-cores, scrapings ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... breakfast dishes in a dreary, listless sort of way. She looked tired and broken-spirited. Ted's enthusiasm seemed to grate on ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... parts of a cracked bell, if I might judge from the tinkling of it. On another side, it was protected from the bitter blast by the poor-house, thus judiciously placed for the benefit of the invalided paupers. It was a dreary evening in February, and everything was looking chilly and black, except, by the bye, an early primrose peering out from the side of a crumbling tomb in the very darkest corner of the whole—that looked fresh and ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M. |
