"Tragically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... didn't comprehend it when she was very young. And now she's aware that the lack of comprehension suits her. Now, perhaps, she doesn't know on purpose," said Betsy, with a subtle smile. "But, anyway, it suits her. The very same thing, don't you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... I can't do anything"—Polly shook her gown free—"so there's no use in asking me to stand here and talk about it, Frick Mason. And just look at that clock—two minutes of nine." She pointed tragically up to the big clock. "And I promised to be at Alexia's—" The last words came back to him as she disappeared out to the veranda and down the steps, racing off as hard as ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... place to place, doing the business of the death. He met Clara in Nottingham, and they had tea together in a cafe, when they were quite jolly again. She was infinitely relieved to find he did not take it tragically. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... knock on a door. Instantly all those many little moments that he had had in that white room with that heavy-scented air crowded upon him and he remembered the smile that she had always given him and the way that her hair lay so tragically about the pillow. He had always been frightened and eager to escape; he felt suddenly so deeply ashamed that the crimson flooded his face there in the dark passage. She had wanted him all these years and he had allowed those other people to prevent ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... too tragically ridiculous to be accepted as typical, the reader may verify it with an almost interminable list of similar cases.(1) Parental irresponsibility is ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Montcalm's main army of five thousand men. "When your enemies blunder, {271} don't interrupt them," Napoleon is reported to have advised. If some one had not blundered badly now, it might have been a second Ticonderoga with Wolfe; but some one did blunder most tragically. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... no doubt that this affair will end tragically, one way or another. It must. Such a woman must interest both gods and men in her cause. But what I most apprehend is, that with her own hand, in resentment of the perpetrated outrage, she (like another Lucretia) will assert the purity of her heart: or, if her piety preserve her from this violence, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... some days the children knew more about it than he, being tragically concerned in it—poor mites!—though they took it gaily enough. For Polpier lives by the fishery, and of the fishermen a large number—some scores—had passed through the Navy and now belonged to the Reserve. These good fellows had the haziest notion of what newspapers meant by the ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... grain of humor in his soul, if that is where the sense of fun is located, could have restrained a laugh at that remark. In a moment it would have been difficult for any one of those present to realize how tragically serious they had all been a ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... secret wish, the moment all is over, to fly the odious scene; for horribly odious it will be: but it would have the appearance of cowardice. It must end tragically! Not even the poor creatures who stand in the place of her natural guardians, tame as they are, can suffer such an insult. Yet which of them dare look me in the face, and call himself my enemy? And, after injuring her, shall I ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Melbourne; a doctor of music. Jaime, suppressing his astonishment at this news from a distant world, told of himself, of his family, of his native land, of the curiosities of the island, of the cavern of Arta, tragically grand, chaotic as an ante-chamber of the inferno; of the Dragon's caves with their forests of stalactites, glistening like an ice palace, of its thousand placid lakes, from the deep crystal depths of which it seemed as if ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sitting motionless, with her head leaning forward, but her mouth compressed as if she were defending herself tragically. And beneath the worldly mask of her face, I saw a fanatical martyr's smile impress itself ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... have terminated tragically had not the uplifted hand been caught by Henry Chester. While he was still holding it, a man came up, who brought the conflict to an abrupt close by seizing Eleparu's collar, and dragging him off ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... watched these two tragically led young women as they stood there, draped in white, and drank this sacrilegious toast; ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... the story that has now to be told of the speech Pro Marcello. At the time the matter ended very tragically. As soon as Caesar had yielded, Cicero wrote to Marcellus giving him strong reasons for coming home. Marcellus answered him, saying that it was impossible. He thanks Cicero shortly; but, with kindly dignity, he declines. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... and pageantry made the Court of Hsuan Tsung brilliant, but the splendour faded and his reign ended tragically in disaster and rebellion. The T'ang dynasty seemed in danger of collapse. But it emerged successfully from these troubles and continued for a century and a half. During the whole of this period the Emperors with one exception[655] were favourable to Buddhism, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... aunt, the fact is, I believe my unhappy brother has never recovered from—from his passion for Cecile de Savenaye, that early love affair, so suddenly and tragically terminated—well, it seems to have ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... wants me to employ him as a guard while going through the pass, backing up the offer of his presumably valuable services by unsheathing a semi-rusty sword and waving it valiantly aloft. He intimates, by tragically graphic pantomime, that unless I traverse the pass under the protecting shadow of his ancient and rusty blade, I will be likely to pay the penalty of my rashness by having my throat cut. Yusuph Effendi and the Erzeroum missionaries have thoughtfully warned me against venturing through ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... minutes, Rhoda saw only the passing tree branches black against the evening sky as she lay across Kut-le's breast. The pursuers had made no sound nor had Kut-le broken a single twig. The entire incident might have been a pantomime, with every actor tragically intent. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... me?" inquired Jean, laughing, for she was accustomed to Polly's moods, and was by no means angry at the alarming frankness of her reply, as she said tragically,— ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... caught up the sentence tragically. "Ah, no, but calm thyself, dear one. Be serene—as usual. There is an intermission for luncheon. We could go to a restaurant. It would be a restaurant with a vinegar cruet in the centre of the table and plates of thick bread at each end ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... the fourteenth century the decaying of the flower was tragically apparent. New elements of cruelty tolerated, of mere intrigue successful, of emptiness in philosophical phrase and of sophistry in philosophical argument, marked the turn of the tide. Not an institution of the thirteenth but the fourteenth debased ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... answered. "You've deceived me—that's what you've done. You've brought your old friends out here under false pretences. You've made me out to be—Oh," and with this her voice broke and she pressed her two little hands together tragically. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... you that eat and cheat, Gold-seeking hucksters in a noble land, Think, when you lift the wine up in your hand, Of a fierce vintage tragically red, Red wine of the hearts of English soldiers dead, Who ran to a wild death with laughing feet— That we may sleep and drink and eat and cheat. Ah! you brave few that fight for all the rest, And die with smiling faces strangely blest, Because you die for England—O to do Something ...
— The Silk-Hat Soldier - And Other Poems in War Time • Richard le Gallienne
... of the car containing those embarked on a mission so closely concerning himself. Instead of fleeing from them he was actually courting their company, pursuing himself, as it were! At another time he might have smiled; now the situation had for him nothing of the comic; it was tragically grim, also decidedly unpleasant. A strong odor of gasolene permeated his nostrils until he was nearly suffocated by it and all the dust, stirred by their flight, swirled up on him, making it difficult to refrain from coughing. Fortunately the machine had a monopoly ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... earnestly, and many times, to write to her about it; "for," she added, "you would be surprised if you knew how much I pick up in this way." "The story," she said, "must begin lightly, and the early instances of mistake might be comic, but it must end tragically." I told her I was sorry for this. "Well," said she, "I can't help it, it must be so. The best I can do for you is, to leave it quite uncertain whether it is possible the man who is to be my victim can ever ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... I didn't make meself a little baby that couldn't help itself, and they needn't have rared me unless they liked. Goodness knows, I'd have rather died like a little pup before his eyes were opened," he continued so tragically that I took the opportunity of smiling behind his back as he threw out ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... said Dimpdin, tragically,—scalping himself meanwhile,—"the church must be recognized in every department, and if my Memorial be acted upon favorably, we shall have such victories, in three months, as will sweep Rebellion into the grave. Yes! Into ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... boyhood, defensive and belligerent. Yet all this was to change, in the twinkling of an eye, in one short season. The first great disillusionments of youth were at hand and woman with the mask of sympathy and understanding waiting to fashion the man out of the urchin. By what ways, ludicrous and tragically comic, this sentimental progression was achieved is here set down ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... that Barney, in his moment of doubt, had spoken more soundly than he had imagined when he had said that it was easier to fool a man about a woman than it was to fool a woman. How tragically true that was! While trying to learn to be a lady by working in smart shops, she had learned that the occasional man who had ventured in after woman's gear was hopelessly ignorant and bought whatever was skillfully thrust upon ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... French, choking with restrained insults, throwing at one another's heads the names of unknown villages, dates of local history which suddenly placed two centuries of family feuds upon the table between two covers. The Nabob was afraid that his breakfasts would end tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous letter has taken ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... to be their second long encounter;—eyes like jewels, these of Madame von Marwitz; full of intense life, intense colour, still, bright and cold, tragically cold. He seemed to see suddenly that all the face—the long eyebrows, with the plaintive ripple of irregularity bending their line, the languid lips, the mournful eyelids, the soft contours of cheek and throat,—were a veil for the coldness of her eyes. To look into them was like ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Redmayne's theory must, after all, be false, and he assured himself that by no possibility could the widow of Michael Pendean ever lose her sad heart to this stranger from Italy. The idea was out of the question, for surely a woman of such fine mould, so suddenly and tragically bereaved, would never find in this handsome chatterbox, throbbing with egotism, any solace for sorrow, or promise for future contentment. In theory his view seemed sound. Yet he knew, even while he reflected, that love in ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... I have!" And casting away the newspaper with a gesture of comic despair, Mac strode from the room, chanting tragically the words of Cassandra, "'Woe! woe! O Earth! O Apollo! I will dare to die; I will accost the gates of Hades, and make my prayer that I may receive ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... says he, puttin' hot' t'umbs up"—and Mike held both hands out horizontally with the thumbs stiff and vertical to illustrate this form of oath—"'there's nottin' doin', Mike,' says he. What d'ye t'ink of that, sir, an' me knowin' there was?" asked Mike, tragically. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... weak and exhausted from the long suspense. For she wished to look into a mirror with no one watching. And as Betty Ashton got the first glimpse of herself, although vanity had never been one of her weaknesses, she honestly believed that she never had seen any one look so tragically ugly before in her entire life. She hardly recognized herself. Her face was white and thin, almost bloodless except for the scar upon her forehead. Then her hair had been cut off, and though in some places the curls still remained heavy and thick, in others she ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... opposites is crudely and narrowly conceived, with no suggestion yet of some more tremendous force behind both, such as later on was to give depth to his view of the world conflict. The loves and the virtues of Laon and Cythna, the gifted beings who overthrow the tyrant and perish tragically in a counter-revolution, are too bright against a background that is too black; but even so they were a good opportunity for displaying the various phases through which humanitarian passion may run—the first whispers ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... to ride again—like I used to," he said, tragically. "I'll ride, yes, but never the ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... his breath, with every muscle tense, and his heart sank within him. For out of that inner doorway came a sound—a sound unmistakably human—tragically human, it seemed now, shattering his returning courage ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... could not, except by processes unspeakably difficult, be described to you at all. On the whole, those dead Churches, this dead English Church especially, must be brought to life again. Why not? It was not dead; the soul of it, in this parched-up body, was tragically asleep only. Atheistic Philosophy was true on its side, and Hume and Voltaire could on their own ground speak irrefragably for themselves against any Church: but lift the Church and them into a higher sphere. Of argument, they ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... the boys and their older companions had been in many perilous situations; but no adventure promised to end more tragically than this flight of the huge airship. The descent of the Snowbird, punctuated by the rifle shot below, seemed likely to ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... practically his own experience in its account of a heroine—not hero—who leaves her native farm to go first to a country college and then to Chicago to pursue a wider life, torn constantly between a passion for freedom and a loyalty to the father she must tragically desert. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... of the wild oats' theory are too tragically evident to need any argumentative refutation. The statistics of the prevalency of venereal diseases alone is sufficient; the results of these diseases are more ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... of existence he bore a charmed life, and sometimes as he moved among his fellows he felt a certain sense of the unfairness of his advantage in this respect, and paused to pity those who could still be so eager, so tragically set upon, this little issue. The virulence of those enemies whom he was already making and who were to multiply as his activities awakened again, seemed particularly pathetic, and he would smile in sad amusement ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... a voice of agony—an agony such as the fear of death could never have infused into his brave soul; an agony born of the heartlessness of this woman who for twenty years had shared his bed and board, and who now in the hour of his adversity failed him so cruelly—so tragically. ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Edwards as an example of native tragedy influenced but not subjugated by classical models. To be exact, it is a tragi-comedy, but it is very improbable that the method of presentment would have been different had it ended tragically; therefore it will suit our purpose. Of importance is the date, some three or four years later than Gorboduc and seventy years earlier than The Misfortunes of Arthur. When we call to mind the form finally adopted for tragedy by Shakespeare, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... me," she said tragically, "that I have checked the development of a mental effort. That ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... her in a light so tragically sinister as now, when she beheld it in the livid, forbidding light of early dawn, enveloped in its shroud of fog. The houses were lifeless and silent as tombs; many of them had been empty and abandoned for the last two days, others the terrified owners had closely ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... matter turns out more tragically. In duels to the death the pose of attack is assumed in all its beauty. The murderous talons unfold and rise in the air. Woe to the vanquished! for the victor seizes her in her vice-like grip and at once commences to eat her; beginning, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... encouraged to believe that she had not been abnormal in viewing Gopher Prairie as unduly tedious and slatternly. She found the same faith not only in girls escaped from domesticity but also in demure old ladies who, tragically deprived of esteemed husbands and huge old houses, yet managed to make a very comfortable thing of it by living in small flats and ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... curve of its cheek and throat you know it is adorably, pitifully young. By its carmined lip, its near-smart hat, its babbling of "him," and by the knowledge which looks boldly out of its eyes you know it is tragically old. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... confidence than in any other living monarch. And when the ambassador had stammered out the lying excuse based upon "the horrible ingratitude and perverse intentions of the Huguenots" against his master, and had tragically recounted the sorrow of Charles at being constrained to cut off an arm to save the rest of the body, she replied that she hoped that if the informations against the admiral and his were confirmed by investigation, the king "might be excused in some part, both toward God ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... I had a sudden feeling of being near water, and coming out from a thicket I was confirmed in this by seeing the light break into ripples on an uneven surface. But tragically, it was not the Channel I had come upon, merely a river, too wide to cross, which though it undoubtedly led to my goal, would increase the length of my journey by many miles. I'm afraid I gave way to a quite unmanly weakness as I threw myself upon the hard ground ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Eve turned tragically to her lover: "In Dad's closet——" she said, choking; then turned and went up the stairs, still clinging to Ricca's hand and ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... the neatly-folded note, another accomplishment that she had taught Otis, read it, and groaned tragically. ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... go on, till Mr. Povey is "forty next birthday," though, dear innocent soul, he scarcely notices it as we notice it tragically in these days of quick living. And Constance buries her mother, and becomes engrossed in Cyril, her son, and scarcely observes how the atmosphere in the Potteries gets blacker and blacker, and the trains run nearer and more frequently, and the electric trams ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these waters, as I know to my sorrow"; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... mills, were grinding up leaves and ejecting their juices. Some were busily inserting the down of a thistle into their ears. Several stood erect, intent upon maintaining striking attitudes; their javelins tragically crossed upon their chests. They would have looked very imposing, were it not, that in rear their vesture was sadly disordered. Others, with swelling fronts, seemed chiefly indebted to their dinners for their dignity. Many were nodding and napping. And, here ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of the financier brought the property into the hands of the Duchesse de Bourbon, the sister of Louis Philippe, and the mother of the Duc d' Enghien, who died so tragically at Vincennes a short time after. The duchess renamed her new possession Elysee-Bourbon and there led a very retired and sad life among surroundings so splendid that they merited a ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... had returned to Mrs. Trent and related their misadventure he was startled by hearing that sensible woman tragically exclaim, in contradiction to his ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... clasped to which, one above either ear, was a great scarlet and black wing, like that of a flamingo, beckoned the two prisoners forth. Hitherto they had been treated fairly well, having been supplied with three good meals per day; but no food was now offered them, and both thought the omission tragically ominous. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... resist it. There are men who not only are so constituted that it is their greatest pleasure, but who are even born with a craving for drink. In no form is the terrible fact of heredity more clearly or more tragically displayed. Many, too, who had originally no such craving gradually acquire it: sometimes by mere social influence, which makes excessive drinking the habit of their circle; more frequently through depression or sorrow, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... His Imperial Highness, which did not, indeed, end tragically, was related last night, at the tea-party of Madame Recamier. A man of the name of Deroux had lately been condemned by our criminal tribunal, for forging bills of exchange, to stand in the pillory six hours, and, after being marked with a hot iron ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... would find idly laborious fingers rebuilding its ephemeral glories. This rebuilding was done thoughtfully and calmly, as though it were a religious rite, as though it were a sacrificial devotion to an ideal in a life tragically forlorn of beauty. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... conspicuous and baleful part in Christian's life, she deserted her benefactor at the first sign of his coming ruin and ended her days in her native Holland, bemoaning to the last the loss of her "little dove," whom she had seen raised almost to a throne and had lost so tragically. ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... caused her to shine in society wherever she was. She had an unquestioned supremacy among the ladies of Haddington and many had been the suitors for her hand. When Irving had given her lessons there, love had sprung up between tutor and pupil, but this budding romance ended tragically in 1822. Before meeting her he had been engaged to another lady; and when a new appointment gave him a sure income, he was held to his bond and was forced to crush down his passion and to take farewell of Miss Welsh. At what ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... But even from this nothing results, and husband and wife drift together again. I like to think that nowadays, what with Zeps and other things, poor old John may grow really contented. Meanwhile, clever as it is, the tale seems oddly anaemic and unreal. It is like those tragically trivial journals of 1914 that still survive in the dusty waiting-rooms of dentists. I don't suggest that Mr. BROWN, whose previous book I much admired, should write about the War; but I could wish him a little more in tune with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... As for Miss Bacon, we find her, with her modest shy dignity, with her solid character and strange enterprise, a real acquisition; and hope we shall now see more of her, now that she has come nearer to us to lodge. I have not in my life seen anything so tragically quixotic as her Shakespeare enterprise: alas, alas, there can be nothing but sorrow, toil, and utter disappointment in it for her! I do cheerfully what I can;—which is far more than she asks of me (for I have not seen a prouder silent soul);—but there is not the least possibility ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... strange presence that appealed and touched. The contributor, revolving the facts vaguely in his mind, was not sure, after all, that it was not the man's clothes rather than his expression that softened him toward the rugged visage: they were so tragically cheap, and the misery of helpless needlewomen, and the poverty and ignorance of the purchaser, were so apparent in their shabby newness, of which they appeared still conscious enough to have led the way to the very window, in the Semitic quarter of the city, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... worthily American; in him the commonest of human traits were blended with an all-embracing charity and the highest human wisdom; with single devotion to the right he lived unselfishly, void of selfish personal ambition, and, dying tragically, left a name to be remembered with love and honor as one of the best ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... till the day afterwards!" exclaimed Winona tragically. "Oh, how I wish he were at the Red Cross Hospital here instead of at Prestwick! If I ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... bring home to oneself the nature of the tragic character is to compare it with a character of another kind. Dramas like Cymbeline and the Winter's Tale, which might seem destined to end tragically, but actually end otherwise, owe their happy ending largely to the fact that the principal characters fail to reach tragic dimensions. And, conversely, if these persons were put in the place of the tragic heroes, the dramas in which they appeared would cease to be tragedies. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... had happened some three or four years then, he said, and you brought into his mind the little girl so tragically lost, who would have been ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character in one most tragically enacted under his ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... He was more explicit about the park than the lady, and he seemed to lay special stress on the fact that the great saloon in the castle was hung with a faded tapestry. The story seemed to Evelyn a little obscure, but she gathered that Ulick had been tragically separated from her, whether by the intervention of another woman or through his own fault did not seem clear. The story was vague as a legend, and Evelyn was not certain that Ulick had not invented ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Once more, he raised his eyes to the crimson wall and the dark frame out of which Elena's pallid face looked forth, that face with the haunting eyes and the sibylline mouth. A penetrating and continuous fascination emanated from that imperious image. That strange pallor dominated tragically the whole crimson gloom of the apartment. And once again he felt that ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... that the action is more artistically managed: it is not that curiosity or sympathy is aroused or sustained with any particular skill. Such a play as "Fatal Curiosity" is as truthfully lifelike and more tragically exciting: it is in mere moral power and charm, with just a touch of truer and purer poetry pervading and coloring and flavoring and quickening the whole, that the work of a Heywood approves itself as beyond ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and was hardly surprised to see the doctor, who had been attached to the service of the Duchess for twenty years, and attended all the guests in the Chateau, talking animatedly with the diplomat. The doctor raised his arms in a horrified gesture, letting them fall again tragically. He gave every evidence of a violent struggle with himself. The diplomat remained calm, determined, and even authoritative. The poor doctor finally yielded. The diplomat shook his ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... which AEschines saw me committing against the state were as heinous as he so tragically gave out, he ought to have enforced the penalties of the law against them at the time; if he saw me guilty of an impeachable offence, by impeaching and so bringing me to trial before you; if moving illegal decrees, by indicting me for them. For surely, if he can indict ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... universal truth. It is we ourselves who settle what God's words and acts will be to us. The trite proverb, 'One man's meat is another man's poison,' is true in the highest regions. It is eminently, blessedly or tragically true in our relation to the Gospel, wherein all God's self-revelation reaches its climax, wherein 'the arm of the Lord' is put forth in its most blessed energy, wherein is laid on each of us the touch, tender ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated. In the year A.D. 303 the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dasius, but he refused to play ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... myself from harm, but I knew very well I wasn't fit to be your wife. Only—I loved you so. And when I knew that Bunny was turning against me—would never believe in me—I just couldn't help turning to you again. And then—and then—you went and married me!" She wrung her hands tragically. "I ought not to have let you. God will never forgive me for it. I don't deserve to be forgiven. But I loved you—I ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... Max opened the sitting-room door and stood watching at the sound of footsteps. His rather bony fists were clenched beneath his loose shirt-cuffs, his eyebrows tragically lifted. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... hat off?" demanded the principal, pointing tragically to the piece of headgear, through the crown and past the rim of which the picket now stood up as ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... The Prophet sprang tragically to the bell. It was answered. The procession was re-formed, and Mrs. Merillia was carried to bed, still smiling, nodding at each stair and bearing ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... tragically during the war, and though Waddell's fort had been abandoned, neither was without influence in the colonization of Tennessee, for some of the men who built these forts drifted back a year or two later ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... realization of his lapse, Terry had sprung astraddle the corner of the billiard table, where, absurdly solemn, he declaimed tragically, combing the classics for sepulchral passages, plunging the intent listeners into deepest melancholy but concluding with a droll extemporization that swept them from verge of tears ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor Lombard's ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... you from him for anything," murmured Sarah Gailey tragically, as Hilda opened the door and left her sitting forlorn among all her skirts ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... undermining her house and was knocking it down. It still stands firm. It was finally "done over" a few years ago, and eventually bought by James E. Forrestal, when he became Secretary of the Navy, and was still his home when he resigned as our first Secretary of Defense, and then ended his life tragically May 12, 1949, by leaping from a window of ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... on the table, and now he tapped it, aggravatingly, with his hand. But the strain was over for me. I looked on with calmness, and was amazed when at last Maxine flew to him, no longer scornful, tragically indifferent in her manner, but ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now. They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... look further afield through Italy we find in 1303 another scene tragically expressive of the changing times. The French King, Philip the Fair, so called from his appearance, not his dealings, had bitter cause of quarrel with the same Pope Boniface VIII who had held the great jubilee of 1300. Philip's soldiers, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the girl who sat so silently, her one arm wound around the light tree trunk, her head leaning against it in the most matter-of-fact attitude, almost caressing the gray button ball wood, while even in the dark those two dark braids of hair were tragically outlined against the white of her ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... nothing he could do that would not be misunderstood. Moreover, he had no adequate idea of what was in her mind—or in her homeless heart. He had known her always as a butterfly; he could not take her tragically now. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... not bear pity, even when silently expressed by a friendly hand or a kindly eye. He stayed at home a good deal, and loafed about with a melancholy and neglected air, vanished when anyone came, talked very little, and was either pathetically humble or tragically cross. He wanted to do something, but nothing seemed to appear; and while he waited to get his poise after the downfall, he was so very miserable that I 'm afraid, if it had not been for one thing, my poor Tom would have got desperate, and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... woman, with a white streak in her dark hair just above the forehead. Her face, which was refined and handsome, had given to Malling a strong impression of anxiety. Even when it had smiled it had looked almost tragically anxious, he thought. The church was seated with chairs, and a man, evidently an attendant, told him that all the chairs in the right and left aisles were free. He made his way to the right, and was fortunate enough to get one not far from ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... is no vice of this kind more contemptible than another; for each is but a result and outward sign of a soul tragically shipwrecked. In the majority of cases, cheap pleasure is resorted to by way of anodyne. The pleasure-seeker sets forth upon life with high and difficult ambitions; he meant to be nobly good and nobly happy, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... faded, immature. She had a drooping Southern accent, and a manner which fluctuated between arch audacity and fits of panicky hauteur. She yearned to be admired, and feared to be insulted; and yet seemed tragically conscious that she was destined to miss both these extremes of sensation, or to enjoy them only at second hand in the experiences of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... jousting in this costume with every knight between Venice and Styria, all for her honour and glory; pulls the gallant in a basket up to her window, and then lets him drop down into the moat which is no better than a sewer; this grotesque and tragically resented end of Ulrich's first love service speaks volumes on the point. The stones in Nostradamus' "Lives of the Troubadours," the incidents in Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," nay, the adventures even in our expunged English "Morte d'Arthur," relating to the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... a soul," I whispered, tragically, "but eggs, and eggs alone, are turning my love for my sister into bitterest hate. She stalks me the whole day long, forcing egg mixtures down my unwilling throat. She bullies me. I daren't put out my hand suddenly without knocking over liquid refreshment ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, becoming tragically resolute. "I must tell ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... ceased to smile. Her strenuous cheerfulness could not hold before his tragically drawn ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... he said, as he bent over the form on the bed, 'forgive me for failing you. It is not Christ who has failed; it is I.' He turned to go. The dying man opened his eyes and looked at Rodwell sadly and tragically. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... saying that most poor mortals were forced to get on without this magic atmosphere. They had never been goddesses; they did not know what they were going without. But her child, who had been, as it were, born a fairy, would miss tragically the delicate beauty of her every-day life, would fade under ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... hung back, as it seemed almost severed from the body by a frightful gash, which yawned across the throat. The instrument which had inflicted it, was found under his body. All, then, was over; I was never to learn the history in whose termination I had been so deeply and so tragically involved. ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... have Aunt Eleanor smiling sarcastically, though she doesn't know half. I think I have at length quieted her, and the great Augustus is entirely mollified." She paused to laugh again, then continued tragically, "Sympathy is what I need now. To begin with, it was the most perfect day—the sort to ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... innocence of initiating this devastating War is conclusive proof that even the worst of them recognizes that they all must finally stand before the moral court of the world's conscience and be judged. The same tendency is shown in the efforts of Germany—grotesquely and tragically sophistical as they are— to justify her ever-expanding, freshly-invented atrocities. At least she is aware that they ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... corresponds with one of the movements of the dance; a solo-singer is answered by the response of a chorus; in the progress of time the rondet assumed the precise form of the modern triolet; the theme was still love, at first treated seriously if not tragically, but at a later time in a spirit of gaiety. It is conjectured that all these lyrical forms had their origin in the festivities of May, when the return of spring was celebrated by dances in which women alone took part, a survival from the pagan rites ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... painful processes, unrelieved by reflections or speculations, by any moral or intellectual emanation. To prevent misconception, however, we hasten to add that they tell no disagreeable secrets; they contain nothing for the lovers of scandal. Balzac was a very honest man, but he was a man almost tragically uncomfortable, and the unsightly underside of his discomfort stares us full in the face. Still, if his personal portrait is without ideal beauty, it is by no means without a certain brightness, or at ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... from bites from the tsetse, marking the spot where the insect had inserted his proboscis. On emerging from the great Elgumi forest, we, still steering northwards, in accordance with the information Mr Mackenzie had collected from the unfortunate wanderer who reached him only to die so tragically, struck the base in due course of the large lake, called Laga by the natives, which is about fifty miles long by twenty broad, and of which, it may be remembered, he made mention. Thence we pushed on nearly ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... point the music-drama hastens tragically to a close. We have Bluebeard's sudden (and feigned) journey, introduced by a pompous march ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Chiefly I use it as an ingredient for happiness, sometimes to remind people, and sometimes to make them forget. It seems to me that some people take happiness rather tragically." ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... quavering rendering of "Yip-I-Addy," but when he reached the statement "home was never like this" Vanessa tearfully begged him to stop. And silence fastened itself with growing insistence on the three captives who were so tragically herded together; thrice a day they drew near to one another to swallow the meal that had been prepared for them, like desert beasts meeting in mute suspended hostility at the drinking pool, and then drew back to resume the ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... beautiful eyes—tragically wide and haughty—upon her companion. There was absurdity in her pose, and yet, as Meynell uncomfortably recognized, a new touch ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... before her. "These hands are soaked in human blood—innocent human blood," he said, tragically. "I don't deny it; if it would do a particle of good I'd tell every soul on earth. I won a good girl's love, and when I got tired of her and left her she killed herself to escape the misery I put her in. I was unworthy of her, but she didn't know it, or want to know it. Nobody ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... text coincide in suggesting another thing, and that is the awful contrast in the average life between what is in a man and what comes out of him. 'Dormant power,' we talk about. Ah, how tragically the true man is dormant in all the work of worldly hearts! God has made a great mistake in making you what you are, if there is no place for you to exercise your powers in but this present world, and nothing to exercise them on except the things that pass and perish. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... resist; and powerless, unless He chose to let them prevail. He speaks as the stainless, incarnate Son of God. He speaks also as Captain of 'the noble army of martyrs,' and His question may be extended to include the truth that force is in its place when used against crime, but ludicrously and tragically out of place when employed against any teacher, and especially against Christianity. Christ, in His persecuted confessors, puts the same question to the persecutors which Christ in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Sirven, though it did not end tragically, was similar, and the government of Toulouse was again responsible. He was accused of having drowned his daughter in a well to hinder her from becoming a Catholic, and was, with his wife, sentenced to death. Fortunately he and his family had escaped to Switzerland, ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... one of 850 souls confined in the Jersey in the summer of 1781, and witnessed several daring attempts to escape. They generally ended tragically. They were always undertaken in the night, after wrenching or filing the bar off the port-holes. Having been on board several weeks, and goaded to death in various ways, four of us concluded to run the hazard. We set to work and got the bars off, and waited impatiently for a dark ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... get up with a few extra touches to scenery and costumes. Thorny was superb as the tyrant with a beard of bright blue worsted, a slouched hat and long feather, fur cloak, red hose, rubber boots, and a real sword which clanked tragically as he walked. He spoke in such a deep voice, knit his corked eyebrows, and glared so frightfully, that it was no wonder poor Fatima quaked before him as he gave into her keeping an immense bunch of keys with one particularly big, bright ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various |
