"Melancholy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirit of resistance may thus gradually be worn out. On the other hand it is also possible that means of evading the law may become more and more perfected by invention and otherwise, and that the melancholy and humiliating spectacle which we are now witnessing may be of very long duration. But in any case it has already lasted long enough to do incalculable and almost ineradicable harm. And for all this it is utterly idle to place the ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... would welcome his re-entry into the political arena, if only for the fact that we should then have a man to deal with, and some one whose statement of the case for his side would be clear and bold, whose speeches would be worth reading and worth answering, instead of the melancholy marionettes whom the wire-pullers of the Tariff Reform League are accustomed to exhibit on provincial platforms. But I hope you will not let these pretexts or complaints move you or prevent you from calling a spade a spade, a tax a tax, a protective tariff a gigantic dodge ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... spoke the truth. Evariste at twenty had had a grave and charming cast of countenance, a beauty at once austere and feminine, the countenance of a Minerva. Now his sombre eyes and pale cheeks revealed a melancholy and passionate soul. But his gaze, when it fell on his mother, recovered for a brief ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... a strange insensibility, the insensibility of the man condemned to death, had come upon her. At dinner Varvara Pavlovna talked little: she seemed to have become timid once more, and spread over her face an expression of modest melancholy. Gedeonovsky alone enlivened the conversation with his tales, although he kept casting cowardly glances at Marfa Timofeevna, and a cough and tickling in the throat seized upon him every time that he undertook to lie in her presence,—but she did not hinder him, she did not interrupt him. After ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... poverty and depopulation of the country. "Consider the armies that the French King has raised," cried Defoe, "and the reinforcements and subsidies he has sent to the King of Spain; does that look like a depopulated, country and an impoverished exchequer?" It was perhaps a melancholy fact, but what need to apologise for telling the truth? At once, of course, a shout was raised against him for want of patriotism; he was a French pensioner, a Jacobite, a hireling of the Peace-party. This ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Tolstoi during all the years of his youth and early manhood, and threw him constantly into fits of melancholy and inner brooding. He could neither dismiss the subject from his mind, nor could he bring into the area of his mortal consciousness that serene contemplation and optimistic line of reasoning which ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... dinner." Mark Twain was capable of epigrams worthy, in their dark levity, of Swift himself. In speaking of Pudd'nhead Wilson, Anna E. Keeling has said "Humour there is in almost every scene and every page; but it is such humour as sheds a wild gleam on the greatest Shakespearian tragedies—on the deep melancholy of Hamlet, the heartbreak of Lear." The greatest ironic achievements of Mark Twain, in brief compass, are the two stories: 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg' and 'Was it Heaven or Hell'? They reveal the power and subtlety of his art as an ironic humorist—or ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... clothes well. His very essence he placeth in his outside, and his chiefest prayer is, that his revenues may hold out for taffety cloaks in the summer and velvet in the winter. To his acquaintance he offers two quarts of wine for one he gives. You shall never see him melancholy but when he wants a new suit or fears a sergeant, at which times he only betakes himself to Ploydon. By that he hath read Littleton, he can call Solon, Lycurgus, and Justinian fools, and dares compare his law to a ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... garden wall, announcing that it was "to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished." It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of which had been ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needleworks and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground. Judge therefore of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of German, I found in these volumes a mine of wealth inexhaustible. I learned from Mrs. Wilson that this scholar was a younger brother of Lord Hilton, who had died about twenty years before. He had led a retired, rather lonely life, was of a melancholy and brooding disposition, and was reported to have had an unfortunate love-story. This was one of many histories which she gave me. For the library being dusty as a catacomb, the private room of Old Time himself, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... replied his comrade, 'that you are doing laughing enough for us both. It is necessary to have one member of the firm solid and substantial. I'm trying to keep the average about right. When you were in the dumps I had to be cheerful for two. Now that you feel so lively, I take a refuge in melancholy, to rest me after ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... neck after the fashion of Jeanne d'Arc's time. It completely hid his ears and fell in sprays over his temples. His face was the typical Christ of the old masters, the effect being heightened by the soft, fine, virgin beard and moustache of somewhat fairer color, and by the melancholy eyes, dark and luminous, with their curled and drooping lashes. These eyes gave rather a suggestion of sadness and inward suffering, but when animated seemed to glow with the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... as a joke, and Dan and Mary uttered a somewhat melancholy, but complimentary laugh; then they looked at each other wistfully, as though regretting that they were not in a position to enable their pastor ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... with their instruments. The butler sent four melancholy Spanish students to the balcony, where they began to tune mandolins and guitars, while an Hungarian band took up its position, we conjectured, on some extension or balcony in the rear, the existence of which we had not guessed until we heard the music later. Then the butler turned ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... got my brother and Thomas to take axes and go to work there; and many a large tree they cut down for me, till you see they opened a way through the woods, for the view of that beautiful stretch of country. I should grow melancholy if I had that wall of trees pressing on my vision all the time; it always comforts me to look off, far away, to those ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... by De Retz, having for its godfather the Provost, for its godmother the Duchess de Bouillon, and who received the name of Charles de Paris; the child of the Fronde, handsome, talented, and brave; who during his life was the troublesome hope, the melancholy joy of his mother, and the cause of her greatest grief in 1672, when he perished, at the passage of the Rhine, by the ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... your amorous delight How melancholy is your plight. With sympathy your case I view; For I am sure it's hard on you. What human being could sustain This unforeseen domestic strain, And not a single trace Of willing women ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... of material for observation and conjecture in the passengers, and their characters or destinations, from my window on that day. Yet I was not in the right cue for the thorough enjoyment of my favorite amusement. I was in a rather melancholy mood. Somehow or other, I don't know why, my memory had reverted to a pretty woman whom I had not seen for many years. She had been my first love, and I had loved her with a boyish passion as genuine as it was intense. I thought my heart would have broken, and I certainly ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the shallow puddles to Moze Quay, equinoctial spring-tides when the estuary was a tremendous ocean covered with foam and the sea-wall felt the light lash of spray, thunderstorms in autumn gathering over the yellow melancholy of deathlike sunsets, wild birds crying across miles of uncovered mud at early morning and duck-hunters crouching in punts behind a waving screen of delicate grasses to wing them, and the mysterious shapes of steamers and warships in the offing beyond the Sand.... The sail ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... long, melancholy hoot of the owl, and he did it so well that he was surprised at his own skill. The note, full of desolation and menace, seemed to come back in many echoes. He saw the swart leader and the men with him start and look fearfully toward ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... conductor into his dwelling place; Poverty were depictured in his melancholy face. His bread it was corn dodger, his beef I could not chaw; This was the kind of hash they fed me ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... were clothed with lead; the clouds were hiding the cone of the volcano; the sea appeared to be made of tin, and a chilly wind was distending sails, skirts, and overcoats, making the people scurry along the promenade and the shore. The musicians continued their singing but with melancholy sighs in the shelter of a corner, to keep out of the furious blasts from the sea. "To die.... To die for thee!" a baritone voice groaned between the harps ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... exchange for the cloths and spices of the East. As the Russian power extended toward the rising sun, the Volga and the Caspian Sea became the highways of a prosperous, though an interrupted, commerce. It makes the soul melancholy to reflect upon these long, long ages of rapine, destruction and woe. But for this, had man been true to himself, the whole of Russia might now have been almost a garden of Eden, with every marsh drained, every stream bridged, every field ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... nevertheless was abridged to 100l. by Cecil, who, hearing of it, and owing him a grudge for some reflections in Mother Hubbard's Tale, cry'd out to the queen, What! all this for a song? This he is said to have taken so much to heart, that he contracted a deep melancholy, which soon after brought his life to a period. So apt is an ingenuous spirit to resent a slighting, even from the greatest persons; thus much I must needs say of the merit of so great a poet from so great a monarch, that as it is incident ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... large waters, and by degrees the vessel sinks again down through mountain torrents. At Mem we are again down by the salt fiord: a solitary tower raises its head between the remains of low, thick walls—it is the ruins of Stegeberg. The coast is covered to a great extent with dark, melancholy forests, which enclose small grass-grown valleys. The screaming sea-gulls fly around our vessel; we are by the Baltic; we feel the fresh sea-breeze: it blows as in the times of the ancient heroes, when the sea-kings, sons of high-born ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... cruel recollection pursued him over the Alps and the Apennines. On a memorable day, indeed, big with the fate of his country, he again, after many inactive and inglorious years, stood forth the Shrewsbury of 1688. Scarcely any thing in history is more melancholy than that late and solitary gleam, lighting up the close of a life which had dawned so splendidly, and which had so early become ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of sitting out after supper on a big rock in the valley, listening to the run of the river and watching the afterglow over the Cumberland, the moon rise over Wallen's Ridge and the stars come out. Waiting for him to speak, I learned for the first time then another secret of his wretched melancholy. It was the hopelessness of that time, perhaps, that disclosed it. Grayson had lost the faith of his childhood. Most men do that at some time or other, but Grayson had no business, no profession, no art in which to ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... family in the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother, for a child can hardly be born with cheerful views of living whose mother's life has been, for its sake, a double burden. From this root spring melancholy, insanity, suicide. The production of human souls is the highest production of all, the one which requires most preparation, truest worth, gravest care and holiest consecration. If the girl of the future recognizes ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... several melancholy days wandering on the borders of the east end of the lake, surveying the various remains of what we now contemplated to have been an unoffending and cruelly extirpated people. At several places, by the margin of the lake, are small clusters of winter and summer ...
— Report of Mr. W. E. Cormack's journey in search of the Red Indians - in Newfoundland • W. E. Cormack
... left of the King at dinner. He seemed very melancholy, and told me that never in his life had he had such a painful experience as he had this afternoon. A few days ago a quite young soldier had struck his superior officer and had been sentenced to death. The King said: "He is to be shot to-morrow in the barracks near the ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... house, Mr. Livermore,' was all we heard, until after a painful pause the street-door was closed, and Arthur's footstep sounded returning up-stairs. I looked fixedly at my companion; her face wore a deathlike pallor, but a soft, melancholy smile ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... composure had already broken down, burst into tears again, perhaps mostly at the downfall of all his own expectations and glorifications of the kinsman about whom he had boasted. Ambrose only exclaimed, "O uncle, you must have been hard pressed." For indeed the grave, almost melancholy man, who stood before them, regarding them wistfully, had little in common with the lithe tumbler full of absurdities whom they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lay in front of the Palace, where children of all classes played among the trees and flower-beds and artificial ponds, and the King sat and watched them, because he took delight in children, and because the sight of them cheered his only daughter, who had fallen into a deep melancholy. But the rich citizens clung to it, for it gave a pleasant neighbourly air to their roadway, and showed what friendliness there was between the monarch of Illyria ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... oil of roses and the best white wax. In the morning, he must take it off, and enclose it carefully in a leaden box till the next night, when it must be again applied. If he be of a sanguine temperament, he shall take sixteen chickens; if phlegmatic, twenty-five; and if melancholy, thirty, which he shall put into a yard where the air and the water are pure. Upon these he is to feed, eating one a day; but previously the chickens are to be fattened by a peculiar method, which will impregnate their flesh with the qualities that are to produce ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... had been stripped of the forest trees. But nevertheless the adventure had not been a prosperous one, for the place was at that time deserted. There were the cacao plants, but there was no one to pick the cacao. There was a certain melancholy beauty about the place. A few grand trees had been left standing near the house, and the grass around was rich and park-like. But it was deserted, and nothing was heard but the roaring of the congos. Ah me! Indeed it was a melancholy place as it was seen ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... Excellency the President." Firing continues, but without any decided result. It is a sound that one does not learn to hear with indifference. There seems little doubt that ultimately the government will gain the day, but the country will no doubt remain for some time in a melancholy state of disorder. Bills are fastened to-day on the corners of the streets, forbidding all ingress or egress through the military lines, from six in the evening till eight in the morning. Gentlemen who live near us now venture in towards evening, to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... democracy, and who were accustomed to look up to those in power, pretended to rejoice in the death of the tyrant, but by their abuse of Timoleon for having done an unholy and impious deed, reduced him to a state of great melancholy. Hearing that his mother took it greatly to heart, and that she used harsh words and invoked terrible curses upon him, he went to her to try to bring her to another state of mind, but she would not endure the sight of him, but shut the door against him. Then ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... gazing across the lake. The melancholy always lurking in the thoughtfulness of his face had become predominant. Yet he turned to her with the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... follow them, but were obliged to give up half-way. The king soon began to get flushed and the reaction of the blood to his face announced that the moment of repletion had arrived. It was then that Louis XIV., instead of becoming gay and cheerful, as most good livers generally do, became dull, melancholy, and taciturn. Porthos, on the contrary, was lively and communicative. D'Artagnan's foot had more than once to remind him of this peculiarity of the king. The dessert now made its appearance. The king had ceased ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disturbing feature, for as the gamut was still unknown, there was no music in the country which could be agreeable to a European ear. The singers seemed to have derived their inspirations from the songs of birds and the wailing of the wind, which last they tried to imitate in melancholy cadences which at times degenerated into a howl. To my thinking the noise was hideous, but it produced a great effect upon my companions, who professed themselves much moved. As soon as the singing was over the ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... It was also on that island on the 27th of August, 1859, that Captain McClintock set foot on his return, bringing back, alas! proofs too complete of the loss of the expedition. The coincidence of these two facts were noted by the doctor; that melancholy conjunction was prolific in memories, but soon the heights of ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... ones, I mean) to be colored by it; but as the mere possession of an imaginative temperament is in itself a more fertile source of unreal pains than pleasures, the answer may be short too; an imaginative mind has almost always a tendency to be a melancholy one. Shakespeare is the glorious exception to this, but then he is an exception to everything. I must ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... adds, that the prominent feature, telling a melancholy tale of its own, is of sanguine colour, and while plainly in the act of speaking, Charles Dump might be fancied about to drop off to sleep. He was impressed by the dreaminess of the face; and I must say I regard him as an interesting character. During my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... acquitted her, therefore, of sinister intentions; and with our feelings of jealousy, feelings in which we had been educated, towards everything that tended to superstition, we soon agreed to think her some gentle maniac or sad enthusiast, suffering under some form of morbid melancholy. Forty-eight hours, with two nights' sleep, sufficed to restore the wonted equilibrium of our spirits; and that interval brought us onwards to the 6th of April—the day on which, as I have already ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and his tribe, in most we reade of them. First, of our English tribes, I conceive his father's the lowest, and the meanest of that tribe, stocke, or generation, and the worst, how bad soever they be; melancholy he is, as appeares by his sullen and dogged wit; malicious as Saul to David, as is evident in his writings; he wants but Saul's javelin to cast at him; he as little spares the king's friends with his pen, as Saul did Jonathan his sonne in his ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... who would enjoy true peace and quiet to retire into a Quaker meeting; and if our sentimental readers (and for such only is this paper written) would find wherewithal to feed and pamper their melancholy, let them follow the mercenary flags, and become haunters of auctions,—let them attend the sales of the effects of their deceased friends and acquaintances,—let them see A's favorite horse, or B's favorite country-seat, or C's favorite books and pictures ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rich young man, of a susceptible and melancholy temperament, on the death of his parents had become master of his fortune. He had set out on a journey in order thereby to complete his education, but had now already spent several months in a large town, for the sake of enjoying the pleasures of the carnival, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... "Tom begun to git melancholy, and his mouth didn't appear quite as broad as usual. Molly Mulligan thought he had taken slow poison and it was gradually working through his system; but he could ate his pick of praties the same as iver. But Tom felt mighty bad; that fact can't be denied, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... took another look at the long, grim-faced silent figure. He was sitting in the shadow of one of his moldy corners, and if there had ever been any light of merriment in his face it was not there now. He looked as fixed and solemn as an ancient puritan, and yet there was something so melancholy in the man's eye, so sad and disappointed, that it seemed anything but hard. Two or three little children were playing about the door and when he came forward to wait on me one of them sidled forward and put her chubby hand ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... giving it for one instant a weird effect, as though the ghost of some Babylonian watchman were waving a lit torch from its summit,—but the lurid glare soon faded and a dead gray twilight settled solemnly down over the melancholy landscape. With a sudden feeling of dejection and lassitude upon him, Alwyn, heaving a deep sigh, went onward, and soon perceived, lying a little to the north of the river, a small, roughly erected tenement with a wooden cross on its roof. Rightly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... forced to the conclusion that Spiritualism, as far at least as it has shown itself before me (and I give no opinion upon what has not fallen within my observation), presents the melancholy spectacle of gross fraud, perpetrated upon an uncritical portion of the community; that the testimony of such persons as to what they see is almost valueless, if they are habitually as inaccurate as they have been at the seances at which ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... was the fourth since that melancholy day. In the time that had passed, Swan had come into the ways of trouble, suffering a great drain upon his hoarded money, growing as a consequence sullen and somber in his moods. No more he laughed; even the distress of his chained ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... and melancholy kind of stupidity in Hal's countenance, as he pronounced these words, like one wakening from a dream, which made both his uncle and cousin ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... did: he was tremendously taken up with it. The old country fell into the lines of his imagination, from the towers of Westminster to the shops in the Strand; from the Right Hon. Fawcett Wallingham, who laid great issues before the public, to the man who sang melancholy hymns to the same public up and down the benevolent streets. It was naturally London that filled his view; his business was in London and his time was short; the country he saw from the train, whence it ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... bottom of the trap, two young calves, netted in, pushed up their melancholy eyes and innocent noses through the mesh. Hurled against each other, flung rhythmically from side to side, they shared the blind trouble of the man and the torment of ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... husband had repeatedly tried his powers of terrifying and depressing her; but, at all events, she could bear anything,—not only with courage and in silence, but with calmness and inexhaustible mercy. According to Moore's account, a friend of Byron's urged him to marry, as a remedy for the melancholy restlessness and disorder of his life; "and, after much discussion, he consented." The next proceedings were in character with this "consent." Byron named Miss Milbanke: the friend objected, on the grounds of her possession of learning and supposed want of fortune; and Byron actually commissioned ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... disheartening, but his death was even a greater calamity, as is evidenced by the words of a Confederate writer (Cooke), who says: "Stuart could be ill spared at this critical moment, and General Lee was plunged into the deepest melancholy at the intelligence of his death. When it reached him he retired from those around him, and remained for some time communing with his own heart and memory. When one of his staff entered and spoke of Stuart, General Lee said: 'I can scarcely think of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... administration, Colbert found no labor too great for his energies, and worked with unflagging energy sixteen hours a day for twenty-two years. It is melancholy to be forced to add that all this toil was as good as thrown away, and that the strong man went broken-hearted to the grave, through seeing too clearly that he had labored in vain for an ungrateful egotist. His great visions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... peradventure he will seek to persuade thee it is but a melancholy fit, and will put thee upon the works of thy calling, or thy pleasures, or phys; or some other trick he will invent, such as best agreeth with thy nature. And thus thy heart is again deaded, and thou art kept in carnal security, that thou mightest perish ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the shadow of the beeches, Where the light and shade are blent; Where the forest-bird beseeches, And the breeze is brimmed with scent,— Is it joy or melancholy That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... fruit-trees gave no sign of fruit. Grass grew in the paths. Such ruin and desolation cast a weird poesy on the scene, filling the souls of the spectators with dreamy thoughts. A poet would have stood there long, plunged in a melancholy reverie, admiring this disorder so full of harmony, this destruction which was not without its grace. Suddenly, the brown tiles shone, the mosses glittered, fantastic shadows danced upon the meadows and beneath the trees; fading colors revived; striking contrasts developed, the foliage of the ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... happiness, to destroy the basis of religion, and Truth's foundation in the goodness of God. If it indeed be so, then it matters not what else is true or not true; speculation is vain and faith is vain; and all that belongs to man's highest being is buried in the ruins of misanthropy, melancholy, and despair. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... well; he made a large lake in a hollow of the park and ringed it with rhododendrons, which have since grown to enormous size. At the end of it he caused to be built a stucco temple overhung with weeping ashes, designed "to invite Melancholy." There is no showing that Merchant Jack had any desire to respond to such an invitation, but it was the fashion of the time, and no doubt he was ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... happened. The early chill passed from the air, a comforting warmth glowed down the trail, the two rain-birds kept whistling to each other their long, persuasive, melancholy call, and the calf stood motionless, waiting, with the patience of the wild, for he knew not what. Then there came a clanking of chains, a trampling of heavy feet, and around the turn appeared the man again, with a pair of big brown horses harnessed to a drag-sled. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the reflections with which you saddened our parting bottle of claret, and thus I must needs interpret the terms of your melancholy adieu. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and melancholy lad, who had behind him a terrible family history of violence, and to his bastard brother, Gianevangelista, the duke accorded the most gracious welcome. Indeed, so amiable did Astorre find the duke that, although the terms of surrender afforded him perfect ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... to compensate for their imperfection of nature. Their want of mental coloring-matter makes them sensitive to those impressions which stronger minds neglect or never feel at all. Many of them die young, and all of them are tinged with melancholy. There is no more beautiful illustration of the principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence than the fact that some of the holiest lives and some of the sweetest songs are the growth of the infirmity ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... manner, which assured me, even plainer than the coy sweetness displayed in our last interview, that her heart had been touched by her lover's attentions. Indeed, she hinted as much before she left, saying in a melancholy tone, when I had ended my story in the usual happy way, with kisses and marriage, "I shall never marry!" finishing the exclamation with a long-drawn sigh, that somehow emboldened me to say, perhaps because I knew she ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... wooden devil, black and shaggy. By his horns, and the goatskin near him, he might be Bacchus; but his manly attributes make him a Pan or a Priapus. It is a darksome figure, seen differently by different eyes; to some suggesting only terror, while others are touched by the proud melancholy wherein the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... been a dreamer, but since his arrival at the chateau, he had, on more than one occasion, manifested to Lucan a melancholy state of mind quite foreign to his natural disposition. Lucan had felt alarmed; nevertheless, as he did not himself like any one to intrude upon his confidence, he had abstained from ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... gave me the power of putting my resolution into effect. I returned to France, though in the midst of its distractions, and took refuge under the protection of my venerable relative, the superior of the convent at Valenciennes. My narrative is now brief, but most melancholy. On the evening of the day when I heard your love—a day which I shall remember with pride and gratitude to the closing hour of my existence—we were suffered to pass the gates, and take the route for Italy. But, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... piano and played with strong feeling. Presently she began to sing a haunting melancholy song by Abt. From Abt she turned to Flotow; from Offenbach to Rossini; from Gounod to Verdi. The voice was now sad or gay, now tender or wild. She was mistress of every ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... therefore, one-half of the dreaded task seemed accomplished. It was a great triumph, and the remaining forty grains were a mere bagatelle, to be disposed of with the same serene self-control that the first had been. A weight of brooding melancholy was lifted from the spirits: the world wore a happier look. The only drawback to this beatific state of mind was a marked indisposition to remain quiet, and a restless aversion to giving attention to the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... single out and cling to this or that figure till it was lost in the street beyond, and then he would try to realize that it was lost to him forever. For the street beyond lay toward the coast, where many ships awaited. The archducal petulance gave way to vague melancholy. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... a melancholy experience (said the gentleman who is answerable for the truth of this story). It was that of going over a doomed house with whose outside aspect I had long been familiar—a house, that is, which by reason of age and dilapidation was to be pulled down during the following week. Some of the thatch, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... had agreed, without loss of time; but they were so pressed, that Abou Hassan had much ado to wrap up his wife, and lay the piece of brocade which the caliph had given him upon her, before Mesrour reached the house. This done, he opened the door of his apartment, and with a melancholy, dejected countenance, and his handkerchief before his eyes, went and sat down at the head of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... barely dipping his oars. It was slack tide now and the pea-pod just held her own. Down on the breeze floated a distant, melancholy note, the voice of the whistling buoy south of Roaring Bull Ledge, two miles from Isle au Haut. Was it ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... He worked in the garden, and fed the chickens, and took care of Ruby the horse, and sometimes drove the wagonette into Nearminster; he also rang the church bell, and was parish clerk. Perhaps it was because he had so much on his mind that he was of a melancholy disposition, and seldom disposed for ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... tiny frescoes representing the triumph of Music, musical instruments are sculptured in marble on the chimneypiece, and even pattern the Aubusson carpet. In the panelled entrance-hall is some fine carving, and here hang the rather melancholy portraits of the unhappy Marquis of Exeter and his unfortunate son, and a large picture of a Lord and Lady Devon, most of their fourteen daughters, and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... to the engraved title has been cropped away. The printed title-page reads: "Recreation for Ingenious Head-peeces. Or, A Pleasant Grove for their Wits to walke in. Of Epigrams, 630: Epitaphs, 180: Fancies, a number: Fantasticks, abundance, Good for melancholy Humors. Printed by R. Cotes for H. B. London, 1645. 8vo." Two poems of Herrick's occur in the additional "Fancies and Fantasticks," first printed in this edition, viz.: The Description of a Woman (not contained in Hesperides), and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... morning, the whole town of (a town in which, we regret to say, an accident once detained ourself for three wretched days, and which we can, speaking therefore from profound experience, assert to be in ordinary times the most melancholy and peopleless-looking congregation of houses that a sober imagination can conceive) exhibited a scene of such bustle, animation, and jovial anxiety as the trial for life or death to a fellow-creature can alone excite in the phlegmatic breasts of the English. Around the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wills to worship womankind studiously forgets its darker sisters. They seem in a sense to typify that veiled Melancholy: ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... well as for the provision which they had made to meet the usual payments chargeable on the civil list. Addressing both houses again, the queen thanked them for the zeal and assiduity with which they had applied themselves to the public business of the country. Notwithstanding the melancholy interruption that had taken place in their labours, she trusted they would have the beneficial effect of advancing the progress of legislation in the new parliament. Her majesty expressed much pleasure in the mitigation of the severity ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... internal structure, and is said still to exist. See Savary's Letters on Egypt. The truncated statue is said for many centuries to have saluted the rising sun with chearful tones, and the setting sun with melancholy ones. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... our eyes fixed upon Him, then, as sure as He is living and is the Truth, He will flood our hearts with blessedness, and His joy will pour into our souls as the flashing tide rushes into some muddy and melancholy harbour, and sets everything dancing that was lying stranded on the slime. If, my brother, you, a professing Christian, know but little of this joy, why, then, it is your fault, and not His. The joyless lives of so many who say that they are His disciples cast no shadow of suspicion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... cheerfulness, or happiness, or even melancholy pleasure among the inmates of Ferdia's camp that night: they were all cheerless, and sorrowful, and low in spirit; for they knew that whenever those two champions, those two slayers of hundreds met, one of the two must fall in that place, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... dancers crowded round, stretched out their hands to get hold of any drinking vessel, and poured the liquid down their dust-filled throats. Bread, butter, cheese, and sausages were laid on a table, and everyone swallowed a mouthful from time to time. As they watched this healthy, noisy fete, the melancholy guests in the dining-room felt that they too would have liked to join the dance, to drink from the great casks, and eat a slice of bread-and-butter and a ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... said Wally, in tones of melancholy. "Every fortune teller I ever saw told me that ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... on one knee and kissed his hand for the favour. When I sought to do the like to Monmouth he was very ready, and received my homage most regally. As I rose, the King was smiling at the pair of us in a whimsical melancholy way. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... when I had so answered, she rose, and kissed my forehead. I thought my heart would have broken when I felt that spirit-like melancholy kiss. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this, as he was a great sluggard and glutton, he was almost always ill; and, as he did good to nobody, he had no friends; and even his servants spoke ill of him behind his back, and all his neighbours, whom he oppressed, hated him. For these reasons he was sullen, melancholy, and unhappy, and became displeased with all who appeared more cheerful than himself. When he was carried out in his palanquin (a kind of bed, borne upon the shoulders of men) he frequently passed by the cottage of the poor basket-maker, who was always sitting at the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... to the melancholy ceremony, a very large body of prisoners (I think 3500) arrived, and were marched through Main Street, to the grated buildings allotted them. But these attracted slight attention,—Jackson, the great hero, was the absorbing thought. Yet there are other ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... countenance did with compassion : calm, composed, and gentle, he seemed bent on appearing not only resigned, but cheerful. I might even have supposed him verging on being happy, had not the havoc of grief on his face, and the tone of deep melancholy in his voice, assured me his Solitude was all sacred to ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Something of a melancholy cast put it into my head to shake it, and to say, "Perhaps we ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... are heirs apparent by virtue of their office; but unlike so many of them, he isn't of a stature to be dwarfed by the suggestion. I think him rather Lincolnesque in a way, though I don't press the comparison. Perhaps it's merely his smile—have you noticed it?—the 'sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men' that Amiel tells us is the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... mourning for their kindred, the deepest privation in a property sense. Everything the loss of which would make them poor was sacrificed on the graves of their relatives or distinguished warriors, and as melancholy because of removal from their old homes caused frequent deaths, there was no lack of occasion for the sacrifices. The widows and orphans of the dead warriors were of course the chief mourners, and exhibited their grief in many peculiar ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... against the wall of the Tuileries and fussing over a pug—the vilest of pugs? She had had footmen and carriages, you know, and a fine house! And I said to you then, 'How much better to be dead at thirty!'—Well, you thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to amuse me, and between two kisses I said, 'Every day some pretty woman leaves the play before it is over!'—And I do not want to see the last piece; ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... all. The hostess sat down to play cards with Marfa Timofeevna, Mme. Byelenitzyn, and Gedeonovsky, who played very slowly, was constantly making mistakes, blinking his eyes, and mopping his face with his handkerchief. Panshin assumed a melancholy mien, expressed himself with brevity, with great significance and mournfulness,—for all the world like an artist who has not had his say,—but despite the entreaties of Mme. Byelenitzyn, who was having a violent flirtation with him, he would not consent to sing his romance: Lavretzky embarrassed ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... waking, and my bad dreams will be cured the moment I open my eyes. I can look up at that blue sky without seeing trailed across it a mirage of the long horror, a film picture of all the things that have been done by men to men. At last I can gaze up at it, limpid and blue, without a dogging melancholy; and I can gaze down at that far gleam of sea, knowing that there is no murk of murder ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... Jove, descended to the distant isle of Calypso, and warned the bright-haired nymph, whom he found weaving in her charmed grotto, that she must let her mortal lover go or brave the wrath of the gods. The nymph, though loath to part with her lover, sought out the melancholy Ulysses, where he sat weeping beside the deep, and giving him tools, led him to the forest and showed him where to fell trees with which to construct a raft. His labor finished, she provided the hero with perfumed garments, a full store of provisions, and saw him ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... assert that the known anti-slavery spirit of revolutionary times never could have consented to so infamous a bargain as the Constitution is represented to be, and has in its present hands become. Now these pages prove the melancholy fact that willingly, with deliberate purpose, our fathers bartered honesty for gain and became partners with tyrants that they might share in the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the course of a single day! From morning to evening he gulps down Crane-flies, Gnats and Midges joyously dancing in the sunbeams. Quick as lightning he passes; and the dancers are decimated. They perish; then their melancholy remnants fall from the nest containing the young brood, in the form of guano which becomes the turf's inheritance. And so it is with all and everything, with large and small, from end to end of the animal progression. A perpetual massacre perpetuates ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... was already working, and, while her story was correct, the recital of it had done more for those girls than had any other attempted cure of their melancholy. ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... mountainous wild country echoing and ghastly with long-lasting war. Their servants and muleteers walked and rode, lamented or were gay, raised faction, swore, laughed, traveled grimly or in a dull melancholy or mirthfully; quarreled and made peace, turn by turn, day by day, much alike. One who was a bully fixed a quarrel upon me and another took my part. All leaped to sides. I was forgotten in the midst of them; they could hardly have told now ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... that he needs not only to replenish the physical substance of the organ by constant care, but to replenish all his dwindling stores of knowledge, ideas, and even of verbal resources. Among the older authors there were some who offered melancholy spectacles of mental exhaustion; and the practised reader knows how to look for particular features in their work, just as he looks for Wouvermans' white horse and Beaumont's brown tree. These literary spinners forget the example of Macaulay, who was quite contented if he turned out two foolscap ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... be discourteous to those who were opposed to this bill: "I am aware," said he, "of the melancholy feelings with which they are approaching this funeral of the nation." He was unwilling, however, to lose the opportunity to pass the bill at once, and send it to the Senate, that the House might proceed to ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... folk are round him. There is his mother, with little Ursula, his child, upon her knee. The old lady is the mother of four comely daughters and nine stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a grizzled man. Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-night; the handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon, with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and my friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a little later, worried with many cares, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... melancholy little sighs, and this time the poor Gnat really seemed to have sighed itself away, for, when Alice looked up, there was nothing whatever to be seen on the twig, and, as she was getting quite chilly with sitting still so long, she ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... vociferous abomination of their successful rivals, the Romish priests. Captain Abrane sniffed, loud as a horse, condemnatory as a cat, in speaking of him. He said: 'By George, it comes to this; we shall have to turn Catholics for a loan!' Watchdogs of the three repeated the gigantic gambler's melancholy roar. And, see what gap, cried the ratiocination of alarm, see the landslip it is in our body, national and religious, when exalted personages ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of it," Esther replied indifferently. He might have taken advantage of this confession to give her a lecture on poetry, if the millpool and the melancholy wood had not been so affecting as to make the least attempt at literary ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... was tall and slender and melancholy faced, her hair a dull reddish-gold or golden-red, her face without color and a bit freckled, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... eminent Dundonian divine, who wishes to remain anonymous, remarks, it is a melancholy fact that men of genius have often been prone to violent ebullitions of temper. He recalls the sad case of MILTON, who, while he was dictating his Areopagitica, threw an ink-horn at his daughter, "to the complete denigration of her habiliments," as he himself described it. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... learned men arrayed against him is not strange. Every man who works in a creative way craves approbation. Some one must approve. After the first fever of ecstasy there comes the reaction, when the pulse beats slow and the mind is filled with doubt and melancholy. This desire for approval is not a weakness—it seems to stand as a natural need of every human soul. When the great Peg Woffington played, you remember, she begged Sir Henry Vane to stand in the wings so as to meet her when she came off the stage, take her in his arms ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... woods. And killing with arrows Rurus and the black deer and other kinds of clean animals of the wilderness, he gave them unto those Brahmanas. And no one that lived with Yudhishthira looked pale or ill, or was lean or weak, or was melancholy or terrified. And the chief of the Kurus—the virtuous king Yudhishthira—maintained his brothers as if they were his sons, and his relatives as if they were his uterine brothers. And Draupadi of pure fame fed her husbands and the Brahmanas, as if she was their mother; and last of all ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... of nervousness, Selma's grave dignity came to her support, and justified her completely in her own eyes. Her father had been fond of verse, especially of verse imbued with moral melancholy, and at his suggestion she had learned and had been wont to repeat many of the occasional pieces which he cut from the newspapers and collected in a scrap-book. Her own preference among these was the poem, "O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" which she had been told was a great favorite ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... way, that reminds me that Eda and your wife are particularly desirous of having breakfast," said Frank. "In fact they sent me specially to lay their melancholy case before you; and I have great fears that Eda will lay violent hands on the raw pork if her morning meal is delayed much longer. As for Chimo, he is rushing about the island in a state of ravenous despair; so ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... six o'clock he was awakened by the barking of the dog, and opening the door beheld Dallison. The grocer was at the window above, and about to let down a basket of provisions to them. To Leonard's eager inquiries after Amabel, Mr. Bloundel replied by a melancholy shake of the head, and soon afterwards withdrew. With a sad heart, the apprentice then broke his fast,—not forgetting at the same time the wants of his little companion,—and finding he was not required by his master, he proceeded to Doctor Hodges' ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... reflection, it may be added, was, on the young lady's part, just the least bit acrimonious. Captain Benyon was not a cynic in any sense in which he might have shocked an innocent mind; he kept his cynicism to himself, and was a very clever, courteous, attentive gentleman. If he was melancholy, you knew it chiefly by his jokes, for they were usually at his own expense; and if he was indifferent, it was all the more to his credit that he should have exerted himself to ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... but, there are no books, save the contents of a light gallery, which runs round three sides of the room, and is reached by a hanging stair of carved oak in one corner. There are only two portraits—an original of the beautiful and melancholy head of Claverhouse, and a small full-length of Rob Roy. Various little antique cabinets stand about the room; and in one corner is a collection of really useful weapons—those of the forest craft, to wit—axes and bills, &c. Over the fire-place, too, are some Highland claymores clustered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... seemed to be turning to melancholy, and she walked on gravely and thoughtfully, though repeating that there could be no doubt of Margaret's perfect recovery by the time of the return from ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Uncle JACK—look at this!" exclaims Mr. E. DROOD, bringing from behind his back and presenting to the melancholy organist a thing that looks, at first glance, like an incredibly slim little black girl, headless, with no waist at all, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... curiosity and affection were mingled with a touch of bitterness. He saw little that was not familiar, or that he had not seen in his dreams a hundred times during the past ten years. There had been some changes, it is true, some melancholy changes, but scarcely anything by way of addition or improvement to counterbalance them. Here and there blackened and dismantled walls marked the place where handsome buildings once had stood, for Sherman's ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... after receiving Faber's communication, poor Mr. Drake roamed about like one on the verge of insanity, struggling to retain lawful dominion over his thoughts. At times he was lost in apprehensive melancholy, at times roused to such fierce anger that he had to restrain himself from audible malediction. The following day Dorothy would have sent for Faber, for he had a worse attack of the fever than ever before, but ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... in together, Mary was forced to readjust certain opinions which she had formed of her lodger. The other night he had been divorced from the dapper youths of her own set by his lack of up-to-dateness, his melancholy, his air of mystery. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... contracted his eyebrows—evidently under the impression that he was facilitating the process of taking his portrait by making his face as like a lifeless mask as possible. All traces of his natural animated expression were fast disappearing, and he was beginning to change into a heavy and rather melancholy-looking man. ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... these words, may I venture relying on the melancholy privilege of seniority, to drop for a minute or two into a tone of advice? I would say, do not be frightened out of your confidence either by the premature paean of victory from the opposite camp, or by timid voices in our own ranks. And that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... it?" he replied. "I suppose they thought I would feel kinder dull and melancholy like, on leaving my native land this way; and I must say I don't feel jist altogether right neither. Ever so many things rise right up in my mind, not one arter another, but all together like, so that I can't take 'em one by one and reason 'em down, but they jist ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... It is a melancholy reflection, that the spirit of melioration which has been going on in that part of Europe, more or less, during this century, and the various schemes very lately on foot for further advancement, are all put a stop to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... untroubled people in the character of a light-spirited, comfortable, untroubled person, and that each year should have its book of connubial humour, its travel in picturesque places, its fun and its sunshine, like roses budding in succession on a stem. He did his utmost to conceal from himself the melancholy realization that the third and the fourth roses were far less wonderful than the first and the second, and that by continuing the descending series a rose might be attained at last that was almost unattractive, but ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... gets his right foot loose," muttered the cochero, stifling another sigh, "I'll give him my horses, and offer him my services even to death, for he'll free us from the Civil Guard." With a melancholy gaze he watched the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... bundle of New York newspapers. When out on the Atlantic he arranged these according to date and went over them diligently, page by page. They seemed like echoes out of another life. He read listlessly on, going over the belated news from his old-time home with the melancholy indifference of the alien, with the poignant impersonality of the exile. He read of fires and crimes and calamities, of investigations and elections. He read of a rumored Police Department shake up, and he could afford to smile at the vitality of that hellbender-like report. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... I, the neophyte, followed alone; and after me the white-robed priests, holding aloft banners and emblems of the Gods. Next came those who bear the sacred boat, and after them the singers and the mourners; while, stretching as far as the eye could reach, all the people marched, clad in melancholy black because Osiris was no more. We went in silence through the city streets till at length we came to the wall of the temple and passed in. And as my father, the High Priest, entered beneath the gateway of the outer pylon, a sweet-voiced woman singer began to sing the Holy ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Church. Lorenzo found himself unable to quit the Spot. The void left in his bosom by Antonia's absence, and his Sister's sacrifice which Don Christoval had just recalled to his imagination, created that melancholy of mind which accorded but too well with the religious gloom surrounding him. He was still leaning against the seventh column from the Pulpit. A soft and cooling air breathed along the solitary Aisles: The Moonbeams darting into the Church through painted ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... years of the Doctor's life he was often shadowed by fits of deep melancholy. One day he was walking with a lady, who was also subject to depression of spirits, and he said to her: "Tell me why I am like a Jew?" She could not answer and he replied: "Because I am sad-you-see" Tears and mirth dwelt ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... pillage and tumult have reached their height when a fiery horse carries a rider up to the main entrance. He is attended by Mohammedan princes, generals, and pashas.[1] His name is Mohammed II., the Conqueror, the Sultan of the Turks. He is young and proud and has a will of iron, but he is solemn and melancholy. He dismounts and passes on foot over this floor, over the marble slabs trodden a thousand years ago by ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... me a melancholy Story. Heavens forbid it. God forbid. No more of that I pray. I wish what you say were not true. But you must be of good Chear, you must pluck up a good Heart. A good Heart is a good Help in bad Circumstances. You must bear up your Mind with the Hope of better Fortune. What Distemper ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... off—eighty—sixty—now. Up goes the gun, but alas and alas! they catch a glimpse of the light glinting on the barrels, and perhaps of the head behind them, and in another second they have broken and scattered this way and that way, twisting off like a wisp of gigantic snipe, to vanish with melancholy cries ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... impossible to behold unmoved the sad, the astonishing changes which time, the arch-destroyer has effected with his giant arm. Our exuberant fancies carry us back to those remote periods when all was glory and magnificence, where now ruin and desolation have established their melancholy empire. Abandoning ourselves to the potent influence of classical contemplations of the past, we revel in the full indulgence of antiquarian enthusiasm. Imagination, however, needs not in general so wide a field for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... would have written well if his mother hadn't put it into his head that he had a soul. The soul is a veritable pitfall." However that may be, it was the discovery, or at least suppositious discovery, that he had a soul, a soul in harmony with the melancholy soul of Ireland, that drove Mr. Moore back to Dublin, and, for moments, even farther west to the home country of his family about Lough Gara in Mayo. This discovery was foreshadowed in "Evelyn Innes" (1898), in which Mr. Moore grows curious about the belief ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... also, of the almost sacred character of husbandry, which was clearly recognized in "elder times," so that even the rudest and most savage peoples respected ploughmen and tillers of the soil in time of war. He then quotes some melancholy verses of Virgil, and gives the whole chapter a twist of humour by ending up with—"But not a word of this in any case, especially that I told you so; and we will proceed to the next and ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... de Morvilliers succeeded him, with the title of keeper of the seals, but the full powers of chancellor.[575] In quiet retirement, the venerable judge and legislator lingered more than four years, unhappy only in being spared to see the melancholy results of the rejection of his prudent counsels, the desolation of his native land, and the transformation of an amiable king into a murderer of his own subjects. Few days in this eventful reign were more lasting in their ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... made upon the fort. At two o'clock in the morning, the columns moved out of the trenches, with the utmost silence, bearing scaling ladders, and crept stealthily over the plain toward the apparently slumbering fort. Dark clouds hung low, and the only sounds heard were the melancholy cry of the loon and the measured dash of the waves upon the shore. At length the American picket discovered the approach of the British columns and gave the alarm. The bugles rang shrill in the ear of night. Every embrasure ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Mother and Daughter,' was published by Mrs. Opie after this visit to the Continent. It is a melancholy and curious story, which seems to have been partly suggested by that of poor Mary Wollstonecraft, whose prejudices the heroine shares and expiates by a fate hardly less pathetic than that of Mary herself. The book reminds one of a very touching ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... resumed its habitual gloom. Then he looked up again, and in the melancholy depths of his eyes I saw a gleam of something that was ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... and having discussed cheese, porter, and red herrings, the cloth was drawn, and a hard-featured dessert, consisting principally of apples, followed. The wine having made a couple of melancholy circuits, the strained conversation about came to a full stop, and Spigot having considerately placed the little round table, as if to keep the peace between them, the ladies left the male worthies to discuss their port and sherry together. Jack, according to Woodmansterne ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... was certain of that—the melancholy wreckage of a vanished and resplendent time. Its small principality, flourishing when commerce and communication had gone by water, was one of the innumerable victims of progress and of the concentration of effort into huge impersonalities. He thought ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... "This melancholy journey of mine will keep me away from England for a fortnight, or, at most, for three weeks. You will oblige me—and you will certainly not sacrifice your own convenience and pleasure—by staying through that interval with your friends at St. Crux. If, before my return, some unexpected ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... was fit to rank, for its austerity and single-mindedness, with that of the most devoted saints. But happy as he became in his strenuous way, he never got his taste for even the most innocent carnal pleasures back. We must class him, like Bunyan and Tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul the iron of melancholy left a permanent imprint. His redemption was into another universe than this mere natural world, and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. Years later we can find him making such an entry as this in his diary: "On Wednesday the 12th I preached ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... discovery of such prophane mockers, we give these markes and characters. 1. They do prophanely and tauntingly abuse the name of the Spirit, under that name deriding the work of Grace and sanctification. 2. They esteem and speak of exercises of conscience, as fancies, or fits of melancholy. 3. They mock at Family-worship and the means of mutuall edification so much recommended by the last Assembly in their directions. 4. They do usually calumniate godly Ministers, and professors who follow ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... deprive thee of the enjoyment of this royalty!" His sisters' words sank deep into the king's mind. He acknowledged their justice, burst into tears, and flung his crown on the ground. After this he fell into a profound melancholy, ceased to care for the exercise of power, and in a short time died. His death is ascribed by the Orientals to his mental sufferings; but the statement of a Christian bishop throws some doubt on this romantic story. Eutychius, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... sailor, lost in a vessel homeward bound from Newfoundland, sometimes belonging to Pool, sometimes to Dartmouth, at other times to other ports, and under such or such commander, according as the newspapers gave account of such melancholy accidents. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... things Haita became melancholy and morose. He no longer spoke cheerfully to his flock, nor ran with alacrity to the shrine of Hastur. In every breeze he heard whispers of malign deities whose existence he now first observed. Every cloud was a portent signifying disaster, and the darkness ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... lead us to believe that the majority of the nation were fast becoming unchristianised. Bishop Butler was not the man to make a statement, and especially a statement of such grave import, lightly, and his account of the state of religion is melancholy indeed. 'It is come,' he writes, 'I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly, they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... where her dress was unbuttoned, moved up and down as if waves were rising and falling under the skin, and the rustling of the skirts showed that the movement extended to her feet. Her head thrown back, her face flushed, her eyes full of melancholy tenderness, of the patient agony we see in the eyes of the wounded, the great veins clearly marked under her chin, Germinie, breathing hard and paying no heed to questions, raised her hands to her neck and throat and clawed at them; she seemed to be trying to tear ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Turner to see us; and there, among other talk, she tells me that Mr. William Pen, who is lately come over from Ireland, is a Quaker again, or some very melancholy thing; that he cares for no company, nor comes into any which is a pleasant thing, after his being abroad so long, and his father such a hypocritical rogue, and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... ears. And though I will not presume to estimate them as superior to the heroes and heroines in the works of former ages, yet the perusal of the motives and issues of their experiences, may likewise afford matter sufficient to banish dulness, and to break the spell of melancholy. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... its melancholy influence was beginning to affect him. He thought less and less of the joy of his love and more of its hopelessness. By the time he reached his house he had begun to confront the possibility of a life of renunciation, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... half of stone, half of clay and stick, stood starkly up in the gray rain and the swooping, shifting gray fog. It marked the site of a cabin burned long ago, and in such melancholy wise as it might it told of the home that had been. Now and again far-away lightning flashed on its fireless hearth; a vacant bird's-nest in a cranny duplicated the suggestions of desertion; the cold mist crept in and curled up out of the smokeless flue with a mockery ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... himself forward, and encountered all the obloquy and reproach to which he knew he exposed himself, and having done so, cheerfully offered to resign the power to another. Peel endeavoured to seize the power, but to shield himself from responsibility and danger. It is a melancholy proof of the dearth of talent and the great capacity of the man that, notwithstanding the detection of his practices and his motives, the Tories are compelled still to keep well with him and to accept him for their leader. No cordiality, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... brutal law of the land went. But the road-menders, with better hearts, from that day to this have always kept up the mound. However beautiful the day, however beautiful the beech trees and the ashes that stand apart, there is always a melancholy feeling in passing the place. This thistle-grown mound saddens the whole; it is impossible to forget it; it lies, as it were, under everything, under the beeches, the sunlit sward and fern. The mark of death is there. The dogs and the driven cattle tread the spot; a human being has passed ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... houses up, and it is needful to say something particularly to that; for this part of the history of the plague is very melancholy. But the most grievous story must ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the ancient order, after a conviction of its intolerable abuses had become general, is as well established as any fact in history can be. Just here you will find the explanation of the profound pessimism of the literature of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the note of melancholy in its poetry, and ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... *proof Thou say'st to me, it is a great mischief To wed a poore woman, for costage:* *expense And if that she be rich, of high parage;* * birth Then say'st thou, that it is a tormentry To suffer her pride and melancholy. And if that she be fair, thou very knave, Thou say'st that every holour* will her have; *whoremonger She may no while in chastity abide, That is assailed upon every side. Thou say'st some folk desire us for richess, Some for our shape, and some for our fairness, And some, for she can either ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... a simple feeling of discomfort, impeded or heightened circulation, perhaps the irritation of a nervous thread, a slight congestion, a small disturbance in the imperfect and delicate functions of our living machinery, can turn the most lighthearted of men into a melancholy one, and make a coward of the bravest! Then, I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I suddenly ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... 'of course we must give up everything here, and that will be a little trying for a while, I'll admit, but we should be thankful that you are not thrown out altogether,' adding with a tinge of melancholy, 'I don't think, though, that I could bear to live in Washington after the change. Suppose we try A—— ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald |
