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More "Pitiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfectly right, ma'am," quoth the imperturbable Frank. "But as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this about poor Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together, like a couple of sensible people, and bring it to an end. Let me tell you, ma'am, that Archie is really quite a promising young man, and in my opinion he would do well at the Bar. As for his father, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be given to these orphan children, whose pitiable condition should appeal to you. And promise me on your honour as men that you will land them at Valparaiso, or some other civilised place, from where they may reach England. If you will not make this promise, you can shoot ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of confidence. Magsie had no basis for her pretension. Magsie was young, and she had madly and blindly fallen in love. There was her single claim: she loved. Rachael could not doubt it after that hour in the sitting- room. But what pitiable folly! To love and to admit love for ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... say. He was not crying over it, but he looked pretty forlorn and white, and his blindness made it pitiable. I call it brutal; the man at least might have travelled up for company. A journey ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... only measure of the man, Solomon. If anybody can talk to me and be unaware that they are conversing with a gentleman, all I can say is their experience has been as pitiable as their intelligence is meager. But it hurts me when you intimate that I stand in the way ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the "Golden Legend." Was not evil Satan himself? And had not she seen how, although he constantly reappeared, he was always overthrown? After every battle he remained crushed to earth, thoroughly conquered, and in a most pitiable state. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... frightened that his master, fully believing that he was concealing something, ordered him to tell at once what remained unseen, and where it was hidden away. Face to face with discovery of his secret, the old man, in a pitiable state of concern, spoke out even more fully than Mr. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... man there are fewer possibilities of caricature than in that of woman, yet, "the masterpieces of creation" frequently exaggerate in a laughable—and sometimes a pitiable—way, certain physical characteristics by ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... late afternoon heat, and fearful that the gathering would break up before she could say what she wanted to say, and entirely unable to control her gasping and puffing, was a sight at once funny and pitiable. As she sank into a comfortable chair she held up one fat hand to command attention, and with the other laid forcible hold upon Barry Valentine. Three or four of the younger women hurried to her with fans and tea, and in a moment or two she ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... it is French comedy of the best type. Don't you agree, sir, that the police would be an inartistic error?" He was perfectly calm and collected, whereas they were in a pitiable state. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... his home of his own free will, leaving his affairs in a pitiable condition. Madame de la Chanterie is, even to this day, amazed at the catastrophe, which no human foresight could have prevented. The persons she prudently consulted before the marriage had assured her that the suitor's fortune was clear and ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... unfortunate who has broken away from a state voluntarily, deliberately, chosen and entered upon, and who struggles through life with a violated vow saddled upon him. But one does not associate the sacred and heroic character of the vow with such pitiable ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... were quite invisible, threw back her bonnet for the admission of fresh air to her heated brow; and in the act of saying faintly—'Less liquor!—Sairey Gamp—Bottle on the chimney-piece, and let me put my lips to it, when I am so dispoged!'—fell into one of the walking swoons; in which pitiable state she was conducted forth by Mr Sweedlepipe, who, between his two patients, the swooning Mrs Gamp and the revolving Bailey, had ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... and fireships in the little Bogaz, which separates the island from the main. At length the fleet sail for Mytilene. The troops at Scala Nova know not what to think, no provisions, no water, 25,000 die of famine, the rest in a most pitiable condition, receive orders to return to their homes, massacre, pillage, and plunder the whole way back. Nevertheless, the Turks contrived to lose two small frigates by the fireships of the Greeks. The conduct of the Pacha, and his disgraceful mode of entering ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... characters; in Phoebe, too, though in a different way, is the same truth, a life entirely real; and, on the smaller scale, Uncle Venner is also to be reckoned a character perfectly done. Clifford is necessarily faint, and does not interest one on his own account; he is pitiable, but his love of the beautiful is too much sentimentalized to engage sympathy in the special way that Hawthorne attempts, and one sees in him only the victim of life, the prisoner whom the law mistook and outraged and left ruined; and Holgrave ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... point, and like most people who have usually little to say, became very voluble, when once she passed into the humor of talking. Therese let her talk unchecked. It seemed to do her good to chatter about Belle and Lou, and Jack Dawson, and about her home life, of which she unknowingly made such a pitiable picture to her listener. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... happiness and salvation, is a chained enemy, and a captive to Him who triumphed in his resurrection and ascension to glory, and under the control and permissive will of Him, whom they denominate Keetchee Manitou, or Great Spirit; and, consequently they are enslaved to all that is pitiable in ignorance and superstition. Acknowledging the being of a God, the uncultivated minds of these savages have led them to shrink from the thoughts of annihilation, and to look forward with hope to a future life. They have no idea however of intellectual ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... was in a pitiable state; and had begun even to question Jenny's loyalty. He had turned to the thought of her as a last resort for soothing and reassurance, and now, in the chilly dawn, even she ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... pitiable. Snatches of talk overheard in Paris and elsewhere warned her that Mrs. Leland would prove an unconquerable foe. She was miserably conscious that her own letter, posted overnight, would rise up in judgment against her, but already she had devised the plausible ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Bob towered above them like a great avenging red angel. Then his anger left him as suddenly as it had come. Carey and the deputy presented such a pitiable sight, although ludicrous withal, that he was moved to shame to think that he had pitted his strength against such puny adversaries. He picked T. Morgan Carey out of the corner, set him on his feet, dusted him off, gave him his hat and restored to him his gold pince-nez. The deputy needed ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... don't mean—you can't—" Mrs. Fowler was really pitiable, for, after all, George was her son, and the ties of blood would not break so easily as the ties of marriage. In the depths of her humiliation she had almost convinced herself that she had never respected George, that she had never believed ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... window-curtains, and shreds of pictures, with which he had bedizened his tatters. His face, too, had lost its vacant and careless air, and the poor creature looked hollow-eyed, meagre, half-starved, and nervous to a pitiable degree.—After long hesitation, he at length approached Waverley with some confidence, stared him sadly in the face, and said, 'A' dead ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... for his musket, and wrested it from him; on which the thief let go the knapsack, and attempted to make off; but when he heard the soldier cock his piece, expecting to be instantly shot, he threw himself down on the road and roared out in the most pitiable manner. The soldier took a steady aim at him, but unfortunately his musket flashed in the pan, and the slave started up and ran in amongst ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... to release her from her misery; and I had gone some little distance on my road, when, on looking round, I found the poor creature hobbling after me, indicating, that it was her wish not to be left alone and abandoned in such a pitiable state. My heart bled for my faithful and noble beast, and I instantly attended to her apparent call upon my humanity. I took the rein, and she followed me home, nearly as fast as I could walk. When we[25] reached there, she was ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... he held dear upon earth? But he was fully satisfied that the glory of that Savior who loved him and gave Himself for him would be promoted by his going forth to preach to the heathen. He considered their pitiable and perilous condition; he thought on the value of their immortal souls; he remembered the last solemn injunction of his Lord, "Go teach all nations,"—an injunction never revoked, and commensurate with that most encouraging promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Actuated ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... the English troops came forward to the attack. They were young, wore no decorations; they carried out with blind courage what their senile commanders ordered—and this in a period of mortars, machine guns and the telephone. Their behavior was splendid, but all the more pitiable was the breakdown of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... in native shrewdness or energy. He foresaw, not the pitiable bubble-burst which ensued, indeed, but the certain and inevitable end of the speculative era. Like every one else, he had bought chiefly with promises to pay, and his paper in the three banks aggregated a sum equal to a frugal ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... in an extremity of weakness that was pitiable to witness; and ever, as time went on, seemed sinking slowly from sheer inanition and exhaustion. After all there must be some strange mischief at work, he said; but Dr. Martin was of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... strength in the effort to wrench herself free, even at the cost of tearing the dress and being obliged to travel with it unrepaired; but in vain; the material was too strong to give way, and she sank down on the step in a state of pitiable fright and despair. ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... respecting matters of fact. The assimilation, as it seems to us, throws a flood of light on both conceptions; on the physical one still more than the mathematical. We might extract many ideas of similar, though none perhaps of equal, suggestiveness. But mixed with these, what pitiable niaiseries! One of his great points is the importance of the "moral and intellectual properties of numbers." He cultivates a superstitious reverence for some of them. The first three are sacred, les nombres sacres: One being the type ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... had taken refuge in nodding, exhausting the significance of nods in reply to the various appeals that the other three addressed to him. If their meaning had been developed, his nods must have landed him in a pitiable mess of inconsistencies; he had tried to agree with everybody, to sympathize all round, to indorse universally. He had won momentary applause, and in the ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... me in the street one night. He was in the most pitiable plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history, or at least the outline of it. In brief, it amounted to this—he had ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... management of a drove of mules. In a fit of drunken madness, he committed the outrage which brought the young woman in question down to my old master's for protection. This young woman was the daughter of Milly, an own aunt of mine. The poor girl, on arriving at our house, presented a pitiable appearance. She had left in haste, and without preparation; and, probably, without the knowledge of Mr. Plummer. She had traveled twelve miles, bare-footed, bare-necked and bare-headed. Her neck and shoulders{64} were covered with scars, newly made; and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... ground from sheer exhaustion, never to rise again. We lost many during the long and trying journey to the Arctic, and I shall always recall their deaths with a keen pang of remorse. For their gentle, docile nature made it the more pitiable to see them perish, as we looked helplessly on, unable to alleviate their agony, yet conscious that it was for our sake they had ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... abatements granted averaged over 30 per cent., and in some cases exceeded 50 per cent., were not perhaps all a sign of the landlord's iniquity, but also may be taken to show something of the tenant's indifference. Poverty is pitiable, truly, and it claims relief from all who believe in the interdependence of a community; but poverty which comes from idleness, unthrift, neglect, and which then falls on others to relieve—these others having to suffer for sins not their own—how about that as ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... a day and a night; drenched by rain; scorched by the sun; crippled by rocks and roots; frightened by rattle-snakes and panthers; blistered and swollen by poisonous insects; nearly starved; tired to death; and presenting the most pitiable appearance in the world, Mr. P. reached the encampment of Mr. MURRAY, proprietor ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... since, fully occupied in collecting and packing together the more cherished articles of his property and without the semblance of a care or a thought for his unfortunate wife, whose condition, in spite of her ludicrous complaints, was truly pitiable. Miss Herbey, however, is unrelaxing in her attentions, and the unremitted diligence with which she fulfills her offices of duty, ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... disapprobation. While Elizabeth lived, indeed, this disapprobation, though deeply felt, was not loudly expressed. But a great change was at hand. The health of the Queen had long been decaying; and the operation of age and disease was now assisted by acute mental suffering. The pitiable melancholy of her last days has generally been ascribed to her fond regret for Essex. But we are disposed to attribute her dejection partly to physical causes, and partly to the conduct of her courtiers and ministers. They did all in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Provided with two humps, it carries a natural saddle; and, clothed in long wool, yellow, brown or black, it looks in winter a lordly beast. Its fleece is never shorn, but is shed in summer. At that season the poor naked animal is the most pitiable of creatures. In the absence of railways and carriage roads, it fills the place of the ship of the desert and performs the heaviest tasks, such as the transporting of coals and salt. Most docile of slaves, at a word from its master it kneels down and quietly ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... authorities, out of the vast number of our men then held captive at Andersonville, the same whom General Stoneman had hoped to rescue at the time of his raid. Some of these prisoners had already escaped and got in, had described the pitiable condition of the remainder, and, although I felt a sympathy for their hardships and sufferings as deeply as any man could, yet as nearly all the prisoners who had been captured by us during the campaign had been sent, as fast as taken, to the usual depots North, they were ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a pitiable state of superstitious indecision. It was popularly believed that Quetzalcoatl would some day return, and it was more than probable to the Aztec monarch and his counsellors that he might be reincarnated in the person ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... scrambled out. One ran one way, and another another; but the Khoja contrived to keep up with the cock, which he drove before him with his stick, the poor bird waddling hither and thither, and fluttering from side to side with distress and indecision pitiable to behold. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of physic, which forces an appetite for a while. But it is soon powerless against the effects of nervous exhaustion, and before the poor devil can obtain relief, he is sometimes reduced to the most pitiable condition. I have seen robust men in Holloway, by means of this plank bed and other superfluous tortures of our prison system, brought to the very verge of the grave; and I can scarcely control my indignation when I remember that Mr. Truelove, at the age of seventy, was subjected ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... she said, "there are women who have lost their hearts, and there are women who were born without any. The former case has the more suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable." ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... while our youth lasted, and diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us. But nothing was expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much of, and that is our tragedy. For very few things, my dear, are more pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind cannot—cannot, because of its very nature—reach to anything higher! Middle-age strips her of everything—the admiration, the flattery, the shallow merriment—all ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... same quarter, and so that he could, at need, take himself off at the slightest disquietude which should assail him, and in short, so that he might not again be caught unprovided as on the night when he had so miraculously escaped from Javert. These two apartments were very pitiable, poor in appearance, and in two quarters which were far remote from each other, the one in the Rue de l'Ouest, the other in the Rue de ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... produce from the natives and the few scattered white traders. At Arorai, the southernmost island of the group, we found the natives in a state of famine owing to a long and disastrous drought. The condition of these poor people was truly pitiable to see, and the tears came to my eyes when I saw them, scarcely able to stand, crawling over our bulwarks, and eagerly seizing the biscuits and dishes of boiled rice that Hayes gave them with an unstinting hand. ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... times over, and for ten years at a stretch! As if it were not to die in one's own lifetime, and without even the sad immunities of death! As if it were not to die, and yet be the patient spectators of our own pitiable change! The Permanent Possibility is preserved, but the sensations carefully held at arm's length, as if one kept a photographic plate in a dark chamber. It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... least, was a refuge: here was a man who loved you, and was ready to give you his home and his name, and show the world that he loved you in spite of all. Here was a chance for you, I thought, to show that you had not given your heart where it was not wanted; that you were not that pitiable object, a woman scorned. But you refused me. So then I took the law into my own hands. Was I so ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... children, and because of the mere suspicion that she was attempting to poison him, he cut off her nose and mutilated her ears. He sent her back to her father in Gaul thus despoiled of her natural charms. So the wretched girl presented a pitiable aspect ever after, and the cruelty which would stir even strangers still more surely incited her father to vengeance. Attila, therefore, in his efforts to bring about the wars 185 long ago instigated by the bribe of Gaiseric, sent ambassadors into Italy to the Emperor Valentinian to sow strife between ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... Ridgway. You have mistaken my purpose, seh. I had no intention of drawing," he stammered with a pitiable ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... 'A pitiable scandal, sir; and if he took my recommendation, he would find instant means of punishing the man who dares to threaten him. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Nieuport, from the terrible days of the Spanish invasion down to these days of even worse fate, has been pitiable. Its former sea trade after the Spanish invasion was never recovered, and its population, which was beginning to be thrifty and prosperous up to 1914, has now entirely disappeared. Nieuport is now in ashes and ruins. When I passed the day there in the summer ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... children of Manfred met with a pitiable fate. On learning of the sad death of her husband Helena sought safety in flight, with her daughter Beatrice and her three infant sons, Henry, Frederick, and Anselino; but she was betrayed to Charles, who threw her into a dungeon, in which she soon languished and died. Of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... to fail. His pitiable existence had been sweetened by his brother's inventive tenderness and his own contented spirit, which, his antecedents considered, was truly remarkable, As for Gerard, the day never passed that he did not devote two hours to him; reading or singing to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... wayside immense crowds of men, women, and children gathered. The railway stations were choked with struggling humanity. Their condition was pitiable. These scenes continued all day and throughout the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... looked over his spectacles at her. Even Mr. Aram glanced round at her surreptitiously; and Lucius turned his face upon his mother's, almost with an air of triumph. But she bore it all without flinching;—bore it all without flinching, though the state of her mind at that moment must have been pitiable. And Mrs. Orme, who held her hand all the while, knew that it was so. The hand which rested in hers was twitched as it were convulsively, but the culprit gave no outward sign ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Law or no law, it was all over between him and that girl! All the circumstances where known: his unfortunate position was the talk of neighbours; often, as we have imagined, kindly souls of women, young and older, must have had their colloquies and whispers about his pitiable bachelorhood caused by the shameful desertion of his wife. Kindly talk was all very well: but was there any unmarried lady willing to take the place of the deserter, if asked to do so? This was really the question in Aldergate Street, and in all the round of Milton's acquaintances. Candidates ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... commends itself to the reverence of his flock, while he sees the softer partner of his guilt standing in the full glare of exposure and humbling herself to the misery of atonement—between this more wretched and pitiable culprit, to whom dishonour would come as a comfort and the pillory as a relief, and the older, keener, wiser man, who, to obtain satisfaction for the wrong he has suffered, devises the infernally ingenious plan of conjoining himself with his wronger, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... from and about those of us left here, and that in a so much more satisfactory way than through letters, that it scarcely seems worth while to write just yet. But Mary left Kate's poor little baby in such a pitiable state, that I think it will be a relief to all to hear that its sufferings are ended. It died about ten o'clock the night that she left us, very quietly and without a struggle, and at sunset on Friday we laid it in its last resting-place. ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... continued Proserpine, 'I make it a rule to support the weaker side, and nothing will ever persuade me that Ixion is not a victim, and a pitiable one.' ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... twisted tobacco, and among the children we distributed a small handful of halfpence, which they received with great eagerness. Yet I have been since told, that the people of that valley are not indigent; and when we mentioned them afterwards as needy and pitiable, a Highland lady let us know, that we might spare our commiseration; for the dame whose milk we drank had probably more than a dozen milk-cows. She seemed unwilling to take any price, but being pressed to make a demand, at last named a shilling. Honesty is not greater ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... in a pitiable state of mind. A railway journey had always been to her a thing of horror. The reader may therefore form some conception of what it was to her to have been thus suddenly called away from quiet suburban life ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... now. He looked, indeed, a most pitiable object as he stood there, his lower jaw drooped and his ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... a class near the door, stared in horror. Amongst them was Curly. His companions declared afterwards that had it not been for the strength of the curl, his hair would have stood upright. For, following Bruce, led in fact by a string, came an awful apparition—Juno herself, a pitiable mass of caninity—looking like the resuscitated corpse of a dog that had been nine days buried, crowded with lumps, and speckled with cuts, going on three legs, and having her head and throat swollen to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... no doubt true that 'Godliness is profitable for all things,' but there are a great many other things besides the godliness of the man that does them which determine whether a man's undertakings shall prosper in the world's sense or not. It would be a pitiable thing if the full revelation of God in Christ did not teach us Christians more about the meaning and the worth of outward success and inward prosperity than the Old Testament could teach. I hope ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... triumphantly from the Chateau de Bruyeres—and such a horse! a miserable, old, broken-down hack, whose ribs were so prominent that he looked as if he lived upon barrel-hoops instead of oats and hay; his lack-lustre eyes, drooping head, halting gait, and panting breath combined to make him a most pitiable object, and he plodded on at a snail's pace, looking as if he might drop down dead on the road at any moment. Only the three women were in the chariot—the men all walking, so as to relieve their poor, jaded beast as much as possible. The weather was bitterly cold, and they wrapped their cloaks ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... seized on a rat of this description, and of covering it suddenly with a glass shade, before it had time to swallow its prey. The serpent, appeared stunned by its own capture, and allowed the rat to escape from its jaws, which cowered at one side of the glass in the most pitiable state of trembling terror. The two were left alone for some moments, and on my return to them the snake was as before in the same attitude of sullen stupor. On setting them at liberty, the rat bounded ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... of Champlain's death until the arrival of the Marquis de Tracy, in 1665, Canada was often in a most dangerous and pitiable position. That period of thirty years was, however, also distinguished by the foundation of those great religious communities which have always exercised such an important influence upon the conditions of life throughout French Canada. In 1652 Montreal was founded ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the dazed look of beings who feel themselves lost yet still are driven by the life within them to press on, the five fugitives—pitiable handful of the Legion—were plodding ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... by fashion, and because the hilt was convenient for the display of a jewel or two. Certainly 't was not for utility that it hung beside him, and no man had ever seen it drawn. Nature had made him the most pitiable coward begotten. Why then should he involve himself in an affair which promised bloodshed, and which must be attended by many a risk for him? There was in all this some mystery that I ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... in this practical world of dollars and cents, where other boys are men, and men forget that they ever were young! But this, you say, is all sentimental nonsense. Of course it is. I admit the full folly of such thoughts. It would be a pitiable spectacle indeed to see every body inspired by the vagabond spirit of Robinson Crusoe. No doubt, if you were sitting upon a rock on the Gulf of Finland, my respected Californian friend, you would be hammering ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... desire to see the old sovereign of Spain before him; the request of Charles IV. and his queen forestalled this proposal. The lieutenant-general had at last snatched away the Prince de la Paix from the hands which detained him. The favorite had taken refuge under the wing of Murat, in the most pitiable condition. "The Prince de la Paix arrives this evening," wrote Napoleon to Talleyrand on the 25th of April; "he has been for a month between life and death, always menaced with the latter. Would you believe it that, in this interval, he has never changed his shirt, and has a beard seven ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... herself, one day when she had not been able to avoid witnessing this pitiable spectacle of infirmity; 'I can't think why I am always fancying he is doing Humfrey and me some injustice, and that he knows it. He, who brought Humfrey home, and has praised him to Mervyn! It is very ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... room just at the time the buffalo hunters, as above described, entered the square of the fort. As he strode forward, with nothing on but his shirt and trousers, his eyes bloodshot, his hair matted and dishevelled, and his countenance haggard in the extreme, he was the most pitiable, and, at the same time, most terrible specimen of human degradation that the mind ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... his limbs, and he bears the brand of degradation on his forehead. What is it but the mere abuse of language to call him free, who is tyrannically deprived of all the motives to exertion which animate other men? The law, in truth, has left him in that most pitiable of all conditions—a masterless slave."—Hamilton's Men and Manners ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... were too thoroughly vanquished. Their plight was laughable, and yet pitiable. They were coated with mud from head to foot, and their pretty hats, with their polka-dot bands, were gone too far down the river to ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... mentioned, that, on the 23d, it was agreed the Dragon and Ascension were to be sent to the Moluccas, and the Hector and Susan to be loaded with pepper, and sent home. We busied ourselves to procure fresh victuals, vegetables, and fruits, for the recovery of our men, who were in a most pitiable case with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... sure that he has mourned; such lore is the alchemy of tears. Hence the insensible and almost universal confusion of idea which confounds melancholy with depth, and finds but hollow inanity in the symbol of a laugh. Pitiable error! Reflection first leads us to gloom, but its next stage is to brightness. The Laughing Philosopher had reached the goal of Wisdom; Heraclitus whimpered at the starting-post. But enough for Lucy to gain even ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not go now, Maurice?" said Crystal at last in pitiable pleading, "we only make each other hopelessly wretched, by lingering near ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... ability to stock it; the proprietor is forced to provide seed and cattle, and he and his tenant divide the produce; a miserable system that perpetuates poverty and prevents instruction. The same wretched country continues to La Loge; the fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are full of misery. Heaven grant me patience while I see a country thus neglected, and forgive me the oaths I swear at the absence and ignorance of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... beaten the little fellow into a pitiable condition. He tied him to that porch column and flogged him with a quirt. While I cannot defend Okada's action in releasing Loustalot, nevertheless, Mr. Farrel—" Don Mike's black eyes burned like ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Baileyville wished help, no matter how excellent its quality. Every night the report from the Harlings was the same—Louise could find nothing to do. Even Mrs. McGregor who was ordinarily able to straighten out every sort of tangle had no remedy for the present pitiable dilemma. The only employment it was in her power to secure for the girl was fine sewing and Louise, restricted by her factory training, could not sew. A week went by and still nothing presented itself. Mrs. Harling and the aged grandfather, from whom the calamity had ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... for the first time in her will also show this desolate heart the path to eternal love. And Parsifal had finally shown her, the pitiable one, the ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... of remote chances of danger either from beasts or men. Our sympathies are drawn out towards our humble hardy companions by a community of interests, and, it may be, of perils, which make us all friends. Nothing but the most pitiable puerility would lead any manly heart to make their inferiority a theme for self-exaltation; however, that is often done, as if with the vague idea that we can, by magnifying their deficiencies, demonstrate ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... they stumbled into camp, Harding ragged and exhausted, and Clarke limping after him in an even more pitiable state. The doctor had suffered badly from the hurried march; but his conductor would brook no delay, and the grim hints he had been given encouraged him to ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... true that the best and worst in humanity are only opposite faces of the same medal, we should be tempted to think mankind even more pitiable than we ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... condition of the Negritos, although not one of extreme misery, is indeed pitiable. Their life is a continual struggle for sufficient food, but their efforts to provide for themselves stop short at that; clothing and houses are of secondary importance. The average Negrito takes little pride in his dwelling place. A shelter sufficient to turn the beating rains is ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... opposite sentiments attached to a doctrine identically the same. In either case no improvement is possible, and the authority of human ideals is denied. To escape, to stanch natural wounds, to redeem society and the private soul, are then mistaken and pitiable ambitions, adding to their vanity a certain touch of impiety. One who really believes that the world's work is all providentially directed and that whatever happens, no matter how calamitous or shocking, happens by divine right, has a quietistic excuse for license; to check energy ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... covet to see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres, the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; 'tis not without compassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our displeasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events. Nothing tickles that does not pinch. And good historians skip over, as stagnant water and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which they know that we ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... temple like a dog that has discovered his lost master and fawns affectionately at his feet. Criminal as he was, his joy in his abasement, his glory in his miserable isolation from humanity, was a doom of degradation pitiable ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... humanity, and object. With very great reason, as I consider, if your hypothesis be correct. What right have you to hang any poor creature "for an example"? He can turn round upon you and say, "Why make an 'example' of me, a merely ill-situated, pitiable man? Have you no more respect for misfortune? Misfortune, I have been told, is sacred. And yet you hang me, now I am fallen into your hands; choke the life out of me, for an example! Again I ask, Why make an example of me, for your own convenience ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... against the strokes of fate. Still it may be urged that these men, in their leisure hours, laugh, sing, play, and live without care for the past as well as for the future. Will you then deny that they are happier than we? Man is such a pitiable and variable creature, and habits have such a potent sway over him, that in the most disastrous situations he always finds some posture that gives him ease, something that consoles him, and, by comparison with past ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the prison, (consequently the night preceding the second public examination of Agnes,) I was attacked by ardent fever in such unmitigated fury, that before morning I had lost all command of my intellectual faculties. For some weeks I became a pitiable maniac, and in every sense the wreck of my former self; and seven entire weeks, together with the better half of an eighth week, had passed over my head whilst I lay unconscious of time and its dreadful freight of events, excepting in so far as my disordered brain, by ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... great men observed (for the very good reason that it had not appeared in their time), but which seems also to have escaped the notice of the writers of our own day, close observers as they are of any new development. I mean the class of Social Exiles, pitiable wanderers from home and country, who haunt the Continent, and are to be found (sad little colonies) in out-of- the-way corners of almost ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... honestly assert that she had danced with him oftener than with Morson, or a dozen others, but he had a pleasant feeling that even when she shook her head and said, "I cannot," her soft eyes added for her, "though I really wish to." There was something almost pitiable, he told himself in the complacency with which that self-satisfied ass Morson would come and take her from him. As if he hadn't sense enough to discover that it was merely because she was his hostess that she went with him at all. But some men would ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... the counted day Fruitlessly came and went; I made excuse for the delay, Pitiable confident. I knew to-morrow's light must bring The words ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... hour, these votes were immediately communicated to the king, who was in a pitiable condition, aged, nearly blind, half crazed, and stubborn even to insanity, in his determination to subjugate the Americans. The poor old man, in his rage, threatened to abandon England, to renounce the crown, and to cloister ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... our former journeys by diligence over broken railway routes; we recalled our cruel voyage from Genoa to Naples by sea; and in a state of pitiable dismay we ate five francs' worth at the restaurant of the Civita Vecchia station before we knew it, and long before we had made up our minds. Still we might have lingered and hesitated, and perhaps returned to Rome at last, but for the dramatic resolution of the old man who solicited ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... fellow at her side inspire such emotion? It was puzzling and baffling, but it roused Drew's sympathy, and held him captive. The rough faces of the men, the pitiable, worn faces of the women, the sprinkling of freckled, childish faces were blotted out for him. Like a star in blank space shone that one sweet, waiting face with its ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... in this state; and he gives a laughable account of their behaviour and strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiable expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons. (7. Brehm, 'Thierleben,' B. i. 1864, s. 75, 86. On the Ateles, s. 105. For other analogous statements, see s. 25, 107.) An American monkey, an Ateles, after getting drunk on brandy, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... It is pitiable that our proud Margaret should come to such a pass. Ah, the men that you have flouted and scorned and bedeviled and mocked at, Margaret—could they see you now, I think the basest of them could not but pity and worship you. This man ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... and the harsh and oppressive measures aforesaid being still continued, the Begum did, about the middle of October, 1782, cause to be represented to the said Middleton as follows. "That her situation was truly pitiable,—her estate sequestered, her treasury ransacked, her cojahs prisoners, and her servants deserting daily from want of subsistence. That she had solicited the loan of money, to satisfy the demands of the Company, from every person that she imagined ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was one of the victims) the Antelope Valley. Every one who could leave it had done so, but there were many who could not, who had spent their all to get there. Some of these had wives and children, and their condition was of course most pitiable. There was naturally no work to be had there, and I heard that many of them were living on charity. The hotel-keeper in the valley, a most charitable man, and his good wife, did all in their power to mitigate the suffering, which was excessive. What became of the colony after ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... to throw him at will. Leaving him thus passive and apparently lifeless (save that the heart's action was distinctly perceptible), Father Paul busied himself over poor John, who was found to be in pitiable plight; for his wound had opened with the exertion of the long ride, and he had lost much blood before any one knew the state he was in. For some short time his case was somewhat critical, as the bleeding proved obstinate, and was checked with difficulty; and but for Father Paul's accurate knowledge ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... not speak at all, but stood motionless, staring in bewildered, pitiable, childlike fashion, and the color had ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... painted there by the hand of Time; his voice was cracked and broken, and his gait that of advanced age. I had formed the impression, beforehand, that Lemaitre was simply a tottering old wreck, a painful and pitiable sight; and I went to the theatre prepared to be saddened by the spectacle of a ruin. A ruin it was, perhaps, but what a grand and impressive one! The old man was magnificent! So far from exciting pity, he roused in me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... procession came, the worse for wear it looked: the white-topped wagons (there were only a few) were torn and battered, the other vehicles were only make-shifts, cut down from the originals, the horses, mules and oxen were very thin, and the people themselves were gaunt and ragged and pitiable. As brown as any Arabs and as bearded as the ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... division of Nimes want clothes, equipment, and drilling, say you? What poor reasons you give me there, Augereau! I have destroyed 80,000 enemies with conscripts having nothing but knapsacks! The National Guards, say you, are pitiable; I have 4000 here in round hats, without knapsacks, in wooden shoes, but with good muskets, and I get a great deal out of them. There is no money, you continue; and where do you hope to draw money from! You ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... once more, the Brazilian came out of the dressing-closet, where he had been waiting, and he appeared with his eyes full of tears, in a really pitiable condition. Montes had ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... home he sobbed, and held his hands suspended from the wrists, a most pitiable object. "Ah! you old ruffian!" soliloquized the tearful pupil, "won't my father give it to ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... a deep sympathy, perhaps because her leading characteristic was a pitiable holding to her ideals. She painted her father as a good and loving man hiding his real tenderness beneath gruff mannerisms. When he denied her friendship with the man she secretly loved, she put upon that denial a high value. He could not bear to run the chance of losing ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... In order to prevent her from falling, he was literally obliged to throw them around her, and, to a certain extent, to press her—for the purpose of supporting her—against his heart, the pulsations of which were going at a tremendous speed. There was, in fact, something so soft, so pitiable, so beautiful, and at the same time so exquisitely pure and fragrant, in this lovely creature, as her head lay drooping on his shoulder, her pale cheek literally lying against his, that it is not at all to be wondered at that ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and quite a little army of them marched out with drums beating and colors flying at the heels of Hamilton's Dragoons. But on the way to the town gates the temper of the volunteers changed, and by the time that the town gates were reached and passed the volunteers had dwindled to so pitiable a handful that they were dismissed, and Hamilton's Dragoons proceeded alone to join Cope's King's Dragoons ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... one." Thereupon, behold, one of the pages came after Gwalchmai, to speak to him. So he sent him to apprise Arthur that Geraint was there wounded, and that he would not go to visit him, and that it was pitiable to see the plight that he was in. And this he did without Geraint's knowledge, inasmuch as he spoke in a whisper to the page. "Entreat Arthur," said he, "to have his tent brought near to the road, for he will not meet him willingly, and it is not easy to compel him in the mood ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... "I am wounded in three places." He crawled down to the shore of the pond, found an Indian canoe, and crept into it. The wind blew it out into the lake, and he was wafted to the southern shore. The sun went down, and the Indians stole away. Pitiable the condition of the settlers. Lovewell was dead, and also their beloved chaplain, Jonathan Frye, who with his dying breath prayed aloud for victory; Jacob Farrar was dying; Lieutenant Rollins and Robert Usher ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ridden, visible only to the eyes of Dante, by Dante's side that night, though the vision vanished at the time when the lances of the Dragon-flag rode out of the sheltering wood to welcome our coming. Well, now it seems that, when Dante was assailed by that very human, pitiable, and pardonable pain and frailty, he suddenly became aware again of the God of Love that was riding hard by him, but this time a little in front, and this time on a great black war-horse. It seemed to Dante that the wonderful youth turned a little in his saddle as he rode, and showed ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... they had uttered these statements, exasperating and pitiable in the recital, before persons alarmed for themselves, exciting greater indignation in the hearers than was felt by themselves, they affirmed "that there never would be any other limit to their occupying the lands, or to their butchering the commons by usury, ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... capable of dying of ennui at the politeness which people show us. We are lodged like princes. But what hosts, what conversations, what dinners! We laugh at them when we are by ourselves, but when we are before the enemy, what a pitiable figure we selves, make! I am no longer desirous to see you come; but I aspire to depart very quickly, and I understand why you do not wish to give concerts. It is not unlikely that Pauline Viardot may not ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... things which wreck friendships, none is so common and so unworthy as money. It is pitiable that it should be so. Thackeray speaks of the remarkable way in which a five-pound note will break up a half-century's attachment between two brethren, and it is a common cynical remark of the world that the way to lose a friend is to lend him money. There is nothing which seems to affect ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... benevolent detachment deriving from hers. And as he spoke he thought of a man whom he had once known and who had committed suicide, and of all that he had read about suicides and what he had thought of them. Suicides had been incomprehensible to him, and either despicable or pitiable. And he said to himself: "Here is one of them! (Or is it an illusion?) But she has made all my notions ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... to be bright before her, and the world was just beginning to know how much it wanted her. Charlotte Bronte, the gifted and the feeble, the lynx-eyed and the blind, so full of glorious strength and pitiable weakness! Charlotte Bronte, who feels the pressure of every-day life to be as hard as a giant's grasp upon her throat! Charlotte Bronte cannot tell why she is so unhappy, why she feels like a prisoner in the world,—why earth, our beautiful earth, is ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... so frightened that his master, fully believing that he was concealing something, ordered him to tell at once what remained unseen, and where it was hidden away. Face to face with discovery of his secret, the old man, in a pitiable state of concern, spoke out even more fully than Mr. Caswall ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... them well-developed. But where imagination is uncontrolled by higher reason and where idealism is not backed by a strong will, there you have the idle 'dreamer of dreams' and such a state of mind is reprehensible and pitiable indeed! ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... to his assailants. It is a pity that he has no kind friend to suggest to him that he had better not bandy words with the Examiner. His plea about the "printer" was too ludicrous, and his second note is pitiable. I only regret that the names of Ellis and Acton Bell should perforce be mixed up with his proceedings. My sister Anne wishes me to say that should she ever write another work, Mr. Smith will certainly have the first ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... He could not honestly assert that she had danced with him oftener than with Morson, or a dozen others, but he had a pleasant feeling that even when she shook her head and said, "I cannot," her soft eyes added for her, "though I really wish to." There was something almost pitiable, he told himself in the complacency with which that self-satisfied ass Morson would come and take her from him. As if he hadn't sense enough to discover that it was merely because she was his hostess that she went with him at all. But some men would never understand women, though they lived to ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... commandments there is great reward." If we look through the holy scriptures we shall find abundant rewards annexed to every requirement. The idea that despising the promises, and being willing to renounce the desire and hope of them, should be made a condition of receiving them, is pitiable weakness and absurdity. ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... held dear upon earth? But he was fully satisfied that the glory of that Savior who loved him and gave Himself for him would be promoted by his going forth to preach to the heathen. He considered their pitiable and perilous condition; he thought on the value of their immortal souls; he remembered the last solemn injunction of his Lord, "Go teach all nations,"—an injunction never revoked, and commensurate with that most encouraging promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... and saw this and looked down on that lonely, patient, wistful little creature making the best shift she could with those pitiable playthings, something came up from that man's breast into his throat. He had not supposed he had any of it left in his soul—it was tender, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... Polygonal Class fail to pass the Final Test or Leaving Examination at the University. The condition of the unsuccessful minority is truly pitiable. Rejected from the higher class, they are also despised by the lower. They have neither the matured and systematically trained powers of the Polygonal Bachelors and Masters of Arts, nor yet the native precocity and mercurial versatility of the youthful Tradesman. The professions, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... the more helpless, the more pitiable, the louder would their blood have cried for reprisals against the wild beasts who sent them to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Manchester, Derby, Nottingham, and Sheffield; and among them the light of truth was to be shed from its cloudy tabernacle in Mr. Coleridge's Pericranium. At the house of a "Brummagem Patriot" he appears to have got dead drunk with strong ale and tobacco, and in that pitiable condition he was exposed to his disciples, lying upon a sofa, "with my face like a wall that is white-washing, deathly pale, and with the cold drops of perspiration running down it from my forehead." Some one ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... happy one. When the former disappeared from the sight of men, he was the victim of nameless tortures. As he told the tale of what he had suffered on the night that followed his arrest; of the ghastly tortures and mutilations which had wrecked his manhood, and left him the pitiable ruin he then was, the White Man writhed in sympathy, and was filled with a horror that made ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... gay is all she says; how bright, how cutting, yet how polished is the equivoque of the witty, high-bred Hervey! He is happy that day—away from the coarse, passionate king, whom he hated with a hatred that burns itself out in his lordship's 'Memoirs;' away from the somewhat exacting and pitiable queen; away from the hated Pelham, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the pages of that most depressing of all books ever compiled by the groaning creature, Julian's hymn-dictionary, and sees the thousands of carefully tabulated English hymns, by far the greater number of them not only pitiable as efforts of human intelligence, but absolutely worthless as vocal material for melodic treatment, one wishes that all this effort had been directed to supply a real want. E. g. the two Wesleys between them wrote thirteen octavo volumes, of ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... I find a marvellous great company, newly flocked in, mothers and men, a people gathered for exile, [799-804]a pitiable crowd. From all quarters they are assembled, ready in heart and fortune, to whatsoever land I will conduct them overseas. And now the morning star rose over the high ridges of Ida, and led on the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... I have undergone a pitiable experience as prompter at head-quarters, and no one has a better appreciation of the value of such services than myself; and it is particularly in a council of war that such a part is absurd. The greater the number and the higher the rank of the military officers who compose the council, the more ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... by some chance escaped from the guardians which the good Earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him in his lunacy, was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad, and singing aloud to himself, with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw, and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though earnestly desirous of seeing her father, was ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... Four cooks inside, and four maids and six footmen on the roof, with a butler driving, come down from London in a trap, and wait the month. And as the last carriage of the company drives away, the servants' coach is packed, and they all bowl back to town again. It's pitiable, sir, pitiable." ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... first time caught sight clearly of the little figure stretched on the ground. "He's never gone and dared to hit the little lady?" and the good-humoured face grew dark and almost fierce as he stooped down close to Pamela. She looked pitiable enough; her face had grown whiter and whiter, her eyes were still closed, and the blood from her foot had crept about her as she lay till it had soiled the frills of her ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... you. You are not yet a child in the kingdom. You do not care for the arms of your father; you value only the shelter of his roof. As to your money, let the commandments direct you how to use it. It is in you but pitiable presumption to wonder whether it is required of you to sell all that you have. When in keeping the commandments you have found the great reward of loving righteousness—the further reward of discovering that, with all the energy you can put forth, you are but an unprofitable servant; when you ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... riverside villages, among them that of Tarsia, the Caprasia of the An tonine Itinerary. "It was described to us," says Rath, "as the most miserable and dirty village in Calabria; but we found it worse." It remains, to-day, a highly infected and altogether pitiable place, concerning which I have made certain modest researches that would require, none the less, a chapter ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of twisted tobacco, and among the children we distributed a small handful of halfpence, which they received with great eagerness. Yet I have been since told, that the people of that valley are not indigent; and when we mentioned them afterwards as needy and pitiable, a Highland lady let us know, that we might spare our commiseration; for the dame whose milk we drank had probably more than a dozen milk-cows. She seemed unwilling to take any price, but being pressed to make a demand, at last named a shilling. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... truth, and a note of unaffected pathos. Mr. Lang knows all about the romance, I say, and the educational advantages, but I doubt if he had turned his attention to the harbour lights; and it may be news even to him, that in the year 1863 their case was pitiable. Hanging about with the east wind humming in my teeth, and my hands (I make no doubt) in my pockets, I looked for the first time upon that tragi-comedy of the visiting engineer which I have seen so often ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... another has led to revolt, and revolt has led to oppression, and oppression occasions grief and deadness: hence bruises and distortion follow. When we view humanity, we behold not the true and natural man, but a deformed and pitiable product, undone by the vices of those who have sought to improve on Nature by shaping his life to feed the vanity of a few and minister to their wantonness. In our plans for social betterment, let us hold in mind the healthy and unfettered ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... her he would not. If she could but be again his own Elfride—the woman she had seemed to be—but that woman was dead and buried, and he knew her no more! And how could he marry this Elfride, one who, if he had originally seen her as she was, would have been barely an interesting pitiable acquaintance in ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... practical value is our much-vaunted belief in the immortality of the soul that most people consider the very fact that they are still conscious an absolute proof that they have not died. The horrible doctrine of eternal punishment, too, is responsible for a vast amount of most pitiable and entirely groundless terror among those newly arrived in Kamaloka who in many cases spend long periods of acute mental suffering before they can free themselves from the fatal influence of that hideous blasphemy, and realize that the world is ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... licentiousness to madness; or concourses of multitudes for pomps, celebrations, shows, games, combats; on the riots of exultation and revenge after victories. The ruder nations had, in their way, however pitiable on the score of magnificence, their grand festive, triumphal, and demoniac confluxes and revellings. To these joys of tumult, the people of the savage and the more cultivated nations sacrificed everything belonging to the peaceful economy of life, with a desperate, frantic fury. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... and shivering, full of pain. Every ambulance and wagon used as ambulance was heavy laden; at every infrequent cabin or lonely farmhouse were left the too ill to travel farther. The poor servants, of whom there were some in each company, were in pitiable plight. No negro likes the cold; for him all the hot sunshine he can get! They shivered now, in the rear of the companies, their bodies drawn together, their faces grey. The nature of most was of an abounding cheerfulness, but it was not possible to be cheerful ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... with a sneer, for of all pitiable objects he regarded an unmanly man as the most despicable. He consented, however, to sit down on a grassy bank and watch the proceedings of this Indian dandy, who had just seated himself in front of his wigwam for the purpose of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... reached the Carolinas, it was December, and he found the army in a pitiable condition. There was but a single blanket for the use of every three soldiers, and there was not food enough in camp to last three days. The soldiers had lost heart because of defeat, they were angry because they had not been paid, and many were sick because they had not enough to eat. They camped ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... was now a pitiable spectacle. He finished his glass, and caught Hanger by the collar of his coat—staring into his face to get at all ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... vanquished. Their plight was laughable, and yet pitiable. They were coated with mud from head to foot, and their pretty hats, with their polka-dot bands, were gone too far down the river to ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... wretches rose slowly, the beasts were loaded, and on went the pitiable procession, so as to reach ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Brennan stood on the dock superintending the final loading of a cargo for the S. R. & N. he was accosted by a tall, nervous man with shifting eyes and twitching lips. It was hard to recognize in this pitiable shaken creature the once resplendent Gordon, who had bent the whole northland to his ends. Some tantalizing demons inside the man's frame were jerking at his sinews. Fear was in his roving glance; he stammered; ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... orphans—flowers destined to be immortal; angels in form, that might be angels in spirit—that must be, whether for good or evil—whom we never cultivate—whom we suffer to escape our tendance, and leave to the most pitiable ignorance, and the most wretched emergencies of want. The life that is wasted upon dahlias, must, prima facie, be the life of one heartless and insensible, and most probably, brutish ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... passed but some unhappy family fell a victim to French bribery and savage cruelty. As for me, though now in comfortable circumstances, with an affectionate and amiable wife, it was not long before I suddenly became the most pitiable of mankind. I can never bear to think of the last time I saw my dear wife, on the fatal 2d of October, 1754. That day she had left home to visit some of her relations, and, no one being in the house but myself, I stayed up later than ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... some go to other countries to tell those who have never heard, but some (a great many) are not helping in any way: though they have all heard themselves, they are living here only to obey their own wills, for their own pleasure in this world! How pitiable! We all know the Gospel of Christ; let us then not follow the heathen (who have never heard) in caring for the things of this world. The Bible says, 'If a man receives all the riches of this world, and loses his own soul' (and ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... of the Negritos, although not one of extreme misery, is indeed pitiable. Their life is a continual struggle for sufficient food, but their efforts to provide for themselves stop short at that; clothing and houses are of secondary importance. The average Negrito takes little pride in his dwelling ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... "healthy women who are not given to prostitution, when they indulge in very frequent sexual intercourse, provided it is practised normally, do not experience the slightest injurious effect. I have seen many young married couples where the husband had been reduced to a pitiable condition of nervous prostration and general discomfort by the zeal with which he had exercised his marital duties, while the wife had been benefited and was in the uninterrupted enjoyment of the best health." This experience is by no ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... own instincts in Africa, develops the Southern sociology to a degree which casts entirely into pitiable pettiness the puling despotism of the calaboose and slave market. Witness Dahomey, where all lives, all fortunes, all persons, are cooerdinated in one perfect 'system' of subjugation to one sable Jefferson Davis Gezo, who is de jure ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... life; he is miserable because he hates the things he has to do; he can take no satisfaction in his work because he feels that it is poorly done; and, finally, all of his joylessness reacts upon him, decreasing his efficiency and making him a more pitiable failure. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... matter, however, to the thousands of women and children living day and night in the mine tunnels some eight or twelve thousand feet below the surface. Theirs was a pitiable condition, and how much longer they could have held out had not help come ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... queen forestalled this proposal. The lieutenant-general had at last snatched away the Prince de la Paix from the hands which detained him. The favorite had taken refuge under the wing of Murat, in the most pitiable condition. "The Prince de la Paix arrives this evening," wrote Napoleon to Talleyrand on the 25th of April; "he has been for a month between life and death, always menaced with the latter. Would you believe it that, in this interval, he has never changed his shirt, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... our tramp. My sandals had given way altogether in the quick march that day, and I was once more walking with bare feet. Marching so quickly, one did not always have time to detect thorns. That day my feet were indeed in a pitiable condition. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... face of the earth. Every sheep that bleats, every ox that lows, every ass that brays, every bird that sings, and every goose that gabbles, is more of a sage, if not more of a saint, than the great preachers! The things so-called by a certain class of simpletons, are about the most pitiable, if not the most blameable creatures, in all God's universe. What then is the upshot of what I am saying? It is this. Whether I sing, or pray, or talk, I will make myself understood. I thank my God, I can speak with tongues ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... royalty—that garment which has been rent by so many little princes! Have you observed, Rosenberg, how they have soiled its majesty? Have you noticed the pretensions of these manikins whose domains we can span with our hands? Is it not pitiable that each one in his principality is equal in power to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of the uneducated deaf and dumb in this world is a pitiable one, and their isolation is keenly felt. Often have we seen some of this portion of suffering humanity unable to plead for themselves, or tell their tale of woe or hardship. Such was the condition of poor Sam Tranter. Though Sam was never in a Deaf and Dumb Institution, his skill ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... were blown clean out of the Downs, and away from their anchors. Indeed, when the weather cleared between the squalls, a pitiable number of blue light signals of distress were seen in the distance beyond the North Foreland. And it is probable that vessels were lost that night on the Goodwins of which no one ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... it was, it was not as bad as Colonel Rush had feared. Rebellion against lawful authority, rank disobedience and deception were to be laid at Percy's door, not to speak of the pitiable weakness which had suffered him to be led into this wrong, and the enormity of his at least passive acquiescence when Flagg had stolen Seabrooke's letter; still worse his own destruction of it, almost involuntary though it was. What ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... life of Rousseau. As to his character, Lord Brougham says that "never was so much genius before united with so much weakness." The leading spring of his life was egotism. He never felt himself wrong, and the sophistries he used to justify his immoralities are both ludicrous and pitiable. His treatment of Madame de Warens, his first benefactor, was heartless, while the abandonment of his children was infamous. He twice changed his religion without convictions, for the advancement of his fortunes. He pretended to be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... father," he took his leave immediately, and presently the weak and shambling figure of the child's father stumbled in, to be expostulated with, and scolded, and treated as the person of the house always treated him, when he came home in such a pitiable condition. ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... for his country, thou hast slain— Hector. His body to redeem I come Into Achaia's fleet, bringing, myself, Ransom inestimable to thy tent. Rev'rence the gods, Achilles! recollect Thy father; for his sake compassion show To me, more pitiable still, who draw Home to my lips (humiliation yet Unseen on earth) his hand who slew my ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... because in heart they are married already, because they love each other, as I never could love him, nor he me, because they were betrothed to each other before he and I ever met, because Nina was dying for love of him, and only marrying him can save her. Oh, it was pitiable to see Nina, Mr. Ingram, and I am thankful—I shall be thankful to my dying day—that I saw her in time ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... the Richmond authorities, out of the vast number of our men then held captive at Andersonville, the same whom General Stoneman had hoped to rescue at the time of his raid. Some of these prisoners had already escaped and got in, had described the pitiable condition of the remainder, and, although I felt a sympathy for their hardships and sufferings as deeply as any man could, yet as nearly all the prisoners who had been captured by us during the campaign had been sent, as fast as taken, to the usual depots North, they were then beyond my control. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... maintain them as beggars in our streets, or suffer our properties to be the prey of their pillage? For men accustomed to slavery will not work for a livelihood when not compelled. And what is there so pitiable in their present condition? Were they not ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... sustenance for Robin's stomach,—furze and heath were not at all to his mind, and he peeped about for a quiet resting-place. Here he was kicked and bitten by others of the herd; several of them were in the like pitiable condition with himself; but some were really of the brute kind, and these fared the best and were better mannered than most of their human companions. Often did our unfortunate hero wish himself in their place. Having little else to do, he was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... certain transcendent sagacities in the handling of railway stock. And then his zeal was quickened by his personal kindness for Valentin; he had a sort of pity for him which he was well aware he never could have made the Comte de Bellegarde understand. He never lost a sense of its being pitiable that Valentin should think it a large life to revolve in varnished boots between the Rue d'Anjou and the Rue de l'Universite, taking the Boulevard des Italiens on the way, when over there in America one's promenade was a continent, and one's Boulevard stretched from New York to San Francisco. ...
— The American • Henry James
... partially standing mast, we discovered several ice-bound figures rigidly hanging therein, which, being cut away and lowered to our boat, proved to be the body of a negro perfectly stark and dead, and three most pitiable white sailors, whose life was so far extinguished that they could neither move hand nor foot, nor utter ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have come to the end of the long road, past the battle of the pens and the wrangling of tongues, to the arbitration of the Lee-Metford and the Mauser. It was pitiable that it should come to this. These people were as near akin to us as any race which is not our own. They were of the same Frisian stock which peopled our own shores. In habit of mind, in religion, in respect for law, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indulged, and give himself up to the devil body and soul, so long as he has the means to do so, or can obtain what he desires by fair means or foul. He knows no shame; all honourable and manly feeling has become callous within him; and it is a happy release indeed for all connected with him when his pitiable life is ended. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... away. She had allowed herself to indulge in a flirtation with his friend Rivers. Was that a crime? He, on the other hand, had lost all love for her, and had given all his heart to Dolores. Katie seemed to him now not repugnant as a false one, but merely pitiable as a weak, child-like character. The falsity now seemed rather on his part than on hers. He believed that Harry had gone much farther in treachery than Katie. Katie, he thought, was merely a weak-minded flirt; while Harry had become a traitor in allowing himself ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... the Rectory field before a large crowd of people was good fun, and at the end of the game I thought that I had managed to escape without making a very pitiable exhibition of myself. But on the following Monday the sporting papers criticized me most unpleasantly. "Marten was obviously nervous, and did not seem to settle down until the game was lost." "As full-back Marten had much to learn; his tackling was good, but his kicking left much to be desired, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... national self-criticism has been extinguished forever. For this people is already permanently cloven into a higher and a lower class: in its industry as much as its army. Its employers are, in the strictest and most sinister sense, captains of industry. Its proletariat is, in the truest and most pitiable sense, an army of labour. In that atmosphere masters bear upon them the signs that they are more than men; and to ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... passion for politics; he had chosen politics as the one field for the one ponderous talent he possessed. The glory of it had hung ponderously about Mr. Higginson last year; but this year, cut off from politics, it was pitiable, the nonentity he had become. Straker could read that in ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... into your constitution, I think, since you won that Garrison Cup. It's very wrong of you not to cure yourself, when you know how it annoys Mrs. Molyneux. He is right, though, Miss Tresilyan; it is a case of real distress: our vocal destitution is pitiable; so, if you have any benevolence to spare, do bestow it upon us, and your petitioners will ever ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... his eyes, wrote the few broken sentences which he thought would best warn her, without compromising his master. The means he took to reach her with this note I have already related. As soon as he saw it in her hands he fled the place and took the first train west. He was in a pitiable condition, when, three days later, he reached the small station from which he had originally set out. The haste, the exposure, the horror of the crime he had failed to avert, had undermined his hitherto excellent constitution, and the symptoms of a serious illness were beginning to make themselves ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... half-alive minds. There can be no doubt that it is better than waste; neither can there be any doubt that it is not as good as use. People who pride themselves on their economy take it as a virtue. But what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... two pugilists had reduced themselves to the pitiable condition of simply mauling each other, hugging each other, and because Crawley just managed to push Ward down and he could not rally in time, the champion lost ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... almost as many base deeds as poor outcasts; but they are careful to do these things in shadow and to parade their virtues in the light, or they would not be great men. Your insignificant man leaves his virtues in the shade; he publicly displays his pitiable side, and is despised accordingly. You, for instance, have hidden your titles to greatness and made a display of your worst failings. You openly took an actress for your mistress, lived with her and upon her; you were ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... prospect is not very bright; a too generous confidence might betray some nation into irretrievable disaster. But the bracing influence of national danger may perhaps be beneficial. For we have to remember the pitiable decay of the ancient classical civilisation, which was partly due, as we have found, to a desire for comfortable and easy living. There have been signs that many of our countrymen no longer think the strenuous life worth while; part of our resentment ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... it best to get Mr. Yatman out of the house immediately. He was in such a pitiable condition that I called a cab and accompanied him home in it. At first he cried and raved like a child; but I soon quieted him; and I must add, to his credit, that he made me a most handsome apology for his language as the cab drew up at his house door. In ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... a good deal of their interest and romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that of a blind fiddler who has but one sense left (if we except the sense of snuff-taking(1)) and who has that stunned or deafened by his own ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the building I started to run, but when I reached the corner and was just about to step on a passing street-car a hand was laid on my arm, and I turned to see who was seeking to detain me. It was a woman in the most pitiable rags, and on her arm she carried a baby so thin and pale that I could scarcely believe ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... times at four o'clock in the morning to help feed the English soldiers who were on their way home after being exchanged for German prisoners. We had the privilege of giving some of them the first white bread they had had in four years. The men who had been kept working behind the lines were in a pitiable condition. One such man happened to be at my table,—for they are taken off the train for two hours, given hot tea and roast beef and ham sandwiches,—and the poor fellow began taking sandwiches, eating ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... to words of love, such as she had never uttered to him before, nor thought she could utter. Then the poor creature, trembling all over, began to say over that ashy face little foolish things that were at once terrible and pitiable. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... politics. The labours of the twenty prime years of his manhood have been copiously bewailed. To have Pegasus in harness is bad enough; but when the waggon that he draws is immovably stuck in the mud, and he himself bespattered by his efforts, the spectacle is yet more pitiable. Many of his critics have expressed regret that he did not make for himself an artificial seclusion, and continue his purely poetical labours, with the classics for companions. The questions that drew him into politics ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... wet and worn, their hair dishevelled and streaming in the wind, themselves bowed down with grief and misery; their whole appearance most dejected, wretched, and forlorn. A sight so different from any he had expected to encounter touched him to the quick, and all idea of anything but their pitiable condition ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... own superiority caused them pain. As they maintained immoral propositions, they must needs be immoral: calumnies were invented about them. Then a pitiable faculty developed itself in their minds, that of observing stupidity and no longer tolerating it. Trifling things made them feel sad: the advertisements in the newspapers, the profile of a shopkeeper, an idiotic remark overheard ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... cousin." "I will not," said he, "for I am not in a fit state to go and see any one." Thereupon, behold, one of the pages came after Gwalchmai, to speak to him. So he sent him to apprise Arthur that Geraint was there wounded, and that he would not go to visit him, and that it was pitiable to see the plight that he was in. And this he did without Geraint's knowledge, inasmuch as he spoke in a whisper to the page. "Entreat Arthur," said he, "to have his tent brought near to the road, for he will not meet him willingly, and it is not easy to compel him in the mood he is in." So the page ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... announcement was the more pitiable in its effects because it served to unnerve and discourage those few of stouter hearts and more hopeful temperaments who had already begun the labor of restoration and reconstruction amid the embers of their desolated homes. In New York ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... this admirable scheme, we have ever since had the pitiable sight of the parents, the sisters, and the sweetheart crooning over the emigration of the best able-bodied young ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... rather curious to see that as she grew in strength Clement lost in assertiveness—in his feeling of command. He began to comprehend that with returning health the girl was not altogether pitiable. She had culture, ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... to her mind a frightful German print at the head of a poem called "The Haunted Heath," in one of her cousin Godfrey's books! It was like an old miser, decrepit with age, pursued and unable to run! Miserable as was her real condition, it was rendered yet more pitiable by these terrors of the imagination. The distant howl of a dog which the moon would not let sleep, the muffled low of a cow from a shippen, and a certain strange sound, coming again and again, which she could not account for, all turned to things unnatural, therefore frightful. Faintly, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... his feet looked like before the war finished. Or Society, for that matter. My one temptation to enter Society here would be the hope of forming a relief organization—drive, do you call it?—for the starving children of Austria. Russian children are not the only pitiable objects in Europe, and after all, the children of civilized countries are of more value to the future ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... former slaves have assisted in the education of the descendants of their former owners. I know of a case on a large plantation in the South in which a young white man, the son of the former owner of the estate, has become so reduced in purse and self-control by reason of drink that he is a pitiable creature; and yet, notwithstanding the poverty of the coloured people themselves on this plantation, they have for years supplied this young white man with the necessities of life. One sends him a little ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... close to his side during all of these operations. She seemed afraid or ashamed to join the others; she avoided Lady Deppingham as completely as possible. Her effort to be friendly when they were thrown together was almost pitiable. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... appointment for him at Salzburg which he was loath to accept. He asked that the Archbishop permit him to travel once in two years. He feared that he "would find no congenial society" in Salzburg, where, moreover, music did not stand in large appreciation. Mozart's subsequent experiences were of the most pitiable character.) ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... for the weather or the state of the pavement. A salary was attached to the post, but she very rarely received it, although she was expected to dress like everybody else, that is to say, like very few indeed. In society she played the most pitiable role. Everybody knew her, and nobody paid her any attention. At balls she danced only when a partner was wanted, and ladies would only take hold of her arm when it was necessary to lead her out of the room ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... "What a pitiable state of mind old 'Bogus' must be in," sighed Tester, when the scurry of feet along the passage had died down kind of quiet, and he and Gordon were sitting in front of a ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... reason induced him to undertake this task: for it is, says he, to forestal the artifices of Satan. He supposes that the Devil, to ruin the fruit of this work, employed two very malicious frauds: the first before it was printed, by drenching the MS. in a kennel, and having reduced it to a most pitiable state, rendered several parts illegible: the second, in obliging the printers to commit such numerous blunders, never yet equalled in so small a work. To combat this double machination of Satan he was obliged carefully ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the Thames, Pytheas crossed the North Sea to the mouth of the Rhine, a passage which took about two and a half days. He gives a pitiable account of the people living on the Dutch coast and their perpetual struggle with the sea. The natives had not learnt the art of making dykes and embankments. A high tide with a wind setting toward the shore ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... his firm and exhaustive exposition of turbulent and troubled hearts, his heavy sledge-hammer style, his comprehension of the shadowy background of the most ponderous sensuality, are all found at their best in this solemn and sordid and pitiable tale. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... two humps, it carries a natural saddle; and, clothed in long wool, yellow, brown or black, it looks in winter a lordly beast. Its fleece is never shorn, but is shed in summer. At that season the poor naked animal is the most pitiable of creatures. In the absence of railways and carriage roads, it fills the place of the ship of the desert and performs the heaviest tasks, such as the transporting of coals and salt. Most docile of slaves, at a word from its master it kneels down and quietly accepts ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... gainsay what you have spoken, Socrates, it is indeed high time that you were constituted my patronus, or I shall become in very truth a pitiable object. ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... story of what occurred last year in Erlangen? The editor of the Erlangen Gazette admitted into his columns an article abusive of our great king. A Prussian officer came in person to Erlangen to call the editor to account. And what do you think he did? He caused the unfortunate and pitiable journalist to be beaten with cudgels, and then gave him a receipt for the bastinado ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot. (16)So, because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am about to vomit thee out of my mouth. (17)Because thou sayest: I am rich, and have gotten wealth, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art the wretched and the pitiable one, and poor, and blind, and naked; (18)I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest be rich, and white garments, that thou mayest be clothed, and the shame of thy nakedness not be made manifest, and to anoint thine eyes ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... many persons were reduced. The difficulty of obtaining the necessaries of life, raised the price of labour at the most unseasonable time, when all manufacturers were overstocked for want of a proper market, which obliged them to dismiss above half the hands before employed. Hence arose the most pitiable condition of several thousands of useful industrious subjects; a calamity attended only with one advantage to the public, namely, the facility with which recruits were raised for his majesty's service. At last the plentiful crops with which it pleased Providence to bless these ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I was glad to find ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... his dismissal in some other way than in my presence? I hate to so cruelly use my advantage in crushing a poor rival; for, after all, a man is a man! This poor buccaneer is going to find himself in a pitiable position. But let me hold firm; and show Blue Beard that I am not the dupe of her confidence concerning her deceased husbands, and that I am not ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... begging here in the streets! what has brought you to this wretched trade?' He gave me, however, no very clear account of himself, but evidently desired to avoid me when he recognized who I was. But, shocked to find him in so pitiable a condition, I pressed my questions, and finally told him I could not bear to see any one who had been in my service reduced to beggary; and though I had no actual need of his services, yet, rather than see him thus, he might return to his old position as servant in my house, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a quickstep, and Douglas walked up and down the .room in a pitiable state of mind, guessing pretty much what was passing in the mind of his friend, and fully sensible that it must be of a severer nature than anything he could yet allow himself to think ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Canada, fighting under the colours of the United States of America! or, in the language of the English government, found fighting against their king and country. The condition of these Irishmen was truly pitiable. Unable to live in their own oppressed country, they, in imitation of our forefathers, left their native land to enjoy the liberty, and the fruits of their labor in another. They abandoned Ireland, where they were oppressed, and chose this country, where they were protected and kindly treated. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... illustrated in the case of the pupil who, as soon as he hears a question, thoughtlessly blurts out an answer without any reflection whatever. In the adult, we find a similar illustration when, immediately upon hearing a pitiable story from a beggar, he hands out a dollar without stopping to investigate whether or not the action is well-advised. It is useless to plead in extenuation of such actions that the answer may be correct or the act noble and generous. The probability is equally great that ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... was drunk and the fighting that began and so forth, as Lever or Carleton would certainly have been inclined to do. She fixes on the central comedy of the situation, Sir Condy's innocent vanity and its pitiable disappointment—is it necessary to recall that he had arranged for the wake himself, because he always wanted to see his own funeral? Poor Sir Condy!—even Thady, who was in the secret, had forgotten all about him, when he was startled by the ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... the way Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his theory by a huge experiment and proving ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... as deep as the eye of man can behold. And we, who dimly gaze on these things with our own blind eyes, we know full well that it is not they alone that we are striving to see, not they alone that we cannot understand, but that before us there lies a pitiable form of the great power ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... collective dullness of our community, the crying need for a strenuous, intellectual renewal, than the consideration of that vast mass of useless, uncomfortable, under-educated, under-trained, and altogether pitiable people we contemplate when we use that inaccurate and misleading term, the Lower Middle Class. A great proportion of the lower middle class should properly be assigned to the unemployed and the unemployable." And that is the moral we may lay to heart from the ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... Isaac Hakkabut, his outcry was beyond description lamentable. Never, in the whole universe, had a merchant met with such reverses; never had such a pitiable series of losses befallen an unfortunate man. Regardless of the ridicule which his abject wretchedness excited, he howled on still, and kept up an unending wail; but meanwhile he kept a keen eye upon every article of his property, and amidst universal ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Gates found the colony in a pitiable condition. The tomahawk of the Indians, famine and pestilence had wrought terrible havoc with the settlers. A mere handful of poor wretched men were left to welcome the newcomers and to beg eagerly to be taken away from the ill-fated country. The town "appeared rather as the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... eloquence [17] confined to the tamer arena of the civil law courts. All those who felt that without a practical object eloquence cannot exist, had to resign themselves to silence. Others less serious-minded found a sphere for their natural gift of speech in the halls of the rhetoricians. It is pitiable to see men like Pollio content to give up all higher aims, and for want of healthier exercise waste their powers ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... wandering, and irregular mode of life, Vrain had completely shattered his health. He lapsed into a state of second childhood, and, being deprived of the drugs which formerly had excited him to a state of frenzy, sank into a pitiable condition. For days he would remain without speaking to any one, and even ceased to take a pleasure in his books. Finally his limbs became paralysed, and so he spent the last few months of his wretched life in a bath-chair, being ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Swann, who was really in a pitiable state. "I'm sorry to trouble you, Mrs Clayton Vernon. But I want to speak to ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... them, but it tested both my imagination and my enthusiasm to do it. I could put no real heart into making excuses for them, and so my words fell like lame birds to the ground, and the tragedy of it was that both of us knew there was no good excuse. It was the most pitiable case I saw in France. God pity the careless mother or sister or father or friend who isn't willing to take the time and make the sacrifice that is needed to at least supply a letter three times a week to the lad who is ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... back," said he, "be so good as wrap it carefully up in paper. We don't know where we are safe, in this country; and your Foreign Quarterly is not one of the favoured publications which we are licensed to import." What a pitiable state of existence is this,—what a perfect bondage of mind, for which the utmost security to person and property ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... beneath his lashes, and again lowered his eyes. I heard a long gasping sound, as if he found difficulty in breathing. He sat upright, and threw back his shoulders with a pitiable ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... their household between poverty and actual want. If she went away, supposing even that she found an equally well-paid post, she would require every farthing of the money to support herself, there would be nothing left to send home. It was a pitiable position; here was she, who had just refused a man worth thousands a year, quite unable to get out of the way of his importunity for the want of seventy-five pounds, paid quarterly. Well, the only thing to do was to face it out and take her chance. On one point she was, however, quite clear; ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... of their teeth, most of which fell out[58]. So severely did this infection spread among us, that by the middle of February, out of 110 persons composing the companies of our three ships, there were not ten in perfect health to assist the rest, so that we were in a most pitiable case, considering the place we were in, as the natives came every day to the outside of our fort and saw but few of us. Eight were already dead, and fifty more so extremely ill that we considered them past all hopes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... out of the big drapery establishment passed crowds of well-dressed women, most of them with pet dogs, and others with male friends led like lambs to the slaughter. The spectacle of a man in silk hat out shopping with a lady friend is always a pitiable one. His very look craves the sympathy of the onlooker, especially if he be ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... fallen senseless at the wicket. Rosina was present at the narration; her heart told her who it was; also told her that I had not been faithless. Joy at my fidelity, and grief at her own precipitancy, which rendered it unavailing, overpowered her, and she was led to her cell in a state as pitiable as mine. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Lawrenceburg and Harrodsburg, and Harrodsburg and Perryville. The movements of Buell had completely mystified General Bragg, and the latter was not only reduced to the defensive, but to a state of mind pitiable in the extreme. He acted like a man whose nerves by some accident or disorder, had been crazed; he was the victim of every rumor; he was alternately exhilarated and dejected. If the enemy dallied, or the distance between them happened to be increased, he became bold and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Herr Assessor, I have asked Herr Baron Schmettau to come with me in order that in his presence I might correct a pitiable lack of tact, which to my regret, and contrary to all my intentions, was perpetrated by ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... he had relapsed into his customary quiet. There had blazed up one momentary flash of suspicion and anger, but it died straightway, for no man could have beheld the trader and not felt contrition. His condition was pitiable, and the sight of a strong man overcome is not pleasant; when it was seen that no harm had been done the others strove to make light of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... very pitiable. What man that had a heart in his breast could listen unmoved to words like these, or look without emotion upon one so beautiful, so gentle, and so tender? It was no longer Layelah in triumph with whom I had to do, ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... because of the mere suspicion that she was attempting to poison him, he cut off her nose and mutilated her ears. He sent her back to her father in Gaul thus despoiled of her natural charms. So the wretched girl presented a pitiable aspect ever after, and the cruelty which would stir even strangers still more surely incited her father to vengeance. Attila, therefore, in his efforts to bring about the wars 185 long ago instigated by the bribe ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... feet and shook him unmercifully. He was crying and retching, a pitiable and horrible sight ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... one to give it to them. {81} For assuredly I would never have given any one anything whatever to stand by my side here and cry aloud how cruelly they have suffered. The truth and the deeds that have been done cry aloud of themselves. And as for the Phocian people,[n] they are in so evil and pitiable a plight, that there is no question for them of appearing as accusers at the examination of every individual ambassador in Athens. They are in slavery, in mortal fear of the Thebans and of Philip's mercenaries, whom they are compelled to support, broken up into villages ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... They are pitiable objects. Never having learnt to read anything but the sporting papers, books are of no use to them. They never wasted much of their youth on thought, and, apparently, have lost the knack of it. They don't care for art, and Nature only suggests to them the things they can ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... have compactly and poignantly expressed a mood which is common to all men who have any feeling for the past. It is a pathetic, almost a tragic mood, a longing more pitiable than that of any fanatic for any paradise, any lover for any woman, because it is quite impossible that it should ever be satisfied. To see, to feel, to move among the foundations of our generation—it is so natural a desire, and it is ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... quite invisible, threw back her bonnet for the admission of fresh air to her heated brow; and in the act of saying faintly—'Less liquor!—Sairey Gamp—Bottle on the chimney-piece, and let me put my lips to it, when I am so dispoged!'—fell into one of the walking swoons; in which pitiable state she was conducted forth by Mr Sweedlepipe, who, between his two patients, the swooning Mrs Gamp and the revolving Bailey, had enough ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... hath become bound in friendship with me during all this time and he hath acquired over me the ties of friendship. His heart hath become attached to the young woman and his love for her hath reached in him an imminent point. Since that time he is almost on the verge of annihilation, in so pitiable a condition and behold, he hopeth from me a good issue from his trouble. He hath made known to me his situation after having concealed it for so long a time: if I do not befriend him in his misfortune I should resemble him who ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... little kid up here, been left by her father in one of the settlers' tents. She's the most pitiable little object I ever saw. I think her father is a drunken tough from Shanty Town. She oughtn't to be left up here alone near such a baby-eater as I am. I wish you'd come up and see about her. If you don't come alone, get Mrs. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... that prior to her marriage with the deceased soldier she had married another man whom she could only say she believed to be dead, I believe her case to be a pitiable one and wish that I could join in her relief; but, unfortunately, official duty can not always be well done when directed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Having heard this pitiable story, I did what I could to comfort him, and said, "Do not despair; I have heard already of that wicked woman, and think I shall be able to find some means of making her restore to you a part at ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... A pitiable outcome, this, of all the hopes of fair "harbours and habitations," of golden dreams, and farflung dominion. All those whom Raleigh had sent to Roanoke were lost or had perished. Those who had named and had first dwelled in Jamestown were in number about a hundred. To these had been added, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... disposed to question the justice of Shakespeare's thought, but would hardly admit the propriety of the application in this instance, much less of the comment. So, after some further temperate discussion of the pitiable miser, finding that they could not entirely harmonize, the merchant cited another case, that of the negro cripple. But his companion suggested whether the alleged hardships of that alleged unfortunate might not exist more in the pity of the observer than the experience ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... not died like Ahab—a shameful and pitiable death. He has done his work and conquered. He has died like a man, whom men honour. Even so it is well. And if he have died in the Lord, a penitent Christian man, he is not dead at all. He does not lie in that grave in a foreign land. All of him ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... that, since that time....' said D'Artagnan, who could not help laughing at the pitiable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... being gathered up and committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were cared for hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to the neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as I have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The companionship ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a most pitiable object in negro eyes, I saw by this summary that Yaap had commenced his travels in much of the same temper of superciliousness as Jason Newcome. It struck me as odd at the time; but, since that day, I have ascertained that this feeling is a very general travelling companion ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... matriculation. The outraged white population turned its back upon this new type of coeducation; in the autumn of 1872 not a solitary white boy made his appearance. The old university therefore closed its doors for lack of students and for the next few years it became a pitiable victim to the worst vices of the reconstruction era. Politicians were awarded the presidency and the professorships as political pap, and the resources of the place, in money and books, were scattered to the wind. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... her sole dependence was on her small stipend from the school: hence she was unable to make a sufficiently reputable appearance in apparel at their accustomed little balls. The daughter of the schoolmistress, her only child, and at that time a very young girl, felt for the poor governess, and the pitiable insufficiency in the article of finery; but being unable to help her from her own resources, devised within herself a means by which it might be done otherwise. Having heard of the great fame of Sir Joshua Reynolds, his character for generosity, and charity, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... once wild country had failed amazingly. Only one of any character was left, and it had shrunk. Of old a structure of possibilities intensely romantic, it was now dingy, pitiable, insignificant. No reasonable person would consider holding a circus there—admission ten pins for boys ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... selected the loneliest ways he could find, and directed his course to the kingdom of Naples, where his sister lived. He was afraid of pursuit; he probably had little money; and considering his ill health and his dread of the Inquisition, it is pitiable to think what he may have endured while picking his long way through the back states of the Church and over the mountains of Abruzzo, as far as the Gulf of Naples. For better security, he exchanged clothes with a shepherd; and as he feared even ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... which Conway received had the effect of sobering him, but he presented a pitiable sight. His face was covered with blood, and one eye was nearly closed. When he knew it was Calhoun that had struck him, his rage was fearful. Nothing but blood would wipe out the insult. For a Kentucky gentleman not to resent a blow meant disgrace and dishonor; ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
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