"Rueful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little over their losses after Prince Rupert's rueful visit, but there was one among them who knew how to "raise the wind," for we find Onions, the bellows-maker, hard at work in 1650; and his descendants keep at the same ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... hour, 120 Let them dance, fairy like, round Ossian's tomb; Let them forge lies and histories for Hume; Let them with Home, the very prince of verse, Make something like a tragedy in Erse; Under dark Allegory's flimsy veil, Let them, with Ogilvie,[335] spin out a tale Of rueful length; let them plain things obscure, Debase what's truly rich, and what is poor Make poorer still by jargon most uncouth; With every pert, prim prettiness of youth, 130 Born of false taste, with Fancy (like a child Not ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... He threw a rueful thought to Jack Tosswill. Miss Pendarth had been right, after all. That sort of experience might well embitter the whole of the early life of such a priggish, self-centred youth; and while he was chewing the cud of these painful, troubling thoughts there came ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... from the stores supplied by the Admiralty for that purpose, but they received them with an indifference almost amounting to apathy. They very closely examined the heroic Miago, who submitted to be handled by these much-dreaded Northern men with a very rueful countenance, and afterwards construed the way in which one of them had gently stroked his beard, into an attempt to take him by the throat and strangle him! an injury and indignity which, when safe on board, he resented by repeated threats, uttered in a sort of wild chant, of spearing ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... lot," she said, looking with a rueful countenance at the sum total. "Yes, I even fear the sealskin must go. I don't want to part with it. Dad gave it me just ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... heard debates Of Princes', Kings', and Nations' fates, With many rueful, bloody stories Of Tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories: From liberty how angels fell, That now are galley-slaves in hell; How Nimrod first the trade began Of binding Slavery's chains on Man; How fell Semiramis—God damn her! Did first, with sacrilegious hammer, (All ills till then were trivial ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... April, the travellers had the customary visit to their yard of a long line of women, who came every morning with rueful countenances and streaming eyes to lament the approaching death of the old widow. They wept, they beat their breast and tore their hair; they moaned, and exhibited all manner of violent affliction at the expected deprivation. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... frightened at the unexpected brilliancy of his evil success, the Captain yet kept a rueful and furtive ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... have thought of questioning a statement made by "Captain Kinzer," but the rueful expression deepened on his face, the basket of eels dropped heavily on the grass, the tough, black fingers twisted nervously together for a moment, and then he sat mournfully down ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... Union and Confederate, he was often in liquor; liquor was always in him. This "knight of the rueful countenance," of the sad heart, the mourning voice, the disabled right arm, and the weakness for apple-jack!—his only hope was to have an exchange of prisoners; but Lincoln and Stanton and Grant would not consent to that. The last I heard of him was when a ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... quicksilver motion; and brings his child to foolish, remediless catastrophe, in fancying his father's work as good, and strong, and fit to bear sunlight, as if it had been God's work. So, again, they represent the foresight and kindly zeal of men by a most rueful figure of one chained down to a rock by the brute force and bias and methodical hammer-stroke of the merely practical Arts, and by the merciless Necessities or Fates of present time; and so having his very heart ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... impressive text as we left the tomb; left the old grand seignior in his little six feet of earth—six feet out of 175,000 acres! But, after all, it was a rueful text; not one for morning sunshine and blue sky, for hearts that yet beat strong, that yet gloried in a boundless estate—all the bright world ours. And the birds were holding carnival over by the stone basin under the ram's head on the wall; ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... growing danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and unrestrained by reputation, might venture upon some desperate act. The strained relations between the party of Order and the President had taken on a threatening aspect, when an unforeseen event threw him back, rueful into its arms. We mean the supplementary elections of March, 1850. These elections took place to fill the vacancies created in the National Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment and exile. Paris elected only Social-Democratic candidates; it even united the largest vote upon one of the insurgents ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... cleaned, the stove had been cleaned, and everything the stove excepted, was wet, and shining with soft soap and sand: the smell of which dry-saltery impregnated the air. In the midst of the dreary scene, the Captain, cast away upon his island, looked round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance, and seemed waiting for some friendly bark to come that way, and take ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... somewhat, along the neck and left cheek, and a bit stiff of shoulder, was rueful but very eager. Frank's gutted gear was out of the blastoff drum, and spread around the shop. Most of it was already fixed. Ramos ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... are all against you, Epicurus, the name of pleasure is an affront to them: they know no other kind of it than that which has flowered and seeded, and of which the withered stems have indeed a rueful look. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... drawn a twenty thousand pound prize! and I had the happiness (added the little man, with a rueful expression of countenance) of communicating to my friend his good luck, as the letter of advice on the subject came, in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... his window beat, And wishes to himself he were a lord, That he might lie a-bed.— He rubs his eyes, and stretches out his arms; Heigh ho! heigh ho! he drawls with gaping mouth, Then most unwillingly creeps out of bed, And without looking-glass puts on his clothes. With rueful face he blows the smother'd fire, And lights his candle at the red'ning coal; First sees that all be right amongst his cattle, Then hies him to the barn with heavy tread, Printing his footsteps on the new fall'n snow. From out the heap of corn he pulls his sheaves, Dislodging the ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... Friday, Saturday, and Monday, trotting up and down between Symford and Minehead; and the Shuttleworth servants and tenants, not being more blind than other people, saw very well that their Augustus had lost his heart to the lady from nowhere. As for Lady Shuttleworth, she only smiled a rueful smile and stroked her poor Tussie's hair in silence when, having murmured something about the horses being tired, he reproved her by telling her that it was everybody's duty to do what they could for ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Then with a shrug he turned. This was the windmill, indeed, and he a poor knight of rueful countenance. To attack it at closer quarters would mean being dashed to pieces. Yet on the threshold ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... thus revenging the affronts he imagined he had received, and chasing the vanquished about the court, the unusual noise and uproar which ensued reached the ears of Mr Barlow, and brought him to the door. He could hardly help laughing at the rueful figure of his friend, with the water dropping from every part of his body in copious streams, and at the rage which seemed to animate him in spite of his disaster. It was with some difficulty that Tommy could compose himself enough to give Mr ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... to ask what is so distressing?' said Madame Clairval, who was struck with the rueful countenance and doleful accent, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... his head, with a rueful countenance. "I bought him from one of the French vignerons below Westover," he said. "The fellow was astride the poor creature, beating him with a club because he could not go. I laid Monsieur Crapaud ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... time that the fallen equestrienne was picking herself up, her face rueful, for she realized that the hour of reckoning had come. A moment later Rosetta Muriel had pounced on Annie, and, as an indication of sisterly authority, was boxing ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... to be really one of the best things in the world, and led to endless banter. They were well dressed, and it could be imagined that the ancient bridegroom had come in for the support of the whole good-looking, healthy, light-hearted family. In some degree he looked it, and wore but a rueful countenance for a bridegroom; so that a very young newly married couple, who sat next the jolly sister-and-loverhood could not keep their pitying eyes off his downcast face. "What if he, too, were young at heart!" the kind little wife's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rest. Sancho Panza, whose stomach cried cupboard, filled his wallet with the rich provisions of the priests, boasting to the wounded man that his master was the redoubtable Don Quixote of La Mancha, otherwise called the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. When the adventure was over, Don Quixote questioned his squire on this name, and Sancho replied, "I have been staring upon you this pretty while by the light of that unlucky priest's torch, and may I never stir ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... so far," said Manning, with a rueful smile. "I'm sorry—but you don't know how tedious my role's been to me. To act the part of bait, and just lie around before the noses of the fish you're after, and not get a bite in two whole weeks—that's not my idea of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... one of the three who has accomplished nothing," was Winter's rueful comment. Nor could any critic have gainsaid him, for he seemed to have been wasting precious hours while his subordinates were making history ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... your pardon," said the investigator in a rueful tone; then he began to rub his shins. "That was rather ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... gloomy, ghastly prison-house of suffering and death, and she in her tender youth and sweet beauty immured in it by an error of judgment, a fatal mistake incidental to rash enthusiasm and total inexperience. If Annie ever arrived at that rueful conclusion, how could she bear the ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... long illness the "glue factory" was completely forgotten, by Alice at least; and her laugh was rueful as well as derisive now, in the kitchen, when she realized that her mother's mind again dwelt upon this abandoned nuisance. "I thought you'd got over all ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... of the skin of about an inch square above my upper lip has come off, so that I cannot even shave or masticate, and I am equally unfit to appear at your table, and to partake of its hospitality. Will you therefore pardon me, and not mistake this rueful excuse for a 'make-believe,' as you will soon recognise whenever I have the pleasure of meeting you again, and I will call the moment I am, in the nursery phrase, 'fit to be seen.' Tell Lady B. with my compliments, that I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... apparently abortive attempt to extend towards his eyebrow; his upper lip was covered with a grizzly and ill-trimmed mustache, which added much to the ferocity of his look, while a thin and pointed beard on his chin gave an apparent length to the whole face that completed its rueful character. His dress was a single-breasted, tightly buttoned frock, in one button-hole of which a yellow ribbon was fastened, the decoration of a foreign service, which conferred upon its wearer the title of count; and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... letter that was the post had brought him—what a letter, and what a woman! He sighed, thinking with a rueful though satiric spirit of all those protestations of hers in the summer, as to independence, a maiden life, and the rest. And now she confessed that, from the beginning, it had been Faversham. Why? What had she seen in him? The young man's ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we can very well do differently," was David's rueful reply. "At least we shall have a chance to find out from Tom just what has happened ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Music's house[2] she came, And begg'd like one both blind and lame; "My only friend, my dear," said she, "You see 'tis mere necessity Hath sent me to your house to whelp: I die if you refuse your help." With fawning whine, and rueful tone, With artful sigh, and feigned groan, With couchant cringe, and flattering tale, Smooth Bawty[3] did so far prevail, That Music gave her leave to litter; (But mark what follow'd—faith! she bit her;) Whole baskets full of bits and scraps, And broth ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... gittin' a belly-full of it," observed Forsyth, with a rueful look "I hope nobody's goin' ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... sustained "sir Andrew Ague-cheek" with infinite drollery, assisted by that expression of "rueful dismay," which gave so peculiar a zest to his Marplot.—Boaden, Life of Siddons Charles Lamb says that "Jem White saw James Dodd one evening in Ague-cheek, and recognizing him next day in Fleet Street, took off his hat, and saluted him with 'Save you, sir Andrew!' Dodd simply waved ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... tongue affords, I crave for mine in ripping up my woe. Sweet Rosalynde, my love (would God, my love) My life (would God, my life) aye, pity me! Thy lips are kind, and humble like the dove, And but with beauty, pity will not be. Look on mine eyes, made red with rueful tears, From whence the rain of true remorse descendeth, All pale in looks am I though young in years, And nought but love or death my days befriendeth. Oh let no stormy rigor knit thy brows, Which love appointed for his mercy seat: The tallest tree by Boreas' ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... examined the heroic Miago, who submitted to be handled by these much-dreaded 'northern men' with a very rueful countenance, and afterwards construed the way in which one of them had gently stroked his beard, into an attempt to take him by the throat and strangle him—an injury and indignity which, when safe on board, he resented by repeated threats, uttered in a sort of wild chant, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... day, to their great disgust, and "ginger" was a dangerous word to mention for weeks after; and for two whole terms not one of those boys were in any of the scrapes that were going on. "They had been there!" they said, with a rueful smile, which we could appreciate. As father used to say, "There's nothing like learning the logical sequence of consequences!" And they had a big washing ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... a little rueful and embarrassed again, with her eyes on the ground. Then, as the Boy still stood there waiting, "Joe," she whispered, glancing over her shoulder—"Joe want me ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... you get for tryin' your hand at prospecting," Sam said, with a laugh, and Fred arose to his feet with a rueful look on his face, which caused his ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... Lay that sings The haunts of happy lovers, The path that leads them to the grove, The leafy grove that covers: And pity sanctifies the verse That paints, by strength of sorrow, The unconquerable strength of love; Bear witness, rueful Yarrow! ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every consideration that we both burst out into a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... little commerce for the ensuing week. I doubt not but the paper may have had some share in alienating the minds of the people from the revolution. Whenever I want to purchase any thing, the vender usually answers my question by another, and with a rueful kind of tone inquires, "En papier, madame?"—and the bargain concludes with a melancholy reflection on the hardness ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... when I saw them Dots in our field again, I knew, just as well as if Dunk had told me, that he was kinda hoping we'd kill a herder or two so he could cinch us good and plenty. I don't say," he qualified with a rueful grin, "that Dunk went into the sheep business just to get r-re-venge, as they say in shows. But if he can make money running sheep—and he can, all right, because there's more money in them right now than there is in cattle—and at the same time get ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... The rest of my family basely fled from the encounter. I must receive our injured friend alone; and the interview must have lasted hard upon an hour, for he was loath to tear himself away. "You go 'way. I see you no more—no, sir!" he lamented; and then, looking about him with rueful admiration, "This goodee ship—no, sir!—goodee ship!" he would exclaim; the "no, sir," thrown out sharply through the nose upon a rising inflection, an echo from New Bedford and the fallacious whaler. From these expressions of grief and praise, he would return ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sensitive woman," he reminded her. "I am a man, and a moderately tough one. However, I must admit that until rather recently I had exactly your feeling. But I got a lesson." He broke off and gave a vague little laugh, vaguely rueful, as at a not ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... coadjutor, led the band. Approaching to the city's lofty wall Through the thick bushes and the reeds that gird The bulwarks, down we lay flat in the marsh, Under our arms, then Boreas blowing loud, 580 A rueful night came on, frosty and charged With snow that blanch'd us thick as morning rime, And ev'ry shield with ice was crystall'd o'er. The rest with cloaks and vests well cover'd, slept Beneath their bucklers; I alone my cloak, Improvident, had left behind, no thought Conceiving of a season so severe; ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... kin to you. Let us go meet her." Then, as they approached, she said, "Here, Agnes, I have brought you a young cousin of yours, whom the Prince has just conducted into my mother's chamber, where he bore so rueful a countenance that I grew pitiful enough to come forth on a bootless errand after his fellow Damoiseaux, who, it seems, are all out riding. So I shall even leave him to you, for there is a troubadour in the hall, whose lay I greatly ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you are right, but I am sure that if you had never lived long enough in one country to become acclimated, you wouldn't feel very responsible, either," said Eleanor in such rueful tones that the girls laughed, although they secretly disapproved ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... corner where the macintoshes and great-coats hung, and then put one foot in one stilt, and made a spring to get into the other, but gave his head such a crack against the brass hat pegs, that he came down quicker than he went up, and then rubbed his crown with a very rueful expression of countenance. However, Harry's was not a nature to be cowed at a slight difficulty; so shifting his position a little, he had another try, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... pine forest, or over treeless prairie, until the winter's day draws to its close and the darkening landscape bids us seek some resting-place for the night. Then the hauling-dog is taken out of the harness, and his day's work is at an end; his whip-marked face begins to look less rueful, he stretches and rolls in the dry powdery snow, and finally twists himself a bed and goes fast asleep. But the real moment of pleasure is still in store for him When our supper is over the chopping of the axe, on the block of pemmican, or the unloading of the frozen white-fish from the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... her a rueful, meditative sort of smile. "I suppose people really do think of us as a kind of hybrid female," he remarked. Then, holding his hat in his hand, he drew a long breath of relief at finding himself in the shade, and ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... himself as accomplished and as cultivated as a white man, was assisting his master in the building of a dinghy. Contemplating the work of his unaccustomed hands in a rueful frame of mind, the boss recited, "Thou fatal and perfidious barque, built in eclipse and rigged with curses dark!" "Ah," said he, "you bin hear that before, George?" "No," replied the boy; "I no bin hear 'em. What that? ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... glance of rueful inquiry at him—"Now what have you come fussing around for?" would be perhaps a fair interpretation of it—and asked him what time it was, in the evident hope that the boudoir clock on her dressing-table had deceived her. It had, but in the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to Crabshaw, with equal surprise and concern, asked what had brought him there? and Timothy, after some pause, during which he surveyed his master with a rueful aspect, answered, "The devil."—"One would imagine, indeed, you had some such conveyance," said Sir Launcelot. "I have followed your cries since last evening, I know not how nor whither, and never could come up with ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... the arm which he had seized with rather a rueful expression. She was a little white, ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and toad-eaters in general, or might bring into the house favourites of her own. I am sure any kind-hearted man of the world must feel for the position of these faithful, doubtful, disconsolate vassals, and have a sympathy for their rueful looks and demeanour as they eye the splendid preparations for the ensuing marriage, the grand furniture sent to my lord's castles and houses, the magnificent plate provided for his tables—tables at which they may never have a knife and fork; castles ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... two poor, neglected beings!" Cried Minnie, laughing heartlessly at their rueful faces, "What would you like me to do for your amusement? Read goody stories to you, or ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... of the woman's face twisted it into a rueful smile. The three words she dragged out were so faint that perhaps none but Dart's strained ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... found himself going wrong, why didn't he shout out?" asked young Carteret, with a rueful face. "I couldn't have ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... he goes to the Place where this Play was acted, there were heard most doleful Moans. Faunus lets fly all his Exorcisms. At Length the Ghost appears a good Way off in the Bushes, every now and then shewing the Fire, and making a rueful Groaning. While Faunus was adjuring the Ghost to declare who he was, Polus of a sudden leaps out of the Thicket, dress'd like a Devil, and making a Roaring, answers him, you have nothing to do with this Soul, it is mine; and every now and then runs to the ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... when you write, of our low spirits—it will vex Charles. You would laugh, or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit together, looking at each other with long and rueful faces, and saying, "how do you do?" and "how do you do?" and then we fall a-crying, and say we will be better on the morrow. He says we are like toothach and his friend gum bile—which, though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of ease, a comfort ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... "she's in a pretty unnatural state. I think she ought to get married, Baird—" To his friendly and disarming twinkle Baird replied with a rueful smile. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... Redmond exchanged rueful grins. "The old sport!" quoth the latter admiringly. "Damme, but I must say ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... cabin-floor, with one hand holding on by the leg of the table, and a bottle of brandy in the other. His prayer-book he had abandoned during a fright, and it was washing about in the lee-scuppers. Jerry was delighted, but put on a rueful face. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he saw that the lad's eyes were following the Roselands' carriage down the avenue, his face wearing a rueful look. ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... the last words which Clover heard as she escaped. She entered Car Forty-seven with such a rueful and disgusted countenance ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... anything to pay?" she asked with a rueful quaver in her voice. "Oh, Nick, there is ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... heard his exclamation, and laughed at his rueful face. "Oh, that isn't Fairy's expression. She thinks brilliant and clever people are just adorable. It is only I who think them horrible." Even Prudence could see that this did not help matters. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... fingering a bump on his forehead with a rueful grin, "All's well that ends well, my son, and sure it's a pleasure to serve you. I flatter myself, moreover, that you wouldn't have done the trick on your own. Hoffstein will stand more from me than ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... a forfeit; but we were far past our unfriendly days, and I received nothing worse than a stern, "I am surprised at you, Miss Morris," and at my rueful response, "Yes, so am I surprised at Miss Morris," he laughed outright and pushed me toward the open door, bidding me hurry over to the dressmaker's. I had a partial revenge, however, for one of the plates he insisted ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... rueful expression. He had probably been used to make easy work of it from town to town, and there was evidently a ludicrous struggle between the temptation of a profitable job and his disinclination for rugged roads and ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... every scullion-wench Grieve, nor the dairy-maid from sobs refrain; The sad postmistress, too, should feel the wrench, And the lone tweeny of her loss complain; Let one—let all afflict the listening spheres: Deplore, ye maids, his fate with rueful tears. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... Badger," replied the lad, and then with a rueful face he added: "But it doesn't seem to be doing me much good. I can't ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... chap," said Sir Richard, good-humouredly, as, with rather a rueful look, he picked up his broken model, "every man to his taste. I like ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... cried he again in rueful tones. "You, return to that place now ... what good do you think you could do—eh?" But here recollecting himself, he hesitated and started upon a more plausible line of expostulation. "Pooh, pooh! You can't leave the little ones, your husband does not ask you to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Not so nimble as his dog, When he walked the plank or log, There his balance losing, Splash! he went—a rueful plight! If his face before was white, 'Twas like morning turned to night, Much ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... into a shout of laughter at the spectacle of four men, one of whom was the dignified manager of the great White Pine Mining Company, calmly sitting on the prostrate bodies of four others, while a fifth, who had just struggled to his feet with a very rueful countenance, suddenly dropped to the deck again as ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... veil Let Them with Ogilvie spin out a tale Of rueful length,' Churchill's Poems, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... no doubt of the poor dog's death. The expression of Ardan's countenance, as he looked at his friends, was of a very rueful order. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... a family to complain. It was characteristic of them to recognize the bright as well as the solemn virtues, and to keep each other reminded of the duty of cheerfulness. A smile, starting from the quiet elder sister, went around the group, directed against the abstracted and somewhat rueful countenance of Joseph, whereat he turned with a better face and said that what the Creator had pronounced very good they could hardly feel free to condemn. The old father was still more stout ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... little face, and staring eye-balls, were approached close to the writhing features of his redoubted principal—as I think I have seen honest Sancho Panza's, in one of Tony Johannot's sketches, to that of the prostrate Knight of the Rueful Countenance. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... adapted herself quickly and calmly to new circumstances. "It is never any use to get in a stew about things," she was wont to say. So now she untied Nap gingerly, with many rueful glances at her geraniums, and led him away to the field behind the house, where she tied him safely to a post with such an abundance of knots that there was small fear of his ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is to learn to the dregs our own ignoble fallibility. When we have fallen through story after story of our vanity and aspiration, and sit rueful among the ruins, then it is that we begin to measure the stature of our friends: how they stand between us and our own contempt, believing in our best; how, linking us with others, and still spreading wide the influential ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it every morning, if you really feel inclined," I replied, smiling at his rueful countenance; "clothes can only be washed during the morning watch (four to eight), I understand, and, as the starboard men are on duty one day during that time and the port watch the next, each is supposed to 'scrub and wash clothes' in his ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... Mounted, my companion asked me, where should we go? I had considered that point; and after a little pause asked, as coolly as I could, where there were any troops drilling in cavalry or artillery exercises. Major Fairbairn pondered a minute and told me, with rather a rueful countenance. ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... turned toward her with a smile. "Not at all. Sometimes I used to try when no one heard, and once when I was in the hammock with my brother's little girl, I joined her in the song she was singing. She looked at me in a minute with a rueful countenance, and said, 'Aunt Helen, I can't sing when you are making such a noise!'" Bernice laughed. "I haven't tried much since," the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... he declared that night, with a sweep of his arm that sent a full glass of whiskey and soda hurtling across space to my bookshelves and ruining some choice bindings—"the devil of it was," said he, after expressing rueful contrition, "that she treated him like a dog, whereas I could do anything I liked with her. But ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... his companions, he heard a scream, and turned quickly to see John Wesley struggling in the water, grasping a tree root, and Mary Emmeline—nowhere! In another minute he saw the strings of her pinafore appear on the surface a few yards beyond, and in yet another minute, with a swift rueful glance at his white flannels, he had plunged after her. A disagreeable shock of finding himself out of his depths was, however, followed by contact with the child's clothing, and clutching her firmly, a stroke or two brought him panting ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... several of my compositions this displacement has so succeeded, at the crisis, in defying and resisting me, has appeared so fraught with probable dishonour, that I still turn upon them, in spite of the greater or less success of final dissimulation, a rueful and wondering eye. These productions have in fact, if I may be so bold about it, specious and spurious centres altogether, to make up for the failure of the true. As to which in my list they are, however, that is another business, not ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... or thought he saw, in the soft twilight, an unfortunate puss in the noose. He threw himself hastily forward expecting to grasp the prize, when lo! up started the timid animal, and limping away, as if hurt, kept the liquorish poacher at her heels, every minute supposing he was sure of his prey. Rueful was the pilgrimage of the unfortunate hunter. The hare doubled, and sprang aside whenever he came within striking distance, then hirpling onward as before. Ralph made a full pause where a wide gap displayed the scanty waterfall, just glimmering through the mist below ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... up in a moment, unhurt, except for a knock on the eye against his gun, which he was carrying before him; and after a minute's rueful look, he joined heartily in the shouts of laughter of his father and brother at his expense. 'Ah, Charley, brag is a good dog, but holdfast is a better. I never saw a more literal proof of the saying. There, jump up again, and I need not say look ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... I had often heard the remark that none were so cheerful as the true Christian; but I soon saw that her views must be widely different. A hearty laugh she seemed to regard as almost a crime. A cheerful laugh upon any occasion would cause her to shake her head in a rueful manner, and denounce it as untimely mirth. Upon one occasion she went to hear a preacher that had lately arrived in the neighboring village. This same preacher was remarkable for drawing dismal pictures, and was very severe in his denunciations, while he quite forgot ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... dashed his right fist full against one of the panels. Crash went the slight deal boards, as if struck with a sledge-hammer, and crash went glass and crockery behind. Tom jumped to his feet, in doubt whether an assault on him would not follow, but the fit was over, and Hardy looked round at him with a rueful and deprecating face. For a moment Tom tried to look solemn and heroic, as befitted the occasion; but somehow, the sudden contrast flashed upon him, and sent him off, before he could think about it, into a roar ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... the horse, communing doubtfully, not knowing where to find another, an old man approached us, and, with rueful look and gesture, besought us not to deprive him of the sole support ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... youthful arms being quite unequal to sustaining its weight, she let it drop, retreating with a wild Indian yell of alarm. The stream of boiling water fortunately escaped her, but nearly put out the fire. When the steam and dust had subsided, the rueful scouts picked up the empty kettle gingerly, as it ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... grown grey hairs, Hope had mourning on, Trenched with tears, carved with cares, Hope was twelve hours gone; And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone, And lives at last were washing away: To the shrouds they took,—they shook in the hurling ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... an' let's see how good a shot you are, said Dale. Bo slowly withdrew her fascinated gaze from the lion and looked with a rueful smile at Dale. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... than Freddy might be willing to be ill under such conditions," said the doctor, complimentary, but rueful. He felt his patient's pulse, and prescribed for him with a softened voice. He lingered and looked round the room, which was very bare, yet somehow was not like any of the rooms in his house. ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... hunting was to interfere with matters as much as possible. As a hunting dog he had only one advantage; he didn't bark. But he deserved no credit for that. It wasn't his nature to bark. As Bull tore enthusiastically about, Whitey would watch him with a rueful smile, and say, "The only way he could help would be by going home, and of ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... she found the piggin where she had hid it, and milked the cow in haste. It was no great task, for the animal was going dry. "Their'n gins a gallon a milkin'," she said, in rueful comparison. ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... House to watch with much amusement the efforts of several negroes to drag a one-horse hack out of the mud into which it had sunk up to its hubs. Suddenly the occupant of the carriage opened the door and beckoned to him. Recognizing Mrs. Bennett, Goddard, with a rueful glance at his immaculate boots, floundered through the mud to ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... "I leave that to Jasper—I call him my walking account-book. I'm sorry you fellows were let in though; I can't understand it; although"—with a rueful laugh—"I suppose it was my fault with that tenner. Yet, I must say, I noticed the man as he galloped past, and saw no, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... rueful little laugh. "She's sharp as needles—that's the one good thing about her. I shall have to start with that and not pretend—anything. It wouldn't be any use. I shall tell her plainly that I'll help her get into our Camp Fire on condition that she treats Elizabeth as she ought and gets her ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... something in the rueful appearance he assumed, which forced her to laugh in spite of her efforts at dignity and restraint, and thus he was reinstated ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... to the ears in the lees of war, I win a rueful reminder from a stray volume of Hours in a Library. Was the world regenerated between 1848 and 1855? Were English labourers all properly fed, housed and taught? Had the sanctity of domestic life acquired a new charm in the interval, and ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... dark These long-extended realms and rueful wastes; Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night, Dark as was Chaos ere the Infant Sun Was rolled together, or had tried its beams Athwart the gloom profound! The sickly Taper By glimmering through thy low-browed misty vaults, Furred round with mouldy damps, and ropy ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... foolish man!" sighed the Duchessa, with a rueful shake of the head. "His foolish British self-consciousness! His British inability to put himself in another person's place, to see things from another's point of view! Could n't he see, from her point of view, from any point ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... not reply, but after examining the letter he rose with a rueful countenance, and departed unceremoniously, a badly ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... no longer thought it hard From favorite pursuits debarred, Nor gazed with rueful face; For every object seemed to be Invested with the witchery ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... helped them up, laughing at their rueful faces, and kissing away the tears that would come at the sight of the ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... rueful nod. "Yes, what the other fellow has been through doesn't count for much. We all have to blister our fingers before we'll believe that fire ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... placed herself majestically on a sofa, put out her foot, called Fido, and relapsed into an icy silence. Frank had long since evacuated the premises, with a rueful look at his wife, but never daring to cast a glance at me. I saw the whole business at once: here was this lion of a fellow tamed down by a she Van Amburgh, and fetching and carrying at her orders a great deal more obediently than her little yowling ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "damned unsatisfactory son," Bohemian and dilettante, frankly at odds with the Sinclair tradition—now standing, more or less, in that father's shoes; his heart centred on the old place and on the boy for whom he held it in trust; and the irony of it twisted his lips into a rueful smile. By his own over-concentration on Roy, and his secret dread of the Indian obsession, he could gauge what his own father must have suffered in an aggravated form, blind as he was to any point of view ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... which I will give out the first line, and you will proceed and repeat the next as usual." When the time for psalmody arrived Wesley gave out, "Like to an owl in ivy bush," and the clerk immediately responded, "That rueful thing am I." The members of the congregation looked up and saw his small head half-buried in his large wig, and could not restrain their smiles. The clerk was mortified and the rector gratified that he should have been taught a lesson and learned to ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... at it to miss it now," said the rueful member with a forced smile. "I must win now, or my game ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dread: Their flesh yet living sets he up to sale, Then like an aged beast to slaughter dooms. Many of life he reaves, himself of worth And goodly estimation. Smear'd with gore Mark how he issues from the rueful wood, Leaving such havoc, that in thousand years It spreads not to prime ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... a passionate Work!—yet wise and well, 45 Well chosen is the spirit that is here; That Hulk which labors in the deadly swell, This rueful ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... poor meal and the grateful warmth of the fire; and somewhere towards midnight we entertained the question of going to bed. We had avoided the topic as long as possible, from a foreboding that our hostess would present us with some rueful tale of blankets lost in the flood. Besides, we were not without misgivings that, should the clouds return and the river rise as before, house and all might follow the other things down the stream, and no one could tell where we might find ourselves on awakening. On broaching ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... MacRummle had risen, and, with a rueful expression of face, was making insane and futile efforts to look at himself behind. A beaming smile overspread the boy's face as he glanced at his companion, for he knew well that the old gentleman cared little or nothing for water. And this was obviously the case, for, after squeezing as much ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... their own youth. Every generation has to educate another which it has brought upon the stage. People who readily accept the responsibility of parentship, having very different matters in their eye, are apt to feel rueful when their responsibility falls due. What are they to tell the child about life and conduct, subjects on which they have themselves so few and such confused opinions? Indeed, I do not know; the least said, perhaps, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though he had captured but two prisoners, the one was the chief, and the other his principal adviser and second in command. The old knight, therefore, commanded that they should be bound with cords together, and in such rueful plight led to his castle at Elibank. It was noon before they reached it, and Lady Murray came forth to welcome her husband, and congratulate him upon his success. But when she beheld the heir of Harden a captive, and thought of how little mercy was to be expected from Sir Gideon when once aroused, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... was the astonishing reply, and they all burst into laughter. More at the rueful countenance, however, than at the news, for it was a ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... summer is bad for wheat on my light soil, and that is why I thought of going in for stock." He paused with a rueful smile. "It doesn't promise to be a great improvement, if I'm to have my best ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... is probably not much as a porter, but he is worth his wages nevertheless. He may or may not aspire to his giddy eminence. We had one droll-faced little Kavirondo whose very expression made one laugh, and whose rueful remarks on the harshness of his lot finally ended by being funny. His name got to be a catchword ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... I saw him in company with his Liddesdale companion, to mimic with infinite humor the sudden outburst of his old host, on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg—the consternation of the dame—and the rueful despair with which the young clergyman closed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... English picture represents a king, with the motto beneath, "I govern all;" a bishop, with this sentence, "I pray for all;" a soldier, with the inscription, "I fight for all;" and a farmer, who reluctantly draws forth his purse, and exclaims with rueful countenance, "I pay for all." The American citizen combines in himself the functions of these four. He is king, prophet, warrior, and laborer. He governs, prays, and fights for himself, and pays ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... somewhat painful excitement, a rueful inspection of the only kind of vehicle that was practicable on the stony, uphill Causse, the Helvellyn we wanted to climb, I gave in. Yes, it was out of the question to drive for fourteen hours at a stretch, seated on such a knifeboard. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... struggle was most amusing—the fish pulling, and the bird screaming with all its might,—the one attempting to fly, and the other to swim, from the invisible enemy—the gander one moment losing and the next regaining his centre of gravity, and casting between whiles many a rueful look at his snow-white fleet of geese and goslings, who cackled out their sympathy for their afflicted commodore. At length Victory declared in favour of the feathered angler, who, bearing away for the nearest shore, landed on the smooth green grass one of the finest ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the go-between, Captain. Here's Mr. John Clemm, the executive genius of this establishment," sung out Burke, who was standing inside the door with the rueful fat ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball |
