"Pitiful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creatures in want? It is well the fairy has supplied me so liberally, or I might soon come to be in want myself, but I think, he proudly added, she must be satisfied with my manner of employing my wealth. One day a person desired to be admitted to him, who told him a long pitiful story of his being reduced from easy circumstances by a rich and powerful man, who in revenge for some offence he had given him, had contrived his ruin, and driven him with a large helpless family to beggary. The natural ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... in a pitiful state, said Gudrun, what with the hay shortage, almost everyone is badly off, and not a single farmer with a scrap of hay to ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... wonder," said Mrs. Joan, or Jane, "that you are able to beat them; you are little, and they very big." "He cared not for that," he replied; "he would beat the best two of them, and his cousins Smacks would beat the other two." This most pitiful mirth, for such it certainly is, was mixed with tragedy enough. Miss Throgmorton and her sisters railed against Darne Samuel; and when Mr. Throgmorton brought her to his house by force, the little fiends longed to draw blood of ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... could not smother his mutterings at night. Toward dark he grew feverish and very restless. And when one has a "glass leg," as the ambulance man had called it and cannot twist and toss to relieve that restless feeling, one's situation is, indeed, pitiful. ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... when Colonel Beauregard showed us the portraits of the major-generals of the Revolution. I saw a vacant place and a tablet like the rest, but with 'Major General—Born 1740' and no name! I asked what it meant. The Colonel said only, 'Arnold.' That is too pitiful—and his wife—I read somewhere that she was young, beautiful, and innocent ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... anything that puts the animal spirits into the same motion that the object present did, will have the same effect with the object. To prove the first, let one observe a man's face looking on a pitiful object, then a ridiculous, then a strange, then on a terrible or dangerous object, and so forth. For the second, that ideas have the same effect with the object, dreams ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... architecture, stored with shabby antiquities and side-shows and overgrown with moss and lichen—a heterogeneous blend of historical strata of all periods, in which gems of poetry and pathos and spiritual fervor glittered and pitiful records of ancient persecution lay petrified. And the method of praying these things was equally complex and uncouth, equally the bond-slave of tradition; here a rising and there a bow, now three steps backwards and now a beating of the breast, this bit for the congregation and that for the minister, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... will compound with the lord of the soil to pull them down for altogether, saying that "if they did let them stand, they should but toll beggars to the town, thereby to surcharge the rest of the parish, and lay more burden upon them." But alas! these pitiful men see not that they themselves hereby do lay the greatest log upon their neighbours' necks. For, sith the prince doth commonly loose nothing of his duties accustomable to be paid, the rest of the parishioners that ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... pushed open and Alfred appeared, his hair shiny, his cheeks redolent of recent ablutions, more than a trifle reluctant. His conversation was limited to a few monosyllables and a whoop of joy at the receipt of a shilling. His efforts at escape afterwards were so pitiful that Burton eventually let him out of the window, from which he disappeared, running at full tilt ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pitiful he should sit there, No one sympathizing, no one heeding, None to love him for his thin gray hair, And the furrows all so mutely pleading Age and care: Seemed it ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... more—He, the Fountain-Head of Absolute Perfection, is no deaf, blind, capricious, or remorseless Being. To Him the death of the smallest singing-bird is as great or as little as the death of a world's emperor. For Him the timeless withering of an innocent flower is as pitiful as the decay of a mighty nation. An infant's first prayer to Him is heard with as tender a patience as the united petitions of thousands of worshippers. For in everything and around everything, from the sun to a grain of sand, He hath a portion, small or great, of His own most Perfect Existence. ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... scarcely walk, by the twenty-eighth, and their sensations of hunger were deminishing. This condition forebode delirium and death, unless stayed by the only means at hand. It was in very truth a pitiful alternative offered ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... rush to the diggings. Indeed, many men are fools enough to leave their work to go there, but I confess that I don't like the notion. It has always appeared to me such a pitiful thing to see men, who are fit for better things, go grubbing in ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... repelled her, And the cold hand that turned her away, And take, from the lips that denied her, This answerless prayer of to-day! Take Lord, from my mem'ry forever That pitiful sob of despair, And the patter and trip of the little bare feet, And the one piercing cry on ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... her journey to Paris, and her mockery of a trial before the tribunal—her pitiful bravery when the inhuman monsters tried to make her say "A la lanterne!" Nothing would induce her to—she had the firmness of ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... next, that they should be shotted, but not fired so as to injure the crews of our ally's ships; and, finally, that they should be used as hostilely and destructively as was necessary to accomplish the purpose of forcing Naples to let the Sicilian rebels alone. But then it is said, and it is the pitiful pretext of equal treatment to both parties, that the orders were alike to prevent action of the King's troops and the revolters. Was ever there a more wretched shift, a more hollow pretence, than this? Keep the Sicilians from breaking an armistice enforced ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... some sort—to wage-earning and wage-taking: sometimes becoming the mainstay of aged or infirm parents, the dependence of younger brothers and sisters. If the history of it all is ever written, it will make pitiful, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... their power and pride? A little shadow sweeps it from the earth! And if they suffer—why, the fatal hour Comes o'er the record like a moistened sponge, And blots it out; methinks this latter lot Affects me deepest—Well! 'tis pitiful!" [27] ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beckon him on no strange pilgrimages, his soul retraced its steps and contemplated this bright thing as an earth creature might creep to the mouth of its lair and blink at the sun. And there was more than that to it. He loved her. He had never had enough to do with pitiful things (his wife Elizabeth had been a banker's daughter), and this, child had come to him, that day in June, so white, so weak, so chilled to the bone, for all the summer heat, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... was not to be shaken off; as well might the earth try to shake off the moon. I had once led his master into trouble, when he fell on one of the topmost jags of a mountain and dislocated his arm; now the turn of his humble companion was coming. The pitiful little wanderer just stood there in the wind, drenched and blinking, saying doggedly, "Where thou goest I will go." So at last I told him to come on if he must, and gave him a piece of the bread I had in my pocket; then we struggled on together, and thus began the most ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... imbecility which, as medical people well know, frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance is frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... And don't worry. I'm all right, and I promise you I won't try any gymnastics till the doctor gives me leave." Then, Ramsdell gone, he turned to the doctor in a sudden wave of self-surrender which the older man found exceeding pitiful. "Doctor, am I a futile sort of chap, or am I slowly going off my head? The woman talked the most utter rubbish; I know it's total rot. And yet—Doctor," and the brown eyes looked up into the keen eyes above them with an appeal before which the keen eyes veiled themselves. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... and the plain, stringent conditions of God's return. Joshua's prayer is answered. He knows now why little Ai has beaten them back. He asked, 'What shall I say?' He has got something of grave import to say. So far this passage carries us, leaving the pitiful last hour of the wretched troubler of Israel untouched. What lessons are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... drew nearer and nearer the angry fire-tide, my hand was across my mouth to shut out the hot burning air; but a man must breathe, and the next intake of breath blistered one's chest like live coals on raw flesh. Little wonder our poor beasts uttered that pitiful scream against pain, which is the horse's one protest of suffering. Presently, they became wildly unmanageable; and when we dismounted to blindfold them and muffle their heads in our jackets, they crowded and trembled ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... in 1797; and it is an accurate description, as far as it goes, of the grown man. But of the religious temper, too, the love of freedom and of virtue, the hatred of injustice, cruelty, and falsehood that guided his uneven steps through all the pitiful struggle of his middle life, of the conscience that made his weakness hell to him—of these, too, we may be sure that the beginnings were to be seen in the boy at Ottery St. Mary, as indeed they were before his eyes in the person of his father, who, if not a ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of bitter trials and distressing times, Washington never lost faith that in the end the American cause would triumph. A beautiful story is told showing the faith of this courageous man while in the midst of these pitiful scenes at Valley Forge. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... little space to give to their pitiful story. Many have doubtless heard it. The younger brother, John, was, at least as a child, more fortunate. When Charleston was at last occupied by the Union army, the two oldest, Francis and Archibald, attracted the attention of some members of the Sanitary ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... passing through Limavaddy, visited its ancient castle, then sadly dilapidated, and, entering one of the apartments, saw an aged woman wrapped in a blanket, and crouching over a peat fire, which filled the room with reeking smoke. After gazing at this pitiful spectacle, the duchess asked the miserable individual her name; when the latter, rising and drawing herself up to her full height, replied, "I am the wife of the O'Cahan."'[Father Meehan dedicates his valuable work to the lord ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... tool-houses, one feed stable, and twelve others that for one reason and another I shall not name. Yet this wretched husk of squalor spent thought upon appearances; many houses in it wore a false front to seem as if they were two stories high. There they stood, rearing their pitiful masquerade amid a fringe of old tin cans, while at their very doors began a world of crystal light, a land without end, a space across which Noah and Adam might come straight from Genesis. Into that space went wandering ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... hidden from him, bending to his feet; but he saw that she trembled and moved her shoulders. So then he said again, "I know that thou art pitiful. I know that thou wilt wash ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett
... such a rash one, that to keep it, were Worse than to swear it; call it back to thee; Such vows as those never ascend the Heaven; A tear or two will wash it quite away: Have mercy on my youth, my hopeful youth, If thou be pitiful, for (without boast) This Land was proud of me: what Lady was there That men call'd fair and vertuous in this Isle, That would have shun'd my love? It is in thee To make me hold this worth—Oh! we vain men That trust out all our reputation, To rest upon the weak ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... we ought to do. I never was without a conscience; but of all the poor pitiful scoundrels of a conscience that ever existed, it was the greatest. But why should I blame it? It loved me too well; for, after some gentle rebukes when I was about to do a rascally act, it quietly withdrew all opposition and left me to my ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hear about the grace of God," said he. "You're the man I want, then," said I. "Yes," the poor fellow said, "you said in your sermon that it was free, and I want you to tell me something about it." Well, I got to talking to him, and he told me a pitiful story. He had drank away twenty thousand dollars, his home had been broken up, and his wife and children had left him. I spoke to him, and it was not long before we were down together praying. That night I got him a night's lodging ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... my mind always in the same position. One moment out of all that had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination; the moment when I struck a match and saw her pale, distorted face, with its look of torture. And what a pitiful, what an unnatural, what a distorted smile she had at that moment! But I did not know then, that fifteen years later I should still in my imagination see Liza, always with the pitiful, distorted, inappropriate smile which was on her face ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... you choose," replied Eva, her red lips pouting scornfully, as if she felt raised above such pitiful derision. "How you hurt, Els! You are pulling all the hair out ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... To wonder at the cry. Not one of all The shining host had dared to speak to Him In that dread hour of woe, when Heaven and Earth Stood trembling and amazed. Yet, lo! the voice Of one who speaks to Him, who dares to pray, "O Lord, remember me!" A sinful man May make his pitiful appeal to Christ, The sinner's Friend, when angels dare not speak. And sweetly from the dying lips that day ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... became acquainted with Z. Marcas, helped him in his distress, attended him on his death-bed, and, with Justi, a medical student, as his only companion, followed the body of this great, but unknown man to the beggar's grave in Montparnasse cemetery. After having told some friends the short, but pitiful story of Z. Marcas, Charles Rabourdin, following the advice of the deceased, left the country, and sailed from Havre for the Malayan islands; for he had not been able to gain a foothold in France. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... who had been with her in her triumphal progress through Princes Street; but it was I who had escorted her the whole wonderful, sordid, glorious, pitiful length of the old High Street, the Royal Mile of gorgeous ghosts. I had been there to see her face as she caught glimpses of dark wynds where long ago men had fought to the death and helped make history, where now colourful yet faded rags hang like ancient banners, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Eternities had so often sat and watched the flickering embers. Here he lived in his loneliness and cursed curses that were prayers, and here for near five decades he read and thought and dreamed and wrote. Here the spirits of Cromwell and Frederick hovered; here that pitiful and pitiable long line of ghostly partakers in the Revolution answered to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... evil: A most miraculous work in this good king, Which often, since my here remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction.—Macbeth, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... swift-footed and silent, was too much for Sir Philip. He sank on his knees by the side of his unconscious son, whimpering like a child—a weak and helpless old man. There was no trace of the dignity of the Herediths or pride of race in the wrinkled face, now distorted with the pitiful grin of senility, as Sir Philip crouched over his son, stroking his face with ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... her departure from the residence of the patriarch Abraham, and so proudly, that all the servants and retainers fell on their knees as she passed along, imploring her with joined hands, like Notre Dame de la Riche. It was pitiful to see the Sieur de Bastarnay following her, ashamed, weeping, confessing himself to blame, and downcast and despairing, like a man being led to the gallows, there ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... that it was a very ill-used hat, frayed and worn, dented of crown and broken of brim, yet beneath its sordid shabbiness there lurked the dim semblance of what it had once been, for, in the scratched and tarnished buckle, in the jaunty curl of the brim, it still preserved a certain pitiful air of rakishness; wherefore, I stooped, and, picking it up, began to brush the dust from it as ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... "I have not done this, I have not done that"—and highly interesting information regarding the moral standpoint a good deal of it was. I have tried to find out the reason of this widely diffused custom which is the cause of such a pitiful waste of life; for in addition to the mother and children being killed it often leads to other people, totally unconcerned in the affair, being killed by the relatives of the sufferer on the suspicion of having ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... by Mary's pitiful sobs, could resist no longer, but opened his arms, and the girl ran ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... letter; and feeling it begin to cool in his grasp, he realized that the rain was beating upon it; so, holding in common with all patient men the instincts of a woman, he put the wet paper in his bosom and tightly buttoned his coat about it. Suddenly he halted; the pitiful howling of a dog smote his ear. At the edge of a small field lying close to the road was a negro's cabin, and from that quarter came the dog's distressful outcry. Jim stepped up to the fence and listened for any human-made noise that might proceed from the cabin, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... that kiss with a pitiful shame. She hated herself for the weakness that could not check her tears. Her lonely life had been brightened by the companionship of her young lover. The youth and girlhood of which fate had cheated her had come to her with love; the future had looked rosy with promise; ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg and borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... amenities of the way: they could not, of course, be what they had been; the carriage was by this a forcing- house. And through the long night we ached away an intolerable span of time with, for under-current, for sinister accompaniment to the pitiful strain, the muffled interminable plodding of the engine, and the rack of the wheels pulsing through space to the rhythm of some music-hall jingle heard in snatches at home. At intervals came shocks of contrast when we were brought suddenly face to face with ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... caravan, disorganized, broken, and overthrown, was disappearing beneath an avalanche of sand. The camels, flung pell-mell together, were uttering dull and pitiful groans; cries and howls of despair were heard issuing from that dusty and stifling cloud, and, from time to time, a parti-colored garment cut the chaos of the scene with its vivid hues, and the moaning and shrieking sounded over all, a terrible ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... sank weakly to the floor; but each time he rose again and continued his pitiful way toward safety. After what seemed to him an interminable time, during which the flames had become a veritable fiery furnace at the far side of the room, the great black managed to reach the veranda, roll ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... continued to raise his head and body without a struggle. He looked the captain in the eye, and his mouth was in motion as though he were trying to speak,—to utter some dying accusation. Never did human eye behold a scene so pitiful as this dying man gazing on his destroyer, gasping to implore or to denounce him. In an instant a dimness came over his ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... himself useful on the farm and at the fishery. He went out fishing, and in those days fish were more plentiful and larger than they are now. The shoals of the mackerel glittered in the dark nights, and indicated where they were swimming; the gurnards snarled, and the crabs gave forth pitiful yells when they were chased, for fish are not so ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... as makes her (his mother) and them that love him to be often in great fear."[1229] But now the picture, as faithfully drawn by the friendly hand of the Venetian ambassador, early in the year 1574, is still more pitiful. His countenance had become sad and forbidding. When obliged to give audience to the representatives of foreign powers, as well as in his ordinary interviews, he avoided the glance of those who addressed him. He bent his head toward the ground and shut his eyes. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... after this, Maria, the youngest daughter, was riding through the forest with her husband. There they found the poor dog crying and yelping in a pitiful manner. Maria recognized her mother. She got out of the carriage, and with her own hands untied the dog. She wrapped her veil around it, and ordered the carriage to turn back to the palace. "Husband," she said as she ascended the steps of the royal residence, "this dog ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... bare-headed man come racing down the draw. His clothes and shoes were in tatters; there were great blisters on his arms and shoulders where the sun had burned him; his eyes were swollen and red, and his lips were cracked and bloody. His hair was so white and so dusty that altogether he was a pitiful-looking object. He greeted us pleasantly, and said that his name was Olaf Swanson and that he was a sheep-herder; that he had seen us and had come to ask for a little smoking. ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... and now await the final result by mail. I only charged them for 50 letters what (even in) greenbacks would amount to less than two thousand dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced Eastern papers, and now they want to publish my letters in book form themselves to get back that pitiful sum. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Perhaps you might escape after all; but, you see, I am a woman, and dare not risk it. Come now, I am ready," and she knelt down, opening her arms to receive the embrace of death, and looked up at me with her lovely, pitiful eyes. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... leaning a little forward, the soft cloud of hair, the fair beauty of the cheek. He had not seen anything like it in his youth, but—it was Youth itself, and so was that which the ringers were so soon to toll for; and for some remote and unformed reason, to his scores of years they were pitiful and should be cheered. He bent forward himself and put out his ancient, veined and knotted, gnarled and trembling hand, to timorously touch the arm of her ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... without working for it—ciphers who do what they're told, and don't understand the inner nature of what they're doing more than a hoss in a plough. But men like Job, though not so noisy, would get to the root, and use their own judgment, and rise superior to party politics and the pitiful need to shout with your ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... a poor blind boy, bereft of speech and hearing as well, and with no other guide than prescience, divination, the nervous faculties of the invalid. Really, it is pitiful to see him wander about, feeling his way, faltering at every step, tapping with his fingers the projections upon which he depends for guidance, with the distrustful awkwardness of an infirm old man. At the very moment when he was mentally casting a doubt ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice, mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder.—My teeth chatter as I speak, yet it is not with the chilliness of the night—of the night without end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies. These sights are more than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... But what was the result? Did they catch the Fairy? Did they chase her into her secret cells and workshops? Did they throw over the freedom of her motions a harness of net-work of coercion as the Pagans over their pitiful Proteus? So far from it, that the more they studied the less they understood; and all the traps which they laid for the Fairy, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... man whom she had hitherto liked, and whom she had unconsciously respected for a certain dignity he seemed to have, degrade himself—and for money's sake, as she rightly judged—to the playing of a pitiful comedy. As the whole scene came back to her in all distinctness, she traced the deception from first to last with amazing certainty of comprehension, and she knew that San Miniato had wilfully and ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... in alarm and sprang towards the goat. She seemed quite strange, was not eating, but stood still in the same spot and pricked up her ears inquiringly. Moni placed himself beside her and looked up and down. Now he heard a faint, pitiful bleating; it was Maggerli's voice, and it came from below so plaintive and beseeching. Moni lay down on the ground and leaned over. There below something was moving; now he saw quite plainly, far down Maggerli was hanging to the bough ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al
... hands and sat up. Her face was brought on a level with his, the swollen eyes blinking through tears, the mouth twisted and pitiful. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the idea that the deceased may want these articles in the world whither they are gone; and it is very affecting occasionally to hear the plaintive and mournful lamentations of the mother at the grave of her child, uttering in pitiful accents, "Ah! my child, why did you leave me! Why go out of my sight so early! Who will nurse you and feed you in the long journey you have undertaken!" The strength of natural affection will sometimes lead them to commit suicide, under the ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... Lodbrok's dog, which the serfs had with them, and they loosed it. It ran to his body first and cried over it, pulling his coat with its paws and licking his face, so that it was pitiful to see it, and there were women present ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... tall soldierly-looking old man, to whom Bob was speedily introduced, and by whom he was claimed, to his unqualified amazement, as an only and long- lost son. Sir Richard Lascelles—for he it was—was indebted to Lance for this joyous discovery; and it was almost pitiful to witness the poor old gentleman's efforts to adequately express his gratitude to Evelin for the totally unexpected restoration of ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... clothing, out of all proportion to the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is judged largely by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the people whose social opinions she most values. Her clothes are her background, and from them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact that girls' ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... means, and bawls all over the house: 'It's an outrage! This is an abominable dive! I'll show you up! ... To-morrow I'll give you twenty-four hours to clear out! ... Do you know, this combination of pitiful helplessness with the threatening cries was so killing that even the gloomy Simeon started laughing ... Well, now, apropos of Simeon ... I say, that life dumfounds, with its wondrous muddle and farrago, makes one stand aghast. You can utter a thousand sonorous words against souteneurs, but ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... a shell. As we drove slowly by, a wounded old woman was carried out and laid beside the bodies of two other white-haired women who had just been dug out of the ruins. Though fatally injured, they were still living, and I shall never forget the pitiful looks on those ashy gray faces as they looked up into my face with eyes like those of sheep about ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... God's gospel as a foolish fable, like the Pope, to whom he is a pitiful purveyor.[458] His very Christianity may be questioned.[459] He ought to expect more severity than other men, as he is most unmerciful in his own reflections on others.[460] With as good a right as his holiness, he sets ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... wonder?" he thought. "No good to her. They hate her, as I ought to, but as I can't, poor, pitiful fool that I am! But my time may come, too. I said I would ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... re-creative power,—power which is yours to use and to control- -imagine that the entire Cosmos is the design of mere blind unintelligent Chance, and that the Divine Life which thrills within you serves no purpose save to lead you to Death! Most wonderful and most pitiful it is that such folly, such blasphemy should still prevail,—and that humanity should still ascribe to the Almighty Creator less wisdom and less love than that with which He has endowed His creatures. For the very first lesson ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... in his new role of military arbitrator, left Shanghai on January 19th by boat, creeping slowly through the canals. The desolation along both banks was pitiful; every village had been burned, every field trampled; not a living thing was in sight—not even a dog—but the creeks were choked with corpses. No man could pass through such a dreary waste unmoved, least of all one who had the slightest power to alter the ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... Don Quixote exclaimed, "Art thou on the gallows, thief, or at thy last moment, to use pitiful entreaties of that sort? Cowardly, spiritless creature, art thou not in the very place the fair Magalona occupied, and from which she descended, not into the grave, but to become Queen of France; unless the histories lie? And I who am here beside thee, may ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... was practically settled from the moment I never followed him. It was a pitiful surrender to agitation, but my being aware of this had somehow no power to restore me. I only sat there on my tomb and read into what my little friend had said to me the fullness of its meaning; by the time I had grasped the whole of which I had also embraced, for absence, ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... senses, not dulled by daily close contact with thousands of indifferent and similar objects, nor by the ceaseless chatter of their fellow-beings, see sights and hear sounds altogether beyond the perceptions of gregarious man. The infinite variety of nature, as compared with the pitiful monotony of the works of humanity, produces in their minds an activity of an especial kind. They do not know what mental weariness means, nor the desire for nervous excitement. The succession of morning and evening does not bore them, for it is a part of themselves, like hunger and the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... not try to bring that time?" he said with pitiful simplicity. "When you speak I believe all you say; other people would ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Amida Butsu"—"Hear me, compassionate Lord Buddha"—words that soon become familiar as one visits these temples; the great refrain of these people's prayers when they pray before the image of "Him, honoured, wisest, best, most pitiful, whose lips comfort the world." And then, having finished her prayers, the little woman pattered back to her home in the town below, while others come and make their devotions likewise, all leaving the temple as if that placid, inscrutable image had whispered ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... inconstancy Receives the smile from the admiring sun, And straight transmits it to the sordid earth,— How many cycles of the silent past Hast thou beheld the rise and fall of man, His proud ascendency and swift decline; His zenith and his pitiful decay; E'er he emerged from out the dismal cave, His habitation rude and primitive; E'er yet the forest trembled at his stroke, E'er his indenting chisel cleaved the stones And framed the first crude ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... and returned. At the other end of the car, opposite, were two Hungarian women, short, squat, heavily oscillating as to hips, clad in full, short skirts, aprons, and gay handkerchiefs over strange faces, at once pitiful, stern, and intimidating. One of the women was distinctly handsome, with noble features closely framed by a snow-white kerchief. She had the expression of the pure and unrelenting asceticism of a nun, but four children nearly of an age were with her—one a baby in her arms, one asleep with heavy ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was very pitiful, her attitude was full of an utter and poignant despair, there was something touching in the extreme in the utter abandonment to grief shown by this young and lovely creature who seemed framed only ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... ever-increasing power. Every knock went to Minnie's heart. It excited an unlimited amount of sympathy for the one who had saved her life, and was now excluded from her door. But as the knocks grew violent and imperative, and Minnie grew sad and pitiful, the other ladies grew indignant. Lady Dalrymple was on the point of sending off for the police, and only Minnie's frantic entreaties prevented this. At last the door seemed almost beaten in, and their feelings ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... stock, agriculture and religion; but when Burton asked to be admitted as a Mormon, Young replied, with a smile, "I think you've done that sort of thing once before, Captain." So Burton was unable to add Mormonism to his five or six other religions. Burton then told with twinkling eyes a pitiful tale of how he, an unmarried man, had come all the way to Salt Lake City, requiring a wife, but had found no wives to be had, all the ladies having been snapped up by the Saints. A little later the two men, who had taken a stroll together, found themselves on an eminence which commanded ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... her superior alertness to dodge that deadly hoof, and was perhaps not prepared for an instant renewal of the attack. But she had barely gotten her four feet in contact with the sod when two rows of terrific teeth plunged into her withers. The pain was frightful, and with a long, pitiful scream Lady Clare sank down upon the ground, and, writhing with agony, beat the air with her hoofs. Shag, who had by this time recovered his senses, heard the noise of the battle, and, plucking up his courage, trotted bravely forward against the victorious Valders-Roan. He ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Sarah, moving off. — Well, I'll be coming down early to the chapel, and let you come to me a while after you see me pas- sing, and bring the bit of gold along with you, and the tin can. I'll marry you for them two, though it's a pitiful small sum; for I wouldn't be easy in my soul if I left you growing into an old, wicked heathen the like of her. SARAH — following him out. — The bles- sing of the Almighty God be on you, holy father, and that He may reward and watch you from this ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... think that they would look on it as their honour which she had played with. His rather pitiful dignity hurt her more than ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... declaimed against Popery; and among the rest, Dr. Sharpe, a clergyman of London, particularly distinguished himself, and affected to throw great contempt on those who had been induced to change their religion by such pitiful arguments as the Romish missionaries could suggest. This topic, being supposed to reflect on the king, gave great offence at court; and positive orders were issued to the bishop of London, his diocesan, immediately to suspend Sharpe, till his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... there had begun the pitiful procession which was to empty the Big House of its company. The tracks were nearly cleared by the wrecking crew, and long rows of fires were consuming the broken evidences of the ruin that had been wrought. The injured had been cared for as best might be ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... degree that it is best that they be kept apart from others. It would seem like an extreme thing to say that these people are spirit-mirrors in which we may partly see ourselves. Yet it would be saying the truth. How laughable, if it were not so overwhelmingly pitiful, must men look to God,—without a stitch to their backs except what He has given, without a copper in their pockets except what has been borrowed from His bank, yet strutting up and down the street of ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... three months that calf that she follows now with such pitiful appeals. If the weaned calf tries to re-establish the old relationship, its mother, "all heart and no head," will kick it in the ribs and then butt it ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... circumstances, and of benevolent impulses, is appealed to by a poor man in the kitchen. She feeds him, gives him clothes, sends him away rejoicing, and feels good over it. The man comes again and again, tells pitiful stories, excites her benevolence of course, and secures a reasonable amount of additional plunder. Months pass away; and being out upon a walk one pleasant afternoon, and finding herself near the poor man's residence, the fair benefactress calls upon him. She finds the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... hope of an alliance by marriage with one of his own kindred, and the prospect of the tribunitian authority, he suddenly, while Sejanus little expected it, charged him with treason, in an abject and pitiful address to the senate; in which, among other things, he begged them "to send one of the consuls, to conduct himself, a poor solitary old man, with a guard of soldiers, into their presence." Still distrustful, however, and apprehensive of an insurrection, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... de Tourville said upon the subject, and the more gesture and emphasis he used to impress the belief in his truth, the less Caroline believed him, and the more dislike and contempt she felt for the duplicity and pitiful meanness of a character, which was always endeavouring to seem, instead of to be.—He understood and felt the expression of her countenance, and mortified by that dignified silence, which said more than words could express, he turned away, and never afterwards addressed ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... says Crockett, "that it was a burlesque on human nature, that an able-bodied man, possessed of his full share of good sense, should voluntarily debase himself, and be indebted for subsistence to such a pitiful artifice. ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... pitiful," said Lucile, "and it made me so desperate to see all those thoughtless cruel boys following him, hooting at him, and laughing at him and calling poor old battered Bull all sorts of names. So I turned around and looked ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... will be faithful and love you, Ingeborg, as long as I live." So good were his intentions. And yet a secret fear and sadness whispered: "You know you have forgotten Hans Hansen altogether, although you see him daily." And the hateful and pitiful thing was that this soft and slightly malicious voice had the right of it, that time went on and days came when Tonio Kroeger was no longer so unconditionally ready to die for the merry Inga as formerly, because he felt in himself the desire and the ability to ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... attractive. She is pretty in an outward way, but her features are unlit by any glimmer of feeling or thought, or even good nature—a slothful, empty sort of prettiness. She makes him walk a chalk-line, and it is contemptible and ridiculous and pitiful to see that big man cringe before this poor, pretty, empty little thing. Once in a while he tears himself away, and a glimmer of his old self returns; for an hour or two he plays his old role again, but if she finds out about it, it is ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... come from Paris you will pass through the whole length of Provins on the everlasting highroad of France, which here skirts the hillside and is encumbered with beggars and blind men, who will follow you with their pitiful voices while you try to examine the unexpected picturesqueness of the region. If you come from Troyes you will approach the town on the valley side. The chateau, the old town, and its former ramparts are terraced on the hillside, the new town is below. They go by the names of Upper and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... personal details that remained, even these being mere suggestions. All her life she had been subject to sudden attacks of faintness, and even as early as 1656, lay for hours unconscious, remaining in a state of pitiful weakness many days thereafter. One of these attacks found record on a loose paper, added by one of her sons to the manuscript book of "Religious Reflections," and showing with what patience she met the ills for the overcoming of which any physician of the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... boy said, with tears in his eyes. "I'll pay you back as soon as I get any money—as soon as ever I can, I do promise you—if only I get safely to England." He had such a pitiful, frightened way of looking over his shoulder, as if he expected to see his father behind him all the time, that Barbara's wrath against the man arose anew, and she felt she could not be sorry, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... for pension on the shelf of General Duty is an object at once pitiful and ludicrous. His profession has ebbed away from him, and he lies a melancholy derelict on the shore, with sails flapping idly against the mast and meaningless pennants streaming ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... jaws and clenched her teeth so as not to scream aloud. It would have done her good to cry; and she sometimes thought that her suffering was about to find an outlet in sobbing; but the relief of tears did not come to moisten her eyes. And, stubbornly, viciously, she went over the whole pitiful story, recalling Suzanne's stay in Paris, the excursions on which Philippe used to take the young girl and from which they both returned looking so happy and glad, their meeting at the Old Mill, Philippe's ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... in such case ascribe his own thoughts and fancies as the cause. Naive and simple as a child himself, he could only see the naivete in the worthless compositions above referred to, and could not understand the small ambition back of the pitiful effort. He often unintentionally afforded equally great amusement to others by his own naivete. Thus he once told Stein, of the noted family of pianoforte makers that some of the strings in his Broadwood ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... and have not Spirit enough to Acknowledge it. Among the Ladies the Case is very common, for there are very few of them who know that it is to maintain a true and high Spirit, to throw away from it all which it self disapproves, and to scorn so pitiful a Shame, as that which disables the Heart from acquiring a Liberality of Affections and Sentiments. The candid Mind, by acknowledging and discarding its Faults, has Reason and Truth for the Foundation of all its Passions and Desires, and consequently is happy and simple; the disingenuous Spirit, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and the moon contended with the fast-flying clouds, and the wild disorder reigning up there made the pitiful little tumults in the streets of no account. It was not that the wind swept all the brawlers into places of shelter, as it had swept the hail still lingering in heaps wherever there was refuge for it; but that it seemed as if ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to the great hall of the castle, before her judges. They read to her the articles which had been founded on her answers, and the Bishop previously represented to her "that these doctors were all churchmen, clerks, and well read in law, divine and human; that they were all tender and pitiful, and desired to proceed mildly, seeking neither vengeance nor corporal punishment, but solely wishing to enlighten her, and put her in the way of truth and of salvation; and that, as she was not sufficiently informed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... pitiful and inquisitive that the substance of Lady Latimer's letter was repeated to her. It was to the effect that Miss Hague's former pupils were of great and wealthy condition for the most part, and that they ought not to let her appeal to public charity, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... same article the Russian satirist draws a clever parallel between the merciless Russian Kulak, or "boss," who ruins the peasantry, and the pitiful Jewish "exploiter," the half-starved tradesman, who in turn is exploited ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... almost worse than the young ones. Used to be that all the old people were mothers and fathers but now they are all going together. Everything is in a critical condition. There is not much truth in the land. All human affection is gone. There is mighty little respect. The way some people carry on is pitiful." ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... Meddy she will git ter studyin' on that of a winter night, an' how the woman that keered fer him mus' hev watched an' waited fer him, an' 'lowed he war deceitful an' de-sertin', an' mebbe held a gredge agin him, whilst he war dyin' so pitiful an' helpless, walled up in that tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... drama, always pitiful, increased in intensity. The old leech who had been her stay and helper died, and left her to face the danger alone. A month later Basterga discovered the secret and henceforth held it over her. From this time she led a life of which Claude, in his dreams upon the hearth, exaggerated ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... showed boldly and with a certain majesty in the foreground, whilst in the distance, high over every roof, arose the leaden dome of St. Paul's. This vista was rather to M. Zola's liking. Close beside us, on the bridge, was one of the semi-circular embrasures garnished with stone seats. A pitiful-looking vagrant was lolling there; but this made no difference to M. Zola. He installed himself on the seat with Desmoulin on one hand and myself on the other, and there we remained for some little time looking ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... is really pitiful. All constructions are destroyed by her; yet she has a hundred times been told the laws of ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... the icy barriers to melt away, the heart of caste is as hard and its severity as rigid as ever. The helplessness of a family under these circumstances is, to any one who is not a slave to the whole accursed system, most pitiful and heartrending. ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... thousands of rifles and dozens of machine-guns. Gad! How these Turks withered and fell. It was brutal, yet it was inspiring. Shrieks, curses, and groans were mixed with pitiful ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... incumbent upon him, either from God or man: no, grace keeps a man low in his own eyes, humble, self-denying, penitent, watchful, savoury in good things, charitable, and makes him kindly affectionated to the brethren, pitiful and courteous ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from his hand, and he stood looking at his daughter. His look was pitiful, and she could not bear to see him shake his head ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... having all found that the ripest nuts are those which fall from the tree of their own accord, or are blown earthward by the soft breezes of benevolence, and not those which are violently beaten down. She began by pitiful appeals; she was moving, but I did not budge. She grew pathetic; she touched on the stolen horse; she paused, and gushed almost to tears, as much as to say, If it must be, you shall know all. Ruin stared them in the face; poverty was crushing them. It was well acted,—rather in ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... man and a policeman who were first on the spot lifted Banker McRamsey and carried him into Hinkle's restaurant. When the aged but indestructible banker opened his eyes he saw a beautiful vision bending over him with a pitiful, tender smile, bathing his forehead with beef tea and chafing his hands with something frappe out of a chafing-dish. Mr. McRamsey sighed, lost a vest button, gazed with deep gratitude upon his fair ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... with a persistence almost pitiful, but he had neither the appearance nor the manner which begets confidence in unlikely tales, and in his mouth the truth itself sounded like a fabrication. He was a willing but an unconvincing liar, and the few ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... the law were not to be hard-hearted, but pitiful and compassionate, willing and ready, with abundance of bowels, to offer for the people, and to make an atonement for them (Heb 5:1,2). To signify, that Jesus Christ should be a tender-hearted High Priest, able and willing to sympathize and be affected with the infirmities of others, to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Alpinist did not awaken them, and he himself had dropped upon a divan, overcome by such icy discouragement, when the sound of vigorous, joyous chords burst from the vestibule; where three "musicos," harp, flute, and violin, ambulating minstrels with pitiful faces, and long overcoats flapping their legs, who infest the Swiss hostelries, had just ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... could act upon the hint his brother-in-law's eyes began to water and bulge. He groped for his napkin while he compressed his lips in an heroic effort to retain the hot and bitter coffee, but instead he grabbed the hanging edge of the table-cloth. His pitiful eyes were fixed upon the coldly disapproving face of Andy P. Symes, but there is a limit to human endurance and Adolph Kunkel quickly reached it. Simultaneous with a spurt of coffee Adolph rose and fled, upsetting his chair as he went, disgraced upon his ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... uneasily, upon his little bed, his mother watching over him; most sacred group on earth to him, who, whatever his faults might be, loved them both dearly. He took a candle in his hand and, stepping lightly, went up the stairs to the nursery door. There was no sound of wailing within, no pitiful little cry to tell the tale; all was still and dark. He tried the door softly, but it would not open. Then another terror awoke, and for the moment took his breath from him. What had happened to the child? Sir Tom suffered enough at this moment to have expiated many sins. There ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Ratto, "My brother, to-day Exhibit your powers in a masterly way, And take me these chestnuts, I pray. Which were I but otherwise fitted (As I am ingeniously witted) For pulling things out of the flame, Would stand but a pitiful game." "'Tis done," replied Ratto, all prompt to obey; And thrust out his paw in a delicate way. First giving the ashes a scratch, He open'd the coveted batch; Then lightly and quickly impinging, He drew out, in spite of the singeing, One after another, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... field our bell should toll, Then welcome be death to the patriot's soul. Thy pampered flesh shall quake at its doom, And crawl in silk to a hopeless tomb. A pitiful exit thine shall be; No German maid shall weep for thee, No German song shall they sing for thee, No German goblets shall ring for thee. Forth in the van, Man for man, Swing the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Bourienne. The countess caressed the boy, and the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had changed very much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful, bewildered person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually looked round as if asking everyone whether he was doing the right thing. After the destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... out, with scared looks, this is the way they stood in their uncomfortable, rough soldier uniforms, with their starched, turned-up collars, fixing an inexpressibly helpless and pitiful gaze upon the garrisoned soldiers, who were handling them rudely. White lips, blue lines under the eyes betokened either fever or cold. And these poor children, without care, without a caress, exposed ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... the extreme surprise of Dick, she first very tenderly wiped the tears away from his cheeks, and then, as if yielding to a sudden impulse, threw both her arms about his neck, drew up his face, and kissed him. A pitiful bewilderment came ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mind, he couldn't rest in his bed till he had cleared it all up and settled it for ever, one way or the other. If Tilgate wasn't his, by law and right, he wanted none of it. If his father was trying to buy off the real heir to the estate with a pitiful pittance, in order to preserve the ill-gotten remainder for Lady Emily's son, why, Granville for his part would be no active party to such a miserable compromise. If some other man was the Colonel's lawful heir, let that other man take the property and enjoy it; but he, Granville Kelmscott, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... "It was rather pitiful, rather small, in you to refuse to read that poor young woman's manuscript the other day, and give her an opinion as to its literary value; and she had come so far, too, and so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Majesty would come to have all that at no more expense than that of the time while you would employ them; and these your vassals, the natives of this country, would have more relief from the burden; and surely it is pitiful to see the burdens that they carry, and what ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... advertisements. Any bad person can say what they choose in an advertisement. If that woman had advertised, she would have described Helene. And there was no Helene." One of the shuddering catches of her breath broke in here. After it, she said, with a pitiful girlishness of regret: "I—I could SEE Helene. I have known so few people well enough to love them. No girls at all. I though—perhaps—we should begin to LOVE each other. I can't bear to think of that—that she never was alive at all. It leaves ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a real nice pony for me, but when they led out the horse for dad I knew that trouble was coming. The horse was round shouldered on the back, and when they put the saddle on the horse humped up and coughed most pitiful, and when they fastened the cinch the horse groaned and the crowd all laughed, A negro boy asked me if my old man was ever on a horse before, and when I told him that dad had eaten horses in the army, the boy said that ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... himself.—Ah! Had that but been possible!—How many geniuses have, indeed, come into the world only to go out of it unfamed, unsuspected? How many have dropped down to hell through the pitfalls of their own creation, and so been lost forever to the world? Good God! How pitiful it is!—Turn ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... knew, was estranged from her! And now she knew that she desired most of all his love in all its purity. Her social strivings, her desire for leadership balanced against Graham's former worshipful, chivalrous love for her, dwindled to a pitiful insignificance. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... opened with prophetic inspiration, and the promise of the heathen as an inheritance hath marvellously recurred to me. For there can be none lack such diligence in the True Faith, but may see that even the conversion of these pitiful salvages hath a meaning. As the blessed St. Ignatius discreetly observes," continued Father Jose, clearing his throat and slightly elevating his voice, "'the heathen is given to the warriors of Christ, even as the pearls of rare ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... kind, had got him. "Crackerjack" had but recently returned from a protracted sojourn at an institution arranged by the State in its paternalism for the reception and harbouring of such as he. The pitiful dole with which the discharged prisoner had been unloaded upon a world which had no welcome for him had been soon spent; even the hideous prison-made clothes had been pawned, and some rags, which were yet the rags of a free man, which had been preserved through the long period ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... night, and your conscience saith, 'What went ye out for to see?' You will then complain of the bitterness of life, and prate of the refining influences of music; of the help to spiritual-mindedness given by the exhibition on the public stage of mockeries of God's world, wherein some pitiful temporal triumph of simulated virtue in the last act is the apology for the vicious trifling that has gone before. And in whom do you there see typified that virtue which you should shield in your hearts from the contamination of the theatre? Is it not in some woman whose private life is ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... I said—poor, pitiful cringing, is it not terrible?—that I'd be up his way again in three days, and did he think he could have it read by then. He said he was not sure, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... intend leaving this place to-day, and going out into the coldness and darkness of the world. Please do not attempt to find me, as seeing you again would only be more pitiful for me. But take this assurance with you down to the very grave: I shall always love you while my life lasts. Your image, and yours alone, will forever be ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... cities, in the uttermost doomed ruin of old Jerusalem fallen under the wrath of God, it was prophesied and said, 'The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children.' The stern Hebrew imagination could conceive no blacker gulf of wretchedness; that was the ultimatum of degraded god-punished man. And we here, in modern England, exuberant with supply of all kinds, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... father, in a letter to his superior in Spain: "Can any one have the presumption to say that these savage pagans have yielded anything more than an inconsiderable recompense to their benefactors, in surrendering to them a little pitiful tract of this dirty sublunary planet, in exchange for a glorious inheritance in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Mr. Davies was a pitiful-looking object after the young men had plastered his face and hands with lampblack and oil, and yet his appearance bore a certain queer relation to the humorous exhibitions one sees on the negro minstrel stage. Particularly was this the case ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... the distresses of the Harlowe family— 'Persons of a pitiful nature, says she, may pity them. I am not one of those. You, I think, pity the infernal man likewise; while I, from my heart, grudge him his phrensy, because it deprives him of that remorse, which, I hope, in his recovery, will never leave him. At times, Sir, let me tell you, that I hate your whole ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... out of commission, had no effect on the progress of the airship. She was still fighting her way upward, with Dick at the wheel, and Grit crouching uneasily near him. The dog gave voice, occasionally, to pitiful whines. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... makes you maudlin, sir," quoth the other, in whom this pitiful show of fear produced a profound disgust. "Is there no way; say you? There is the window, but 'tis seventy feet above the river; and there is the door, but it is locked, and there is a sentry ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the simplest thing in the world to mark one of your pieces of paper with a red mark: whoever receives the marked paper undertakes the commission. All is quite fair, I say. Only you know, I dare say, the common, the pitiful trick of the conjurer who throws a pack of cards on the table, backs up. You take one, look at it privately, return it, and the cards are shuffled. Without lifting the cards at all he tells you that the one you selected was the eight ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Seal Cove, and at whose house?" she asked gently, feeling exceedingly pitiful for the poor fellow, who must have lost his life if she had not chosen to bring her boat through the weedy back channel ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... of her disgraceful, shameful position was torturing her and had long tortured her. "What, what," he thought, "could hitherto have hindered her from putting an end to it?" Only then he realised what those poor little orphan children and that pitiful half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna, knocking her head against the wall in ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... bully-beef and biscuits for weeks at a time and take no harm, provided one could get water. But the Turks had a habit of poisoning the wells as they retreated, and the most stringent orders had therefore to be issued, forbidding men to drink of water unexamined by a medical officer. It was pitiful to see the horses, too, after two or three days' hard riding, watered perhaps once in all that time; for the lightest driver or cavalryman, with his equipment, rides at least eleven stone, a heavy burden to carry over the sand in ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... had a brother that liked me." went on the pitiful little voice. "Tom Benson likes Charlie. He likes him an awful lot. And Charlie doesn't do nearly so many things as I do. I guess I oughtn't to tell, Tiger, but you and Tops wouldn't tell tales, so 'tisn't the same as tellin' father, or mother, or ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... ended, in a manner indicating his acceptance of the apology, although he looked both amazed and amused. But the explanation had a very different effect upon the girl at his side. As she listened, her eyes had filled with tears, and her face had taken on a wonderfully tender, pitiful smile. When he ended speaking, she impulsively said, "I 'm so sorry we were not what you thought us! Why not pretend we are, to-night at least? We can pretend it, you know. The moonlight makes anything possible;" and then glancing ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the Legion of Honour to the lieutenant in command, M. de Langle, who had behaved like a hero. I went alongside his ship to see him in the lonely creek to which the infected vessel had been relegated. A crowd of spectral figures crept to the ports to look at me. It was a pitiful scene. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... her own hands again, to search among the leaves for the illustrations which were interspersed, so that Geordie might be introduced to all the beauties of this wonderful volume. Geordie kept looking at her as she turned the leaves with a somewhat pitiful gaze, and presently he said in a low tone, "Jean, come a little nearer. I want to speak to ye, Jeanie. Do ye ken I'm maybe goin' til the grand school the good Maister keeps waitin' for us in the heavenly land? And I'll be learnin' a deal o' things there that we canna learn down here," ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... dynasty, was selected as the most acceptable figurehead. He was a young man of ability and spirit. His induction into office in 1534 with appropriate ceremonies, the barbaric splendor of which only made the farce the more pitiful, did little to gratify his natural ambition. As might have been foreseen, he chafed under restraint, escaped as soon as possible from his attentive guardians, and raised an army of faithful Quichuas. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... And the pitiful face is shewn again For an instant ere they close; But it is not discovered to living men— Only to ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... their only child, that stocking was meant. But her hands were shaking so much that she dropped more stitches off the needles than she made, and still she persevered. Big Michael looked at her for a bit, very pitiful; even opened his mouth once, as if he wanted to say something; a nice, silent person he was, very even-going in himself. But he must have thought better of it, for he only shook his head again, and turned and went off out of the door into the wild storm and darkness, with the wind howling and ...
— Candle and Crib • K. F. Purdon
... the retort. "It's either seriously pitiful, or pitifully serious, whichever way you choose to look ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... said, "it was rather pitiful, and there was a certain ghastly irony in the situation; but, after all, as he once admitted, there was very little that gold ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... I had hastened to the southern side of Paris as soon as the cannonade apprised us that an engagement was going on. Pitiful was the spectacle presented by the disbanded soldiers as they rushed down the Chaussee du Maine. Many had flung away their weapons. Some went on dejectedly; others burst into wine-shops, demanded drink with threats, and presently emerged swearing, cursing ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... frantically, but she felt its grip of steel about her wrist; and while she sat there with her face hidden, she was learning to gaze into its eyes, and front their fiery terror. When she looked up again her face was very white and pitiful to see, and she rose from her chair and went toward the door so unsteadily that the woman put her arm ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair |
