"Heartrending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the time that he took his life. The third occasion was when his lovely consort, to whom, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, he was so deeply devoted, was taken from him by the hand of an assassin in a foreign land, and under peculiarly heartrending circumstances. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... companions searched for him in vain, and finally recognized his agonizing cries from the opposite shore where the cannibals were torturing him. In his delirium he had swum across the narrow inlet which separated them from their enemies; his heartrending cries told of the reception accorded him. "Oh, if he had only repented!" cried the boys with ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... surprise; the old colonel wheeled toward the back of the store, his jaw dropping and his eyes protruding as though he were confronted with a ghost. As, in a way, he was: even I had been struck by that strange, heartrending similarity to her mother's tone; and even I trembled a little to hear that voice, as it ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... William Irwin, of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, and his party, as related in the Paris Herald, were heartrending. On leaving Switzerland for France they were forced to carry their own luggage, all the porters apparently having selfishly marched off to die for their country, and the train was not lighted, nor did any ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... it. The boats would have sunk had he allowed all to remain. As it was, they were already too deeply laden for safety. The sailors had literally to lift out those who had last got in, and to place them on the shore, ere we shoved off into deep water. It was heartrending to see the whole shore lined with fugitives: some rushing into boats which had already come up, some waving frantically to other boats which were approaching. Here, Spanish troopers charging the unhappy people with lances, or sabring them as they attempted ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... It was indeed heartrending; but the skipper was a thoughtful man, and when he found that his mate was famine-struck, he risked swamping the boat, and sent some beef and biscuit. The shameless Spaniards had plenty below, but they were enraged for some reason or other, and they would have let their deliverer ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... with a heartrending expression, "Why should he understand this, my sister? He is my master, and I am his slave; he has the right ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sacred sea of the old poets and philosophers, on the sea whose voice has rocked the thought of the world, that he cast into the shadow that long lament, so heartrending and sublime, that posterity will long shudder at the remembrance of it. The bitter strophes of this lament seem to be cadenced by the Mediterranean itself and to be ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... away from that heartrending sight; they begged her to go to her room; but she insisted upon staying. They tried to remove her by force; but she clung to the bed, and vowed that they should tear her to pieces sooner than make her leave ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... men to carry each canoe we had been compelled to make three loads of our outfit, and this meant fifty-five miles actual walking, and thirty-three miles of this distance with packs on our backs. The weather conditions had made the work more than hard— it was heartrending—as we toiled over naked hills, across marshes and moraines, or through dripping ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... ordinary, everyday thing appears to it as something entirely new and attractive, as if metamorphosed by witchcraft and now seen for the first time. Life is worth living, says art, the beautiful temptress; life is worth knowing, says science. With this contrast the so heartrending and dogmatic tradition follows in a theory, and consequently in the practice of classical philology derived from this theory. We may consider antiquity from a scientific point of view; we may try to look ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... am beginning to understand now," answered the shipowner, averting his eyes lest Iris should see the tears in them. Their Calvary was ended, they thought—was it for him to lead them again through the sorrowful way? It was a heartrending task that lay before him, a task from which his soul revolted. He refused even to attempt it. He sought forgetfulness in a species of mental intoxication, and countenanced his daughter's love idyll with such apparent approval that Lord Ventnor wondered whether Sir Arthur were not suffering ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... gave way more and more to an insuperable hopelessness; it was no longer a keen, heartrending grief that she felt, but a dull, gloomy melancholy. There was nothing to rouse her from it, no one came to see her, and the road which passed before her door was almost deserted. Sometimes a gig passed by driven by a red-faced ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... wonder, clean, comfortable, and vacant. Comparing it hastily with the first-class compartment being held by Francesca, I found that it differed only in having no carpet on the floor, and a smaller number of buttons in the upholstering. This was really heartrending when the difference in fare for three persons would be at least twenty dollars. What a delightful sum to put aside for a rainy day!—that is, be it understood, what a delightful sum to put aside and spend on the first rainy day! for that is the ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... into an act of disobedience, and at once ordered their men to go in and take everything he possessed. This tribe is small and weak, which the Boers well knew. Eye-witnesses of what followed say it was a heartrending sight. The women, with children in their arms, pleaded in vain to the Boers to leave them something or they would starve, but the latter only jeered at them. What these poor people will do God only knows, for the Boers stripped them of every living thing they possessed, and with the proceeds of ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... hands of their soldier boys and bravely sent them away. After the good-byes were said there was nothing for these women to do but to go back and wait, wait, wait. The excitement of battle was not for them. It was simply a season of anxiety and heartrending inactivity." Now the fact is, when a great call to arms is sounded for the men of a nation, women enlist in the industrial army. If women did indeed sit at home and weep, ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... appeal had been made to the god, when those who were following the case and were looking out for some grim evidence that the god was at work in bringing retribution on the man whom everyone suspected of being the thief, were startled by a heartrending catastrophe. ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... marine picture made the background, and on the shore little Mary Morrison bade little Jimmie Jones "Good-bye" with heartrending sobs. But this Bobbie Shafto never went to sea. As picture followed picture, he was shown pulling at a rowing machine, sailing toy ships in a tub, fishing in a pail, and digging for treasure in a tiny sand pile—and after each funny scene, the curtain would drop, and tiny Mary ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... of this when I am dead.' This was most heartrending, coming from a man I loved better than any one in the world excepting my wife. He died that night, in silence, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... Elector to furnish them some redress for their affliction and want, and besought him, even now, to make peace with the Swedes, and to command the Stadtholder in the Mark to institute a milder government in the unhappy province. In heartrending words, they pictured the distresses of both wretched cities, which had so far declined that they had now hardly seven thousand inhabitants, while ten years ago they had numbered more than twenty thousand. "But fire, pillage, and oppressions," ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... spiral plume called the "Osprey," the old birds "are killed off in scores, while employed in feeding their young, who are left to starve to death in their nests by hundreds." Their dying cries are described as "heartrending." But they evidently do not rend the hearts of our fashionable ladies, or induce them to rend their much-beplumed garments. Thirty thousand black partridges have been killed in certain Indian provinces in a few days' time to supply the European demand for their skins. One dealer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... expiate. Bettina accused herself of bringing a curse upon the family, and died in despair at being unable to obtain her father's pardon. Notwithstanding the consolations which the ministers of religion, touched by her repentance, freely gave her, she cried in heartrending tones with her latest breath: "Oh father! father!" "Never give your heart without your hand," she said to Modeste an hour before she died; "and above all, accept no attentions from any man without telling ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... armies through the mountains of Albania was almost as heartrending as the flight of the civilian population. Day by day, thousands of men, ill-clad and ill-shod, or with bare and bleeding feet, so famished that they fed on the flesh of dead horses by the wayside, stumbled painfully and wretchedly ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... fresh revolt. 400 The tragedy of the Calle de Camba. Cebu Island rises in revolt. 401 The Cebuanos' raid on Cebu City; Lutao in flames; piles of corpses. 402 Exciting adventures of American citizens. Heartrending scenes in Cebu City. 404 Rajahmudah Datto Mandi visits Cebu. Rebels in Bolinao (Zambales). 406 Relief of Bolinao. Father Santos of Malolos is murdered. 408 The peacemaker states his views on the reward he expects from Spain. 409 Don Maximo Paterno, the Philippine "Grand Old Man". 411 Biographical ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... late before the visitors departed; after that Tom Fuller was compelled to take his leave,—a heartrending performance as far as he was concerned; so the day drew to a close, leaving both the husband and wife more preoccupied and anxious than the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... but of late Mrs. Rodney had informed her sister that she was no longer young enough to permit these expeditions. Imogene accepted the announcement without a murmur, but it occasioned Waldershare several sonnets of heartrending remonstrance. Imogene continued, however, to make his breakfast, and kept his Parliamentary papers in order, which he never could manage, but the mysteries of which Imogene mastered with feminine ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... sorrowful from Camus to Kincreggan. A sound pleasant in the ears of Cameron the shepherd, who read no grief in it, but the comfortable tale of progress, growth, increasing flocks, but to Gilian almost heartrending. The separation for which the ewes wailed and their little ones wept, seemed a cruelty; that far-extending lamentation of the flocks was part of some universal coronach for things eternally doomed. Never ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... of a tree, found herself lying on the ground with only a little piece of torn clothing tightly clasped in her hand. Hitherto, comforted by Martha's presence, the little one had not uttered a sound; but now, feeling itself deserted, it gave vent to the most heartrending screams—screams that abruptly disturbed the silence of that lonely spot and pierced to the depths of Martha's soul. In an instant she rose, and, dashing on, bounded over stock and stone, tearing herself pitiably, but heeding ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... are unanimous in their praise of the truth and uniform consistency of his characters, of his heartrending pathos, and his comic wit. Moreover, they extol the beauty and sublimity of his separate descriptions, images, and expressions. This last is the most superficial and cheap mode of criticising works of art. Johnson compares him who should endeavor to recommend this poet by passages unconnectedly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... our first introduction to the desert and, though a little monotonous, it seemed quite pleasant, and indeed was so, when compared to the heartrending country met with later ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... America, as written by one of Admiral Cervera's captains,[1] with the publication of the actual telegrams which passed between the Government and the fleet, and the military commanders in the colonies, is one of the most heartrending examples of the sacrifice, not only of brave men, but of a country's honour to political intrigue or the desire to retain office. This, at least, is the opinion of the writer of this painful history, and his statements are ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... potions? Pardon? What, are you fools? Why do you think I held my tongue, when I discovered your infamy, and let myself be poisoned, and threw the doctors off the scent? Do you really hope that I did this to prepare a scene of heartrending farewells, and to give you my benediction at the ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... this desolation the terror-stricken inhabitants running everywhere, looking for members of their families—many of whom had been killed by bullets or by flames—or sitting before their still smoking homes, tearing their hair, a picture of distress truly heartrending. The soldiers who were the first to enter Smolensk found flour, brandy and wine, but these things were devoured in an instant. There were 10 thousand wounded in the so-called hospitals, and among these unfortunates typhus and hospital gangraene developed ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... will be his servant, the servant of his dog, and he shall eat my heart if he will.' She met M. le Cure of Saint-Remy, and said to him: 'Monsieur, I will till the earth with my finger-nails, but give me back my child!' It was heartrending, Oudarde; and IL saw a very hard man, Master Ponce Lacabre, the procurator, weep. Ah! poor mother! In the evening she returned home. During her absence, a neighbor had seen two gypsies ascend up to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... But to his questions, Dallas, her reason tottering like her steps, could only return others that were heartrending: ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... death struggle, and the distracted attempts to find a place of concealment for the victim, are too heartrending to be repeated here. James fell, it is said, with sixteen wounds in him, hacked almost to pieces, yet facing his murderers so desperately that some of them bore the marks of his dying grip when they were brought to the scaffold to be killed in their turn with every circumstance of horror conceivable ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... too soon to the small room at the top of the house on Eleventh Street. He turned paler than his wife when he saw her lying on the bed. She smiled through her tears,—a really heartrending smile. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... room. Each slipped an arm gently beneath hers, and they raised her up and led her towards the dining-room. But the moment she divined their intention, she shook them from her in a last despairing outburst. The scene was heartrending. She threw herself on her knees at the bedside and clung passionately to the sheets, while the room re-echoed with her piteous shrieks. But still Jeanne lay there with her face of stone, stiff and icy-cold, wrapped round by the silence of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We gave a nigger four fingers ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... one of a wicked childhood, ignorant youth, wasted early years, melancholy, sins, outbursts of faith, falls, returns of love, pride, virtue, restitution through repentance, scourged hopes, dead confidences, the entire heartrending existence of a woman who had left more of her heart than of the flesh of her body clinging to the nails of her calvaries:—all, though ordinary and commonplace, was so cruel in its truth that it appealed at once to Sulpice's heart, a heart bursting with pity, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... his training in the school of chivalry. He had been profoundly moved by little Amy's sacrifice to the powers of life, and he was further touched by the heartrending spectacle of Jane. Jane doing all she knew for him; Jane, so engaging in her innocence, hiding her small, childlike charm under dark airs of assumed maternity; Jane, whose skirts fluttered wide to all the winds of dream; Jane with an apron on and ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... to command you, Caroline, but to bear the request of my guests. No, I do not even ask you on my account to go up to the great hall: it is to please my guests only." Her tears and heartrending appeal began to sober him. Bigot had not counted on such ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... same spot, but there was a change in their positions. The prisoner was now kneeling with clasped hands before the cut-throats, begging for his life for the sake of his wife and children, in heartrending accents, to which his executioners replied in mocking tones, "We have got you at last into our hands, have we? You dog of a Bonapartist, why do you not call on your emperor to come and help you out of this scrape?" The unfortunate man's entreaties became more pitiful and their mocking replies ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... me. My dear Hilda, I am afraid I shall not be able to keep Miss Mills, she seems to get sillier every day; it is my private conviction that she has a love affair on, but she's as mum as possible about it. Poor Sutton cried in a most heartrending way when she left; she said when leaving, 'I'll never get another mistress like you, ma'am, for you never interfere, even to the clearing of the jellies.' I am glad she appreciates me, I didn't think she did while she was living with us. The new cook ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... sano. Health, toast a toasti. Healthy sana. Heap amaso. Heap up amasigi. Hear auxdi. Hearken auxskulti. Hearse cxerkveturilo. Heart koro. Heart (cards) kero. Heart, by parkere. Heart, to learn by parkeri. Hearth fajrujo, hejmo. Heartrending korsxiranta. Heartsease violo. Hearty korega. Heat hejti. Heat varmeco. Heath stepo, erikejo. Heather (plant) eriko. Heathen idolano. Heathenism idolservo. Heaven cxielo. Heaviness multepezeco. Heavy ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... had brought the leader back was the look of heartrending yearning in the gray eyes of a tattered little boy. He smiled, seeing that look swiftly change to one of ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... children who had lost their parents. He impersonated the departed in their agonies in purgatory, he made the people hear the pitiful moaning of the victims in the purgatorial fires, and transmitted their heartrending appeals for speedy help to the living. He clinched the argument by playing on the people's covetousness: for the fourth part of a gulden they could transfer a suffering soul safely to the home of the eternal paradise. Had they ever had a greater bargain offered to them? Never would they have this ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... were well known to me for several years) caused the soldiers to raid private houses, and bring out native families by force into the public square, or conduct them to the cemetery on the Guadalupe road, where they were shot in batches without inquiry and cremated. The heartrending scenes and wailing of the people failed to turn their persecutor from his purpose, save in one case—that of a colleague, who, wearing his chain of office, stepped forward and successfully begged for his life. A low estimate of this official's victims is 200. The ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... I beg," I said sarcastically; "if you are thinking of using these materials for one of your popular novels, be sure to throw in a few duels, several heartrending catastrophes, and other incidents of what you call 'action,' appropriately expressed in ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... Winter's door. Agnes opened it herself. Dorothy had indeed rushed to do it, but fortunately Agnes contrived to reach it before her. It was evident that Cicely was loth to tell her terrible news, though Dorothy begged her, over Agnes' shoulder, to relieve her heartrending suspense. Was it from one faint throb of womanly feeling in her usually hard heart, that Mistress Winter, in sharp tones, summoned Dorothy within, and left Agnes to ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... is a modern town built on a plain of mud and sand, a town of heartrending monotony, the least picturesque of all cities in the peninsula, the least Italian. It has not even a central piazza! You may conjure up visions of Holland and detect something of an old-world aroma, if you stroll about the canal and harbour where sails are now flapping furiously ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... ludicrous adventures, was married to a retired attorney. Mr. Nedopyuskin had succeeded before his death in getting Tihon a place as supernumerary clerk in some office; but directly after his father's death Tihon resigned his situation. Their perpetual anxieties, their heartrending struggle with cold and hunger, his mother's careworn depression, his father's toiling despair, the coarse aggressiveness of landladies and shopkeepers—all the unending daily suffering of their life had ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... Fasito'otai were selected for the first offerings, and after them followed others in quick succession, night and day, early and late, until the last wretched victim had been consumed. Most heartrending were the descriptions I received from persons who had actually looked on the fearful ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... if the day were breaking! Almost immediately two other windows flew into fragments, and I saw that the whole of the lower part of my house was nothing but a terrible furnace. But a cry, a horrible, shrill, heartrending cry, a woman's cry, sounded through the night, and two garret windows were opened! I had forgotten the servants! I saw the terrorstruck faces, and their ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... stolid, may call it what he will, but it is the common wish to forget that has brought all these people—young and old—together in Ignacz Goldstein's barn this night—the desire to forget that hideous, fateful fourteenth of September which comes with such heartrending regularity year after year—the desire to forget that the lads, the flower of the neighbouring villages, are going away to-day . . . for three years?—nay! very likely for ever!—three years! and all packed up like cattle in a railway truck! ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... being made most impressive; and so I am told they are, but the cremation of the poor lacks every element of this nature. My heart bled for a poor widow whose husband had just been taken to the pile. She was of a very low caste, but her grief was heartrending; not loud, but I thought I could taste the saltness of her tears, they seemed so bitter; but she has this consolation to comfort her after the outburst, that she insured the eternal happiness of her mate by having ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... his falcon in the boiling blood of life, Tracing in heartrending horror all the hoary wrongs and strife, Till the world shall sick and sadden of its folly and its sin, Hearkening through the roar of traffic to the ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... forge, I ought to be able to work an accordion. So I went at it, hammer and tongs, and soon could produce a great noise, though mighty dismal, I think, and maybe what you would (had you heard it) have called heartrending, since whenever I started up Kaiser would point his nose to the ceiling and howl, very sad indeed. I think when one of our concerts was going on that could a guest have arrived at the Headquarters House he would have thought he had found a home for lunatics and not a hotel ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... voice. It broke on a heartrending sob. And the voice of the resourceful Capataz de Cargadores, master and slave of the San Tome treasure, who had been caught unawares by old Giorgio while stealing across the open towards the ravine to get some more silver, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... rollers, and, by means of the smaller ones, communication by ropes being established, the negroes were, a few at a time, hauled through the surf. Many were more dead than alive, and several died before they reached the corvette. Some were brought up by their companions dead, and many were the heartrending scenes where fathers and mothers found that they had lost their children, husbands their wives, or children their parents. Orlo had held out bravely all the night, but his strength, towards the morning, gave way, and Lieutenant —, seeing his condition, directed ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... the bakeshop, which stands next door to our cabin, young Tom Somers lay straightened for the grave (he lived but fifteen minutes after he was wounded), while over his dead body a Spanish woman was weeping and moaning in the most piteous and heartrending manner. [Post, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... and, in company with many more people, he ran down to the water's edge, when he could see that a boy was battling with the waves, his head just above water, and crying for help in the most heartrending tones. People were running about wringing their hands, while those who had been bathing were huddling on their clothes, and others, again, had gone to seek for a boat; but it was very plain that, if assistance were not immediately rendered, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... ideas for which Luther's stubborn and contentious spirit fought, against both Catholics and Calvinists, are abandoned by the free investigation of modern times. His intensely passionate beliefs, gained in the heartrending struggles of a devout soul, occasionally missed an important truth. Sometimes he was harsh, unfair, even cruel toward his opponents; but such things should no longer disturb any German, for all the limitations of his nature and training are as nothing compared ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... had visited these enlightened Christians—if two of their children, instead of two of their horses, had met with a sudden death,—their grief could not be more heartrending or despairing than on this occasion. The whole family was in an uproar. There were wringing of hands, lamentable cries, and bewailings the most bitter, of the death of the best team in the town of Greenditch. ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... fortunate enough to be able to lay hold of a floating spar, and contrived to keep himself afloat; and, after a long struggle with the winds and waves, he was cast upon a strange island. But what was his surprise, on reaching the shore, to hear sounds of the most heartrending distress, mingled with the sweetest songs which had ever charmed him! His curiosity was instantly roused, and he advanced cautiously till he saw two huge dragons guarding the gate of a wood. They were terrible indeed to look upon. Their ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... Mine! My wickedness!" she cried, in a heartrending voice, bathed in tears, stretching out her clasped hands towards them. "He did it through me. I tortured him and drove him to it. I tortured that poor old man that's dead, too, in my wickedness, and brought him to this! It's my fault, mine first, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bewilderment passed into chill horror; her face took a wild, death-like expression; she locked herself up in her bedroom, and her maid, putting her ear to the keyhole, could hear her smothered sobs. More than once, as he went home after a tender interview, Kirsanov felt within him that heartrending, bitter vexation which follows on ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... day the great poet died, in Greece, the death of a hero. His body was taken back to England for burial, and Caroline Lamb stood at her window and saw the procession go by. The coffin was followed by a dog, howling piteously. Caroline uttered a heartrending cry, and sunk to the floor insensible. They raised her and placed her in her bed, from which she never rose; she was borne ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... of dear old Devon, can realize to the full extent the sickening hardships they had to endure, or the cruel disappointment under which even they at last gave way. I cannot conceive a situation more heartrending than theirs must have been on their return to Cooper's Creek, to find the depot abandoned. They had succeeded in accomplishing the glorious feat which so many brave men had tried in vain to accomplish; they had endured hardships which might make the stoutest heart quail; they had returned ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... moved about later among her guests an amiable hostess, with beaming countenance, the gayest of the gay. But every morning while the festivities lasted, promptly at eleven o'clock she would prostrate herself before the coffin and display heartrending grief in the presence of the unmoved spectators in order to ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... satisfaction, Jim found that the man was suffering from nothing more serious than a severe scorching, and he guessed that it must have been the anticipation of torture which had made the Indian send up those heartrending screams. As soon as the poor wretch had recovered from the shock which he had sustained, Jim questioned him as to how he came to be in such a situation, and was told that the man, whose name, by the way, was Jose, had been a guide in the guerilla service. The Bolivians believed that it was ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... left and centre of the defence were pierced, the Germans crossed the Nethe, and began to concentrate their howitzers on the inner line of ramparts. On the 7th the exodus from the city began by land and water, and amid heartrending scenes a quarter of a million people strove to reach the Dutch frontier or safety on the sea. The Belgian and British troops did their best to hold off the Germans while the flight proceeded and the city ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... happy, she went to the hovel of poor Madelon Dreux, the cobbler's widow, and nursed her and her children through a malignant fever, sitting early and late, and leaving her own peaceful hearth for the desolate hut with the delirious ravings and heartrending moans of the fever-stricken. "How ought one to dare to be happy if one is not of use?" she would say to those who sought to dissuade her from ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... he really to go out so far, to China, perhaps to slaughter. She still had him there with her, quite close, her poor hands could yet grasp him—and yet he must go; all the strength of her will, all her tears, and all her great heartrending despair—all! would nothing be of ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... recourse to self-destruction sets an example of unseemly revolt against one of the most beautiful and comforting of all the laws of nature. Moreover, suicide was a waste of force on which it was simply heartrending to have to look. There were so many great deeds to be done which called for the laying down of life. In a thousand different ways one might benefit mankind by Winkelried-like actions. If one was determined to die, one should at least render thereby to those ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... French drama, La Douloureuse, already cited, affords an excellent instance of a quiet last act. After the violent and heartrending rupture between the lovers in the third act, we feel that, though this paroxysm of pain is justified by the circumstances, it will not last for ever, and Philippe and Helene will come together again. This is also M. Donnay's ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... what had suddenly become a hideously raw evening, my driver entertained me with many heartrending and more or less truthful stories of evictions. He showed me a vast tract of land belonging to the Marquis of Sligo, from which the original inhabitants had, according to his story, been driven to make way for one tenant who paid less rent for all than they did ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... picture of wholesale murder, nor a bottle of vitriol thrown in the face of the Kaiser. After the thunder and the lightning, came the still small voice. It is a poem in the metre and manner of Gray, with the same silver tones of twilit peace—heartrending by contrast with the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... this tirade until she uttered the last sentence, when with a heartrending groan of anguish he sprang up and ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Bryant's station. He determined to pursue his march to the battle ground to bury the dead, if he could not avenge their fall. He was joined by many friends of the killed and missing, from Lexington and Bryant's station. They reached the battle ground on the 25th. It presented a heartrending spectacle. Where so lately had arisen the shouts of the robust and intrepid woodsmen, and the sharp yell of the savages, as they closed in the murderous contest, the silence of the wide forest was now unbroken, except ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... left fast locked up in her little place, that she could but just pay the rent for. Here, too, were young girls, children with an aged, worn look, like the fruit that withers to half its size before it ripens. Most heartrending of all, persons of real refinement were mingled up with this rude mass; poor wretches who had indeed seen better days, and their helpless, broken-hearted looks, the remnants of early sensitiveness, that still clung around them, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... draws in such noble outlines the dignity of the daily life of humanity regards as evil that divine act of procreation by which that dignity is renewed from age to age. It is difficult to believe that a man who has painted with so frightful an honesty the heartrending emptiness of the life of the poor can really grudge them every one of their pitiful pleasures, from courtship to tobacco. It is difficult to believe that a poet in prose who has so powerfully exhibited the earth-born ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... he started to prosecute his work more earnestly in Baltimore. The sight of the slave-pens along the principal streets; of vessel-loads of unfortunates torn from home and family and sent to Southern ports; the heartrending scenes at the auction blocks, made an impression on Garrison never to be forgotten; and the young man whose mother was too poor to send him to school, although she early taught him to hate oppression, resolved to devote his life to secure the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... forth from The heavenly gates; upon the lurid flame His chariot shall roll, and on the clouds Of sable smoke, down through the stormy sky, Where roar tremendous thunders, mid the cries Of agony and fear, which rise anon, Heartrending, from the lost, in anguish sore, Who call for shelter, but have no reply, Save terrors still more awful than before; Who seek for mercy, when their fearful doom Shall echo in their ear, "Too late! ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... him," continued the old man, taking his niece's hand, "but he is watching for the success of his treason. Do you recognise my son, Rosita?" he added, with heartrending despair, "or ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... now!.. But—just think what would be said of them down there in Tarascon, if they returned without Tartarin? They each felt this. And, at the moment of separation in the station at Geneva, the buffet witnessed a pathetic scene of tears, embraces, heartrending adieus to the banner; as the result of which adieus the whole company piled itself into the landau which Tartarin had chartered to take him to Chamonix. A glorious route, which they did with their eyes shut, wrapped in their rugs and filling the carriage with sonorous ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... condemned her to death. The people smeared her with honey from top to toe, and exposed her where bees would be attracted to her. The insects stung her to death, and the callous people paid no heed to her heartrending cries. Then it was that God resolved upon the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... away, would contrive to return to his post, watching with intense eagerness those who entered or left the room; continually making that dismal moaning which a dog in distress usually does. It was heartrending to hear him. One day, they allowed him to enter the room, hoping it might quiet him; he jumped upon the bed instantly, and disturbed the suffering child so much that he was never permitted to go in again. Poor Arthur! he no longer had a smile or caress ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous
... Panine, his credit would fall. Disowned by his mother-in-law, and publicly given up by her, he would be of no use to Herzog, and would be promptly thrown over by him. The mistress did not wish her daughter to know the heartrending truth. She would not willingly cause her to shed tears, and ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... The captain was right; but we all felt somehow disappointed, and looked back wistfully at the little boat, jumping up and down far astern now; the poor little light shining in vain, and the poor wretch within screaming out in the most heartrending accents a last faint ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... measles. No one of any degree of maturity in reading Pauline will be quite so horrified at the sins of the young gentleman who tells the story as he seems to be himself. It is the utterance of that bitter and heartrending period of youth which comes before we realise the one grand and logical basis of all optimism—the doctrine of original sin. The boy at this stage being an ignorant and inhuman idealist, regards all his faults as frightful secret malformations, and ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... He lived right up in the attics. When they opened the door a woman who lay there in child-bed raised herself up on the iron bedstead and gazed at them in alarm. She was thin and anemic. When she perceived the condition of her husband she burst into a heartrending fit ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the abodes of wealth and power, after all, draws nearly as much from the taxation of tobacco and spirits, which are the luxuries of the working classes, who pay their share with silence and dignity, as it does from those wealthy classes upon whose behalf such heartrending outcry ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... could appoint any other than Mr Harding. Mr Harding himself, when he heard how the matter had been settled, without troubling himself much on the subject, considered it as certain that he would go back to his pleasant house and garden. And though there would be much that was melancholy, nay, almost heartrending, in such a return, he still was glad that it was to be so. His daughter might probably be persuaded to return there with him. She had, indeed, all but promised to do so, though she still entertained an idea that the greatest of mortals, that important atom of humanity, that little god upon earth, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... characteristic as an English music-hall, with its half-participating audience. "Hurrah for Maudie!" as some favourite took the boards to sing, with her shoulders hunched up to the brim of her enormous hat, a heartrending song ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... he cried as he rose from the floor, where he had been grovelling in heartrending paroxysms of grief. Seizing the old man's hand, he kissed it and pressed it to his bosom. Then, bursting into tears, he added: "God Himself will reward you for having come to visit an ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... some soup, John," said Mary, as they went out, "You know, one can never get these people to do anything in a rational way," she added to James. "It's perfectly heartrending trying to teach them even such a natural thing as ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... extra line of care furrowed the brows of the disheartened bushmen then. Not only was their living taken from them by the drought, but there is nothing more heartrending than to have poor beasts, especially dairy cows, so familiar, valued, and loved, pleading for food day after day in their piteous dumb way when one ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... points, worked a revolution in science." After this frank declaration of the inestimable value and glorious results of American medical education, the writer draws the logical(?) sequence that it (American medical education) is responsible for a case of most heartrending malpractice, which he relates, compared to which the Japanese hari-kari were merciful mildness, and approaching more nearly the tortures by crucifixion as administered by this same kind-hearted people. With about as much reason and justice might he conclude that the American system ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... ordinary, or rather let me put it in this way, the setting of the case was so very extraordinary, that she scarcely thought of the problem before her, in her great interest in the house through whose rambling halls she was being so carefully guided. So much that was tragic and heartrending had occurred here. The Van Broecklyn name, the Van Broecklyn history, above all the Van Broecklyn tradition, which made the house unique in the country's annals, all made an appeal to her imagination, and centred her thoughts on what ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... embark, whose looks told unutterable things; they both seemed young, but their faces betokened the extreme of agony. The name of Patrick Morgan being called, the distracted wife clung to her husband, uttering the most piercing and heartrending cries. ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... took the count by the shoulders; we removed him to a bed near the window; but just as I was loosening the count's neckerchief—for I was afraid it was apoplexy—the countess came and flung herself upon the body of her father, uttering such heartrending cries that the very remembrance of ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... storming of the place would be an easy matter. But despair had suggested to the Carthaginians means of defence in every direction. All assaults were repelled. Everybody was engaged day and night in the manufacture of arms. Nothing can be more heartrending than this last struggle of despair. Every man and every woman labored to the uttermost for the defence of the ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... vice. He painted scenes at cafe-concerts and the rooms of wantons with intense truth. Nobody has revealed better than he the lowness and suffering of the creatures "of pleasure," as they have been dubbed by the heartrending irony of life. Lautrec has shown the artificiality of the painted faces; the vulgarity of the types of the prostitutes of low origin; the infamous gestures, the disorder, the slovenliness of the dwellings of these women; all the shady side of their existence. It has been ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... beauty—named in Irish "Tha ma mackulla's na foscal me,"—-or in English, "I am asleep, and don't waken me." The position of the boy caused the recollection of the old melody to flash into the mother's heart,—she simply pointed to him as the words streamed in a low melodious murmur, but one full of heartrending sorrow, from her lips. The old sacred association—for it was one which she had sung for him a thousand times,—until warned to desist by his tears—deepened the tenderness of her heart, and she ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... A heartrending series of screams from the stowaways rounded his sentence, screams which gave way to sustained sobbing, as the schooner, catching the wind, began to ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... and lamentations of the warriors and women of his band were heartrending; such a manifestation of grief was never before witnessed at the agency. A handsome fence was erected around his grave, in the cemetery at Fort Sill, and the government ordered a beautiful marble monument to be raised over it; but I ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... was,—I have gone out a great deal of late, and my head took to ringing such a literal alarum that I wondered what was to come of it; and at last, a few evenings ago, as I was dressing for a dinner somewhere, I got really bad of a sudden, and kept at home to my friend's heartrending disappointment. Next morning I was no better—and it struck me that I should be really disappointing dear kind Mr. Kenyon, and wasting his time, if that engagement, too, were broken with as little warning,—so I thought it best to forego ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... of stone stood alone, leaning fearfully. Red sunset haze shone through cracks where the wall had split. Jane did not look high, but she felt the overshadowing of broken rims above. She felt that it was a fearful, menacing place. And she climbed on in heartrending effort. And she fell beside Lassiter and Fay at the top of the incline ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... that I know the worst," said he, "I know it only to deplore it. Far from alleviating, presence seems rather to aggravate my poor mother's misfortune. Oh! it is heartrending to see the strivings of these longing eyes to look upon the face ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... far and wide, and her heart was full of pity for the helpless people, "Heartrending accounts," she wrote, "come from up-country, where the people, panic-stricken, are fleeing and leaving the dead and dying in their houses, only to be stricken down themselves in the bush. They have ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... pious clergymen to make a tour through North Carolina in order to remove the prejudices which the minds of the Regulators and Highlanders may labor under with respect to the justice of the American controversy, and to obviate the religious scruples which Governor Tryon's heartrending oath has implanted in their tender consciences. We are employed at present in quest of some persons who may be ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... a heartrending groan of pain. The boys stood stricken with consternation. It was going to be a long and difficult task to get the professor out of his present predicament, and there seemed ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... morning, for I was bedecked in all my finery, and upon entering Noo-koom's lodge, I seized Ojistoh by the hair of her head, and dragged her out. Her struggles to escape from me were quite edifying in their propriety. Her shrieks were heartrending—or rather, they would have been had they not alternated with delighted giggles. By that time the wedding march had begun; for as we struggling lovers led the way, the children, bubbling with laughter, followed; ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... night. We shall confine ourselves however to the later version of the middle ages, the only one with which Wagner was familiar. "The form of the 'Flying Dutchman' is the mythic poem of the people; a primeval trait of humanity is expressed in it with heartrending force," Wagner says to those who in spite of Goethe's "Faust" had formed no conception of the vitality, and poetic treasures that lay concealed in the myth. In its general significance the motive is to be considered as the longing for rest ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... Celtic Tartarus. It is plain that the Seigneur of Jauioz by his purchase of their countrywoman became so unpopular among the freedom-loving Bretons that at length they magnified him into a species of demon—a traditionary fate which he thoroughly deserved, if the heartrending tale concerning his victim has ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... cries from Armenia became so piercing, so heartrending, and so prolonged, that the Christian people in Europe would stand it no longer. They demanded that, come what would, the Powers must put a stop to the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in the breaker! Oh, the boys! the poor boys!" These cries, and many like them—wild, heartrending, and full of fear—were heard on all sides. They served to empty the houses, and the one street of the little mining village of Raven Brook was quickly filled ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... washing my hands before dinner and cheerfully whistling Hiawatha, I became conscious that Jones was lolling back on a sofa at the dark end of the room. What particularly arrested my attention was a groan—preceded by a pack of heartrending sighs. It worried me—when everything seemed to be going so well. He had every right ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... die, dear Arribas, and was touched, edified, to the bottom of my soul. God grant, when my hour comes, I may find that calm, that force, in the last struggle with life. Not a complaint! not a sigh! Once only he gave Norine a sorrowful, heartrending look; then, from lips already cold, breathed that one word, 'Theodore!' Marcus Aurelius used to say: 'A man should leave the world as a ripe olive falls from the tree that bore it, and with a kiss for the earth that nourished ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... any one's power to refute the sinister and prosaic verse. The contrast with 1914 is painful and striking. In the existing war the holocaust of victims, poets and historians, painters and sculptors, musicians and architects, has been heartrending, and it can never in future years be pretended that the Muses have this time spared us their most poignant sacrifices. A year ago the Revue Critique, one of the most serious and original of the learned journals of Paris, announced the losses it had endured. It was conducted by a staff of forty ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... consolation. Nowhere out of her own home was Virginia more beloved and admired than in our family; we feel afflicted painfully at what to our human vision looks like an unmitigated calamity. But if it is so hard for us to bear, to whom in no sense she belonged, what a heartrending event this is to you, her mother! What an amazement, what a mystery. But it will not do to look upon it on this side. We must not associate anything so unnatural as death with a being so eminently formed for life. We must look beyond, as soon ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... that he had visited in his northern voyage similar heartrending cases had, to be sure, fallen under his attention. In one harbor he found a poor Eskimo both of whose hands had been blown off by the premature discharge of a gun. For days and days the man had ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... fence about the simple yard within which stood the humble house forever after to be pointed out as the scene of Sutherlandtown's most heartrending tragedy. In this fence was a gate, and through this gate now passed Mr. Sutherland, followed by his would-be companion, Miss Page. A path bordered by lilac bushes led up to the house, the door of which stood wide open. As soon as Mr. Sutherland ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... which is sounding in our ears now is no cry of terror or of disappointment, and the men who join in it are all of one mind; yet the cry is none the less bitter or heartrending. As we listen to it, we can distinguish the shrill voices of women mingled with the deeper ones of men, and we notice also, that, although the cry is one of sorrow and distress, there is a deep undertone ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... Verbena flung herself down on the Persian carpet at Mrs. Greyne's large but well-proportioned feet, and, bathing them with her tears, cried in a heartrending manner: ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole dwelling-place—abject poverty begs a copper from "his honour" for the love of God and the glory of the Blessed Virgin, telling meantime a heartrending story of privation and oppression. Abject poverty points to all the outward signs and circumstances of its woe; but it forgets the good stone house in which live the son and the son's wife—the dozen or more of cattle grazing free on the mountain side—that bit of fertile ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... breath, in his rage, and the woman exclaimed in a heartrending voice: "Paul, Paul, stop him; make him be quiet; do not let him say this before my son!" Limousin had also got up, and he said in a quite low voice: "Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue! Do understand what you are doing!" But Parent continued ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... evicted tenants. "You will see the shells of the cottages to-morrow," he said, "and you will judge for yourself what they were worth." But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently before the public in connection with his failure to appear and ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... clever shifts were made to enable families where perhaps only one lay sick to escape from the house, leaving the sick person sometimes quite alone, or sometimes in charge of a nurse. Dan said it was heartrending to hear the cries and lamentations of miserable creatures pleading to be let out, convinced that it was certain death to them to remain shut up with the sick. Yet, since they might likely be themselves already infected, it was the greater peril and cruelty to ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and in some cases even before death occurs, the friends and relatives assemble at the lodge and begin crying over the departed or departing one. This consists in uttering the most heartrending, almost hideous wails and lamentations, in which all join until exhausted. Then the mourning ceases for a time until some one starts it again, when all join in as before and keep it up until unable to cry longer. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... of unheard of outrages and barbarous scenes, unbelievable were they not proved by evidence of every description. The savage acts committed in Isabela by the inhuman Leyba and Villa cannot possibly be painted true to life and in all their tragic details. The blackest hues, the most heartrending accents, the most vigorous language and the most fulminating anathemas would be a pale image of the truth, and our pen cannot express with true ardour the terrifying scenes and cruel torments brought about by such ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... so in your mind towards me?" he asked, and in his voice and eyes was that heartrending pathos which once in a lifetime a man's soul may come to share ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... and kissed it, and kissed it and wept again, in grief so passionate, so heartrending, as to draw bitter tears from my eyes. I said what little I could to calm her—to have sought to do more would have been a mockery; and observing that the darkness had closed in, I took my leave and departed, being favoured with the services of ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... felt was hopeless to expect, and he had come to say "good-bye" ere he set out on a quest from which he might never return. At the news Martha was greatly perturbed. She rose and clung to the young man, her wild grief venting itself in heartrending sobs. She begged him not to depart. But his mind was fully made up, and, notwithstanding her tears and caresses, he tore himself away and quitted ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... light-heartedness, much demoralization, with here and there, at rare intervals, a Madame Roland or an Andre Chenier, to keep high above degradation their minds and their characters. And every day comes the heartrending hour of the roll call for the Revolutionary Tribunal which with so ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... several farm houses, but one and all had no Patriotism whatever and refused to let us use their terratory. It was heartrending, for where we not there to help to protect that very terratory from the enemy? But no, they cared not at all, and said they did not want papers all over the place, and so on. One woman observed that she ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... beneath me. He was fully sixteen feet in length. I saw the whole thing. He got the woolly-head by the middle, and away he went, the poor devil, head, shoulders, and arms out of water all the time, screeching in a heartrending way. He was carried along in this fashion for several hundred feet, when he was dragged ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... too dreadful to relate. As already intimated, the prospects of both had been blighted through oppression and villainy, brought to bear upon them by distant relatives, who were the infamous agents of a still more infamous government. The case of Nick, although sore enough in its way, was not so heartrending as that of Kate. He was of a sex fitted to wrestle with the storms of life, but she, proud and brave as she was, occupied a different position. Fortunately for both, however, through the instrumentality of a small pittance set aside by the Courts in her ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... went up! It came from the breasts of those who waited with limitless courage, and those who worked feverishly to save. It was the heartrending, bloodcurdling cry of people doomed—for the ship had begun to settle! Through his ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... and Long Farewell. A Missionary Wife's Experience in Oregon. All Alone with the Wolves. A Woman's Instinct in the Hour of Danger. Dr. White's Dilemma and its Solution. A Clean Pair of Heels and a Convenient Tree. A Perilous Voyage and its Consequences. A Heartrending Catastrophe. A Mother's Lost Treasure. A Savage Coterie and the White Stranger. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding. A Murderous Suspicion. The Benefactress and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... engineer might and might not produce a satisfactory working machine. There was nothing in the contract about this—save only as it protected the engineer. What was indeed produced was a list of costs for the development often of several designs of a given idea that to say the least were heartrending. ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... up-stairs, inspired to unusual speed by the heartrending sounds that came from below. When she returned, Grandmother seemed to be in a final spasm, and even Matilda was frightened, though she would not ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... stained with blood. French blood, German blood, it is always the Man of Sorrows. Yesterday we were listening to the sublime and gloomy plaint which breathes from Barbusse's Under Fire. To-day come the yet more heartrending accents of Menschen im Krieg (Men in Battle). Although they hail from the other camp, I will wager that most of our bellicose readers in France and Navarre will flee from them with stopped ears. For these tones would be ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... delightful modes of speech to man was soon to be utterly lost to him. At last he became so deaf that the most stunning crash of thunder or the fortissimo of the full orchestra were to him as if they were not. His bitter, heartrending cry of agony, when he became convinced that the misfortune was irremediable, is full of eloquent despair: "As autumn leaves wither and fall, so are my hopes blighted. Almost as I came, I depart. Even the lofty ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... bien aimee, I am starving. You who are at ease, let me come and eat with you"—and so on and so on. Her heart grieved for them; but que veux-tu?—one was not a charitable institution. So it was all very sad and heartrending. To say nothing of her hourly anxiety. If only the sale guerre would cease and they could go on tour ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... branches. Mrs. Webb had been exacting in the few things she taught, especially arithmetic. And Uncle Win admitted to himself that Doris had a poor head for figures. When she came to fractions it was heartrending. Common multiples and least and greatest common divisors had such a way of getting mixed up in her brain, that he felt very ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... fire like a nasty wee black imp and said that awful thing. But she must not tell her mother, who would only be fretted by it and ask like a little anxious mouse, "You're sure you've not said anything, dear? You're sure you've been a careful girl with your work, dear?" and would brace herself with heartrending bravery to meet this culminating misfortune. "Ah, well, dear, if you do have to look round for a new post we must just manage." So she must keep silent and seem cheerful, though that memory was rolling round and round in her brain ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... arrived, and he pointed out to the infuriated rabble the secluded mansion where the Christian household dwelt. He could not offer to them a more acceptable service, and the lady's modest apartment was soon swarming with enemies of her God and His followers. In spite of her heartrending cries and supplications, her children were seized, and when the youngest boy clung to her, the mother was thrown senseless upon the pavement. The whole five were carried off in triumph; it was the greatest success of the day. There was some hesitation how to dispose ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Heartrending scenes are witnessed in front of the closed doors of the various banking establishments, where large posters are to be seen, bearing the inscription: Closed temporarily, by order of the Government. The most popular of these institutions is the Wiener Bankverein. This bank, by making ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... professional cheerfulness said that that sort of thing wouldn't do at all, and that Master Austin must make up his mind to lie up a bit. And so he was put to bed, and people smiled ghastly smiles which were far more heartrending than sobs, and talked about taking him away to some beautiful warm southern climate where he would soon grow strong and well again. Austin only said that he was very comfortable where he was, and that he wouldn't think of being taken away, because he knew how ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... heartrending news as I have had!" began she. "A relation of mine is dying, and wants to see me. I ought to be away by the ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Sara suspected that Pirlaps, at least, had known all along that she was older than the Snoodle.) The speeches, on the other hand, were marvels of variety and interest. The Snimmy's, of course, was sad—even heartrending; and he was sniffing before he had finished saying, "How do you do, Toast?" and shedding gum-drops like hail-stones before he was half through. His Toast, however, was orange-cake, unusually delicious; and the wine ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... and I made a pretty good bit of noise moving about and opening and shutting drawers. His moans were quite heartrending—he was evidently in considerable pain; and I was glad to get away, as that sort of thing always ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade |
