"Woeful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had alliances of old or recent date, and friends not a few, whereby they deemed that there they might tarry with Iphigenia in security. But Fortune, that had accorded Cimon so gladsome a capture of the lady, suddenly proved fickle, and converted the boundless joy of the enamoured gallant into woeful and bitter lamentation. 'Twas not yet full four hours since Cimon had parted from the Rhodians, when with the approach of night, that night from which Cimon hoped such joyance as he had never known, came weather most turbulent and tempestuous, which ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... can beware Into whose hands they fall by any such chance; Which if they do, they hardly escape care, Trouble, misery, and woeful grievance, And thus I make an end, committing you to his guidance, That made and redeemed us all, and to you that be now here I pray God grant and send many a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... the lips, and meanwhile swallow down The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled, Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus Grow strong again with recreated health: So now I too (since this my doctrine seems In general somewhat woeful unto those Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd Starts back from it in horror) have desired To expound our doctrine unto thee in song Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere, To touch it with ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... her strength of purpose and at her courage. Many girls, finding themselves in such a woeful strait, would have been entirely overcome—would have begged and pleaded in abject fear or weakly yielded to circumstances, and married him, but Mona only seemed to gather courage as difficulties closed ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... springs to her feet, and flings her arms round Miss Knollys. Presently she leans back and looks at her again, still, however, holding her with her arms. Her small face, so woeful a while ago, is now wreathed in smiles; it even suggests itself to Margaret that she is with difficulty suppressing a wild outbreak of mirth—a suppression meant, no doubt, as ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... the outcome of his splendid marriage—those two poor, weak little beings, whom the least breath from the sky threatened to kill like flies. Of the fortune he had married, all that remained to him was the constant grief of beholding those woeful children stricken by the final degeneracy of scrofula and phthisis. However, this big, egotistical fellow showed himself an admirable father. The only energy that remained to him consisted in a determination to make his children ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... disgrace through human laws and social customs, and in the private endurance of bodily and mental pains and of strange misgivings that load the soul with fear and anguish. Subjection to the animal nature in the obedience of unrighteousness sensibly tends to bring upon its victim a woeful mass of positive ills, public and personal, to put him under the vile tyranny of devouring lusts, to induce deathlike enervation and disease in his whole being, to pervade his consciousness with the wretched gnawings of remorse and shame, and with the timorous, tormenting sense of guilt, discord, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... cunningly-wrought chest the raging blast and the stirred billow and terror fell upon her, with tearful cheeks she cast her arm around Perseus and spake, 'Alas, my child, what sorrow is mine! But thou slumberest, in baby-wise sleeping in this woeful ark; midst the darkness of the brazen rivet thou shinest and in the swart gloom sent forth; thou heedest not the deep foam of the passing wave above thy locks nor the voice of the blast as thou liest in thy purple covering, a sweet face. If terror had terrors for thee, and thou wert giving ear to ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... controversy, till now—more than ninety years. The long periodic time has at last run out, and the star has again mounted into the heavens. What Ireland was doing for herself in 1795 we at length have done. The Roman Catholics have been emancipated—emancipated after a woeful disregard of solemn promises through twenty-nine years, emancipated slowly, sullenly, not from good will, but from abject terror, with all the fruits and consequences which will always follow that method of legislation. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... middle age, with a rich voice and a good-natured manner. Had Carmichael rasped and girded much longer, one would have believed in the inspiration of the vowel points, and I left the church with a low heart, for this was a woeful change from ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... morning, everything had been changed through the sorcery of Morgan le Fay, that was secretly plotting against her brother, to destroy him. King Uriens awoke in his own bed in Camelot, and Arthur found himself in a dark prison, with many woeful knights complaining about him, and they soon told him for what cause ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... often wander in pairs, one black and one white: they mostly have horns; the wool of the white sheep is spotless. There are plenty of sheep in the Island, and it is for them as much as the ponies that the grass is cut, dried, and stacked under such woeful disadvantages and in such ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... yourselves—succeed or not, I'll pay you well. Could any thing be more fortunate?" continued the old gentleman, soliloquising to himself—"could any thing be more fortunate than our show of fire-works bringing all the miners of the parish about our ears; the very best hands in the world, from woeful experience in like matters, to render aid in an accident ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... that most woeful man my husband once, Who, needing respite, still draws vital breath, I—pardon him? So far as lies in me, I give him for his good the life he takes, Praying the world will therefore acquiesce. Let him make God amends,—none, none to me Who thank him rather that, whereas strange ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... gazers may think little of them; but no towering oak, no stately temple, can stand without them. Above all, in the Church of God, he who works on any other rule than this will lose his labor, it may be will lose himself, and find written at last over his most cherished plans the woeful words: "All ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... saw the young man coming slowly through the gloom, and the shadow of some calamity came steadily on before him. Lulu went to the top of the long flight of white steps, and put out her hands to greet him. He motioned her away with a woeful and positive gesture, and stood with hopeless yet half defiant attitude ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... unlearned before he could begin to make progress with the Scandinavian footgear. For in snow-shoe walking the feet must be lifted straight up and then carried forward before they are planted, and any attempt to slide them forward makes a woeful tangle; to try to lift the ski off the ground, however, is to invite ridiculous distress, and the whole art of scooting on the ski is in the long, sliding motion. It is a sort of skating on incredibly long skates that must not be lifted ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... think of her even now with a steady mouth. Hers was the tragedy of living on, more mournful than the tragedy that kills. In Thrums the weavers spoke of "lousing" from their looms, removing the chains, and there is something woeful in that. But pity poor Nanny Coutts, who took her chains to bed ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... "The master's in a woeful way," mourned Janet. "To think of your father's only bairn leaving her ain house so! The master's half daft with his troubles, for they've scattered and lost the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... which petty municipal minds could fall when confronted with a wild revolutionary welter, marked the hesitant policy of the British Government. This aimless chaos of soul was the main cause of the woeful waste of our political advantages and enormous resources in the accomplishment of secondary ends which generally led nowhere. It was thus that they forfeited the active support of Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, foolishly stood by applauding every ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... thumb and finger went to work To move the stubborn lid; And presently a mighty jerk The mighty mischief did; For all at once, ah! woeful case, The snuff ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... pearly galaxy Of snow-white pigeons. Next upon the height Of Pergamos uplift a beam of light That for its core enshrined a naked youth, Golden and fierce. She knew the God sans ruth, Him who had given woeful prescience to her, Apollo, once her lover and her wooer; Who stood as one stands glorying in his grace And strength, full in the sun, though on her place Within the temple court no sun at all Shone, nor as yet upon the topmost wall Was ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... appreciate. "Will the greatest Mastership in Greek and Latin, or [the] translating [of] these Languages into English, avail for the Purpose of acquiring an elegant English Style? No—we know just the Reverse from woeful Experience! And, as Mr. Locke and the Spectator observe, Men who have threshed hard at Greek and Latin for ten or eleven years together, are very often deficient in their own Language."—Preface to the British Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... woeful thing that the daughters of our land have abandoned the old respectable mode of yeast-brewing and bread-raising for this specious substitute, so easily made, and so seldom well made. The green, clammy, acrid substance, called biscuit, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to reach the eastern shore, while among the frantic masses appeared here and there a fugitive from the scene of battle, perhaps wounded and telling his dreadful story of the defeat, with all the woeful consequences that ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... to the filing-cases that covered the west wall of his library from floor to ceiling, from north window to south. "I base my hope on those—next to you, of course," said he. Then with his "woeful widower" pose, he added: ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... that Love's own hand did make Breathed forth the sound that said, "I hate," To me that languished for her sake: But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that, ever sweet, Was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus anew to greet: "I hate" she altered with an end, That followed it as gentle day Doth follow night, who, like a fiend, From ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... and how do they call papa, and how do they call mamma. He has broken out into sweat, the poor fellow, from the effort, the cap is at the back of his neck, the whiskered face is such a kindly and woeful and helpless one, while the voice is gentle, so gentle. At last, what do you think? As the girl has become all excited, and has already grown hoarse from tears, and is shy of everybody—he, this same 'roundsman on the beat,' stretches out two ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... legislators; their chapels had been frequently nailed up, and their bishops had been often obliged to remove them from one neighbourhood to another to prevent worse consequences. The infatuation was not to be stayed; the evil was engrafted on society, and many a long year, and woeful scene, and blighted life, and broken heart, was to signalize the perpetuation of secret ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the change which had taken place in her was a woeful one. Her bright loveliness was gone—her simple, lovable happiness. Her nerves seemed all unstrung. But it was the piteous, strained look in her childlike eyes which stirred poor ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... red as blood, all weary with waiting and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom of the foul place where they were immured together. Shedding tears, beating their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour, these unhappy creatures of God, who had been great of soul when they sang their death-song with the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front, now quaked for the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... 'however close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again,' which means that even the poorest devils at the works can be beaten into giving a little more; but our dear Seleem, God bless him, will be ruined and made miserable by his promotion. I had a very woeful letter ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... his heart sinking with the despairing sorrow of those who are doomed to exile. He no longer felt a haughty disdain and scornful hatred of the strangers he met, but a woeful impulse to speak to them, to tell them all that he had to quit France, to be listened to and comforted. There was in the very depths of his heart the shamefaced need of a beggar who would fain hold out his hand—a timid but urgent need to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... unfortunate brothers. They kindled high their hospitable fires for us, and spread their feasts, and bid us eat and drink and banish our sorrows, for that we were in a land of friends. And so indeed, we found it; for whenever we told of the woeful battle of Culloden, and how the English gave no quarter to our unfortunate countrymen, but butchered all they could overtake, these generous people often gave us their tears, and said, O! that we had been there to aid with our rifles, then should ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... a swarm of frightened birds. And in the dark background the low notes sang in measured, harmonious cadence like the waves of the sea exhausted by the storm. Some one cried out, a loud, agitated, woeful cry of rebellion, questioned and appealed in impotent anguish, and, losing hope, grew silent; and then again sang his rueful plaints, now resonant and clear, now subdued and dejected. In response to this song came the thick waves of dark sound, broad and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... quoth she, 'your tunes entomb Within your hollow-swelling feather'd breasts, And in my hearing be you mute and dumb: My restless discord loves no stops nor rests; A woeful hostess brooks not merry guests: Relish your nimble notes to pleasing ears; Distress likes dumps when time is kept ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... already lie To deck my coffin when I die. Bring them here—'twill not be long, 'Tis the last word of the woeful song; And the final and dying words are sung To the discord of lute strings ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... foaming deep; Death now stares them in the face; There is found no time to sleep, Nor would it avail to weep In such a woeful case. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... us, of the gun-deck, were at times condemned to sufferings and blights, and all manner of tribulation and anguish, yet, no doubt, it was only our misapprehension of these things that made us take them for woeful pains instead of the most agreeable pleasures. I have dreamed of a sphere, says Pinzella, where to break a man on the wheel is held the most exquisite of delights you can confer upon him; where for one gentleman in any way to vanquish another ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... being an old and faithful servant. At last, in his misery and despair, he thought he would go to his youngest daughter, who had become queen of France, and see if she would take pity on him. So he crossed over to France. When Cordelia heard of her father's woeful plight, and of her sisters' cruelty to him, she wept for sorrow, and at once sent him everything needful for his comfort. She and her husband then set out to meet him, surrounded by their soldiers and followers, and ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... woven argument, Lacks warp to hold the woof in place, Smothers his honest discontent, But leaves to view his woeful face. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... flat-footed, hawhawing, Civil Service idiot be looking on while she reattires herself! He had half a mind to descend and brain him on the spot, if he had any brains, so as to render impossible the woeful calamity. But the fates were merciful, sending Mr. Lamb up with Marjorie and Mr. Bigglethorpe. Now was the angry man's chance, and a rare one, but, like an angry man, he did not seize it. The other two ladies remarked to each ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and threw herself on her knees before Angelo, saying, "I am a woeful suitor to your Honor, if it will please your ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was to prepare the room she had rented for its strange guest and it gave her many a pang to fold away the "kirk clothes" of her father and brothers and lock them from sight in the big "kist" that was the family wardrobe. For clothing has a woeful individuality, when we put it away forever; and the shoes of the dead men had a personality that almost terrified her. How pitiful, how forsaken, how almost sentient they looked! Blind with tears, she hid them from sight, and then turned, as the Bereaved must ever turn, back to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... to play, and oft begun in wanton mischief ends in woeful madness. In the first flush of shame and rage Mrs. Potiphar was eager to punish the slave's presumption, even though herself o'erwhelmed in his ruin; but hate, though fierce, is a fickle flame in the female heart, and seldom survives a single flood of tears. Already Joseph's ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and thirst, With woeful mien, away he burst, Swift to the hermit's breast he flew, And weeping thus began to sue: "No sire have I, no mother dear, No kith or kin my heart to cheer: As justice bids, O Hermit, deign To save me from the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... present disapproved, through the blessed acts and dispensations of grace, not only to become visible saints, but also saved for ever. Who doubts but that he who now by examining himself, concerning faith, doth find himself, though under profession, graceless, may after that, he seeing his woeful state, not only cry to God for mercy, but find grace, and obtain mercy to help in time of need? though it is true, that for the most part the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with us before we know it; but let us imagine that its consummation has come suddenly and dramatically, acknowledged and hailed by all right- minded people; and what shall we do then, lest we begin once more to heap up fresh corruption for the woeful labour of ages once again? I say, as we turn away from the flagstaff where the new banner has been just run up; as we depart, our ears yet ringing with the blare of the heralds' trumpets that have proclaimed the new order of things, ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... for the signs of death at every door,—the sexton, the hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives,—all that makes up the woeful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its bell, which had always tolled till now, when this figure appeared in the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to its home that afternoon, nor ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and laid it in the hand of Lucius; and I left them there upon the peak, and turned no more. And no more woeful spirit was in the land of heaven that day than mine as I stumbled wearily down the slope, and found the valley. And then, for I did not know the way to descend, I commended myself to God; ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his time were altogether to his taste, and that no other age would have suited him half so well. [11] Tibullus is a melancholy effeminate spirit. Horace exactly hits him when he bids him "chant no more woeful elegies," [12] because a young and perjured rival has been preferred to him. He seems to have had no ambition and no energy, but his position obliged him to see some military service, and we find that he went on no less than three expeditions ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Now was my soul greatly pinched between these two considerations, "Live I must not, die I dare not." Now I sunk and fell in my spirit, and was giving up all for lost; but as I was walking up and down in my house, as a man in a most woeful state, that word of God took hold of my heart, Ye are "justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ" (Rom 3:24). But O! what a turn it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... gone, and I need no longer mind what color my face is, nor what shape of woeful jealousy my ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Never has the theater been more popular. Many sports, like bear-baiting and bull-baiting, were cruel. Hunting was also much relished, though humane men like Luther and More protested against the "silly and woeful beastes' slaughter and murder." Tennis was so popular that there were 250 courts in Paris alone. The game was different from the modern in that the courts were 121 feet long, instead of 78 feet, and the wooden balls and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... frightened the tinker that he flung down the pudding and ran away. The pudding being broke to pieces by the fall, Tom crept out covered over with the batter, and with difficulty walked home. His mother, who was very sorry to see her darling in such a woeful state, put him into a tea-cup, and soon washed off the batter; after which she kissed him, and laid him ...
— The History of Tom Thumb, and Others • Anonymous
... hopelessly wet days that are apt to happen in a land of lakes and hills. Banks of mist obscured the fells; the garden walks were turned to running rivers, the bushes dripped dismally, and cascades poured from the gutters. The school, which had been promised a country tramp, looked out of the windows with woeful disappointment. The seniors consoled themselves by holding a committee meeting, from which all but their elect selves were rigidly excluded. The juniors took possession of the play-room, and relieved their spirits ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... invited them to accompany me in a visit to the Wye, including Piercefield and Tintern Abbey; objects new to us all. It so happened the day we were to set off was that immediately following the woeful disappointment! but here all was punctuality. It was calculated that the proposed objects might be accomplished in two days, so as not to interfere with the Friday evening's lecture, which Mr. Southey had now wisely determined ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... alleviation, and promised me heaps of gold if I would keep quiet, and not increase the mischief by rubbing and scratching. I controlled myself, while, according to the prevailing prejudice, they kept me as warm as possible, and thus only rendered my suffering more acute. At last, after a woeful time, there fell, as it were, a mask from my face. The blotches had left no visible mark upon the skin, but the features were plainly altered. I myself was satisfied merely with seeing the light of day again, and gradually putting off my spotted skin; but others were pitiless enough to remind ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... was not, however, much to look at, with his coarse frieze coat with its cape and scalloped edge, his old corduroy trousers and great brogues, and his stout stick made fast to his wrist by a thong of leather: and he would have been a woeful shock to the gleeman MacConglinne, could that friend of kings have beheld him in prophetic vision from the pillar stone at Cork. And yet though the short cloak and the leather wallet were no more, he was a true gleeman, being alike poet, jester, and newsman of the people. In ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... soul was a pack of poor relations. Particularly a brother-in-law—a bilious, cadaverous fellow, whom I saw once, and once was enough. He had been an itinerant preacher farther East, and he lived in a woeful little cottage along one of Jehiel's horse-car routes. His mournful-eyed wife was always asking help. He too had "gone into real-estate," and unsuccessfully. He was the dull reverse of that victorious obverse upon which Johnny McComas was beginning ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... face and became haggard and woeful, and she cried out: O if I could but weep, as ye children of Adam! O my grief and sorrow! Child, child! then will betide that falling into her hands which I spake of e'en now; and then shall this wretch, ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... morning Tommy's face presented a very woeful appearance. His cheek and lips were swelled and black, and the loss of his two front teeth made ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... primitive forms of animal life had spread from the depths of the sea along the shallow shores, and were there learning to extract from the air a nourishment similar to that which they obtained from the water. But by a woeful chance, one of your primitive animals—a deaf, blind, sexless clot of jelly—then had its body pierced by a drop of sea-water thicker than usual, and it found that this way of feeding was quicker than simple respiration. Such was the origin of the first digestive tube, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... which we write Scotland had for many years been in a woeful plight—with tyranny draining her life-blood, cupidity grasping her wealth, hypocrisy and bigotry misconstruing her motives and falsifying her character. Charles the Second filled the throne. Unprincipled men, alike in Church and State, made use of their position and power to gain ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... were struggling in vain with the fire in the Summer Parlour, which flared up occasionally with a woeful gleam, and then expired, and while Leucha felt crosser and crosser each moment, and the night fell over the land, in the ghost's hut Margaret Drummond was being dressed up to impersonate the hapless youth who had suffered death by drowning on the night ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... than to a court of justice; and that the post he was in obliged him to express his surprise at such conduct. The Prince replied that the First President had no reason to wonder at his great precautions, since he (the Prince) knew by recent woeful experience what it was to live in a prison; and that it was notorious that the Cardinal ruled now in the Cabinet more absolutely than ever he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... three young men again wished to rush yonder, whither they knew not; but they felt that they must throw down all obstacles and conquer. Their powerlessness rent their hearts, they were both so frantic and so woeful that their grandmother strove to calm them. "Father's own wish was to die," said she, "and he is resolved ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... its size, Belgium was in a woeful state of military unpreparedness for war, because it was supposed to be exempt from conflict through an agreement of the great powers. All the great nations of Europe had decided that it was safer and ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... ne'er-do-weel son shoot a gentleman Cameron! I am third cousin to the Camerons mysel'—my blood warms to them. And if you want to write about deserters, I am sure there were deserters enough on the top of Arthur's Seat, when the MacRaas broke out, and on that woeful ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... that there is a rumor spread abroad among us of the Spaniards Arrival, and are sensible by woeful experience how such and such (naming them) and Hayti (so they term Hispaniola in their own language) with their Inhabitants have been treated by them, that they design to visit us with equal intentions of committing ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... by seeing the horrible and profane doings of the town of Mansoul, might repent, though entered into a covenant of redeeming them, of pursuing that covenant of their redemption; for he knew that Shaddai was holy, and that his Son Emmanuel was holy; yea, he knew it by woeful experience; for, for his iniquity and sin was Diabolus cast from the highest orbs. Wherefore what more rational than for him to conclude, that thus for sin it might fare with Mansoul. But fearing also lest this knot should break, he bethinks ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... strength and sympathy, as did our Lord in the case of these disciples. Until now, Peter had been a valiant, not to say, reckless follower of Jesus; while all, John especially, had been well beloved and tenderly watched over by Him. And yet this woeful sleep deadens them to it all. Even for one short hour they ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... Louise of the books she had read on ship-building, and she asked if she might borrow them. Polly made a woeful face at this. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... in the country, an actress spoke very low in her communication with her lover. The actor, whose benefit it happened to be, exclaimed with a face of woeful humor, "My dear, you may speak out, there is nobody to ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... white marble. She spoke of these with animation, and heard my admiring comments with a smile of pleasure: that soon, however, vanished, and was followed by a melancholy sigh; as if in consideration of the insufficiency of all such baubles to the happiness of the human heart, and their woeful inability to supply ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... said breathlessly, "you don't see. You don't understand. Fay loves you." He looked earnestly at Wentworth as if the latter were acting in some woeful ignorance, which one word would set right. He seemed entirely oblivious of Wentworth's insulting ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... Brahmana and his wife. Then Kunti quickly entered the inner apartments of that illustrious Brahmana, like unto a cow running towards her tethered calf. She beheld the Brahmana with his wife, son and daughter, sitting with a woeful face, and she heard the Brahmana say, 'Oh, fie on this earthly life which is hollow as the reed and so fruitless after all which is based on sorrow and hath no freedom, and which hath misery for its lot! Life is sorrow and disease; life is truly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... best of the woeful change. The deep, quiet love she had given to her son she transferred to Felicita, who, she well knew, had been his idol. She believed that the sorrows of these last few months had not sprung out of the ground, but had for some reason come down from God, the God of her fathers, in ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, They always leave a scar behind. He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in what degree it lies; And, as he was dispos'd, could prove it, 175 Below the moon, or else above it. What Adam dreamt of, when his bride Came ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... a leap, whether joyful or woeful; but she answered indignantly, "How can you say such a thing to me, Mrs. Lander. I'm not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of discouragement was brought by Ingham, who returned from Frederica on April 10th, with a message from Charles Wesley begging his brother to come to his relief. He told a woeful story of persecution by the settlers, and injustice from Oglethorpe to Charles Wesley, all undeserved, as Oglethorpe freely admitted when he threw off the weight of suspicion laid upon his mind by malicious slanderers, and sought an interview with his young secretary, in which much was ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... up for a moment with Joe Henderson. I hope the draft gets hold of that bird. They were going to have tea at the Biltmore when they got back to the city. I almost bit the end off of a sentry's bayonet when I heard this woeful piece of news. Liberty looks ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... back her wet, ruffled, grey hair from her heated, tear-stained, woeful face, and listened with such earnest eyes, trying to form some idea of the "Father's house," where her boy had gone ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... incoherent that he could only stand there at a loss, stand with his sense of having upset her, though of having done it by the truth. He had to listen to her in a silence that he made no immediate effort to attenuate, feeling her doubly woeful amid all her dim diffused elegance; consenting to it as he had consented to the rest, and even conscious of some vague inward irony in the presence of such a fine free range of bliss and bale. He couldn't say it was NOT no matter; for he was serving her to the end, he now knew, anyway—quite ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... not seek; and the dreams of Saladin, of whose kin I am, to interweave my life with the bloody policies of Syria and the unending war between Cross and Crescent, that are, both of them, my heritage." Then, with a woeful gesture, ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... removed. The people are sober, and are rapidly advancing to knowledge, their political exertions and dignity have broken away much of the prejudices against them, and a man passing through any part of Ireland expects to find woeful poverty and strong discontent, but he does not fear the abduction of his wife, or attempts to assassinate him on every lonely road. The coaches, cars, and roads, too, have become excellent, and the hotels are sufficient for any reasonable traveller. One very marked discouragement to ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... next two months many things happened. It had early transpired that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph Hill. Whosoever was sheltering her—if she was still alive—had been persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts to find trace ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the magistrate's messenger, and cannot say how the woeful aspect, the tears and supplications for mercy of the poor wretch, moved my heart. He swore that Castelbajac had given him the notes, but he added that he knew where they came from originally, and would tell me if ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wholly uttered, and I,—I who once deemed human intelligence and reason all-supreme, all-clear, all-absolute, am now compelled to use that reason reasonlessly, and to work with that intelligence in helpless ignorance as to what end my mental toil shall serve! Woeful and strange it is!— yet true; . . I am as a broken straw in a whirlwind,—or the pale ghost of my own identity groping for things forgotten in a land of shadows; . . I know not whence I came, nor whither I go! Nay, do not fear me,—I am not mad: I am conscious ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... young babies who have been taken out of doors without proper protection to the ears; or, it may be associated with a cold in the head, which is not detected until the mischief has already been done, while the resulting running ear tells the tale of woeful suffering. Earache must always be thought of as a possible cause when the cry of pain accompanies a cold in the head, and if medical aid is secured early, the abscess may be aborted and the deafness of later years entirely avoided. There is only one ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... to myself again. I could feel my heart beating; I could hear the woeful moaning of the wind in the wood; I could leap up in bed, and give the alarm before she escaped from the house. "Murder! Wake ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Considering the woeful life that Franz Hals led, it is amazing to think that he of all artists is the best painter of good humour. He puts a smile on the face of nearly every one of his "leading characters," whether it be a modest young girl, a hideous old woman, a strolling ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... man at the window was as if some woeful spirit of the melancholy scene were calling him. With head bowed, and face turned a little to one side, he listened intently as one listens to voices that are muffled and indistinct. He pressed his face close to the glass, and with straining eyes tried to see more clearly the ghostly trees, the ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Regular, is dead! Honor to the man who slew him!" So the Bergen farmers said as they crowded round to view him; For the wretch that lay there slain had with wickedness unbending To their roofs brought fiery rain, to their kinsfolk woeful ending. Not a mother but had prest, in a sudden pang of fearing, Sobbing darlings to her breast when his name had smote her hearing; Not a wife that did not feel terror when the words were uttered; Not a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... woeful figure! In one hand she carried an empty shoe box. And her face was streaked with good rich Iowa mud. Her clothes were plastered with it. One shoe was caked from the sole to the very top button, and a great gash in her stocking revealed a generous ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... we found a supplementary wing, or rather tail of rooms, loosely knocked together, to proceed from the back, forming a sort of skilling to the main building. These rooms led direct into one another, and, consisting of little more than timber and plaster, were in a woeful state of dilapidation. Everywhere the laths grinned through torn gaps in the ceilings and walls; everywhere the latter were blotched and mildewed with damp, and the floor-boards rotting in their tracks. Fallen mortar, rusty tins, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... O a woeful shout the waves are making on the strand; they that took hold of comely Cael, a pity it is ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... become a guide in the perilous adventure of crossing this mountain. All recoiled and fled from the adventure. It was attempted without a guide—in the dead of winter—accomplished in forty days—the men and surviving horses—a woeful procession, crawling along one by one; skeleton men leading skeleton horses—and arriving at Sutter's Settlement in the beautiful valley of the Sacramento; and where a genial warmth, and budding flowers, and trees in foliage, and grassy ground, and flowing streams, and comfortable food, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... up to the feet of the Great Mountains, and does what it may to climb them whereso the great wall or its buttresses are anywise broken down toward our country; but the end of it lieth along our road, as I said, and we do but skirt it. A woeful wood it is, and save for the hunting of the beasts, which be there in great plenty, with wolves and bears, yea, and lions to boot, which come down from the mountains, there is no gain in it. No gain, though forsooth they say that some have found ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... a slight contempt expressed for such woeful ignorance. "They are long pieces of wood with places for your feet up from the ground. It's just as if you had wooden legs, only they make you tall so that you feel ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... 'at lang for parks an' halls, An' letters to ther name; But happiness despises walls, It's nooan a child o' fame. A robe may lap a woeful chap, Whose heart wi grief may bleed, Wol rags may rest on joyful breast, Soa ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... torment to Doctor Apollo; three of whose favourite servants—that is to say, Macbeth, his butcher; Mrs. Haller, his cook; and George Barnwell, his book-keeper—I waylaid in one of my fits of insanity, and mauled after a very frightful fashion. In this woeful crisis, I accidentally heard of your invaluable New Patent Hissing Pit, which cures every disorder incident to Grub Street. I send you inclosed a more detailed specimen of my case: if you could mould it into the shape of an address, to be said or sung on the first night of your ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... first is mine already: 'Twas easy work to gain a covetous mind, Whom rage to lose his prisoners had prepared: Now caught himself, He would seduce another. I must help him: For churchmen, though they itch to govern all, Are silly, woeful, aukward politicians: They make lame mischief, though they mean it well: Their interest is not finely drawn, and hid, But seams are coarsely ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... affords a protection to the vessels. The more oblique the incision happens to be, the greater probability is there that the wound is comparatively superficial, owing to the circumstance of the instrument having encountered one or more parts of the hyo-laryngeal range; but woeful chance sometimes directs the weapon horizontally through that membranous interval between the thyroid and hyoid pieces, in which case, as also in that where the laryngeal pieces persist permanently cartilaginous, the resistance to the cutting instrument ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... isn't the simple operation it sounds, for your land, in the first place, has to be staked off and marked with guidons, since you must know your measurements and have your headlands uniform and your furrows straight or there'll be a woeful mix-up before you come to the end of your job. The great trouble is that a tractor can't turn in its own length, as a team of horses can. Hence this deploying space must be wasted, or plowed later with horses, and your headlands themselves must be wide enough for the turning ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... continued: "We were in sad and woeful want after the war. Once I asked my father why he let us go so hungry and ragged, and he answered: 'How can we help it? Why, even the white folks don't have enough ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... was that this woman suggested to him, or who it was that she had been associated with in that dim and shadowy past which but lately he had been calling up. Her voice, too—what was it that it suggested? That voice, in spite of its constraint, was woeful and sad beyond all description. It was the voice of suffering and sorrow too deep for tears—that changeless monotone which makes one think that the words which are spoken ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... what sequester'd clime Does darkness ever hold her ebon reign? Where woeful dirges measure out the time, And endless ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... amused at the prologue, and waited on the tale. It soon came. Oliphant, it appeared, was the purse-bearer of the household, and woeful straits that poor purse-bearer must have been often put to. I questioned him as to his master's revenues, but could get no clear answer. There were payments due next month in Florence which would solve the difficulties for the winter, but in the meantime expenditure had beaten ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... have shunned him. He fled through the green park, out on the high-road, away through the deep woods—he knew not whither never looking back; crying out at times, with a hollow, awful voice that he had been all night by her grave; falling at times on his face with wild, woeful weeping, praying the heavens to fall upon him and hide him forever ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... sit together, and play such woeful tunes on our pipes, that the very sheep are moved ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... "And what luck! I always said that Peter would never marry, because he would insist on taking women seriously, and because at heart he was afraid of them to a woeful degree, and showed it in such a way, as simply to make women think he didn't like them individually. But Miss Luck wouldn't allow that. Oh, no! Miss Luck isn't content even that Peter shall take his chance of getting a wife, with ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... their estimation of the end as a blessed release. But peace had not come with it. She was not impervious to remorse, regret, humiliation, for her course. The sight of Bayne, the sound of his voice, had poignantly revived the past, and if she had suffered woeful straits from wanton cruelty, she could not deny to herself that she had been consciously, carelessly, and causelessly cruel. In withdrawing herself to the library she had thwarted certain feints of Mrs. Briscoe's designed to throw them together ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... worse than their leader, for holes were worn in the knees of their trousers, while sharp points of rock in the roof and sides of the tunnel had made rags of every inch of their once brilliant uniforms. A more tattered and woeful army never came out of a battle, than these harmless victims of the rocky passage. But it had seemed their only means of escape from the cruel Nome King; so they had crawled ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... pointed. There, in the water and mud, rested the racing car belonging to Pete Barnaby. And standing in the mud up to his knees was the sporty man himself, looking the picture of woeful despair. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... letter first, walking slowly and smiling. If he were only here to share this wide beauty! Then she read her sister's, which was full of woeful exclamations and bad news. The sick man was slowly dying, and they could not leave him. Meanwhile she was desolated by thinking of her little sister. Of course she was safe, for Giacomo and Assunta were more trustworthy than the Italian government, but it must be ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... which I had, relative to the conditions necessary for the validity of a sacrament. The bishop of Hippo is indeed right in what he said. A sacrament depends on the form; its virtue is in its form; its vice is in its form. Listen, confessors and pontiffs, to my woeful story. I was a priest in Rome under the rule of the Emperor Gordianus. Without desiring to recommend myself to you for any special merit, I may say that I exercised my priesthood with piety and zeal. For forty years I served ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the suppliant, but to-day he found no kind word for her, and the glance he cast down at her was anything rather than gracious. How had he ever been able to find amusement even in this woeful old body? Alas! poor Doris was quite a different creature in her little house, among her flowers, dogs and birds to what she seemed here in the spacious hall of a magnificent palace. This wide and gorgeous frame but ill-suited so modest a figure. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she answered; "the expression of my grief I know is painful to thee, but a dismal foreboding obtrudes itself upon my mind, which I strive in vain to banish. Alas! it is fraught with a most fearful, but indefinite anticipation; a woeful presage that ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... her knees, she prayed for strength to bear the woeful burden, for courage to endure it steadfastly, for resignation to believe ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... as woeful a want of statesmanship in the treatment of his Protestant subjects as in the prosecution of disastrous wars. The Huguenots, deprived of their former military and political power, had turned to manufacture, trade, and banking; "as rich as a Huguenot" had become a proverb ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... first grey dawning a new day did begin, King Siggeir bade his bondsmen to dight an earthen mound Anigh to the house of the Goth-kings amid the fruit-grown ground: And that house of death was twofold, for 'twas sundered by a stone Into two woeful chambers: alone and not alone Those vanquished thralls of battle therein should bide their hour, That each might hear the tidings of the other's baleful bower, Yet have no might to help him. So now the twain they brought And weary-dull was Sinfiotli, with eyes that looked at nought. ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... will join with thee, To the most woeful end e'er mother kneel'd: If thou dishonour thus thy husband's bed, Be thy life short as are the ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... to the house as often as usual; but in his countenance she could perceive a sort of anger and concern which perfectly frightened her. But as they did not speak to her, she could not bring herself to ask the cause of this woeful change, for fear of hearing something too ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... sayeth, "Krishna, Krishna, come!" Lovingly she prayeth, "Fair moon, light him home." Yet if Hari helps not, Moonlight cannot aid; Ah! the woeful Radha! Ah! the ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... poem, filled with his last thoughts—his exalted dreams that had faded, his patriotic sentiments that were bloody dust and ashes, his love for the woman he was allowed to marry a few hours before he was shot, his woeful love for his troop of devoted friends, who would have died for him and with him if the sacrifice then and there had not been hopeless—it will be discovered that he was a true poet, and we give one of his stories that was hostile ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... has not been ascertained, but it would seem that he survived her. Jonathan having married a second wife remained in Concord. For two years the old man lived with his eldest son, seeing the Nashaway Valley blooming with the fruits of civilized labor; seeing new families filling the woeful gaps made in the old by Philip's warriors; seeing children and grandchildren grasping the implements that had fallen from the nerveless hold of the earliest bread-winners, with hopeful and pertinacious purpose to extend the paternal domain; seeing too, may we not ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... weird, woeful spectacle, and made me long more than ever for the pure, fresh breezes of the lonely headland. But Tim looked round as I entered, and his face, till now so black and sullen, lit up as he saw me, and he beckoned ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... hulks, and can well imagine that my companions must have been very much aware of it. My brother, whose nature was much happier than mine, who dreamed much less and observed much more, was the life of these woeful excursions. Without him I don't think that my father could have endured them. At any rate, he never did. I amazed, irritated, and confounded him at most times, but in nothing more than my apathy to what enchanted him.[1] The birds, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... of this world. On the 14th of November, 1895, there were still thousands of people outside Alderman Fox's house, but their grief and despair were pitiable to witness. The women sobbed, the men cursed, and all this, mingled with the woeful complaints of the sick, created an extraordinary atmosphere in the ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... ruth on his woeful mood * And o'erwept him as still by his couch he[FN149] stood: And garred him drink of his lip-dews and wine[FN150] * Ere he died and this ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... any firm hand upon the helm, and an inclination to look longingly to the son of her ancient Kings, as the one above all others given by God to govern her. But she had made the terrible mistake of first driving him away into lands where he found little morality and less religion, and it was to her woeful hurt that ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... A woeful scar across his cheek reddened against the white skin. A flash of the old Blister appeared in the ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... spans; and, now and then, mule teams bringing happy negroes, ready to squander all on the first Georgia watermelons and cider. Every vehicle contained heaping baskets of good things to eat (the previous night had been a woeful Bartholomew for Carlow chickens) and underneath, where the dogs paced faithfully, swung buckets and fodder for the horses, while colts innumerable trotted dose to the maternal flanks, viewing the world with their big, new eyes in ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... shot through the body, who raised a cry of bitter lamentation when came this lull. Perhaps he had been calling out during the fighting also, but at that time no one had heard him. But now the men turned at the woeful complaints of him ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... no Hall-Sun sitting under our Roof at home to tell true tales concerning the Kindred every day. Yet forsooth from time to time is a word said in our Folk-hall for good or for evil; and who can choose but hearken thereto? And yestereve was a woeful word spoken, and that by a ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... on me to know whether John had determined what to do. Said I thought he meant to fight the battle. He looked most woeful, and said, "As sure as I stand here, he will not be the member ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... all then, ye were not destined to leave me in your heedlessness and to wander far; but fate has turned you back. Poor wretch that I am! What a yearning for Hellas from some woeful madness seized you at the behest of your father Phrixus. Bitter sorrows for my heart did he ordain when dying. And why should ye go to the city of Orchomenus, whoever this Orchomenus is, for the ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... of morbid and woeful countenance, was one who looked across a world glorious with spring sunshine, as if he saw nothing but the earwigs, and black-beetles, and creepy, crawly things of existence, and he promised readily to pray also: and perhaps ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... [110] also, in a sort of boundless sympathy. Unoccupied, as he might seem, with great matters, he is in immediate contact with what is real, especially in its caressing littleness, that littleness in which there is much of the whole woeful heart of things, and meets it more than half-way with a perfect understanding of it. What sudden, unexpected touches of pathos in him!—bearing witness how the sorrow of humanity, the Weltschmerz, the constant aching of its wounds, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... was at the end of a long lane, and did not look as if it could produce the makings of a meal. The poorest providers and preparers of foodstuffs are their producers. Who has not eaten salt pork on a cattle ranch and longed for cream on a dairy farm? What city boarder has not discovered the woeful lack of connection between the cackling of hens and the certitude of fresh eggs on the table at the next meal? What muncher of Maine doughnuts in a Boston restaurant has not thought of the "sinkers" offered to him when he was on his ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... unexpectedly attacked by a new enemy, was obliged to yield to fortune, and not knowing the precise extent of his danger, he not only suffered the sow to escape, but joined his vociferations to the general scream. This alarmed Mr Barlow, who, coming up to the place, found his pupil in the most woeful plight, daubed from head to foot, with his face and hands as black as those of any chimney-sweeper. He inquired what was the matter; and Tommy, as soon as he had recovered breath enough to speak, answered in this manner: "Sir, all this ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... headlong over. Unluckily in one of these somersaults a man was injured. Flung ahead into the snow by the first lurch, the sledge and wine-cask crossed him like a garden-roller. Had his bed not been of snow, he must have been crushed to death; and as it was, he presented a woeful appearance when ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... bending beneath their weight of golden fruit, and the crops whose gleanings you so recklessly threw aside, were fully ripe. The star will fade now, gradually receding and descending, and soon will be incapable of piercing the woeful darkness wherein your destiny ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... little brown spaniel, very old, who seemed only to have held on to life just for her return, died. She accused herself terribly for having left it so long when it was failing. Thinking of all the days Lass had been watching for her to come home—as Betty, with that love of woeful recital so dear to simple hearts, took good care to make plain—she felt as if she had been cruel. For events such as these, Gyp was both too tender-hearted and too hard on herself. She was quite ill for several days. The moment she was better, Winton, in dismay, whisked her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gasping, but got himself up by a supreme effort, came to me, and opening wide his eyes, fixed upon me a glance that called for help with intense supplication. He seemed to say to me, "You are a man; do save me." Then he staggered, his eyes already glazed, and fell to the ground, uttering so woeful, so despairing, so anguished a cry that it filled me with mute horror. He was buried at the foot of the garden, under a white rosebush that still marks ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... Don Pedro, on his return, with added cordiality, it was nothing in his dark, eager countenance that set my heart beating—but rather the glimpse I had caught of a bitten lip, a knotted brow, and a pair of woeful gray ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... Colonel Newcome's breakfast-table, and he smothered the exclamation of wonder which was rising to his lips, not choosing to provoke the questions of Clive, who sate opposite to him. Clive's father was in a woeful perplexity all that forenoon. "Tuesday night, twelve o'clock," thought he. "Why, Barnes must have gone to his grandmother from my dinner-table; and he told me she was out of town, and said so again just now when we met in the City." (The Colonel was riding ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... such a woeful change In the health of the hardiest; It is wonderful odd—it is "passing strange"— As over the country you travel and range, To behold such a sudden, lamentable change All over ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... contrariwise start beating your wife! But that vixen Feng brags away the whole day long, as if she were a human being as valiant as any tyrant, and yet yesterday she got into such a funk that she presented a woeful sight! Had it not been for me, you would have done her bodily harm; and what ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Christians, but most orthodox Catholics. The burning of heretics was a public amusement, and the court ladies sat out the play. On the queen-mother and on her miserable son lay all the blood of the St. Bartholomew. The country was torn asunder; everywhere was battle, murder, pillage, and such woeful partings as Mr. Millais has represented in his incomparable picture. To the solitary humourous essayist this state of things was hateful. He was a good Catholic in his easy way; he attended divine service regularly; he crossed himself when he yawned. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... misadventure, Brother Ambrose had left the book in Lorenzo's cell, the pages doubled down at the woeful sixteenth print. Ah, there had been a passage! Simply glancing at it, you groveled hand ...
— G-r-r-r...! • Roger Arcot
... had mysteriously imparted to his faculties left them suddenly. His brain grew confused—his heart beat wildly—his ears opened for the first time since the appearance of the woman to a sense of the woeful ceaseless moaning of the wind among the trees. With the dreadful conviction of the reality of what he had seen still strong within him, he leaped out of bed, and screaming "Murder! Wake up, there! wake up!" dashed headlong through ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... own, like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance in quest of melancholy adventures. But I know not how it is, but I am never so perfectly conscious of the existence of a soul within me, as when I ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... fulsome; rotten, rotten at the core. vile, base, villainous; mean &c. (paltry) 643; injured &c. deteriorated &c. 659; unsatisfactory, exceptionable, indifferent; below par &c. (imperfect) 651; illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c. 945; shocking; reprehensible &c. (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c. (malevolent) 907. unadvisable &c. (inexpedient) 647; unprofitable ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... proud Humber's concubine. You happy sprites, that in the concave sky With pleasant joy enjoy your sweetest love, Shed forth those tears with me, which then you shed, When first you would your ladies to your wills. Those tears are fittest for my woeful case, Since Locrine shuns my nothing pleasant face. Blush heavens, blush sun, and hide thy shining beams; Shadow thy radiant locks in gloomy clouds; Deny thy cheerful light unto the world, Where nothing reigns but falsehood and deceit. What said I? falsehood? Aye, that filthy crime, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... frank opinion, he turned all his attention to Dainty, and by his skill succeeded after some time in restoring her to consciousness again, though it was indeed a pale, woeful face that looked up at the anxious group around ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... that some rumour had reached his ears? Could it be that he had come to set her free? It seemed scarce possible, and yet what besides could have brought him hither? And at least with help so near she could surely make her woeful case known ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hell, there whence envy first sent her forth. Wherefore I think and deem it for thy best that thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, and will lead thee hence through the eternal place where thou shalt hear the despairing shrieks, shalt see the ancient spirits woeful who each proclaim the second death. And then thou shalt see those who are contented in the fire, because they hope to come, whenever it may be, to the blessed folk; to whom if thou wilt thereafter ascend, them shall be a soul more worthy than I for that. With her ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... King, fresh tears gathering in his eyes. "Even my jokes are miserable. I'm wretched, woeful, afflicted, distressed and dismal as an individual can be. Are ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... sword. One night an English baron took the Cardinal Bertrand, who with his comrade Peter still accompanied Edward's host, to the summit of a high tower, whence they could witness the flaming homesteads and villages of the fertile and populous district. In that woeful spectacle the churchman saw the futility of his last two years of constant labour, and fell in a swoon to the ground. But the confederates could do little more than devastate the open country. Cambrai itself was besieged to no purpose, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... me, "Do you not think that God might have justly passed you by, and left you without his grace or help at all?" I answered, No; I think he could not have done any such thing. That I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin conceived, I allow; its woeful effects I feel to this day. But then that was not my fault. I could not help it; and certain I am, that God never demands the taking up of that which he never laid down, or reaping where he has not sown. That ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... himself had always been a free spender. His books, his pictures, his garden, his mania for curiosities, had run away with thousands of pounds, and now, when he surreptitiously tried to convert these things into cash again there was a woeful falling off in their value. He knew nothing of the art of driving a bargain; and, where others would have made a profit with the same opportunities, he invariably lost money. He had bought badly to begin ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... look, half woeful, was seen on his face as he turned His eyes upon each of his children, like one who but faintly discerned His old self in an old mirror. Then gathering sense in his fist, He sounded it hard on his knee-cap. 'Your hand, Tom, the French fellow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'Whence, O Palinurus, this fierce longing of thine? Shalt thou without burial behold the Stygian waters and the awful river of the Furies? Cease to hope prayers may bend the decrees of heaven. But take my words to thy memory, for comfort in thy woeful case: far and wide shall the bordering cities be driven by celestial portents to appease thy dust; they shall rear a tomb, and pay the tomb a yearly offering, and for evermore shall the place keep Palinurus' name.' The words soothed away his distress, and for a while ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... these woeful lines did read, He with a sigh did say indeed, "If hanging be my destiny, My parents shall not see ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to the light, show wan and woeful; withal, lovely as ever; piquant in their pale beauty, like those of some rebellious nun hating the hood, discontented with ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid |
