"Woful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... right at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting speech. I knew it ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Of that here lawe positif Hath set to make werre and strif For worldes good, which may noght laste. God wot the cause to the laste 250 Of every right and wrong also; But whil the lawe is reuled so That clerkes to the werre entende, I not how that thei scholde amende The woful world in othre thinges, To make pes betwen the kynges After the lawe of charite, Which is the propre duete Belongende unto the presthode. Bot as it thenkth to the manhode, 260 The hevene is ferr, the world is nyh, And veine gloire is ek so slyh, Which coveitise hath now withholde, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... this time, still fancying she could feel the poor sick girl's woful heart beating in her own breast. But by-and-by she cheered herself, remembering Time's promise, and hurried on as fast as she could. She met with a great many sad people after this, and lived a great many different lives, so that she became quite familiar with all the sorrows and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... o'clock the rush began. I shall never forget that woful sight of a beaten, demoralized army that came rushing back,—humanity in the last throes of endurance. Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody, the men limped along unarmed, but followed by siege-guns, ambulances, gun-carriages, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... fifteen or twenty others were pitched down the upper flight of ten steps. The mass on the main staircase below recoiled with the shock, and as those in the hall still pressed onward, a dense body was wedged together in woful confusion. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too!" shouted Travis, and the Whigs poured forth from the room, and mustered thickly at the head of the staircase, exulting in the disaster of their opponents, while the end of the plank, which had been reset for action, peered over the banisters, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... man pays to many may absorb the whole of what he possesses, and amount to an actual partition of all his substance among them. A perfect equality will, indeed, be produced,—that is to say, equal want, equal wretchedness, equal beggary, and, on the part of the partitioners, a woful, helpless, and desperate disappointment. Such is the event of all compulsory equalizations. They pull down what is above; they never raise what is below; and they depress high and low together beneath the level of what ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... land, and the hunter, forgetting his oath, slays four sea-gulls for food. The bird-wife 'shrilled out in a woful cry,' and taking the plumage of the dead birds, she makes wings for her children and for herself, and flies away ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. It is the peculiar and prodigious advantage of travelling, that it counteracts this woful and degrading tendency, and by directing men's thoughts, as well as their steps, into foreign lands, has a tendency to induce into their ideas a portion of the variety and freshness which characterize the works of nature. Every person knows how ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why the merriest people in the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... themselves from the world and its works, uselessly they cannot speak: so they bind them to silence that they dare say no word save it be teaching others or praising GOD: and therefore, when they ask GOD aught, He grants it at once." But we, woful wretches, who deal with the world, that chatter all the day like magpies; now lie, now twist, now speak evil, now quarrel, now backbite, now swear great oaths, these defile our prayer and hinder ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... failed again and again; middle age crept on him, and the shadows of failure seemed to compass him round. In one terrible passage which he wrote in a flippant novel called "The Young Duke" he speaks about the woful fate of a man who feels himself full of strength and ability, and who is nevertheless compelled to live in obscurity. The bitter sadness of this startling page catches the reader by the throat, for it is a sudden revelation of a strong man's agony. At last the toiler obtained ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... finished, a moan was uplifted, 15 Morning-cry mighty. The man-ruler famous, The long-worthy atheling, sat very woful, Suffered great sorrow, sighed for his liegemen, [6] When they had seen the track of the hateful pursuer, The spirit accursed: too crushing ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 woful 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, there shall be a soul more worthy than I for that. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... sealed the fate of Athens. "That night," writes the historian Xenophon, referring to the night upon which the news of the woful disaster reached Athens, "That ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove; Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or cross'd ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... maintained but by a small knot of men in the Assembly, they fought man fully, inch by inch, and there were various reasons why the majority, instead of overwhelming them by a conclusive vote or two, allowed them to struggle on. For one thing, though Baillie thought there was a "woful longsomeness" in the slow English forms of debating at such a time, it was felt by the English members that, in so important a business as the settling of a new constitution for the National Church, hurry would be unbecoming. But, besides this, the Assembly was not a body legislating in ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... we not all acknowledge woful failures in this regard? How much of our service, our giving, our preaching, our planning, has been carried on without one thought of the ills and godlessness we profess to be seeking to cure! If some angel's touch could annihilate all that portion of our activity, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... I got little satisfaction when I asked the Moors about the songs of their slaves. Who will say that the above words are not a very appropriate song? What could have been more congenially adapted to their then woful condition? It is not to be wondered at that these poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in their long, lonely, and painful wanderings over the desert, with words and sentiments like these; but I have often observed that their fatigue and sufferings were too great for them to strike up this ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... top, and with "sundry rimes and verses affixed." Stern Endicott rode down ere long to investigate matters, and at once cut the "idoll Maypole" down, and told the junketers that he hoped to hear of their "better walking, else they would find their merry mount but a woful mount." ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the Storm's impending Black With woful Ululation and "Alack!" - The garbled Tenor of a sore Despite Can never bring your ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... mine eyes do surfeit with delight, My woful heart imprisoned in my breast, Wisheth to be transformed to my sight, That it like those by looking might be blest. But whilst mine eyes thus greedily do gaze, Finding their objects over-soon depart, These now the other's ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... etc., are subjects of interest everywhere, and the present writers seem to be specially competent for the task they have assumed. If the household library should possess such books more frequently, less ignorance would prevail on topics concerning which every American ought to be well-informed. Woful silence usually prevails when a foreigner asks for statistics on any point connected with our industrial progress, and very few take the trouble to get at facts which are easy enough to be had with a little painstaking. We are glad to see so much good material brought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... dragged heavily away, for all except the little ones were under the impression that dark and woful days were before them. Mr. Benton had not disguised the truth—that the problem with which they had to deal was one of great difficulty and much doubt. This prospect was depressing, but that which weighed like lead upon their hearts was the thought that one ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... of MISERY into which we are fallen, we are come short of the glory of God; and it is out of this wretched woful state we must be brought, else we shall never see the face of God with comfort. This is an eternal truth of God, and recorded in the Holy Scriptures. John iii. 16. That "God so loved the world, that ...
— A Sermon Preached at the Quaker's Meeting House, in Gracechurch-Street, London, Eighth Month 12th, 1694. • William Penn
... must be strong in many families, and the social, gregarious natives smoke each other's pipes and wear each other's clothes, and either from fatalism or ignorance have disregarded all precautions regarding this woful disease; and now that measures are being taken for the isolation of lepers, they are concealing them under mats and in caves and woods. This forlorn malady, called here Chinese leprosy, in the cases that I have seen, confers nothing of the white, scaly look attributed to Syrian leprosy; ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... exception, among others, readily occurs in the pathetic old ballad of the Conde Alarcos, whose woful catastrophe, with the unresisting suffering of the countess, suggests many points of coincidence with the English minstrelsy. The English reader will find a version of it in the "Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain," from the pen of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... the pummelled plaintiff neutralise the malice of his adversary, by requesting to have the rest of the beating in presence of the court,—if it is not that such conduct would run counter to all the conclusions of experience, and be the procreation of the mischief it affected to destroy? Woful is the man whose wealth depends on his having more than somebody else can be persuaded to take from him; and woful also is the people that is in such ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lantern; and a vast sorrow for the old man standing there, full of years, yet henceforth to be childless, for the moment overcame the bitter agony in her own heart. But only for a moment. Then, with a cry keen and woful, that echoed along the arroyo, and even for an instant made the men pause in their deadly fight, with every drop of her sluggish but fierce Indian blood aroused and burning in her veins, she sprang to her feet, and but ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... token How the glories of thy godhead sound and shine: Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind's broad wings broken, Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine. Half the world abhors thee beating back the sea, and blackening Heaven with fierce and woful change of fluctuant form: All the world acclaims thee shifting sail again, and slackening Cloud by cloud the close-reefed cordage of the storm. Sweeter fields and brighter woods and lordlier hills than waken Here at ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... stolen and will steal on all. How near dark Pluto's court I stood, And AEacus' judicial throne, The blest seclusion of the good, And Sappho, with sweet lyric moan Bewailing her ungentle sex, And thee, Alcaeus, louder far Chanting thy tale of woful wrecks, Of woful exile, woful war! In sacred awe the silent dead Attend on each: but when the song Of combat tells and tyrants fled, Keen ears, press'd shoulders, closer throng. What marvel, when at those sweet airs The hundred-headed beast spell-bound Each black ear droops, and Furies' hairs ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... quantity of alkali to the pint must necessarily produce very different results at different times. As an actual fact, where this mode of making bread prevails, as we lament to say it does to a great extent in this country, one finds five cases of failure to one of success. It is a woful thing that the daughters of New England 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, which many ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... character of Osmyn there was little room for effective declamation; our actor was fain to content himself with being interesting, through the misfortunes of the Prince of Valentia, his woful lawful love, and the besettings of an unreturned passion. In this he succeeded so well, that the feminine portion of his audience grew tender with Almeria, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the nations on the harvest wheat. Tempest of darkness drave me to the gates Of Anguish: then a cry came up from earth, Cry like my daughter's when her mother died, That stayed the on-rushing whirlwind; yet mine eyes Perforce looked in, and, many a thousand years, Branded upon them lay that woful sight Now washed from them for ever." Patrick spake: "This day a twofold choice I give thee, son; For fifteen years the rule o'er Erin's land, Rule absolute, Ard-Righ o'er lesser kings; Or instant else ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... and all of them, spoke of Cobden and Bright as of another Danton and Mirabeau, likened their corn-law league, and peace protests, to the first measures of the first leaders of the French Revolution; and predicted with woful headshakings a similar end to their proceedings. I do not know whether this is an injustice to the individuals in question, but it seems to me an injustice to the whole people of England collectively, and to their own class, the aristocracy of England, which has incurred no such retribution, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... and Vedangas, in the war Deadly to enemies, like sun and moon For splendor—by some certain evil ones Being defied to dice, my virtuous Prince Was, by their wicked acts, of realm despoiled— Wealth, jewels, all. I am his woful wife, The Princess Damayanti. Seeking him Through thickets have I roamed, over rough hills, By crag and river and the reedy lake, By marsh and waterfall and jungle-bush, In quest of him—my lord, my ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... master's name as Col. J. Corydon Malcome, a sounding appellation enough; and he was often seen walking up and down the streets in his rich, fur-lined overcoat and laced velvet cap, placed with a courtly air over his cloud of ebon curls. He was known to be a widower, and the woful extravagancies into which Mary Madeline Mumbles cajoled her doting mother, were enough to make one shudder in relating. Wimbledon was ransacked for the gayest taffetas, the jauntiest bonnets, and broadest Dutch lace, till, at length, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... him and went all about that garth espying everything, fearing nothing; albeit there were divers woful captives of the Goths, who cursed me for a dastard, when they saw by my attire that I was of ...
— 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
... wrapping woolly heads, and shoes slouched at the heel furnishing doubtful covering to feet redolent of filth and crippled by disease—alternate with the scanty habiliments of black and white children, brought up in the kennel and reduced by blows, mud and exposure to a woful similarity of hue. The whiskey bottle generally accompanies the basket with a quart of decayed potatoes, from the grocery at the corner; and even the begged calf's-liver or the stolen beef-bone comes home accompanied by a flavor of bad gin. It is no ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Ogier bold With his nephew Henry was Richard the old, Gascony's gallant Count Acelin, Tybalt of Rheims, and Milo his kin, Gerein and his brother in arms, Gerier, Count Roland and his faithful fere, The gentle and valiant Olivier: More than a thousand Franks of France And Ganelon came, of woful chance; By him was the deed of treason done. So ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... before Dr. MacLure could come, but the very sight of his face, which was as the sun in its strength, let light into the room where Lachlan sat at the bedside holding Flora's hand, and making woful pretence that ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... they enter, where they found The woful man, low sitting on the ground, Musing full sadly in his ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... and darkness of the night Sir Owen awoke by reason of a woful outcry and lamenting; and then he knew that Earl Cadoc, the Knight of the Fountain, was dead from the wound he had ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... at Baltimore, I found that so woful was the condition of the road between this city and the capital, that, although the distance is but thirty-seven miles, and that there remained full three hours of daylight, still no regular stage would encounter, until morning, the perils of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... yielded. He took possession in 1698, and was enthroned at Peel Castle. The picture of his enthronement must have been something to remember. Peel Castle was already tumbling to its fall, and the cathedral church was a woful wreck. It is even said that from a hole in the roof the soil and rain could enter, and blades of grass were shooting up on the altar. The Bishop's house at Kirk Michael, which had been long shut up, was in a similar plight; damp, mouldy, broken-windowed, green ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... room, but one bed, was all they had between them. She was by no means free from fear. He had seen his friends married, and felt soured thereat. Thenceforth her way is marked by tears, by utter weakness, by a woful self-surrender. Threatened by her only God, her son, heart-broken at finding herself in a plight so unnatural, she falls desperate. She tries to drown all her memories in sleep. At length comes an issue for which neither of them can fairly account, an issue such ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... she should die suddenly and quietly without my knowing it, while we were alone together; but I got into a perfect agony now, for fear this last worst affliction should take me by surprise. I don't suppose five minutes passed all that woful night through without my getting up and putting my cheek close to her mouth, to feel if the faint breaths still fluttered out of it. They came and went just the same as at first, though the fright I was in often made me fancy ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Antinomians (1644): "I never heard that the Indians in these parts did ever before commit the like outrage upon any one family, or families; and therefore God's hand is the more apparently seen herein, to pick out this woful woman, to make her and those belonging to her an unheard of heavy example of their ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... this that suddenly hath cross'd us? Speak, Salisbury: at least, if thou canst speak: How farest thou, mirror of all martial men? One of thy eyes and thy cheek's side struck off! Accursed tower! accursed fatal hand That hath contrived this woful tragedy! In thirteen battles Salisbury o'ercame; Henry the Fifth he first train'd to the wars; Whilst any trump did sound, or drum struck up, His sword did ne'er leave striking in the field. Yet liv'st thou, Salisbury? though thy speech doth fail, One eye thou hast, to look to heaven for grace: ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... that all the Spectators may get Good by the horrible Spectacle that is now before them! Let all the People hear and fear, and let no more any such Wickedness be done, as has produced this woful Spectacle. And let all the People beware how they go on in the Ways of Sin, and in the pathes of the Destroyer, after so Solemn Warnings; Lest thou shouldest not only leave them to the grossest Acts of Wickedness, but also give them up unto the most amazing Impenitency, when the Punishment ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... least, should follow a more excellent way, and advance a diligent servant, not because he cannot be done without, or because it is for the good of the firm to retain his services, but because his promotion is right and richly deserved. It would be a woful thing if God treated us exactly ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... conscious, that drove him to do his work of service in the directest manner. He then fancied the girl had caught something of the tone of her lady: the savage intensity or sincerity; and he brooded on Carinthia's position, the mixture of the astounding and the woful in her misadventure. One could almost laugh at our human fate, to think of a drop off the radiant mountain heights upon a Whitechapel greengrocer's shop, gathering ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tendre, O dere, O yonge children myne, Your woful moder wende stedfastly That cruel houndes or some foul vermyne Hadde eten you; but God of his mercy And your benigne fader ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... faces were smiling, hundreds of eyes were bright, hundreds of cheeks were flushed. Now there is not a single smile or a trace of brightness, or a bit of color on a face in the valley. Such is the woful change wrought in every household, as the successive reports of the heavily-charged pieces sound through the village, and penetrate to the farthest outlying farmhouse. The first shot may well be an accident, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... ascension; and the vessel which, three months ago, was ready—crew, captain, and machinery—to attempt its advertised flight round the walls of Paris, is still reposing, in inglorious idleness, upon its stocks in the Chantier Marbeuf (Champs Elysees), to the woful disappointment of its enthusiastic inventor, who, however, consoles himself with the hope of coming over to London for the purpose of testing his invention, as soon as the return of fine weather shall render it prudent to make the trial journey. In justice to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... stood, And mused in many-minded mood If life or death were evil or good, Forth of a covert of a wood That skirted half the moorland lea Fast rode a maiden flower-like white Full toward that fair wild place of fight, Anhungered of the woful sight God gave her ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hand To stand for ever at thy ship's helm seen, Shall he that bade their threefold flower be shorn 1730 And laid him low that planted, give thee back In sign of sweet land reconciled with sea And heavenlike earth with heaven; such promise-pledge I daughter without mother born of God To the most woful mother born of man Plight for continual comfort. Hail, and live Beyond all human hap of mortal doom Happy; for so my sire hath sworn ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing, Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll; Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, Were never miss'd."—Thus plaining, doth she bring A gentler speech from burning Porphyro; So woful, and of such deep sorrowing, 160 That Angela gives promise she will do Whatever he shall wish, betide ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... day a party was to ride To see an air balloon; And all the company beside Were dressed and ready soon: But she a woful case was in, For want of just a ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... who would silence and crush her, and I fear our children will see the glory of England vanishing like Arthur in the mist; they will cry too late the woful cry ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... the long and woful story to an end, and then threw himself down again to sleep off his weariness, when another messenger arrived, whom he sharply upbraided for ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... present do loose their hair, and let it hang down, and with their two hands together behind their heads do make an hideous noise, crying and roaring as loud as they can, much praysing and extolling the Virtues of the deceased, tho there were none in him: and lamenting their own woful condition to live without him. Thus for three or four mornings they do rise early, and lament in this manner, also on evenings. Mean while the ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... warn Sir Launcelot] Now when the people of the town beheld that terrible blow they lifted up their voices in a great outcry, crying out: "Turn back, Sir Knight! Turn back! For this is a very woful thing for thee that thou hast done!" and some cried out: "Thou hast killed the giants' warder of the bridge!" And others cried: "Thou art a dead man unless thou make haste away from this." But to all this Sir Launcelot paid no heed, but wiped his sword and thrust it back into ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... paragraph 17: replaced "woful" with "woeful" in "by woful experience" — it appears to ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... to say the truth, was not ill befitting such a vessel and such mariners. By its aid we steered our course by day, while the stars served as a guide by night; and, if they were obscured, we guessed our way by the motion of the clouds. In this woful plight we continued four days and nights. On the fifth day we were at the brink of despair, and abandoned all hopes of safety. Thence we ceased our labor, and laid aside our oars; for, either we had no strength left to use them, or were reluctant to waste the little ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... with a gleeful face and a sparkle in his blue eyes. O, for the pencil of a Beard or a Bellew, to portray those saucy pug-noses, those dirty and begrimed faces! Faces with bars of blacking, like the shadows of small gridirons—faces with woful bruised peepers—faces with fun-flashing eyes—faces of striplings, yet so old and haggard—faces full of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the proof of this musical project, behold! what woful work they made of it! every performer would be a Caesar or Nothing; their several pretentions to preference were not to be limited within the laws of harmony; they would all choose their own songs, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... victory!" Triumphant words, through all the land's length sped. Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea— Another efflux of a sea more red! Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably alone With ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... noise of the poor persecuted woman, which drove them all to much admiration, desiring to know what it was, and no one resolving them they rose from the tables, and looking directly as the noise came to them, they espied the woful woman, the dogs eagerly pursuing her; the knight galloping after them with his drawn weapon, and came very near unto the company, who cried out with loud exclaims against the dogs, and the knights stepped forth in assistance ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Mr "O'Grady" concluded an impassioned statement of his wrongs with "Voila tout, Mr Archdeacon, voila tout." "Waller tew," quoth churchwarden No. 1; "what ha' he to dew with it?" And there was the visit to that woful church, damp, rotten, ruinous. The inspection over, the rector said to my father, "Now, Mr Archdeacon, that we've done the old church, you must come and see my new stables." "Sir," said my father, "when your church is in decent order, I shall be happy to see your new stables." And "the next ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... wo! O woful, woful, woful day! Most lamentable day; most woful day, That ever, ever, I did yet behold! O day! O day! O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this; O woful day! ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... November, What ails thee so to smile? Chill August, pale September, Endured a woful while, And fell as falls an ember From forth a flameless pile: But golden-girt November Bids ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... thoughts recall - A sun-scorched desert, waste and bare, Nor waves nor breezes murmured there; There saw she, where some careless hand O'er a dead corpse had heaped the sand, To hide it till the jackals come, To tear it from the scanty tomb. See what a woful look was given, As she raised ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... Dead Sea of our sensibilities. The lady appears to have carried on a furious flirtation with the bard—a cousin of her own—which she, naturally perhaps, but certainly cruelly, terminated by marrying an old East Indian nabob, with a complexion like curry powder, innumerable lacs of rupees, and a woful lack of liver. A refusal by one's cousin is a domestic treason of the most ruthless kind; and, assuming the author's statement to be substantially correct, we must say that the lady's conduct was disgraceful. ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... apostrophisin' That uncommon woful wreck: "Your position's so surprisin' That I tremble for ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the matter lies, Montijos and the others being mere satellites on their respective sides. Much battered upon, this Hyndford, by refractory Hanoverians pitting George as Elector against the same George as King, and egging these two identities to woful battle with each other,—"Lay me at his Majesty's feet" full length, and let his Majesty say which is which, then! A heavy, eating, haggling, unpleasant kind of mortal, this Hyndford; bites and grunts privately, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in his bewildered brain her sad story was strangely complicated with that of the hapless girl of Verona. When she swallowed the sleeping-draught, he shrank and shuddered at the horrible pictures conjured up by her frenzied fancy; and in the last woful scene, he forgot himself, the play, the audience, everything but her, the forlorn gypsy child, the shy and lonely little girl whom long years ago he had taken on his knee, and smoothed down her tangled black hair, as he might have smoothed the plumage of an eaglet, struggling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... played up to his destiny. Holding fast to his great purpose to find a passage to the East by the North, he compelled every one of Fate's deals against him—until that last deal—to turn in his favor; and even in that last deal he won a death so heroically woful that exalted pity for him, almost as much as admiration for his great achievements, has kept his fame through the centuries ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... aloud in tears and blood, That from her grief-burst veins, in piteous flood, From the sweet conduits of her favour fell. The gentle turtles did with moans make swell Their shining gorges; the while black-ey'd swans Did sing as woful epicedians, As they would straightways die: when Pity's queen, The goddess Ecte,[89] that had ever been Hid in a watery cloud near Hero's cries, 270 Since the first instant of her broken eyes, Gave bright ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... the giants the hapless wight a while had kept since the Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged by sovran God for slaughtered Abel. Ill fared his feud, {1f} and far was he driven, for the slaughter's sake, from sight of men. Of Cain awoke all that woful breed, Etins {1g} and elves and evil-spirits, as well as the giants that warred with God weary while: but their wage was ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... flatlings on the ground, And for the death she was full dreadand, For to her heart struck many woful stound, As in a fever trembling foot and hand; And when her sister in such plight her fand, For very pity she began to greet, Syne[11] comfort gave, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... The same God who fed Elijah with ravens, and saved Daniel in the horrible den. At last she floated into the English seas, and was thrown by the waves on the Northumberland shore, near which stood a great castle. The constable of the castle came down in the morning to see the woful woman. She spoke a kind of corrupt Latin, and could neither tell her name nor the name of the country of which she was a native. She said she was so bewildered in the sea that she remembered nothing. The man could not help loving her, and so took her home to ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... that time in the world; and I may liken the good Galahad unto the son of the High Father, that light within a maid, and bought all the souls out of thrall: so did Sir Galahad deliver all the maidens out of the woful castle. Now, Sir Gawaine, said the good man, thou must do penance for thy sin. Sir, what penance shall I do? Such as I will give, said the good man. Nay, said Sir Gawaine, I may do no penance; for we knights adventurous oft suffer great woe and ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... became less manly—woman unlovely and rude." No wonder that the factory, like too many more, though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes "a prime nursery of vice and sorrow." "Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement—a struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain." But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his book, and certainly the one which bears most directly on the general purpose of this article, is one in which he speaks ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... who has so lightened for us the sorrow of mere bereavement, and made quick-coming death a little thing—for some of us, indeed, a lovely thing—has not taught us how to bear the sufferings of those we love, the woful ache of pity for pangs we are powerless to relieve and can only try ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... alluring trifles. He needed the steady, sturdy influence of some one outside himself to keep him always in the beaten tracks. Already, for better or for worse, Catie's influence upon him was a strong one; stronger, Mrs. Brenton admitted to herself with a woful little sigh, than that of his own mother, despite the ill-concealed anxiety and the doting love that only a mother can give, and then only to an only son. Between the two of them, herself and Catie, Catie's will was the stronger ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... was making this oration to the town of Mansoul, it was observed by some that Diabolus trembled.[103] But he proceeded in his parable, and said, 'O thou woful town of Mansoul! wilt thou not yet set open thy gate to receive us, the deputies of thy King, and those that would rejoice to see thee live? "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the threshold of their homes, when lo! the dark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn them back. The varied narratives of the strangers had arranged themselves into a parable; they seemed not merely instances of woful fate that had befallen others, but shadowy omens of disappointed hope and unavailing toil, domestic grief and estranged affection, that would cloud the onward path of these poor fugitives. But after one instant's hesitation, they opened their arms, and sealed their ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... efforts in this direction have certainly not been crowned with success. On the contrary, although dealing with a subject which bristles with points of a highly controversial nature, he states his conclusions with an assurance which is little short of oracular. Heedless of the woful fate which has attended many of the fiscal seers who have preceded him, he does not hesitate to pronounce the most confident prophecies upon a subject as to which experience has proved that prophecy ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... touch is necessarily crude at first, but constantly gaining as they gain facility in working. A precedent of some kind they must have, and they find it close at hand in the Roman basilicas. Uncertain, from the result of woful experiments, of arches of great span, they pack their columns close together and surmount them with sturdy little arches that have scarcely any thrust. This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate arches ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... home dwelt afterwards in her mind. The white earth, the headstones sprinkled with snow, the vast grey sky over which darkness was already creeping, the wind and the clergyman's voice joining in woful chant, these alone remained with her to mark the day. Between it and the days which then commenced ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... It was from her that the family derived their beauty of feature, while in their strength of intellect they resembled rather their father. One of Alfred's earliest literary passions was a love of Byron, and he remembered in after life how as a child he had carved on a rock the woful tidings that his hero was dead. In this period he was already writing poetry himself, though he did not publish his first volume till after he had gone up ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... continued to beat furiously upon the house and the din was appalling, but these two men, keen-eared, trained to the life of their mountains, had heard a sound which was not the storm, nor of the forest creatures doling their woful cries beneath the shelter ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... and I have thee not! Like one Lifted by spirits to a shining dale In Paradise, who seeks to leap and run And clasp the beauty, but his foot doth fail, For he is blind: ah! then more woful none! Bhanavar, unveil! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... master saw his woful plight, His limbs, that tottered with his weight, And, friendly, to the stable led, And saw him littered, dressed, and fed. In slothful ease all night he lay; The servants rose at break of day; The market calls. Along the road His back must bear ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... the fire was, however, it called attention to the fact that there was a woful lack of water in the city. Most of the water was still supplied by the wells and springs which had been sufficient for a small town, but were by no means so for a city of the present size. It was now that the idea of bringing a large ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... they attached supreme importance to their Abrahamic lineage as children of the covenant, "an holy people unto the Lord," whom He had chosen "to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth".[162] Judah had experienced the woful effects of dalliance with pagan nations, and, at the time we are now considering, a Jew who permitted himself unnecessary association with a Gentile became an unclean being requiring ceremonial cleansing to free him from defilement. Only in strict isolation did the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... I fear it was a woful attempt. Even the scent of the roses had been crushed out of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... o'er all the pilgrimage of time, Thou'lt meet them poor, and ev'rywhere descry A threadbare, goldless genealogy. Nature—it seems—when she meant us for earth Spent so much of her treasure in the birth As ever after niggards her, and she, Thus stor'd within, beggars us outwardly. Woful profusion! at how dear a rate Are we made up! all hope of thrift and state Lost for a verse. When I by thoughts look back Into the womb of time, and see the rack Stand useless there, until we are produc'd Unto the torture, and our souls ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... him to give him back his dog. Without any shame or hesitation, the wicked neighbor answered that he had killed Shiro because of his bad behavior. At this dreadful news Shiro's master wept many sad and bitter tears. Great indeed, was his woful surprise, but he was too good and gentle to reproach his bad neighbor. Learning that Shiro was buried under the yenoki tree in the field, he asked the old man to give him the tree, in remembrance ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... here the woful'st husband comes alive, No husband now; the wight, that did uphold That name of husband, is now quite o'erthrown, And I am left a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... research as opposed to "good old English breadth and suggestiveness of treatment." And the consequence has been a "continuation" which serves as a standard whereby to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful falling- off and deficiencies of the sequel— the latter retaining of the former naught save the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Anyhow the cabbies have it their own way. I was warned on this head before I arrived, but I was obliged once to take one. I paid about six times the London fare. However, as you can go almost anywhere in a tram-car with comfort, it does not much matter, especially as you escape the woful jolting a cab entails. ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... and heal the heart of man no more Than winter may, or withering autumn. Sire, Husband and lord, I have a woful word To speak against a man beloved of thee, A man well worth all glory man may ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... endeavour is to sing a woful song, How a very learned bishop in the Arches Court went wrong. Aid me, for duplex querela is an uninviting theme, And the practice of the Arches raises no poetic dream. 'Tis the Reverend Child Willis, child in name but not in age, Comes he to the Court of Arches burning ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... the aching call of gulls along a shore to which the netted foam crept out of darkness, the island of Aengus and the elder gods and the eternal glories that never were, tall kings and women girdled with crusted gold, the woful incessant chanting and the—— ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... prospect of an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, with a fair prospect of the ultimate loss of the property. The company conveyed the property with all mines and claims in Arizona to the writer, on the 2nd January, 1870,—a woful heritage. ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... salt sea must have been his grave." Here sobs prevented her utterance; but after a short pause, with many vehement lamentations over the virtues of the dead, and imprecations on his murderers, she related that as soon as the woful tidings were brought to Monktown kirk (and brought too by the Southron, who was to take it in possession!) she and the clan's-folk who would not swear fidelity to the new lord, were driven from the house. She hastened to the bloody theater of massacre; and ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... scrofulous French novel On gray paper with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages At the woful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... nothing very remarkable; and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery and causes a woful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers I took ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this hour from danger free? Perhaps with fearful force some falling Wave Shall wash thee in the wild tempestuous Sea, And in some monster's belly fix thy grave; 20 Or (woful hap!) against some wave-worn rock Which long a Terror to each Bark had stood Shall dash thy mangled limbs with furious shock And stain its craggy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... town officer that she be put back in the rest-house, where she shortly afterward died. Let it not be thought that this is an isolated case. He who is familiar with Indian life knows it is not, for daily he has to witness the woful limitations which ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... storm and sounding loud in sympathy. What have we here? What human trace of times When hearts o'erflowed, and hand and steel were swift, And red in the flashing of a hasty thought? Ah me! these times, these woful times when word And blow were wed, and none could sunder them, And honour'd live! See yonder isle set single In the lake, near by where Earn darts swiftly 'neath The rustic bridge to bear the music of the place To broader Tay, who murmurs ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... more, woful Shepherds weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar, So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... against all acts made anywise derogative to the work of God and reformation; likewise protests against all banishments, imprisoning, finings and confinements that the people of God had been put to these years by-past; describing the woful state and condition of malignants, and all the enemies of Jesus Christ. And in the last place speaks very fervently anent his own sufferings, state and condition, which he begins to express in these words, "Now if the Lord, in his wise and over-ruling providence, bring me ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... woful, woful is thy tale! Our hearts are heavy and our eyes are dimmed. What ship is this that ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... {32} more to be considered its real root than the kernel of a seed is. When you sow a pea, if you take it up in a day or two, you will find the fibre below, which is root; the shoot above, which is plant; and the pea as a now partly exhausted storehouse, looking very woful, and like the granaries of Paris after the fire. So, the round solid root of a cyclamen, or the conical one which you know so well as a carrot, are not properly roots, but permanent storehouses,—only the fibres that grow from them are roots. Then there are other apparent roots ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt ends in a woful failure. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... meal, Bannocks o' barley; Here's to the lads wi' The bannocks o' barley; Wha in his wae-days [woful-] Were loyal to Charlie? Wha but the lads wi' ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... to quit my home upon a day, And journey through the country, (as you can Haply remember by an Arab clan. Those robbers thee, Marphisa, bore away: While young Rogero 'scaped, who better ran. Bereaved of thee, they woful loss I wept, And with more watchful care ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... having nine nieces on his hands, and makes a woful face over the fact. He dispensed a charming hospitality here, and no friend who ever visited him forgot the pleasure. He was a most genial and cordial host, and loved much to have his friends bring the children, of whom he was passionately fond. His nieces watched over his welfare with most tender ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... pity on her woful face. "P'raps you're not so much to blame, Mint. You don't know," he said, in a somewhat softened ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the spirit of the Prince Was moved to see this world beyond his gates, This life of man, so pleasant if its waves Ran not to waste and woful finishing In Time's dry sands. "I pray you let me view Our city as it is," such was his prayer To King Suddhodana. "Your Majesty In tender heed hath warned the folk before To put away ill things and common sights, And make ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... purchased for the monastery. It is in its original wooden binding: wanting repair. Here are a few Roman Classics, which are more choice than those in the Public Library: as Reisinger's Suetonius, in 4to. but cropt, and half bound in red morocco, with yellow sprinkled edges to the leaves—a woful specimen of the general style of binding in this library. Lucretius, 1486: Manilius, 1474: both in one volume, bound in wood—and sound and desirable copies. Eutropius, 1471; by Laver; a sound, desirable copy, in genuine condition. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... persons died, in another seventeen; a little child of seven years old was the only creature left to tell the woful tale. This poor desolate orphan was taken by the nuns to their benevolent institution, where every attention was paid that ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... Cid was aware of this, a woful man was he, At dawn of day he came to pray at the blessed Father's knee: "Absolve me, blessed Father, have pity upon me, Absolve my soul, and penance I for my sin ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged; and among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the fault? Youth ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... a beggar such as I shall now depict. One may happen to be in a reflective mood, and aroused from his meditations by what he supposes to be a cow lowing close to his ear. He starts up and goes to the window, but instead of that quadruped he finds a man standing with a rope round his neck, and a woful countenance, holding out his palms, indicating that he wants charity. This man has had the misfortune to lose his cow; and as it died tethered, his religion imposes on him the penalty of begging from door to door without speaking, but imitating the cow, till ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... very gold shoulder-straps on the well-remembered blue uniform undress; his cap which lay on her table, with its service symbols. Is it that the sameness of these material trifles seems to assert that nothing is changed, and so makes the change more incredible and dreadful? I cannot describe the woful pain which the sight of these things gave Diana. With them came the fresh remembrance of all the manly beauty and grace of Evan in which she had once sunned herself, and the contrast of her husband. Not that ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... forgery; and because Billy hid himself behind the dismal opportunity of silence, had ruined the name of a dead man called Charley Steele. Since Charley's death John Brown had never seen Billy: he had left the town one woful day an hour after Billy had told him of the discovery Charley had made. From a far corner of the country he had read the story of Charley's death; of the futile trial of the river-drivers afterwards, ending in acquittal, and the subsequent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fact that he was knighted and recorded arms. Not quite so genteel, but still in public life, Hugh was Under-Clerk to the Privy Council, and liked being so extremely. I gather this from his conduct in September 1681, when, with all the lords and their servants, he took the woful and soul-destroying Test, swearing it "word by word upon his knees." And, behold! it was in vain, for Hugh was turned out of his small post in 1684.[4] Sir Archibald and Hugh were both plainly inclined to be trimmers; but there was one witness of the name of Stevenson who held ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them without a scorch. Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab, answered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar. Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... get together and have a society of their own, the which it is very affecting to watch—those tawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that jingling old piano; oh, it makes the heart sick to see and hear them. As Mrs. Raff, with her company of pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs. Diddler, they talk about bygone times and the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... posted on a rampart's height, With more to guard the encampment from surprise, When 'mid the equal intervals, at night, Medoro gazed on heaven with sleepy eyes. In all his talk, the stripling, woful wight, Here cannot choose, but of his lord devise, The royal Dardinel; and evermore Him, left unhonoured ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... prostrate, even priest as well as potentate, undistinguishable victims of crude, unblenching violence, with its climax of nefarious sacrilege. We, common mortals, therefore, can hope for no deliverance from, or even succour in, the woful plight thus dismally contrived for us all by the fair-skinned race who have now become our masters." Such was naturally the train of thought that ran through those forlorn bosoms. The formidable death-dealing ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... camphor after all and I lost in stocks, when if I'd only waited five minutes more in the office I'd have got the message from my brokers and saved my five hundred. Expensive, my time is, eh?" with a woful shake of ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... back, and so they were en rapport with each other. The father was seldom sober at meals. When he "felt funny," he would stealthily pour a glass of water down the nearest child's back and then sit and chuckle over the havoc he had wrought. There followed a long and woful wail and an instant explosion from the mother in this wise. I can hear her now. It ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Hydraes of my stout transgression. These be the bitter fountains, heads and roots, Whence flowed the source, the sprigs, the boughs, and fruits, Of more than thou canst hear or I relate, That with high hand I still did perpetrate; For these were threatened the woful day I mockt the Preachers, put it far away; The Sermons yet upon Record do stand That cri'd destruction to my wicked land; I then believed not, now I feel and see, The plague of ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of potatoes, a wheaten loaf, and a pot of tea. Cups, plates, and saucers were of thickest stone-ware, knives and forks were of iron, and spoons were of pewter, but Peveril managed to make successful use of them all, and though betraying a woful ignorance of the proper functions of a knife, ate his first working-man's meal with all of a working-man's appetite and ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... act Peter, a youth of marvellous stupidity and cousin of the bailiff, presents himself in a woful plight, to which he has been reduced by some soldiers at the same wedding festivities, and shortly after Gustav, the real son appears on the scene. He is a manly fellow, full of tender {113} thoughts for his home. Great is therefore his ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... me, beloved shades! Oh, my father! oh, mother, I want you so desperately! Come out of the past for a few seconds, and give me some words of comfort! I'm in such woful plight! If ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... people in the street; such a crowd that we could hardly make a passage through them, and so many cabs and omnibuses that it was difficult to cross the ways. Some of the illuminations were very brilliant; but there was a woful lack of variety and invention in the devices. The star of the garter, which kept flashing out from the continual extinguishment of the wind and rain,—V and A, in capital letters of light,—were repeated a hundred times; as were loyal and patriotic mottoes,—crowns formed ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whisht! I hear the banshee keen, All woful is her cry. She comes along the gray boreen— Pray God ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... frame of mine was wrenched With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... show a master's hand. Sometimes,—to-night, for instance,—the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question. "Is this the End?" they say,—"nothing beyond? no more?" Why, you tell me you have seen that look ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Ballinamony'. Ye brave Irish lads, hark away to the crack, Assist me, I pray, in this woful attack; For sure I don't wrong you, you seldom are slack, When the ladies are calling, to blush and hang back; 60 For you're always polite and attentive, Still to amuse us inventive, And death is your only preventive: Your hands ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... said Marian, eagerly. "Since you disclaim weariness we could listen for hours yet. You are a skilful narrator, for, intensely as your story has interested me, you have reserved its climax to the last, even though your search led you only among woful scenes in the hospitals." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Unworthy of thy love. Thou hast no blame, Save that thou art my husband, in the world! Of trustful sleep, to death's arms by my hand? And where then shall I hide me? O perfidy! Can I e'er hope for peace? O woful life— Life of remorse, of madness, and of tears! How shall Aegisthus, even Aegisthus, dare To rest beside the parricidal wife Upon her murder-stained marriage-bed, Nor tremble for himself? Away, away,— ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps underwitted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his face,—a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the sickly blotches that covered its features,—and found means to express such a perfect confidence that it was going to be fondled and made much of, that there was no possibility in a human heart of balking its expectation. It was as if God had promised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his sack, with his rotten old hat, he looked a woful figure as the heavy shower beat on his back. But to Amaryllis ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd With wail so woful, that at his remorse I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the graces and the languor of thy body and thy shape, By the fount of wine and honey from thy coral lips that rise, O my hope, to see thine image in my dreams were sweeter far Than were safety to the fearful, languishing in woful wise! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... went out for his drive, smiling at my woful plight. Is it only after hard riding that remorse succeeds enjoyment? I was left alone in his great caravansary of a mansion. I wandered from room to room, from corridor to corridor,—now glancing through the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... with accents terrible, Of dire combustions and cosfus'd events. New-hatch'd to th' woful time, the obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say the earth Was fev'rous and ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... awhile in woful reverie upon the edge of the bed, and then crossed the room to a beautiful writing-desk which Miss Ludington had given her. She opened it, and, taking out several sheets of paper, prepared to write. "If I had not run upstairs that ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... boon to common men but a curse to public men. Jason Mallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; he never laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before now fallen into the woful error of doing one or both of these things. Wherefore they were forever after called humourists—and ruined. When they said anything serious their friends took it humorously, and when they said anything humorously ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... wind rushes in, but it is like the hot breath of a panting dog. The noise of swinging persiennes that have got loose, and are banged now against the wall, now against the window-frame, mingles with a woful confusion of sounds within, as though a most unruly troop of ghosts were dancing the farandole all through the house. If any door has been left open, it worries you more by its banging at intervals of a minute than if it went on without ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Cheemaun exulting, And the noble Hiawatha Sang his war-song wild and woful, And above him the war-eagle, The Keneu, the great war-eagle, Master of all fowls with feathers, Screamed and ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... before had stood the proud pinnacle. An enormous mass of rocks fell into the lake below, and the vapors rose in a rival cloud. High in the firmament they curled and twisted, their wreathing forms together telling a woful tale ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... Treachery, Despair, and Hate. These grim but very efficient instructors have aided me materially, simple, inexperienced girl as I was so recently—or so long ago, as it seems to me. And good old Aunt Hagar, who has been in this woful world many years—years full of vicissitudes and sharp life-lessons—is my counsellor and adviser. She aids me greatly with her shrewdness, and knowledge of the world and the folk in it. So we have discussed ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... woes of that so woful time came of the sword of the civil power being still grafted on the crook of the Church; as also of the insane attempt of so many of our forefathers to solder the crown of Charles Stuart to the crown of Jesus Christ. How ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... room and there alone, the fair, gentle, woful creature gave free reign to the grief of her stricken mother-heart. The room was kept just as her boy had left it, for she constantly hoped against hope that he would return. Hers was the aching, pent-up grief of a mother whose child ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Fancy loves in some of her more familiar moods,—at such times as she has met Noll Goldsmith, and walked and talked with him, calling him "old acquaintance." Southey certainly has no pretensions to vie with you in the sublime of poetry; but he tells a plain tale better than you. I will enumerate some woful blemishes, some of 'em sad deviations from that simplicity which was your aim. "Hailed who might be near" (the "canvas-coverture moving," by the by, is laughable); "a woman and six children" (by the way, why not nine children? It would have been just half as pathetic again); "statues ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... vice—you need not inform me of that: but show me that it makes no difference to me whether I am in pain or not. It has never anything to do, say you, with a happy life, for that depends upon virtue alone; but yet pain is to be avoided. If I ask, why? It is disagreeable, against nature, hard to bear, woful and afflicting. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... she has indeed come back to a changed world, where there will be little sympathy except such as Ruth can give. It is with almost passion that she abjures her name 'Pleasant,' as a satire on her woful lot, and bids them call her 'Bitter,' as truer to fact now. The burst of sorrow is natural, as she finds herself again where she had been a wife and mother, and 'remembers happier things.' Her faith wavers, and her words almost ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... might never have escaped from that terrific thralldom, if a city friend, after hearing my woful ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn |
