"Spiritless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... education of the people. The aid of poetical song was called in to enliven and adorn the banquets of the great public assemblies, the Olympic and other games, and scarcely a social or public gathering can be mentioned that would not have appeared to the ardent Grecians cold and spiritless ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... a spiritless dog if I had not risen to his mood. But in truth his cutting of the knot was at this juncture exactly what appealed to me. I, too, was tired of vicarious casuistry, and the fascination of our enterprise, intensified by the discovery of that afternoon, had never been so strong in ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... wartime and shedding more blood than even the fiercest lion on his cruelest days. Which would perplex a gentlemanly super-cat spectator the more, our habits of wholesale slaughter in the field, or our spiritless making a fetish ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... her with every incentive for enquiring what was to be done next. It was the pressing pursuit of this knowledge that, in concatenations of omnibuses and usually in very wet weather, led her so often to my door. She thought us spiritless creatures with editors and publishers; but she carried matters to no great effect when she personally pushed into back-shops. She wanted all moneys to be paid to herself: they were otherwise liable to such strange adventures. They trickled away into the desert—they ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... more; For all my fortune, all my fate in love, My life, my death, the good, the ills I prove, To her are trusted by one sovereign power. Hence 'tis, whene'er my lips would silence break, Scarce can I hear the accents which I vent, By passion render'd spiritless and weak. Ah! now I find that fondness to excess Fetters the tongue, and overpowers intent: Faint is the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the blood-red banner of the North against the sky, few men realised that the invaders were to weld them into the strongest Duchy of the West, and finally to make France herself arise as an independent nation out of Europe. They fled, these spiritless and defenceless villagers, to the nearest abbey's walls, they hid before the altars which held the relics of their saints, but neither relics nor sanctuary availed to save, as the monks of St. Martin ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... cloister; the cats live on the green garth, and sometimes die there, I did not see much of the Canons; but the cats seemed to me very sad-depressed, nostalgic even, I might describe them, if there had not been something more languid, something faded and spiritless about their habit. It was not that they quarrelled. I heard none of those long- drawn wails, gloomy yet mellow soliloquies, with which our cats usher in the crescent moon or hymn her when she swims at the full: there lacked even that comely resignation we may see on any sunny window-ledge ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... now went on, but it was a spiritless affair. Every ear was turned to hear the muffled roar of the voices outside, which every moment increased in power as the mighty multitude kept ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... was written on every face. The singing was spiritless, and as the people filed out of church and gathered in knots about the door, the old-time head-shaking was resumed, and the comments were many ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... thinking about is that light and easy, springing, elastic gait, that swiftness of advance. What a contrast that is to the way in which most of us get through our day's work! Plod, plod, plod, in a heavy-footed, spiritless grind, like that with which the ploughman toils down the sticky furrows of a field, with a pound of clay at each heel; or like that with which a man goes wearied home from his work at night. The monotony of trivial, constantly recurring doings, the fluctuations in the thermometer of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Roman Catholic priesthood, to a man, would lend to it the influence of all its spiritual authority. Paris was every hour agitated by rumors of the approach of the armies of invasion. The people all believed that Louis wished to escape from Paris and head that army. The king was spiritless, undecided, and ever vacillating in his plans. Maria Antoinette would have gone through fire and blood to have rallied those hosts around her banner. Such was the position of the Girondists in reference to the Royalists. They were ready to adopt the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... which seems to court insult, because it endures it? Is not this what men of the world would say of such a one? "Such a man is unfit for life; he has no eye for any thing; he does not know the difference between good and evil; he is tame and spiritless, he is simple and dull, and a fit prey for the spoiler or defrauder; he is cowardly and narrow-minded, unmanly, feeble, superstitious, and a dreamer," with many other words more contemptuous and more familiar than would be becoming to use in Church. ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... spiritless child, but every day and all day her life slipped on in its dull groove and she did not ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... the open door of the room beyond. The somber light from the two tall windows fell upon the figure of the girl. She was sitting before Andrew Bolton's desk, her head upon her folded arms. Something in the spiritless droop of her shoulders and the soft dishevelment of her fair hair suggested weariness—sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a muffled sob escaped the quiet figure. He turned noiselessly ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... seem to have carried their motions and plans with great facility. The opposition for the most part was tame and spiritless, whence Burke calls it,—"a tedious session." On one occasion, however, the harmony which prevailed in the cabinet, and between the two houses, was momentarily interrupted. The lords having taken upon themselves to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... look unfavorably on me, but I was no more than another to them. In intervals among the occupations of the rest-camp, I wandered spiritless, blotted out by the common soldiers' miserable uniform, familiarly addressed by any one and every one, and stopping no glance from a woman, by reason ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... the histories of other old men and women whose memories go back as far as hers, supplemented by a little reading in the newspapers of that day, I can understand how it came about that these poor labourers, poor, spiritless slaves as they had been made by long years of extremest poverty and systematic oppression, rose at last against their hard masters and smashed the agricultural machines, and burnt ricks and broke ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... moon Ellen rode in across the rolling stretches on one of the Ironwoods, with Cleve beside her. She was spiritless, silent. Cleve was silent, too, though for a far different reason. There was a frown between his brows, a glitter in his narrowed eyes. He was thinking of the only man in Corvan whom he had been able to persuade to present Ellen's protest—Dick ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... get so very pale, Miss Isabel," said the housekeeper. "He wasn't white, not like that when he come first to Llanfeare." To this Isabel made no reply; but she, too, had remarked how wan, how pallid, and how spiritless he had become. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... of anything that he goes at in a listless, spiritless way. To build up a business you must see it expanding in your mind before it actually takes tangible shape. Every great task that has ever been accomplished has first been merely a vision in the mind of its creator. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... ambitiously, upon the lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the earl of Leicester, whom he courted by all the poetry in which Sacharissa is celebrated; the name is derived from the Latin appellation of sugar, and implies, if it means any thing, a spiritless mildness, and dull good-nature, such as excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, is never honoured ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... utterly unlike any Priscilla of any one of her moods that he had ever seen before. Her eyes were red, her eyelids heavy with tears, her face was pinched and narrower, the corners of her mouth had a most piteous droop, her very hair, pushed back off her forehead, seemed sad, and hung in spiritless masses about her neck and ears. "Mein liebes Kind," stammered poor Fritzing; and his hand shook so that he upset some of ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Anglomaniac, Ivan Petrovitch had at the same time become a patriot, at least he called himself a patriot, though he knew Russia little, had not retained a single Russian habit, and expressed himself in Russian rather queerly; in ordinary conversation, his language was spiritless and inanimate ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... inure; harden the heart; steel, caseharden, sear. Adj. insensible, unconscious; impassive, impassible; blind to, deaf to, dead to; unsusceptible, insusceptible; unimpressionable[obs3], unimpressible[obs3]; passionless, spiritless, heartless, soulless; unfeeling, unmoral. apathetic; leuco-|, phlegmatic; dull, frigid; cold blooded, cold hearted; cold as charity; flat, maudlin, obtuse, inert, supine, sluggish, torpid, torpedinous[obs3], torporific[obs3]; sleepy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... volumes of the American Encyclopedia. I wish to complete the set, and must, therefore, know the deficiencies. I have seen none of your acquaintance save the Biddles. To-morrow (if I should in the mean time receive a letter from you) I shall add something. You are the two most spiritless young persons I ever knew. Pray muster up energy enough to do something more than lounge on sofas. Go on Sunday to Ludlow's. Ask some of your friends often to dine with you. There is a little boy right opposite my ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Spiritless, and utterly indifferent to what his fate might be, Dick Varley rode along with his head drooping, and keeping his seat almost mechanically, while the mettlesome little steed flew on over wave and hollow. Gradually he awakened from this state of despair to a sense of danger. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... to find a difficulty made of his seeing the lady: but, insisting on it, he found her to be wholly spiritless, and in terror; afraid to speak, afraid to look, before her cousin Laurana; yet seeming to want to complain to him. He took notice of this to Laurana—O Father, said she, we are in the right way, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... after eleven, one by one they appeared with their followers. The excitement had died down. Ranger Steele was out of the way and Linrock was once more wide open, free and easy. Blome alone seemed sullen and spiritless, unresponsive to his comrades and their admirers. And now, at the time of my arrival, the whole gang, with the exception of old Snecker, were ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... the Apple-tree" had no interest for them. Little attention was given the boy as he read in a sing-song, spiritless manner: ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... vogue, and incorporates it in the accredited standard of decency. The next step is to make this standard of decency the point of departure for a new move in advance in the same direction—for there is no merit in simple spiritless conformity to a standard of dissipation that is lived up to as a matter of course by everyone ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... not, however, leap from the car with the spring of anticipation that Bob did, and noticing his spiritless step his friend once more remarked ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... the spiritless premiership of the Duke of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a succession of moves which gave a new aspect to the contest ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... descend and take away the work of the common laborers. And take it away they do; for, as a matter of fact, a well-fed, ambitious machinist or a core-maker will transiently shovel coal better than an ill-fed, spiritless laborer. ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... him, and not only regretted being at odds with their neighbors but also condemned his perpetuation of the old feud as unchristian. Hence it was a cause for much rejoicing to his mind to reflect that one male Howe at least survived to bolster up a spineless, spiritless, and decadent generation. To love one's enemies was a weak creed. Martin neither loved them nor pretended to. Never, never, would he forgive the insults the Websters had heaped upon his family. He wished no positive harm to Ellen Webster; but he ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... the idea of property, that he comes habitually to look upon it as a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the great proprietors, and becomes in consequence spiritless, purposeless." ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Stupid, worthless, spiritless, sick, not more than a dozen years old, no delight in the eyes of the young men of her village, she had been consigned by her disappointed parents to the cooking-pot. When Captain Van Horn first encountered her had been when she was the central figure in a lugubrious procession on the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... if you choose rather to defend than correct a fault, he spent not a word more nor fruitless labor, but you alone might be fond of yourself and your own works, without a rival. A good and sensible man will censure spiritless verses, he will condemn the rugged, on the incorrect he will draw across a black stroke with his pen; he will lop off ambitious [and redundant] ornaments; he will make him throw light on the parts that are not perspicuous; he will arraign what is expressed ambiguously; he will mark ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Had slumbered, now in opposition burst 255 Forth like a Polar summer: every word They uttered was a dart, by counter-winds Blown back upon themselves; their reason seemed Confusion-stricken by a higher power Than human understanding, their discourse 260 Maimed, spiritless; and, in their weakness strong, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the want of real inner strength. How many faces one sees which, in ordinary circumstances, are comfortable, self-asserting, sufficient, and even bold; the lines of which, under difficulties, collapse and become mean, spiritless, and insignificant. There are faces which, in their usual form, seem to bluster with prosperity, but which the loss of a dozen points at whist will reduce to that currish aspect which reminds one of a dog-whip. Mr. Camperdown's countenance, when Lord Fawn and Mr. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... The spiritless one shook her head. But no. The only other customers of the house thus far had been the postman and two soldiers. The party might have passed. She and her parents were too busy to take note of what went on outside. A faint chill of desolation touched me. It ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night. And would have told him half ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... She was disappointed and spiritless when she reached the ranchhouse, and very tired, physically. Agatha's questions irritated her, and she ate sparingly of the food set before her, eager to be alone. In the isolation of her room she lay dumbly on the bed, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of a life's ambition be more explicit? It seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged animal or ambition drives him always on—he is never content with any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million, when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and desire, presses ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Very spiritless, and tame, and old fashioned, will the other Rosalind appear by the side of this impetuous, relentless deity. A few perhaps will consider that her tame, kindly, old-fashioned, mythological piece of advice to the shepherdess, makes her the more lovable: "What, shepheardesse, so fayre ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... all its pride and dignity, and seemed a poor, reeling, spiritless thing. The deck was deserted save for the little group about the hatch who strove with might and main to launch this last poor medium of rescue. The abrupt pitch of the deck made their frantic efforts seem all but hopeless, and walking, even standing, was quite out of the question. Tom could ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... sitting in her room in dreary apathy and spiritless reaction from the strain of the morning, when she was aroused by a knock on her door. "Madge," called a voice that sent the blood to her face, "what say you to another ride? I know the roads are ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... the benefit of Attila. That Gunnar should first detect the imposture, and should then recognise the heart of his brother, is a fine piece of heroic imagination of a primitive kind. It would have been wholly inept and spiritless to transfer this from Gunnar to Attila. The poet of Atlaml shows that he understands what he is about. The more his work is scrutinised, the more evident becomes the sobriety of his judgment. His dexterity in the disposing of his incidents is proved ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Plautine character is not so tame and spiritless as merely to think aloud. He has a fondness for actual conversation with himself that shows a noble regard for the value of his own society. This is attested by many passages, such as Amph. 381: Etiam muttis?; Aul. 52: At ut scelesta sola secum murmurat; Aul. 190: Quid tu solus tecum ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... sea was something inexpressibly melancholy and desolate, mist-shrouded, and lonely, terrible in its grey and shivering spaces; and their tone about it is always elegiac and plaintive, as a place of dreary spiritless wandering and unmarked graves. When the English settled they lost the sense of the sea; they became a little parochial people, tilling fields and tending cattle, wool-gathering and wool-bartering, their shipping confined to cross-Channel merchandise, and coastwise ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... knocked about and divide her load between the others and the horses; she may follow which I think she will; distance on course to camp about eight and a half miles. The patients improving, Kirby remains very weak and spiritless. This morning wind cool from southward; during the day changed round to east-south-east and in the evening to west-south-west and rather cloudy. This is a wretched little creek, for some miles sandy, now in ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... were more or less covered by a low scrub, and without either grass or water for the last sixty miles. This tract is of so uneven and heavy a nature that it would be quite impossible for me to take a loaded dray across it at this very unfavourable season of the year, and with horses so spiritless and jaded as ours have become, from the incessant and laborious work they have gone through during the last seven months. Upon rounding the head of the Bight, I met with a few friendly natives, who shewed ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... 6th Massachusetts foot regiment, which was just leaving for the lake on its usual road-mending detail, stood in spiritless silence to see the artillery pass; their Major, Whiting, as well as the sullen rank and file, seeming still to feel the disgrace of Cherry Valley, where their former colonel lost his silly life, and Major Stacia was taken, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... was fancy, but I thought that in the look of mingled surprise and something like reproach which he gave me there was also a trace of grateful pleasure. But he said, in that tone of spiritless humility these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... de Lamennais was wont to speak with contempt of Silvio Pellico, as being a weak, spiritless craven, who accepted with resignation when he should have plotted to end the thraldom of his country. Yet what can a man do, when the classes above him and those below him, when noble and priest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... am I to find a surgeon who can put together my crushed bones? Daggers, indeed! Do you not suppose that in thinking of you I have often thought of daggers? Why have I not thrust one into your heart, so that I might rescue you from the arms of this puny, spiritless English girl?' All this time she was still seated, looking at him, leaning forward towards him with her hands upon her brow. 'But, Paul, I spit out my words to you, like any common woman, not because they will hurt you, but because I know I may take that comfort, such ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... enmeshed and benetted With spiritless villainies round, With counsels of cowardice fretted, With trammels of treason enwound, Is yet, though the season be other Than wept and rejoiced over thee, Thine England, thy lover, thy mother, Sublime as ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with the sudden, craven weakness of the utterly spiritless creature which these crushing words had made of him. And so, even in the months of which he had never dared to think again, because they had been too happy, in those months when she had loved him, she was already lying to him! Besides that moment (that first ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... by daybreak, with the broad ocean before us. We are five—six with the Senor—and our ship lies but a short league away, ready for sea. There are only four men on the sloop, with some servants above—spiritless fellows. Why else should he have signaled our coming, unless there was work to do? That will be the plan, to my notion—the money and the girl in one swoop; then a quick sail to the southward. Pist! ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... one of the sad effects or results of the enslaving Old Bailey fashion of defending, or, as we may well call it, apologizing for, Christianity,—introduced by Grotius and followed up by the modern 'Alogi', whose wordless, lifeless, spiritless, scheme of belief it alone suits,—that we dare not ask, whether the passage here referred to must necessarily be understood as asserting a miraculous remembrancing, distinctly sensible by the Apostles; whether the gift had any especial reference to the composition of the Gospels; whether ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... will enable him to judge of these points himself. In a general way, where a horse's coat is habitually rough and untidy, there is a sad want of elbow-grease in the stable. When a horse of tolerable breeding is dull and spiritless, he is getting ill or badly fed; and where he is observed to perspire much in the stables, is overfed, and probably eats his litter in addition to his ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... could be seen from the window. The prison-room looked drear and bleak; the fire on the hearth was smoldering away to black ashes; the untasted meal stood on the table. Seated by the window, in a drooping, spiritless way, as if never caring to stir again, sat bright Mollie, the ghost of her former self. Wan as a spirit, thin as a shadow, the sparkle gone from her blue eyes, the golden glimmer from the yellow hair, she sat there with folded hands and weary, hopeless ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... handsome, dreary room sat Giant Despair. The December day was damp and cheerless, and the coal fire in the ugly old-fashioned grate beneath the elaborate marble mantel burned in a grudging, spiritless way. Above the uncurtained windows, with their shutters thrown wide upon a view of moist, bare garden, the heavy gilt cornices seemed to frown. Giant Despair was frowning as he searched in a massive black walnut ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... best covers for game, knew where to find the first bird's-nest, and could climb the loftiest forest tree to obtain the young of the hawk or crow with more certainty of success than her gay companions. Their sports were dull and spiritless without ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... rain-drops just then fell; the sky, from a bright day, became overcast; and I was a type of our first parents, after eating of that fatal fruit. I felt myself naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savor had tempted me, dropped from my hand, never to be tasted. All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me but that the Hebrew word, in the second chapter of Genesis, translated apple, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to bring in coffee," said the young lady in a spiritless tone; and then she leaned her arm and head against the kitchen mantelpiece, and hung listlessly ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... end the war. But to such an extent did sickness reign in our camp, that no better medicine was found than that of absence, and deferring this undertaking to another time. The assistance from Tydore was of no consequence. They proved lukewarm friends, and all the rest was spiritless. Heaven knows the other reasons. There must have been some stronger ones; for, in reality, the camp was raised, and after embarking returned to Manila, without having had any greater effect than to increase ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... now again, and we trekked at night, seldom riding, but plodding doggedly through the endless succession of dunes, with the spiritless horses strung out behind us. Their hooves were splayed to an enormous size through this incessant trekking through the sand; yet, though broken and enfeebled, they had become more inured to the conditions, and ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... very solicitous concerning this her only son and his possessions. So she took counsel with herself to leave the inhabited country, and to flee to the deserts and unfrequented wildernesses. And she permitted none to bear her company thither but women and boys, and spiritless men, who were both unaccustomed and unequal to war and fighting. And none dared to bring either horses or arms where her son was, lest he should set his mind upon them. And the youth went daily to divert himself in the forest, by flinging sticks and staves. ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... was now conversing visualized the episode for him. In his mind there was an element of picturesqueness in that joint page of Holton-Montgomery history. He wondered whether Phil looked like her mother. Phil was pretty enough, though in repose she seemed rather spiritless. She was swinging herself in the swivel chair, carelessly, and since his reference to the old scandal he saw or imagined that he saw her manner change from courteous interest to a somewhat frosty indifference. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... of a libel for publishing those resolutions to which the present minister of that kingdom had already subscribed his name? To what other cause can you ascribe, what in my mind is still more astonishing, in such a country as Scotland—a nation, cast in the happy medium between the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty, and the sturdy credulity of pampered wealth—cool and ardent, adventurous and persevering, winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every science, with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires; crowned, as ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... dull and spiritless. I don't know what is the matter. They are tired with their journey perhaps, and forlorn in a strange place. Maybe they would feel better if they saw the doctor. I think such ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... their rendering of 'The first good joy,' or 'The angel Gabriel;' then take them off to church and let them sing these same ditties to an organ accompaniment. You will find that, strive against it as they may, the tune drags slower and slower; the poem has become a spiritless jingle, at once dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out into the fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum; stay it with flagons and comfort it with apples, for it is ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... becomes formal or spiritless in the treatment of his favorite topics, and often rises to a high degree of enthusiastic eloquence. Witness the following noble appeal in behalf of a cheerful earnestness in the cultivation of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Scotch songs, which begins "To Fanny fair could I impart," &c., it is most exact measure, and yet, let them both be sung before a real critic, one above the biases of prejudice, but a thorough judge of nature,—how flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite, and lamely methodical, compared with the wild warbling cadence, the heart-moving melody of the first!—This is particularly the case with all those airs which end with a hypermetrical ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... "what makes you let that bow-legged cross between a bulldog and a flamin' red sunset tromp on you so? It looks to me like you're plumb spiritless." ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... And for the moment one would hardly have recognized the sallow, spiritless face, that with all the delicacy of boyhood still, at times looked so exceedingly old. "No, no, Mr. Halifax, who ever heard of a man beginning ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... left it a youth, filled with all the aspirations, the fire, the courage, the faith, of a lofty and spiritual temper. He returned to it a man aged before his time, worn, weary, crushed, spiritless, with no ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... however, and spiritless, like everything else about the place that night, greeted us as Mrs. Ashley opened the door leading directly into ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... your work: it is useless for you to defend yourself," said she, tossing away her husband's hat from the arm-chair, and then throwing herself in a spiritless ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... could neither speak nor write Danish correctly, but he must be able to define the finest points in a Latin grammar of more than 1200 pages. Attendance at religious services was compulsory; but the services were cold and spiritless, offering little attraction ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... seem far away when you are used to it," remarked Patty in a spiritless tone. The vague heaviness, like a black cloud covered her heart again. She was jealous of Margaret, jealous of her sweet, pale face, of her trusting blue eyes, of the delicate distinction that showed in the turn of her head, in ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... king's bounty, which they considered as the wages of a criminal silence. Even the former soon repented their compliance. The people, who had been accustomed to hear them rail against their superiors, and preach to the times, as they termed it, deemed their sermons languid and spiritless when deprived of these ornaments. Their usual gifts, they thought, had left them, on account of their submission, which was stigmatized as Erastianism. They gave them the appellation, not of ministers of Christ, but of the king's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... it to me!" exclaimed Matty. "There's nothing that I adore like Parade; often and often I've wished to have it. I'm quite astonished that Nelly should prefer that dull, spiritless ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... made a prodigious stir. Dead France woke suddenly to life, wherever the great news traveled. Whereas before, the spiritless and cowed people hung their heads and slunk away if one mentioned war to them, now they came clamoring to be enlisted under the banner of the Maid of Vaucouleurs, and the roaring of war-songs and the thundering of the drums filled all the air. I remembered now what she had said, that time ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... than a day or two, that our distresses are prodigious, even for clothes to wear; and as to books, there are not three amongst us; and for company only Mr. de Luc and Miss Planta; and so, in mere desperation for employment, I have just begun a tragedy.(295) We are now in so spiritless a situation that my mind would bend to nothing less sad, even in fiction. But I am very glad something of this kind has occurred to me; it may while away the tediousness of this unsettled, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... soldiers. It followed then that the size of a unit was immaterial, and indeed, given the manpower that the Army received from reenlistments and Selective Service, any black unit, no matter its size, would almost assuredly be an inefficient, spiritless group of predominately Class IV and V men. For in addition to its educational limitations, the typical black unit suffered a further handicap in the vital matter of motivation. The Gillem Board disregarded this fact, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... I will see thee damned first— Wretch! whom no sense of wrong can rouse to vengeance— Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast! ...
— English Satires • Various
... do in Funchal save eat and swim or ride. The climate is enervating, and when the east wind blows from the African coast it is impossible to move save in the most spiritless and languid way. It may make an invalid comparatively strong, but I am sure it might reduce a strong man to a state of confirmed laziness little removed from actual illness. I was glad one day to get horses, in ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... most meekly at his feet, and the two noble bucks—the fellow on whose steaks we had already made an inroad, having been left as fat Tom's portion—securely corded down upon a pile of straw, with their sublime and antlered crests drooping all spiritless and humble over the backboard, toward the frozen soil which crashed and rattled under the ponderous hoofs of the magnificent roan horse—Tom's special favorite—which, though full seventeen hands high, and heavy in proportion; ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... And showing himself spiritless and spent, From thence as quickly as he could withdrew, And from young Leo's to his lodgings went; When it was midnight, armed himself anew, Saddled his horse, and sallied from his tent; (He takes no leave, and none his going ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... had come in from the playground at once, and put themselves under Firth, to be kept quiet; and that very little dinner had been eaten; and that, when the writing-master arrived, he was quite astonished to find everything so still, and the boys so spiritless: but that nobody told him till he observed how two or three were crying, so that he was ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... unseemliness lies, do you see, not in himself, but somewhere outside in space. And so—an ingenious idea!—it is not only he who is dissolute, false, and disgusting, but we . . . 'we men of the eighties,' 'we the spiritless, nervous offspring of the serf-owning class'; 'civilisation has crippled us' . . . in fact, we are to understand that such a great man as Laevsky is great even in his fall: that his dissoluteness, his lack of culture and of ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... assistant and shared in by the few women present. The sermon was short and lifeless and the entire service—though read from the Book of Common Prayer, as fine a model of impressive English as exists—was spiritless. When we left the church we met lines of well-dressed, but plain, proper men, women and children in Sunday garb. I inquired where these people came from, and was informed they were Methodists on the way home from their ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... leave their husbands sweltering behind, but there were several points to be taken into consideration in this case. In the first place, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent had not yet learned how to maintain a separate existence. Life apart from each other was a tame, spiritless thing, simply to be endured, not enjoyed; then, too, Uncle Joshua's home was not a Paradise, although he and Aunt Patty were kind and pleasant. Faith had vivid memories of a few weeks spent there soon after her marriage. They lived on their ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... conviction; and with this corroboration of it he grew so spiritless that he could offer no retort. He slid to a despondent sitting posture upon the door sill and gazed wretchedly upon the ground, while his companion went to replenish the licorice water at the hydrant—enfeebling ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... predominate. The blood becomes weak and watery, the subject is nervous, dropsical, consumptive and derangement of the important functions follows almost invariably. Excessive intellectual activity often produces weak state of the system, and the person thus affected becomes languid, spiritless, and an easy prey to disease. This mental cause and its bodily results may be classified in the following order. Mental Cause: EXCESSIVE MENTAL EXERTION, which produces waste of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... a fund is furnished by continual wars and plunder. Nor could you so easily persuade them to cultivate the ground, or to await the return of the seasons and produce of the year, as to provoke the foe and to risk wounds and death: since stupid and spiritless they account it, to acquire by their sweat what they can gain by ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... spiritless, then, to dare a refusal. I bowed my head meekly enough while Chepa—the smiling, good-natured negress—gathered up the rustling folds of the green silk petticoat and slipped it over my shoulders. I made no demur while she looped and twisted the long tresses of my yellow ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... smaller islands. They are dark, some of them being as black as African negroes. Their general appearance resembles that of the Alfoor Papuan of New Guinea. They have curly matted hair, like Astrakhan fur. The men cover only their loins, and the women dress from the waist to the knees. They are a spiritless and cowardly race. They would not deliberately face white men in anything like equal numbers with warlike intentions, although they would perhaps spend a quiverful of arrows from behind a tree at a ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... connected with the notion of suffering. It is therefore a passive state, just as the opposite is an active state of the mind, with which, when great, patience is incompatible. It is the innate virtue of a phlegmatic, indolent, and spiritless people, as also of women. But that it is nevertheless so very useful and necessary is a sign that the world ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in a wordy contest a Limena is sure to come off triumphant. They have a great deal of decision of character, and a degree of courage which does not usually fall to the lot of the female sex. In these respects they are infinitely superior to the timid, spiritless men. In the various political revolutions of the country, the women have often taken an active, and, in some instances, a more decided ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... lineaments, that Time and Taste contrive to mould gradually into beauty. The following is the scene that introduces him to the audience, and no one ought to be disheartened by the failure of a first attempt after reading it. The spiritless language—the awkward introduction of the sister into the plot—the antiquated expedient [Footnote: This objection seems to have occurred to himself; for one of his memorandums is—"Not to drop the letter, but take ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... happiness. The poems of Muller, the painter, are full of latent warmth. Burger, Pfeffel, the blind poet, and Claudius, gave utterance, in Schubart's coarse manner, to a few trite truisms. Musaeus was greatly admired for his amusing popular stories. As for the rest, it seemed as though the spiritless writers of that day had found it more convenient to be violent and savage in their endless chivalric pieces and romances than, like Schiller, steadily and courageously to attack the vices and evils of their age. Their fire but ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... critic convince me that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done before, or that, if I leave it undone, some one else will do it to my mind; and I should fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow in that field there, with a placidity that would, perhaps, seem very spiritless to your now ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... interrogates, and doubts, and is caustic; in a word, he thinks he converses while he is at his studies. Sometimes, apparently a complacent listener, we are mortified by detecting the absent man: now he appears humbled and spiritless, ruminating over some failure which probably may be only known to himself; and now haughty and hardy for a triumph he has obtained, which yet remains a secret to the world. No man is so apt to indulge the extremes of the most opposite feelings: he is sometimes insolent, and sometimes querulous; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... supposed that this could be the same boy whose sobbing aroused Florella's compassion—the poor, trembling little creature, spiritless and unhappy, who had hardly dared to say his name was Florio. But so it was; and when he called so loudly in his cheery voice, Florella quickly came forth from the sweet-brier bush and ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... and spiritless. Something, for the moment, seemed to have passed from him. He seemed, indeed, to lack both inspiration and courage. Her fingers clung slightly to his. She was praying, even, that he might laugh to scorn her unspoken appeal. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lyral chords of each rising thought Are swept by a hand unseen; And I glide, and glide, With my music bride, Where few spiritless souls have been; And I soar afar on wings of sound, With ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... utterly nerveless and servile and altogether devoid of so much as the desire for efficient action. It was no time to stay with the party of weakness; it was right to strengthen rather than to hamper a man so pacific and spiritless as Mr. Jefferson; to show a readiness to forward even his imperfect expedients; to display a united and indignant, if not quite a hostile front to Great Britain, rather (p. 055) than to exhibit a tame and friendly feeling towards her. It ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... serious trouble or grief fell upon you, you would find Mr. Bazalgette a much greater comfort and a better stay than poor spiritless me." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... for the "access to records" vouchsafed to its author. As the date of the story is 1146 (it was long before Mr. Freeman wrote) access to records would certainly not have been superfluous. The actual results of it are blocks of spiritless and commonplace historic narrative—it is nearly all narrative, not action—diversified by utterances like this of Malcolm III. of Scotland, "O my Edward! the deed which struck my son's life has centred [sic] thy noble youthful bosom also," or ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... inventions and various processes, added to the general cheapening of books, led to its disuse. Its present application seems to be almost solely to diplomas and testimonials, and in point of quality, usually as poor and spiritless as the incapacity of most of its professors can ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... round, I fancied I beheld the man who "drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night." That messenger, I am sure, could not have presented a visage more pale, more spiritless than my Helvetian. Recollecting that he had served in the Swiss guards, I was the less at a loss to account for his extreme agitation. "In what part of the chateau were you, Jean," said I, "when these balls were aimed at the windows?"——"There was my post," replied he, recovering himself, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... take care of me for the sake of his bird! That smiling, spiritless, indolent-minded man would rule Egypt! Am I then so much wiser than other folks, or do none but fools come to consult Hekt? But Rameses chose Ani to represent him! perhaps because he thinks that those who are not particularly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... while in raising the more than equivocal character of his hero, by placing him in the picture-gallery of the Queen of Carthage, and giving him leisure to contemplate and to criticise, and poetically to describe to his silent and spiritless lounger-friend many noble and many touching works. In this passage we also obtain the great Latin poet's opinion of the ameliorating effect of "collections." The hero of the AEneid knew immediately he was among an amiable people. The picture-gallery was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... in the highest esteem. We see these men prosing in their ancient style before the judges; but we see them left without an audience, deserted by the people, and hardly endured by their clients. The truth is, their cold and spiritless manner has no attraction. They call it sound oratory, but it is want of vigour; like that precarious state of health which weak constitutions preserve by abstinence. What physician will pronounce that a strong ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and listened. There was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir of the summer wind. Feeling about for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain overthrow. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... with you, Claude!" said Gladys in a tone of sudden weariness. From that spiritless murmur Enid suspected that Bayliss had captured Gladys' hand ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... himself, went in fear. Their eyes were careworn, their caution extreme; behind the summer they saw another shadow forever moving; and the annual struggle with those ice-bound or water-logged months of the early year, while as yet the Moor had nothing for their stock, left them wearied and spiritless when the splendour of the summer came. They farmed furtively, snatching at such good as appeared, distrusting their own husbandry, fattening the land with reluctance, cowering under the shadow of withered hopes and disappointments too numerous to count. Will pitied ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... escaped my lips, and then I was silent, for my uncle turned to his writing again, and for the next week he was cold and distant to me, while I went on with my task in a dull, spiritless manner, feeling so miserable that I was always glad to go and hide myself away, to sit and think, and wonder what I should do when my ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... and dejected, thro' the evening dusk, She now went slowly to that small kiosk, Where, pondering alone his impious schemes, MOKANNA waited her—too wrapt in dreams Of the fair-ripening future's rich success, To heed the sorrow, pale and spiritless, That sat upon his victim's downcast brow, Or mark how slow her step, how altered now From the quick, ardent Priestess, whose light bound Came like a spirit's o'er the unechoing ground,— From that wild ZELICA whose every ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... left me; exhausted, spent, my life shrunken up within me, my energy burned out, a puny, spiritless remnant of the strong woman who lay down upon that couch, I lay despondent, vacant of all interest in the world hitherto so exciting to me. I had not seen Monsieur since this apparent commencement of recovery. A great, good-natured ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... last letter that I shall ever write to you. Do not pity me, my fate is more worthy of envy than of pity. I never knew, I never dreamed of anything more beautiful. It has been said time and again that real life is tame, spiritless and disenchanted by the side of the fictions of the poets. What a mistake! There is a more wonderful inventor than any rhapsodist, and that inventor is called reality. It wears the magic ring, and imagination is but a poor ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... haste, we know not; but that hardship and suffering of some sort had preyed upon her spirit, was evident in her appearance. Her beauty was much faded; she had grown pale and thin; and though she was scarcely yet in the prime of womanhood, her step was heavy and spiritless. She was not happy, of course, but her misery was not only negative: the gnawings of remorse were but ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... meet. And with a shot-gun policy, tissue ballets, and intimidation at the South, while a gigantic, bold, and matchless system of fraudulent voting was pushed with vigor in the North, there was little show of success for the Republican ticket. The contest on the part of the Republicans was spiritless. It was difficult to raise funds or excite enthusiasm. The Republican candidate had only a local reputation. He had been to Congress, but even those who had known that had forgotten it. A modest, retiring man, Gov. Hayes was not widely known. The old and tried leaders were not enthusiastic. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Something in his spiritless mien and sorrowful voice made Dolly's eyes fill; but knowing she must depend upon herself now, and make the best of her position, she said kindly, ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... but Mr Bertrand was seated in an easy chair, his arms folded, his face grave and set. Miss Carr pointed to the sofa, and the three girls sat down, turning inquiring eyes on her face. It was horribly formal, and even Norah felt cowed and spiritless. ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... attacked them en route, they made no other stand until General Miles headed them off near Bear Paw Mountain in Northern Montana, and captured nearly all their horses. Then they were compelled to fight or surrender. They made a four days' fight, but it was a spiritless one, and finally succumbed to the inevitable, and laid down ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields |
