"Heartbreaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any storm.—Oh, you don't really know him. He is so sure. He stands right up. He's never taken a cropper in his life. God smiles on him. God has always smiled on him. He's never been beaten down to his knees... yet. I... I should not care to see that sight. It would be heartbreaking. And, Evan—" Her hand went out to his in a pleading gesture that merged into a half-caress. "—I am afraid for him now. That is why I don't know what to do. It is not for myself that I back and fill and hesitate. If he were ignoble, if he were narrow, if ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... one moment our course is due north, then east, then again north, and as suddenly due south; in fact, we face every point of the compass within an hour. Frequently the noggurs that are far in the rear appear in advance; it is a heartbreaking river without a single redeeming point; I do not wonder at the failure of all expeditions in this wretched country. There is a breeze to-day, thus the oppressive heat and stagnated marsh atmosphere is relieved. I have always remarked that when the sky is clouded we suffer more from heat ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... Cousin Elsie," Arthur returned, with ill-concealed emotion, "how illy you could be spared by any of those who know and love you. Even I should feel it an almost heartbreaking thing to lose you out of my ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... proper were repaired to the greatest possible extent. It was a heartbreaking task, for we must only guess at what machines should be connected together. Much damage had been done by the rushing air as it left, for it filled the machines, too, and they were not designed to resist the terrific air pressure that was on them when ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... the unhappy slaves who, on the two big committees of your Trade Union (the Society of Authors) drudge at the heartbreaking work of defending our miserable profession against being devoured, body and soul, by the publishers—themselves a pitiful gang of literature-struck impostors who are crumpled up by the booksellers, who, though small folk, are at least in contact with reality in the shape of the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... oblivious of what is transpiring.] As if the difficulty of conducting a business of this kind isn't sufficient without extra bothers and worries being brought down on one's head! What with one's enormous rent, and rotten debts, it's heartbreaking! Here's a woman here, on my books, who runs an account for fifteen months, with the face of an angel, and no more intends to pay me than to jump over ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... Her aunt has had a heartbreaking lesson. She may say a few words to unsay words that she never should ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... my dear fellow—Hooker," exclaimed my uncle, as we were starting, "do let me know as soon as possible if our treasures have escaped; it would be heartbreaking to lose them. Send up Walter as soon as possible. The knowledge that they are safe would bring me round quicker than anything else, and recompense me for what ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... particular black man set me crazy. He was intelligent and deft, but one day I caught sight of his face as he served a crowd of men; he was playing the clown,—crouching, grinning, assuming a broad dialect when he usually spoke good English—ah! it was a heartbreaking sight, and he made more money than any waiter in ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... kept repeating themselves. All the same words, and the worst, the most heartbreaking. 'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!' They will drive a soul to perdition quicker than any in the English language. I am going to have them engraved on my tombstone, because I can ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... family could not live without hers. He could come and visit her, and sit in the kitchen and hold her hand, and he must manage to be content with that. But day by day the music of Tamoszius' violin became more passionate and heartbreaking; and Marija would sit with her hands clasped and her cheeks wet and all her body atremble, hearing in the wailing melodies the voices of the unborn generations which cried ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... off their legs several times. Again and again it appeared as if the smack must fall off the sides of the steep seas, as the long screw colliers sometimes do in the Bay of Biscay when the three crossing drifts meet. It was a heartbreaking day, and, at the very worst, a smack bore down as if he meant to come right into the Mission vessel. Sweeping under the lee and stopping his vessel, the smack's skipper hailed. "Got the doctor on board?" Down went the newcomer into ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... swollen and stamped with the carpet-nap, squirming in a grief that was actually abashing before it was heartbreaking, Ann 'Lisbeth Connors, whose only epiphany of life was love, and shut out from so much else that helps make life sweet, was now shut out from ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... white as a sheet. He did not care a dollar for his lost gold, but for this Indian boy to fail him—oh, it was heartbreaking! He buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Foxy!" he almost sobbed. "Foxy, my little Chippewa friend, I have tried so hard to treat you square—and—Foxy, you've failed me! You've failed me." And big, burly Jack Cornwall's tear-wet face was lying against Larry's hand, and poor, big, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... something over a thousand small houses, few of which were less than a century old. The streets were narrow and crooked, mostly named after bygone admirals or forgotten sea-fights; the romantic and picturesque quarter of a great naval port to the casual glance of a passer-by, but heartbreaking to any except the most courageous resident on account of its overcrowded and tumbledown condition. Yet it lacked the dreariness of an East End slum, for the sea winds blew down the narrowest streets and alleys, sailors and soldiers were always in view, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... summer season, but Harrison was unable to transport the food and war material needed by his ten thousand men. A million rations were required at the goal of the Maumee Rapids, and yet after two months of heartbreaking endeavor not a pound of provisions had been carried within fifty miles of this place. Wagons and pack-trains floundered in the mud and were abandoned. The rivers froze and thwarted the use of flotillas of scows. Winter closed ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... reserves were recharging cases of artillery shells which had been sent back from the front in carload lots. There were horses here —a whole troop of draft horses which had been worn out in that relentless, heartbreaking labor into which war sooner or later resolves itself. The drove had been shipped back this far to be rested and cured up, or to be shot in the event ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... great falls of the Rassini, beyond which no white man had gone. They hid the canoe in the bushes and placed beneath it the iron stove and half their supply of food. Then they plunged into the brush, eastward. Bennie had never known such grueling work and heartbreaking fatigue; and the clouds of flies pursued them venomously and with unrelenting persistence. At first they had to cut their way through acres of brush, and then the land rose and they saw before them miles of swamp and barren land dotted with dwarf trees and lichen-grown rocks. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... late in the afternoon when the exhausted men reached the clearing by the beach, but for two of them the return brought so great a happiness that all their suffering and heartbreaking grief was forgotten on ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... This heartbreaking result ought not to be charged to the soldiers so much as to the administration. John Armstrong, Secretary of War, allowed the British to land 5,000 men on the Chesapeake and to march fifty miles overland to Washington. Within a distance of two days' land travel from that city ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... country places leaving behind him dead men looking sightlessly up to the sky. The hero will be the man or woman who knows and loves and serves. In the new histories we will be shown the tragedy, the heartbreaking tragedy of war, which like some dreadful curse has followed the human family, beaten down their plans, their hopes, wasted their savings, destroyed their homes, and in every way turned back the ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... you have put poor Mamma off so late, as she is very much hurt at it, I fear, by what I hear, and accuses me of it. But that will, I trust, be forgiven. You don't say that you sympathise with me in my present heavy trial,[66] the heaviest I have ever had to endure, and which will be a sad heartbreaking to me—but I know you do feel for me. I am quiet and prepared, but still I fell very sad, and God knows! very wretched at times, for myself and my country, that such a change must take place. But God in His mercy will support ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... been a long fight," she began, as we talked in her modest little sitting-room, into which the sun streamed brightly with no thought of the cold shadows in the grim building below. "Oh, and such a hard, heartbreaking fight! Often it seems as if we had exhausted every means at our disposal, and yet we shall never give up. Why cannot we make the world see our case as we see it? Everything seems to have conspired against us—and yet I cannot, I will not believe that the law and ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... after a solemn pause. "And let this be a warning to you. Don't put your money in industries, dear old Captain Hamilton. What with the state of the labour market, and the deuced ingratitude of the working classes, it's positively heartbreaking—it is, indeed, ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... pleasure over a shining table spread beside the coping of the fount. A captain bowed with easy recognition and drew out two chairs. A statue-like waiter, born but to obey and, obeying, sweat, bowed less easy recognition and bent his spine to the backaching, heartbreaking angle of servitude. And through the gleaming maze of tables, light-footed as if her blood were foaming, Mrs. Violet Smith, tossing the curling ribbon of a jest over one shoulder. Following her ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... passing weary days of bitter, heartbreaking despondency. His lost liberty he had borne without much complaint, for it was merely the fortune of war, and hundreds of his countrymen were sharing the same fate with him. But to lose that love upon which he had believed all the happiness of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The suspense is heartbreaking, and night brings no forgetfulness. Those long voiceless nights of South Africa! Not a bird's call, nor a chirp from the tiny creatures which hide in the grass. A white moon, a wide heaven filled with strange stars, and the ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... painting carts and wheelbarrows. And Mrs. Lynde says it is the most hideous color for a building, especially when combined with a red roof, that she ever saw or imagined. You could simply have knocked me down with a feather when I heard it. It's heartbreaking, after all the trouble ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is entirely their affair, and one knows. But one can't help thinking. Just fancy Gwen the wife of a blind country Squire. It is heartbreaking ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... was the one inter-tribal flag of truce likely to be respected, provided the bearer of it could prove his right to its possession. They stared in silence at the feverish youth as, with great effort he told them the story of the Black Phantom and of the heartbreaking weeks he had spent in ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... dinner-wagons anywhere. Our visitor for C 13, having escaped from the back of the Scottish baronial building, emerges into a vista of covered corridors, wooden-floored, galvanised-iron roofed. It is a heartbreaking vista to the poor woman who has had no bus-fare and is burdened by a baby in arms. It is a vista which seems to have no end. Corridor branches out of corridor—A Corridor, B Corridor, C Corridor, D Corridor, each with its perspective of doors opening ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... shadowy misgiving. Neither you nor I nor Prothero will ever know a hundredth part of the rapture Nicky knows. We get it for five minutes, an hour, perhaps, and all the rest is simply hard, heavy, heartbreaking, grinding labour." ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... When they had learned their lesson, when they had found out what sorrow it brought, when they knew that there was only loss and shame in it for them—then it was too late! Then men, and women, too, expected them to go on giving; there was nothing else to do. Oh," said Julia, in a heartbreaking voice, bringing her locked hands down upon the table as if she were in physical agony, "if the law would only take a hand before and not afterward! Or if, when they are sick to death of men, they could believe that time would wash it ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... young, and saw Hal's mood. "Don't misunderstand us!" he cried. "It's heartbreaking—but it's not in our power to help. We are charged with building up the union, and we know that if we supported everything that looked like a strike, we'd be bankrupt the first year. You can't imagine how often this same thing happens—hardly a month ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... stand empty and deserted. Simply from the point of view of material economy this waste in church property, reduced to dollars and cents, would appear deplorable. From the point of view of social economy, reduced to terms of humanity, the waste is heartbreaking. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... said by Daniel Boone to his wife in that heartbreaking interview no one ever knew. When the scout rejoined the band, which now had assembled behind the protecting barricade, he said simply: "We must prepare for a hasty burial. These bodies must not be left for the wolves to maltreat." ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... while, by the employment of bribes, they easily contrived to escape detection. Waller felt the matter very severely. To have the poor negroes, in whom he took so great an interest, carried into slavery, after all the toil and danger he had gone through, was almost heartbreaking. For long afterwards he could scarcely bear ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... sat down to reflect again. In the face of these papers, almost sacred, almost prohibited, which he would touch and which death alone could have placed in his hands, he had in this moment the consciousness, in a more heartbreaking manner, of the irrevocable departure of his mother; tears returned to him and he wept there, alone, in ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... and went, and answered the heartbreaking question in her big brown eyes with cheerful words that did not, somehow, cheer. The storm was over, they told her, and now they would have a better chance. She mustn't think of what Murphy said—Murphy was an old fool. She mustn't give up. And even while they talked she knew ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... do it for Will, as is my own cousin, and who I love better than anybody else in the world? Don't you take on now, dear—don't you," for Bet had flung her head down on her hands, and was giving way to the most terrible, heartbreaking sobs. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... was heartbreaking work, this waiting and watching, and there was not one of the "Yankee's" crew but would have given a year's pay to have seen the mist lift long enough ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... many principles upon a pinnacle of security from which they will never be shaken, but which has also accomplished this result at the cost of innumerable mistakes, blunders, errors, futile efforts, and heartbreaking failures; or secondly, by the application of the principles of control and test which are now at our service, and which permit present-day teachers to concentrate within a single generation the growth and development and progress ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... the man stopped in his course because of one mistake, though he had done ten thousand wise things. The power taken from his hands, the interrupted life, the dark future, the beginning again, if ever his sight came back: it was sickening, heartbreaking. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that heartbreaking book, the LIFE OF SCOTT. One should read such works now and then, but O, not often. As I live, I feel more and more that literature should be cheerful and brave-spirited, even if it cannot be made beautiful and pious ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His daughter was quite meek and tractable; she spoke not, nor could any ingenuity on their part extract the slightest reply from her. Neither did she shed a single tear, but the vacant light of her eyes had stamped a fatuitous expression on her features that was melancholy and heartbreaking beyond all power of language ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in his mouth. What kind of a trick was fate playing on him? Was this to be the end of his heartbreaking struggle, his wild flight through the woods? Was he to get just a tantalizing glimpse of liberty to have it immediately snatched from him? At that moment he tasted the ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... interrupted by a cry, a single shrill, heartbreaking cry; and Philip fell senseless to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... came to my notice during those twenty years, they would without exaggeration make a volume the size of the latest edition of the Standard Dictionary, printed in the same small type. Some of them are positively heartbreaking. They make you sick at the stupidity of the human race, at the stupidity and brutality of the lawgivers. But I do not wish to appeal to your emotions. I do not wish to take extreme and unique cases. I will therefore briefly relate a few everyday cases, which will ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... husbands and sons had been absent in the forest at the time of the breaking out of the fire, over whose fate remained a terrible uncertainty, gathered in silence around lonely hearths. The terrors of the past night were, to such, supplemented by days and even weeks of heartbreaking anxiety and suspense, closed at last by ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... of Joseph and of David; and of my keen appreciation of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham in his dealing with Lot. Like a sudden flash there returns back upon me, my utter scorn of the pettifogging meanness of Jacob, and my sympathetic grief over the heartbreaking lamentation of the cheated Esau, "Hast thou not a blessing for me also, O my father?" And I see, as in a cloud, pictures of the grand phantasmagoria of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... there lurks almost always the ancestor, the savage contemporary of the cave-bear. True humanity does not yet exist; it is growing, little by little, created by the ferment of the centuries and the dictates of conscience; but it progresses towards the highest with heartbreaking slowness. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... papa has been very hopeful. I don't know exactly what his mind runs on, but I can see that he is making heaps of plans in regard to the future, and oh! You can't think how glad and how thankful I am for the change. The state of dull, heartbreaking, weary depression that he fell into just after getting the news of our failure was beginning to undermine his health. I could see that plainly, and felt quite wretched about him. But now he is comparatively cheerful, and so gentle too. Do you know, I have been thinking a good deal lately of ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... shall have future occasion to notice, he writes on the 29th of March 1802: "I must not omit to say a word about my attempts to cultivate the land. The result of all my labours in that way was disappointment almost as heartbreaking as that of the unlucky Chinaman, whose example however did not deter me. After many vexations I descended from the plains into the ravines, and there met with the success denied me on the elevated land. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to read?" asked Devant uneasily; "the library is yours, my child." The last words had a possible significance that was well-nigh heartbreaking to ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... good job, my lad, for it would be heartbreaking to know that all we've done out there, planting fruit-trees and getting the place in such nice trim, should be 'lowed to go back again to ruin, and grow over into forest wilds, as it would in a ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... father and son. They clung to each other again and again, as if they had a presentiment that they should meet no more. Poor John was almost as violently affected: his master, as he always called Mr. Martin, was as dear to him as a father. He stood by, witnessing this heartbreaking struggle, overpowered with his own feelings, and wretched at seeing his dear respected master undergoing such a trial. "Ah, Miss Helen," whispered he, "what would I give to get one kiss of my master's hand before I leave him! But do not intrude on him: I would not add to his distress for ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... paradise which had been conjured up before him by the warm, inspiring sentences of this miners' leader, and joyful in the contemplation of this paradise of happy humanity, he fell asleep. Could he have foreseen the terrible, heartbreaking ordeals through which Smillie often had to pass, still clinging with tenacity to the gleam that led him on, praying sometimes that strength would be given to keep him from turning back; of the strenuous battle he had, not only with those he fought against, but of the greater and more bitter ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... paused another heartbreaking second, then he saw that caution was the better way. "I'll have to shut you out for a minute or two, boys. Go down to the bar and have a few on me." He turned, laughing and waving to them. Then the door closed, and Dozier turned slowly to face his hunted man. Into Andrew's mind came back the ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... tried to resume their conversation. She did so deliberately rather than for pleasure: she was obviously taking a great deal of trouble to find subjects of conversation, and bored with the questions she put: questions and answers came between heartbreaking silences. Christophe remembered his first interviews with Otto: but with Sabine their subjects were even more limited than then, and she had not Otto's patience. When she saw the small success of her endeavors she did not try any more: ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... sunshine, her blossoming flowers, her leafy trees, and her jubilation of mating birds. He looks about him and thinks: "Everybody is happy, everything is rejoicing. I am the solitary exception; I am the only living thing that is out of place." And then there comes upon him a heartbreaking sense of loneliness, a feeling of complete isolation, as if the great, happy world had cast him off and gone on its way singing. He has thought of suicide before—he has thought of it often; and now, when the world, in its triumphant gladness, ignores his very existence, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... away from him, like a headstrong, restive horse. The notion suggested the colt that had fallen lame; he wondered if Elbridge would look carefully after it; and then he thought of all the other horses. A torment of heartbreaking homesickness seized him; his love for his place, his house, his children, seemed to turn against him, and to tear him and leave him bleeding, like the evil spirit in the demoniac among the tombs. He was in such misery with his longing for his children, that he thought it ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... eager. A tingling buoyancy and impatience took hold of him: he fidgeted with sheer eagerness for life. Land, the beloved stability of our dear and only earth, drew and charmed him. Behind was the senseless, heartbreaking sea. Now he could discern hills rising in a gilded opaline light. In the volatile thin air was a quick sense of strangeness. A new world was close about him: a world that he could see, and feel, and inhale, and yet ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... consolation after this heartbreaking defection but two interesting things in life—the printing press and the Flobert Rifle. Somehow the week dragged through until Sunday, when Bobby duly scrubbed and dressed, had to go to church with ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... he could for the jolting. They had again struck the level and seven miles, at Park's usual pace, was heartbreaking to a man not accustomed to the saddle. Thurston had written, just before leaving home, a musical bit of verse born of his luring dreams, about "the joy of speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky," and he was gritting his teeth ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... daisies had been scattered in the thin grass over the poet, and one hardly dared lift one's eyes from them to the heartbreaking epitaph which one could not ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... to atone for these more or less frequent lapses, there was something pathetic, even a little heartbreaking, in Carrie's zeal for his well-being. No duty too small. One night she wanted to unlace his shoes and even shine them—would have, in fact, except for his fierce catching of her into his arms and for some reason his tonsils aching ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... thought of going through again what I had endured when seeing Di and Eagle March together, kept me from raising my voice in persuasion. It would be heartwearing to be left behind, never to know what was happening except from an occasional letter; but to be on the spot and see for myself would be heartbreaking. I wasn't quite sure which would be worse, so I left the decision to Fate; and as I said before, it was my Frenchified genius for doing hair which settled the matter. Di discussed it with Father frankly before me, and argued that not only was I cleverer than the average maid, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... cries that night, so utterly pitiful and childlike. I've heard many a cry of pain, but in all my life nothing so heartbreaking as that boy in fevered delirium talking to his mother. His voice is one of peculiar tenderness, penetrating and musical. It goes quivering into your soul, and compels you to listen until you swear it's your brother or sweetheart or sister or mother calling you. You should have seen him the day he ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... many people will be killed in this war, John Joseph, and that is heartbreaking to think of; yes heartbreaking, although you with your warlike notions say it ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... look up until he had finished revising a difficult paragraph. By that time Mr. Hamlin had comfortably settled himself on a cane sofa, and, possibly out of deference to his surroundings, had subdued his song to a peculiarly low, soft, and heartbreaking whistle as he unfolded a newspaper. Clean and faultless in his appearance, he had the rare gift of being able to get up at two in the afternoon with much of the dewy freshness and all of the moral superiority of an ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... by the fiend Aun-Ab she saw in it traces of poison. No doubt about his death then remained in her mind, and clasping him in her arms she lifted him up, and in her transports of grief leaped about like fish when they are laid on red-hot coals. Then she uttered a series of heartbreaking laments, each of which begins with the words "Horus is bitten." The heir of heaven, the son of Un- Nefer, the child of the gods, he who was wholly fair, is bitten! He for whose wants I provided, he who was to avenge his father, is bitten! He for whom I cared and suffered ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge |
