"Wofully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... does not see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length of time, should have so smashed these heavy stones; it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such as the most poetical imagination would find it difficult to idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect; it has a great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family under the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and bought cigars from the row of boxes nestling there among the newspaper piles. They had such evident delight in the work of selection; they took off the ends of the cigars so carefully, and lighted them with such meditative attention,—he could see that he was wofully handicapped by not knowing how to smoke. He had had the most wonderful breakfast of his life, but even in the consciousness of comfortable repletion which pervaded his being, there was an obstinate sense of something lacking. No doubt ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to observe that the two estimable and admirably qualified ladies whose names were presented for school committee in this city, failed of success. Their influence in official connection with the schools could not have been other than salutary. The treatment accorded Mrs. Doyle in the fifth ward was wofully shabby. Without her solicitation, the Republican caucus unanimously nominated her for a member of the school committee. Being a novice in political proceedings, she naturally enough supposed that the party that desired her services so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... more on board our former ships. But our return was far from triumphant. We, who only seven weeks ago had set out in the surest confidence of glory, and I may add of emolument, were brought back dispirited and dejected. Our ranks were wofully thinned, our chiefs slain, our clothing tattered and filthy, and even our discipline in some degree injured. A gloomy silence reigned throughout the armament, except when it was broken by the voice of lamentation over fallen friends; and the interior of each ship presented a scene well calculated ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... passage of feces toward elimination. This wise provision of Nature to moderate the steady motion of the feces as they proceed toward the sigmoid flexure or receptacle, to wait there till there is a proper stimulus for expulsion, is wofully abused by man. He is quite willing to take foodstuffs three or four times a day, to fill the long row of intestinal pools between the dams with feces and gases in all stages of decomposition, not dreaming of ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... care to his posthumous fame alone, but carefully inventoried and preserved the effects which he left behind him, namely, the contents of his small wardrobe, and a number of printed books of somewhat more consequence, together with certain, wofully blurred manuscripts, discovered in his repository. On looking these over, I found them to contain two Tales called "Count Robert of Paris," and "Castle Dangerous;" but was seriously disappointed to perceive that they were by no means ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... which he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy trial to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait; as if he saw no reason for taking one step farther, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to his cheek, crying wofully, "You've drawn, beastly gaoler! a night out of my life like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and permanent. It is bound to be so. Infinitely sadder is the sight of a mind which is falling to pieces by reason of the rust that has eaten into its very core. For rust must needs mean idleness—and no human intellect need be idle. So it had been with these two old ladies. Born in a wofully unintellectual age, they had never left a certain groove in life. When their brother married Christian Vellacott's grandmother, they had left his house in Honiton to go and live in Bodmin upon a limited but sufficient income. These "sufficient incomes" are a curse; they ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the barrels as fast as you can and retreat. You run great danger; you can only by a miracle escape capture; but it is our only resource for the next charge. We must surrender or die," he added, looking wofully at the meager remnant of his company. Before the words had fairly ended, Jack is off like a shot, forgetting Barney, forgetting everything but the extrication of this grand young Roman. As he skurried along, sometimes on hands and knees, he blames himself for not learning the captain's name. He ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... every one has trooped away from the sun-baked squares, and the sultry streets of the great empty town. I have never done a season before, and the heat and the late hours have tired me wofully. Often, when I have gone to a ball, I have longed to go to bed instead. And, now that we are home again, it would seem to me very pleasant to sit in leisurely coolness by the pool, and to watch the birth, and the prosperous ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Middle Ages wore velvet robes or had long flaxen hair. It is dark, mysterious, melancholy, beautiful—a vision of dignity and of grace, made sublime by suffering, made weird and awful by "thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls." Sorrow never looked more wofully and ineffably lovely than his sorrow looks in the parting scene with Ophelia, and frenzy never spoke with a wilder glee of horrid joy and fearful exultation than is heard in his tempestuous cry of delirium, "Nay, I know ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Giovanni, upon the challenge of the last mentioned, a stipulated distance, for a sum of two hundred guineas—an affair which did not, to use a sporting phrase, come off well, for the Don most ungallantly refused to meet his fair opponent; and being wofully depressed in spirits, either from apprehension of defeat, or sea sickness, or some such fresh water fears, the little Queen was compelled to sail over the course alone to claim the reward ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... gone than the unfortunate Laudonniere was gladdened in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends Ottigny and Arlac, who conveyed him to the fort and reinstated him. The entire command was reorganized, and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted; but the bad blood had been drawn off, and thenceforth all internal danger was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... at any rate, to consider economy in some matters in these wofully extravagant days. When the shops are decked out in their gayest colors to lure us on to destruction, why is it that "just the very thing you want" is placed so conspicuously in the front of the window, put cunningly near a ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... entomb so many clerical controversies of our Colonial times, it has often seemed as though we had lighted on some bar-room wrangle, translated out of its original billingsgate into scholarly classical quotations and wofully wrested tests of Holy Writ. This illusion seems all the more probable when we remember that the potations which inspired the loose jester and the ministerial pamphleteer of that period but too often flowed from the same generous tap. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... first sight, however, such a lack of specification appears wofully incompatible with any intelligible transmission of ideas. So communistic a want of discrimination between the meum and the tuum—to say nothing of the claims of a possible third party—would seem to be as fatal to the interchange of thoughts as it proves ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... and the perfection of all that is hideous in nature, our Dragon fly is most conspicuous. Look at its enormous head, with its beetling brows, retreating face, and heavy under jaws,—all eyes and teeth,—and hung so loosely on its short, weak neck, sunk beneath its enormous hunchback,—for it is wofully round-shouldered,—while its long, thin legs, shrunken as if from disease, are drawn up beneath its breast, and what a hobgoblin ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... most miserable"; but they are apt to reject Christian charity too, and to dance on the ruins of all that has hitherto sustained their fellow-creatures in a world of sin and sorrow. That they are not right, but wofully wrong, I firmly believe, and happily many and many a noble intellect and great heart, which have not shrunk from searching into the mysteries of life and death with all the powers and all the love of truth given them ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... at the miller's cot, soon they espy'd him out, As he was mounting upon his fair steed; To whom they came presently, falling down on their knee; Which made the miller's heart wofully bleed; Shaking and quaking, before him he stood, Thinking he should have been hang'd, by ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... table a dress, once belonging to Annaple's trousseau, was laid out, converted into its component parts. The wails of a baby could be heard in the distance, and the first person to appear was Master William, sturdy and happy in spite of wofully darned knees to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of charity were trumpeted in clarion tones, as if she, a member of a profession famous for its deeds of unostentatious kindness, were the only one who had the right to wear the lovely crown of mercy and beneficence. All this machinery of advertisement, though wofully opposed to all the instincts of Jenny Lind's modest and timid nature, had the effect of fixing the popular belief into a firm faith that what had cost so much trouble to secure ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... I have in Margery's place is an Irish Protestant, a very good and conscientious girl, but most wofully ignorant, and one who murders our luckless mother-tongue after a fashion that almost maddens me. However, as with some cultivation, education, reading, reflection, and that desire to do what is best that a mother alone can feel for her own child, I cannot ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... spirits, laughing and capering on deck as if nothing had happened; but, on being shown to my cabin, where Shega, having heard of her arrival, was sitting crying in readiness, she began with her niece to howl most wofully. I, however, put a stop to this ceremony, for such it certainly was, under the plea of disturbing the child. The arrival of a pot of smoking walrus-flesh soon brought smiles on all faces but that of Takkeelikkeeta, who refused food and sat sighing ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... neither selfish nor unwise. Perhaps, after all, the grand error was, in not making the preparations for defence adequate to the object. The resources of the State were small, and these had been diminished wofully in succoring her neighbors, and in small border strifes, which the borderers might have been taught to manage for themselves. The military force of the State, under any circumstances, could not have contended on equal terms with the ten thousand well-appointed ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... morning frock?" In front of it, too, was a streaked mark of grease, the long since deposited remains of some of her culinary labours. Her feet were stuffed into slippers—truth compels me to say they would more properly be called shoes down at heel—her stockings were wofully dirty, and, horror of all horrors, out at the heels! There she sat, with her feet on the fender, her face on her hands, and her elbows on her knees, with her thumb-worn novel lying in her ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... make you wofully jealous to-night, for I intend to have Mr. Fleet dine with us and spend the evening. Wo, I will take no excuse, no denial. This infatuated man will do whatever I bid him, and he is a sort of Greek athlete. If you do not come right along I shall command ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... upon. "India," again to quote his own words on a late public occasion, "was won by the sword;" yet the military spirit of the army, on which the preservation of our empire depends, had been damped, and its efficiency wofully impaired, by the injudicious reductions introduced by Lord William Bentinck and persevered in by his successor; and the reverses and losses of the Affghan war, following close in the train of these ill-advised ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Coleridge,—Not an unkind thought has passed in my brain about you. But I have been wofully neglectful of you, so that I do not deserve to announce to you, that if I do not hear from you before then, I will set out on Wednesday morning to take you by the hand. I would do it this moment, but an unexpected ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... estimate of its strength, for in after years, during the civil wars, it held out stoutly against the parliamentary forces, and was only reduced at last by treachery, when part of its gate-tower was blown up, destroying an officer and two hundred men, "in that blast most wofully." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... roamed ceaselessly about. Not far from Maplebank was what the better class called a "straglash district"—that is, a settlement composed of a number of people who had by constant intermarriage, and poor living, caused insanity of a mild type to be woefully common. Almost every family had its idiot boy or girl, and these poor creatures, being, as a rule, perfectly harmless, were suffered to go at large, and were generally well treated by the neighbours, upon whose kindness ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... California in the next three decades. While current response plans and preparedness measures may be adequate for moderate earthquakes, Federal, State, and local officials agree that preparations are woefully inadequate to cope with the damage and casualties from a catastrophic earthquake, and with the disruptions in communications, social fabric, and governmental structure that may follow. Because of the large concentration of population and industry, the impacts of such an earthquake ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... evening I went to the Lyceum Theatre, saw Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in Sardou's "Robespierre," and for the first time in my life was woefully disappointed in them. The play is wretchedly conceived, and it amazes me that Sardou, who wrote "Thermidor," which is as admirable as "Robespierre" is miserable could ever have attached his name to such ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the Stuarts was hailed as the restoration of their rights. They were woefully disappointed. A compromise was made between the legitimists and the republicans; the former were to resume their rank, the latter to retain their plunder, Ireland was disregarded. The mockery of the Court of Claims restored less than one-third of the Irish ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... administration of those laws, which we shall never have while the present corrupt system lasts. However," said the clergyman to me, "my young friend, do nothing hastily; but should you go into any of the yeomanry corps, with your zealous feeling and patriotic love of country, I fear you will be woefully disappointed if you expect to find any of your comrades acting under a corresponding impulse. Their main object appears to be to secure their corn ricks, and to keep up the price of their grain; and their landlords, who are ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... zoo and considered his animals thoughtfully. The shop-worn brown bear would not do to fill cousin Mike's order; neither would the weather-worn red deer nor the family of variegated tame rabbits. The zoo of Idlewild Park at Franklin was woefully short of dongola goats—in fact, to any but the most imaginative and easily pleased child, it was lacking in nearly every thing that makes a zoo a congress of the world's most rare and thrilling creatures. After all, the nearest thing to a ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... coming! Mary is coming! Mary! Mary!' from morning until night. They say Buckingham is beside himself for love of her. He has a wife at home, if I am right, and is old enough to be her father. Is he not?" I assented; and Brandon continued: "A man who will make such a fool of himself about a woman is woefully weak. The men of the ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... the other end of the forecastle, and producing a large, rusty, tin can, and an equally rusty, and woefully battered tin pannikin, poured out a draught, which he brought to me, and, supporting my head upon his shoulder, held to my lips. I had an opportunity to take a good look at him now, as he bent his face close to mine, and, so far as I could see by the dim light ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... it was great and woefully increasing with each panting breath, she slowly laboured to turn herself towards the pillow on which her offspring lay, and, this done, she lay staring at the child and gasping, her thin chest rising and falling convulsively. Ah, how she panted, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... task, though, to hold the horses—the poor creatures shivering with dread, and fighting hard to get free. The worst part of the adventure revealed itself to Bart a few moments later when he turned to look for Joses, whom he found rubbing his head woefully beside the traces of their fire, over which the bison had gone in enormous numbers, with the result that the embers had been scattered, and every scrap of the delicious, freshly-roasted, well-browned meat ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... the army itself. Soon after the first fire the settling smoke and dense shrubbery made the woods almost as dark as night in our front, but the long line of fire flashing from the enemy's guns revealed their position. The men became woefully tangled and disorganized, and in some places losing the organizations entirely, but under all these difficulties they steadily pressed to the front. When near the outer edge of the thicket, we could see the enemy lying down in some young growth ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... for I was not a university graduate, and the very extensive reading I had done in my special line of study—the control and development of tropical dependencies—though it might entitle me to some consideration as a student in that field had left me woefully ignorant of general literature. Would the ability to discuss with intelligence the Bengal Regulation of 1818, or the British Guiana Immigration Ordinance of 1891 be welcomed as a set-off to a complete unfamiliarity with ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... parts, though she is woefully ignorant," said Goodwife Hopkins aside to her husband. "It shall be ...
— The Green Door • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... aloof from the others, but evidently amused by the tale with which De Soto was regaling them. She was smiling; Barnes saw the sapphire lights sparkling in her eyes, and experienced a sensation that was woefully akin ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the wreck, for there were still things he wished to know. And as he glanced about him he became more fully aware of the havoc of the storm. Even in the brilliant sunshine the whole prospect looked woefully jaded. Everywhere the signs told their pitiful tale. All along the river bank the torn and shattered pines drooped dismally. Even as he stood there great tree trunks and limbs of trees were washed down ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... statesmanship to blurt out everything at once? Only a craven time-server would say wait and see. Waiting was a contemptuous proceeding wherever practised, and seeing required eyes, which Heaven knows the PREMIER woefully lacked. (Cheers.) What right had an incorrigible hoodwinker such as Mr. ASQUITH to advise anyone to see? It was monstrous. Let the people get rid of this impostor without a twinge of compunction, and the sooner ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... "Ah!" woefully murmured the Captain, on hearing his patronymic pronounced; for ever since his proscription as Cornelio Lantejas, he had held his own name in horror. Never did it sound to him with a more lugubrious ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... coughed!" He paused before her in his stride. "Is it your purpose to cough during my speeches when this play is produced before an audience?" He waited for no reply, but taking his head woefully in his hands, began to pace up and down again, turning at last toward the dark auditorium ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... heard of Eormanric Of the wolfish heart: a wide realm he had Of the Gothic kingdom. Grim was the king. Many men sat and bemoaned their sorrows, 25 Woefully watching and wishing always That the cruel king might be conquered at last. That has passed over: so ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... up in the weak, flickering candlelight, one hand on the polished hilt of his saber. The other two men winced, watching him. "Gentlemen, Houston's trying to pull his militia together while he falls back. You know, Texas was woefully unprepared for a contest at arms. The general's idea is to draw Santa Anna as far into Texas as he can, then hit him when he's extended, at the right place, and right time. But Houston needs more time—Santa ...
— Remember the Alamo • R. R. Fehrenbach
... away, it will be remembered then for Englishmen that their greatest organ in the Press maintained a fine tradition of independence, and thus did much to redeem the good name of Britain when "the Black and Tans" were dragging it woefully in the mire. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... bitter waves of Acheron, Where many soules sit wailing woefully, 290 And come to fiery flood of Phlegeton, Whereas the damned ghosts in torments fry, And with sharpe shrilling shriekes doe bootlesse cry, Cursing high Jove, the which them thither sent. The house of endlesse paine is built thereby, 295 ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... We had left the business of cutting my bonds almost too late. In the darkness of the bush the strips of hide could only be felt for, and my Kaffir had a woefully blunt knife. Reims are always tough to sever, and mine had to be sawn through. Soon my arms were free, and I was plucking at my other bonds. The worst were those on my ankles below the horse's belly. The Kaffir fumbled away ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... Missionary, William H. Shepherd, consider the African Methodist Bishops, strong men, leaders of their fellows, against whom no murmur of scandal is raised. Surely among our own men in the Church, or our system is woefully at fault, we can find one or two honest, true, able, pure men, fit to be Bishops to their own race." Such a man would be a Bishop indeed to his race, such a Bishop as no white man can possibly be. He will enter, as ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange
... had shelter of a sort, he would recapture his breath and reassemble his wits. Even so, the respite from those elements which Mr. Leary dreaded most of all—publicity, observation, cruel jibes, the harsh raucous laughter of the populace—could be at best but a woefully transient one. He was not resigned—by no means was he resigned—to his fate; but he was helpless. For what ailed him there was no ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... interrupted. "How are we going to do that under present conditions? The cry of the country is for economy in governmental affairs, so Congress prunes the already woefully inadequate appropriation for the Department of Labor and keeps our force of immigration inspectors down to the absolute minimum. These inspectors are always on the job; the few we have are splendid, loyal servants of the government, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Gurth, "I had not greatly minded till now, but this vile- tongued Fool hath stirred Fear to wakefulness within me. Here's me, scarce thirty turned, hale and hearty, yet must die woefully and with a maid ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... soakings and dryings it had undergone, had by this time made it shrink woefully all over, especially in the arms, so that the wristbands had gradually crawled up near to the elbows; and it required an energetic thrust to push the arm through, in ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... chimney. At the top of the stairs, where it was still quite dark, he could see Peter curled up in bed. But it was not he that he had come to see. He began groping about on the floor in search of something. "Ah! here it is!" he said with a chuckle, bringing to light a stocking most woefully riddled with holes. Morgridge Klaus stuffed a paper parcel into the stocking, and laying it carefully on the floor, stumbled down stairs, chuckling to ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... matter to put into words; poetry would have done it better justice, but he must abstain from poetry. In an infinite number of half-obliterated scratches he tried to convey to her the possibility that although human beings are woefully ill-adapted for communication, still, such communion is the best we know; moreover, they make it possible for each to have access to another world independent of personal affairs, a world of law, of philosophy, or more strangely a world such as he had had a glimpse of the other ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... turmoil for a long time, and the continual reports of outrages on the people of the island by Spain greatly aroused the Americans. The "ten years war" had terminated, leaving the island much embarrassed in its material interests, and woefully scandalized by the methods of procedure adopted by Spain and principally carried out by Generals Campos and Weyler, the latter of whom was called the "butcher" on account of his alleged cruelty in attempting to suppress ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... of facts in general was woefully defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had 'no nonsense' about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... seen that as a whole the Scratch Team was woefully weak. Hugh's players had things pretty much their own way. Before more than half of the first twenty-minute period had been exhausted the score stood five goals for Scranton High, and none to the credit ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... Yorkers, no matter what their station, Lawrence cherished a provincial contempt for such people as are not of Manhattan. While he was woefully timid in the presence of firearms, and the flash of steel reduced him to a panic, he was a past master at the "manly art," and carried a punch in which he reposed unlimited faith. The deference with which the cowboys treated him, their simple, child-like faith in his ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... writing lengthy epistles to a tribe of nieces. I could see her marshalling a household in the family pew, or riding serenely in the family coach behind fat bay horses. But here, on an inn staircase, with a false name and a sad air of mystery, she was woefully out of place. I noted little wrinkles forming in the corners of her eyes, and the ravages of care beginning in the plump rosiness of her face. Be sure there was nothing appealing in her mien. She spoke with the air of a great lady, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... our stockings. There were six of them, from mother's long one to father's short one. Ours, although built on womanish lines, lacked the greater length and they were, consequently, inferior for the purpose of our greed; but father's were woefully short, as if fashioned to the measure of his small expectancy. Even a candy cane came peeping from the top, as if curiosity had stirred it to ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Maggie was speaking very gravely now. "They matter—woefully. I never say 'It doesn't matter' to war, or death, or sin, or evil. But there ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... shedding down floods of light on the town, and investing its commonplace aspect with something of romance. The streets were radiant with the cold, clear lustre; the shadows cast by the houses lay black as Indian ink on the ground; and the laughter and noise of the passers-by seemed woefully out of place in this ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... were crouching as close as possible to the parapet, which, though it had seemed only quite a short time before so complete, now suddenly felt most woefully inadequate, with those beastly shells dropping their bullets down from the sky. Another boom. This time the shell burst well, and the whole ground in front of the trench was covered with bullets, one man being hit. At this moment rifle fire began on Waschout Hill, but no bullets came ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... thoroughly dismayed, disheartened group of three there under the high, girdered roof of Uncle Sam's reception chamber for prospective children by adoption. Anna, alarmed for both the threatened child and angry flute-player, stood, woefully distressed between the two, a hand upon the arm of each and big, alarmed and wondrously appealing eyes fixed on the gruff official, who stirred uneasily beneath the power of their petition; Kreutzer was frightened, also, now that his wrath was passing and he took time to reflect that ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... without her? He will find there an authority, and he is obliged to recognize it, even if he does on ordinary occasions declaim against and condemn it. Incidentally, if his eyes are open, he will discover that his individually interpreted Bible has failed most woefully to do its work; it ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... remains of the temple of Mars Ultot, within which a convent of nuns is now established,—a dove-cote, in the war-god's mansion. At only a little distance, they passed the portico of a Temple of Minerva, most rich and beautiful in architecture, but woefully gnawed by time and shattered by violence, besides being buried midway in the accumulation of soil, that rises over dead Rome like a flood tide. Within this edifice of antique sanctity, a baker's shop was now ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lives by bread! Now just look at that policeman at the corner, for instance; not only is he stark naked—everybody is like that—but he's perfectly different from the sturdy, good-humoured, red-faced, puzzled man you and I know. He is thin, woefully thin, and his ears are long and perpetually twitching. He pricks them up at the least thing; or lays them suddenly back, and we see them trembling. His eyes look all ways and sometimes nothing but the white is to be seen. He has a tail, too, long ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... book is to tell the story of Burton's life, to delineate as vividly as possible his remarkable character—his magnetic personality, and to defend him alike from enemy and friend. In writing it my difficulties have been two. First, Burton himself was woefully inaccurate as an autobiographer, and we must also add regretfully that we have occasionally found him colouring history in order to suit his own ends. [13] He would have put his life to the touch rather than misrepresent if he thought any man would suffer thereby; but he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... wise and gentle folk of Sarras come to perceive how woefully they had been deceived in the tyrant they had crowned, and speedily it came to pass that when they spoke of King Talisso they breathed not his name, but using an ancient word to signify such insane and evil pride as ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... you kill me, Harold?" Mrs. Brookenham woefully interposed. But it was with the same remote melancholy that she asked in the next breath: "It ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... jes' put dese t'ings on, Marse Benson, ef yo' please, sah," mocked the mulatto, tossing down some woefully tattered, nondescript garments, and, after them, a battered, rimless Derby hat and a pair of brogans out ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... clever man; but to see the kind of display he makes when he gets up to talk about the Turf is very saddening. He can give you an accurate statement concerning the evils of drink, but as soon as he touches racing his innocence becomes woefully apparent, and the biggest scoundrel that ever entered the Ring can afford to make game of the harmless, well-meaning critic. The subject is an intricate one, and you cannot settle it right off by talking of "pampered nobles who pander to the worst vices of the multitude;" and you go ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... 'cat(1)' is considered the {canonical} example of *bad* user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It is far more often used to {blast} a file to standard output than to concatenate two files. The name 'cat' for the former operation is just as unintuitive as, say, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... answered Theodore, smiling. "Is that a hint that we are woefully late, Winny? It is too bad; we will be ...
— Three People • Pansy
... the plans and proposals they discussed leaked out, allowing the other side to checkmate their best moves and woefully retard progress. It was really too provoking just as these troublesome negotiations promised to end so well; it meant precious time wasted; it meant unnecessary anxiety and worry. But no matter, history has never been made without trouble to its makers; the I.G. was well prepared for obstacles; ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... was a pitch-dark night, with pouring rain, all around looked woefully gloomy and desolate. No lanterns were to be seen, except the little one that hung at one end of the street, before the image of the Virgin Mary that adorned the wall there. The water was heard dashing and splashing against the wooden work near, out by Slotsholm, on ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... deserted. With the same woefully desolate look, it constantly comes back in my dreams. I went farther down the valley. The full-rushing stream went with me like a dog. It made no murmur, only a low gurgle as it shot along. It seemed to draw me ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... himself tumble at hazard over the ledges. A little too late he felt a depth below him; it was as though a cold wave washed through his heart, and he clutched wildly at the air for some support. "Father Lasse!" he cried woefully; and at the same moment he was caught by brambles, and sank slowly down through their interwoven runners, which struck their myriad claws into him and reluctantly let him pass, until he was cautiously deposited, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... with grave tenderness. "'Tis a cordial of mine own invention, and in the strength it gave me I fled from Cropredy Bridge though woefully hacked ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... slept the rest of the night for talking over the stirring scenes of that spectacular fire. Indeed, there had been a strenuous fight to keep it from spreading, and the Graysons' quarters next door were badly scorched, and the Graysons woefully scared, before the little bachelor hall had burned itself out. Big Jim Ennis had lost pretty much everything he owned except what he had on. Lanier was not much better off. As to the origin of the fire, Bob merely said ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... she said, shaking her head woefully, "you'd oughtn't to distress your sister! She says you drove that young man right out of the house. You'd ought ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... my vision of a future literary career waxed and waned, but a belief that I was going to be Somebody rarely deserted me. If not a literary lion, what was that Somebody to be? Such an environment as mine was woefully lacking in heroic figures to satisfy the romantic soul. In view of the experience I have just related, it is not surprising that the notion of becoming a statesman did not appeal to me; nor is it to be wondered at, despite the somewhat exaggerated respect and awe in which Ralph's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... England and at Khartoum, the Smithsonian, Wistar, Carnegie and Rockefeller Institutes in the United States; the list of research institutes of important dimensions (excluding astronomical observatories) is, I believe, practically exhausted by the above enumeration, and many of them are woefully undermanned and underequipped. At least two of them, the Solvay Institute wholly, and the Frankfort Institute for Experimental Therapy in part, owe their existence and continuance to scientific men, Solvay and Ehrlich, who have contrived to ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... joy for me to be in school, I was woefully unprepared to remain there. Really, I am unable to tell the many obstacles that confronted me while in school. But one of my many difficulties was to get sufficient clothing, for when I entered, I had on all that I possessed and day after ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... district office, where it might have been acted on by the officers in charge to the great detriment of the Service. At that time the evil of sending out as inspectors men admirably trained in theory but woefully lacking in practice and the knowledge of Western humankind was one of the great menaces to effective personnel. Fortunately this particular report came into the hands of the Chief, who happened to be touring in the West. A fuller investigation exposed to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the "good roads" of Britain come next, though in some parts of the country they are woefully inadequate to accommodate the fast-growing traffic by road, notably in London suburbs, while some of the leafy lanes over which poets rhapsodize are so narrow that the local laws prevent any automobile traffic whatever. As one unfortunate ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... was a joke. That insidious, odious chill which earlier prompted my tempestuous applause, as I woefully registered, hung about me yet. Unquestionably Arabella Lessingham's visit to Church Street showed more and more, when I considered it, as a radical mistake! From it I date the waning of the moon of my delight in respect of both Pogson and herself. I ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... leaving his lieutenants to carry on his campaign amongst the young Indian students. The Indian Sociologist itself continued to be openly published in London and to advocate assassination until the tragedy at the Imperial Institute led the authorities to take woefully-belated action in prosecuting successively two printers of the sheet, which was then transferred ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... you, minimize the immediate danger. This is the time to defend the United States; and the United States is woefully indifferent to its dangers and to the needs of the situation. We have been carrying on a ship-building program with reference to conditions after the war. It is only within ten days that we have realized that the end of the war will be one of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... unbeaten. He could not conceive that men who had just endured such a harassing experience as the seven days' continuous retreat could possibly be in a condition to turn and fight. Not for the first or last time in the War German psychology was woefully at fault. Whether General MAURICE'S theory is correct or not, it is most attractively set forth, and, thanks to the excellent; maps with which the volume is provided, can be easily followed even by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... the modesty of art. One more thing they and their kindred do, I must add, for which, unfortunately, we can patronise them less. They make even the most elaborate material civilisation of the present day seem woefully shrunken and bourgeois, for they simply—I allude to the biggest palaces—can't be lived in as they were intended to be. The modern tenant may take in all the magazines, but he bends not the bow of Achilles. He occupies ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... at a grand concert. Or the singing may be very poor; that fact should not be emphasized by the scowling countenance of the critic in the pews. A mind absorbed in true devotion does not measure church singing by secular standards. The spirit may be woefully lacking in the most artistic rendition: it may be vitally present in the most humble song of worship. While we may with righteous indignation condemn the sacrilege of a spiritless or irreverent singing of the sublime service of the church, it is very bad ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... another disillusioning jolt. Could it be that this practiced woodsman's eye actually appraised me as being as heavy as my mate, or even heavier? Surely he must be wrong in his judgments. The point was that I woefully was wrong in mine. How true it is that we who would pluck the mote from behind a fellow being's waistcoat so rarely take note of the beam which we have ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... right of self-determination for Ireland, it seemed as if the American President, Woodrow Wilson, who first gave utterance to the ideal of self-determination for all the oppressed peoples of the world, was woefully unmindful of the age-long struggle that Irishmen had been making to free their own beloved land from British domination. But to those, like myself, who were on the inside of affairs, it was evident that in every proper and legitimate way ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... Adieu, my good Perigord." And the graceful stranger rode away. An interval of quiet succeeded, in which the innkeeper gazed woefully at his wife. Suddenly he was startled by a clatter of hoofs, and an aristocratic ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... however, were quite distinct from the real business of that great Consulate, which is now woefully fallen off. The technical details I left to the treatment of two faithful, competent English subordinates. An American has never time to make himself thoroughly qualified for a foreign post before the revolution of the political wheel discards him from his office. For myself, I was not at all the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... got over that feeling, and I resolved to trust to myself alone. It was not till then that I recovered my self-respect. I say, Merry; if you fancy that you have many friends, don't you ever attempt to borrow money from them, or you'll find that you are woefully mistaken. Mary and I talked the matter over, and she settled to keep a school, and I to come to ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... to manage the best sort of "camp out" we could with a coat each and a couple of Scotch plaid rugs among us all. The prospect seemed more pleasant than a one or two-roomed torp shared with the torppari's family; for we had suffered so much in strange beds already, and had woefully regretted many times not having brought hammocks, which we might have slung out of doors on those splendid June and July nights, and slept in peace under the daylight canopy of heaven. Accordingly, a camp on the bank had been voted ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... confoundedly, deucedly, devilishly, with a vengeance; a outrance^, a toute outrance [Fr.]. [in a painful degree] painfully, sadly, grossly, sorely, bitterly, piteously, grievously, miserably, cruelly, woefully, lamentably, shockingly, frightfully, dreadfully, fearfully, terribly, horribly. Phr. a maximis ad minima [Lat.]; greatness knows itself [Henry IV]; mightiest powers by deepest calms are fed [B. Cornwall]; minimum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... clergyman came away from these calls feeling very young, indeed, and woefully inadequate. What DID he know of the great ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... also, the steadfast among spears, dark Fate destroyed as they defended their native land rich in sheep; but they being dead their glory is alive, who woefully clad their limbs in the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... cousin beyond the seas. He is blessed with a healthy mistrust of analysis, and hair-splitting is the occupation he most despises. There is always a little of the Dr. Johnson in him, and Dr. Johnson would have had woefully little patience with that tendency to weigh moonbeams which in Hawthorne was almost as much a quality of race as of genius; albeit that Hawthorne has paid to Boswell's hero (in the chapter on "Lichfield and Uttoxeter," in his volume on England), a tribute ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... said old Duncan McKay, one fine evening as he sat in his invalid chair, beside Duncan junior, who was woefully reduced and careworn, despite the attentions of the sympathetic Jessie Davidson, who was seated near him on a ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... wedding. waesomely, woefully. wag-at-the-wa', wall clock with long pendulum. wale, choose. wame, belly. wark, work. warl, world. warsled, wrestled. warslin', wrestling. warst, worst. wat, wet; wat his whustle, took a drink. wauken, waken. waur, worse. wean, child. weel, well. weel-a-wat, I think truly. weel-on, ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... but reciting the common praises of the Art of Persuasion, to remind you how sacred truths may be most ardently promulgated at the altar—the cause of oppressed innocence be most woefully defended—the march of wicked rulers be most triumphantly resisted—defiance the most terrible be hurled at the oppressor's head. In great convulsions of public affairs, or in bringing about salutary changes, every ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the idol of their thoughts and affections—a feline companion—may be seen carrying a precious morsel, safely skewered, in advance of them; this gentleness the artist has been careful to retain to eminent success. We are, nevertheless, woefully at a loss to divine what the allegory can possibly be (for as such we view it), what the analogy between a pretty poll and a pol-yanthus. We are unlearned in the language of flowers, or, perhaps, might probe the mystery by a little floral discussion. We are, however, compelled to leave ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... living with a man on terms of equality whom, when measured up with the standards she was accustomed to, failed impossibly. And yet, did he? That is, did he, in the larger sense? That he was woefully deficient in all the little niceties of life, that he was illiterate and ignorant could not be denied. But he was no man's fool, and, as far as his light shone, he certainly lived up to it. That was just it. He had a standard of ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... positive conviction that the majority of unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity. All this goes to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each other. It always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves. We do not really associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to question their own ideas. None have more persistently and dogmatically insisted ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... in the fire; for my rifle's gone with the horse," deplored the old man woefully; for mule and bronchos had galloped along the trail with the clatter of a cavalcade through the canyon. Wayland handed the old man his own rifle and took the six shooter from his belt ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... highest nerve tension. Not one was there who had not missed death a dozen times by the merest of escapes. They had for ten or eleven days been engaged in an offensive and what meagre rest had been theirs was woefully insufficient to counteract the heavy demands ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... us to tea with the Russian bishop who was in charge. He was a stout, sweet-mannered little man, who shook his head woefully ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... a good deal as usual. Stores were open, at least there was a daily train from Habana, and the barracks were full of Spanish troops. It was from off the wastage of this normal population that these fifteen thousand prisoners were forced to live. Even this wastage was woefully inadequate, merely serving to prolong suffering by ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... my own mind, I agreed with her—there was none to be compared with him. At all events, all the other boys that used to call and bring me candy and send me flowers at about this time suffered woefully in comparison with him! I remember that. So tame they were—so ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... O'Shaughnessy and I slept together last night,—only we couldn't sleep for the continual, whining cry of a sick baby at the cabin. So after a while we rose and dressed and crossed over to see if we could be of any help. We found a woefully distressed young couple. Their first child, about a year old, was very sick. They didn't know what to do for it; and she was afraid to stay alone ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... man has little intuition, but a world of good intentions. Men blunder woefully in their relations with women, not because of innate boorishness in the sex, not because of willful brashness, but because of lack of understanding. They mean well, but their performance is deplorable.... In that moment Bonbright's most valuable ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... him then he might have finished the career of the daring man-hunter, without the least danger to himself. For once, Professor Ruggles missed it woefully. ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... of the Georges. The Lives of Pope, Dryden, and others have scarcely been superseded, though much fuller information has since come to light; and they are all well worth reading. But the criticism, like the politics, is woefully out of date. Johnson's division between the shams and the realities deserves all respect in both cases, but in both cases he puts many things on the wrong side of the dividing line. His hearty contempt for sham pastorals and sham love-poetry will be probably shared by modern readers. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... control of the sovereign, and the latter under the control of the universal Church; such pretensions are too frivolous to merit refutation. (58) I cannot however, pass over in silence the fact that such persons are woefully deceived when they seek to support their seditious opinions (I ask pardon for the somewhat harsh epithet) by the example of the Jewish high priest, who, in ancient times, had the right of administering the sacred offices. (59) Did not ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... the saint, seizing a stick, pursued him. They ran through the halls, turning round the pillars, running up the staircases, galloping along the cornices, jumping from gargoyle to gargoyle. The poor devil, who was woefully ill, was running about madly and trying hard to escape. At last he found himself at the top of the last terrace, right at the top, from which could be seen the immense bay, with its distant towns, sands and pastures. He could no longer escape, and the saint came up behind him and gave him ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant |
