"Ennui" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... n'est point d'art, d'ennui scientifique; Piccini, Gluck, n'ont point note les airs. Nature seule en dicta la musique, Et Marmontel n'en ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... veracity and sent them scampering with a whoop, swinging the satchel around his head. He pulled down his vest, felt his tie and winked boldly as he passed a pretty girl. He broke into a whistle presently, practising the latest rag-time air with an earnestness which found no ennui in repetition of tune, and it was while thus absorbed that he went by the Jessup Grill. He was well beyond the entrance before he realized that his name was being called and that somebody had darted out from the doorway to ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... about to inaugurate the modern world. Severely nurtured, unused to delicate living, these giants of the Renaissance were like boys in their capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for enjoyment. No generations, hungry, sickly, effete, critical, disillusioned, trod them down. Ennui and the fatigue that springs from scepticism, the despair of thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and unperverted senses rendered them keenly alive to what was beautiful and natural. They yearned for magnificence and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... chance of ennui in the week in London before a voyage; you have packing, shopping, insuring, and buying tickets and general bustling round—what charming occupations for the contemplative mind! Then you throw in visits to friends, and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... secretly loved when there were only women about the house) even down to night with rest, the shrieking world banished. There were other evenings when Ellwell drove up alone, morose, biting his iron-gray mustache in sullen disgust and ennui at some failure, perhaps in self-discontent and fear. Leonora met him at the veranda with a kiss, and a bubbling, clever greeting that dragged out a smile. Dinner was then a pleasant place for talk, the ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... old man at sight—like him and want to help him, though he was hardly conscious of this and believed his motive rather more than less selfish, that he was grasping at this opportunity for relief from the deadly ennui that oppressed him as madly as a famished man at a crust. Indeed, the boy was eager to deceive himself in this respect, with youth's wholesome ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the soul of the desert, born of the sun, palms, ennui, flies, the sand, and Allah knows what besides, suddenly sat up in Jill's eyes and laughed, and as she laughed the words "Go always alone in ze night to 'is oasis bien aimee" rang in the girl's ears, as a strange and startling ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and stout, dark and light, but they had these things in common—they all dressed in black and white, their hair was lofty and of exaggerated waterfall, and their expressions never altered from one of lazy-eyed, lofty, scornful ennui. To Bobby they were easily the leading feature of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... 'll know A pleasure worthy Xerxes the great king; For not the bless'd sherbet, sublimed with snow, Nor the first sparkle of the desert-spring, Nor Burgundy in all its sunset glow, After long travel, ennui, love, or slaughter, Vie with that ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... idleness, though it assuredly was not a case which came under the witty description once launched by Turgeneff broadside at his countrymen: "The Russian country proprietor comes to revel and simmer in his ennui like a mushroom frying in sour cream." Ennui shunned that happy valley. We passed the hot mornings at work on the veranda or in the well-filled library, varying them by drives to neighboring estates and villages, or by trips to the fields to watch the progress of the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... struggled with his passion, Barbarina had a far more dangerous enemy to contend with. Sentimentality is veiled in melancholy, in softened light and faded tints; but ennui has no eye, nor mind, nor heart for any thing. It is a fearful enemy! Barbarina was weary, oh, so weary! Was it perhaps impatience to appear again upon the stage which made the hours so leaden, so long drawn out? She lay the whole day stretched ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... and scores in those subterranean regions. Had it not been for the fact that nearly every man was smoking, the atmosphere would have been unbearable. In most of the kitchens they were beguiling the ennui of Sunday afternoon with cards; but the game was invariably suspended on our arrival. Some few removed their hats—for all wore them—and a smaller number still joined in a verse or two of a hymn, and listened to a portion of Scripture and a few words of exhortation. One or ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... quite intensely. In moments of ennui, when there is really nothing to do in the office, the fear of discovery alone restrains me. I'm not sure that I can rely on the professional secrecy of the girl at the exchange. Has she strength of mind to refuse a righteously indignant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... had any special lady ever been so far honoured in his thoughts as to be connected in them with any vague ideas which he might have formed on the subject. But now it did occur to him that Portray Castle was a place in which he could pass two or three months annually without ennui; and that if he were to marry, little Lizzie Eustace would do as well as any other woman with money whom he might chance to meet. He did not say all this to anybody, and therefore cannot be accused of vanity. He was the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I had quite made up my mind to carry out the scheme I had unfolded to him. Yes, actually, led on by ennui and solitude, I had gradually arrived at dreaming of and looking forward to this absurd marriage. And then, above all, to live for awhile on land, in some shady nook, amid trees and flowers. How tempting it sounded after the long months we had been wasting at the Pescadores (hot and arid ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... there were mulled wines and port, cherry brandy and liqueurs to refresh the weary, and sweets for the women. A livelier party never sat down to table; and Hamilton, who was placed between two chattering girls, was a man of the world, young as he was, and betrayed neither impatience nor ennui. Rachael sat at the head of the table, between the Governor and Dr. Hamilton. Her face, usually as white as porcelain, was pink in the cheeks; her eyes sparkled, her nostrils fluttered with triumph. She looked so exultant that more than one wondered if she were intoxicated ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... if he thought so three centuries ago, what must it be now, when we see so many persons of extraordinary intellect collected in one city, and so many accustomed to employ that intellect in adding to the pleasures of conversation. The demon of ennui has always pursued me; by the terror with which he inspires me, I could alone have been capable of bending the knee to tyranny, if the example of my father, and his blood which flows in my veins, had not enabled me to triumph over this weakness. Be that as it may, Bonaparte ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... here and there with stone granges and white villages, I thought of all the women within that circle, any one of whom might prove the woman I sought,—from milkmaids crossing the meadows, their strong shoulders straining with the weight of heavy pails, to fine ladies dying of ennui in their country-houses; pretty farmers' daughters surreptitiously reading novels, and longing for London and "life;" passionate young farmers' wives already weary of their doltish lords; bright-eyed bar-maids buried alive in country inns, and wondering "whatever possessed them" ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... was dark, the other fair. There was also the same indolent sort of movement, a certain languid air discernible in both; proclaiming the undoubted fact, that both were idle in disposition and given to ennui. There the resemblance ended. Lord Hartledon had nothing of the irresolution of Percival Elster, but was sufficiently decisive ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... conventionally fixed for posterity. But the manufacture of city-chronicles of course did not suspend its activity; it continued to supply its contributions both in prose and verse to the great library written by ennui for ennui, while the makers of the books, in part already freedmen, did not trouble themselves at all about research properly so called. Such of these writings as are mentioned to us—not one of them is preserved—seem ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... little yawn which may have been due to ennui, but also to the tingling of her nerves. Clyffurde saw that her hands were never still for a moment; she was either fingering the snowdrops in her belt or smoothing out the creases in her lace scarf; ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... of ennui, Archie was glad even to meet the novelist. They talked for hours and afterward went to ride together. It appeared that Roseleaf had come south to get material for an article in the interest of the magazine on which ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... bad time—I still recall. I suffered, I suppose, from a sort of ennui of the imagination. I found myself without an object to hold my will together. I sought. I read restlessly and discursively. I tried Ewart and got no help from him. As I regard it all now in this retrospect, it seems to me ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... to me that life is so self-sufficient here that there is no need for anyone to get anywhere. What I don't quite understand is how you manage to pass your days without ennui." ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... futility of existence with one I could not provoke, even enrage, I should commit suicide. My own disposition is so equally divided between perversity and repentance that I could not endure the placidity, the ennui, of a level ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Friday, will be of use to him; for though he cordially dislikes the country and everything belonging to its unexciting existence, he has always had a very great attachment for Mrs. Arkwright, and perhaps, for so short a time as a week, he may be able to resist the ennui of l'innocence des champs.... ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... have had people in my pockets, in my plaits, -and on my shoulders! I indeed find this fatigue worse in the country than in town, because one can avoid it there, and has more resources; but it is there too. I fear 'tis growing old; but I literally seem to have murdered a man whose name was Ennui, for his ghost is ever before me. They say there is no English word for ennui;(847) I think you may translate it most literally by what is called "entertaining people," and "doing the honours:" that is, you sit an hour with somebody you don't ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... lost Macedonia, might have spent his days peacefully ruling his own subjects in Epirus; but he could not endure repose, thinking that not to trouble others and be troubled by them was a life of unbearable ennui, and, like ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Nevertheless, I replied that I would obey him, and to tell the truth, I was not ill pleased at the thought of the change. My life with M. de Chalusse was a monotonous and cheerless one. I was almost dying of ennui, for I had been accustomed to work, bustle, and confusion with the Greloux, and I felt delighted at the prospect of finding myself among ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... life. She uttered no reproaches. She took me as I was, and for three years our life together has been to me one long unbroken harmony. Our tastes were very similar. She was well read, receptive, a charming companion. Ennui was a word of which I have forgotten the meaning. And it seemed so with her, too, for she ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... comet fame), L. Euler, the brothers Grimm, the two Humboldts, Lachmann, Lagrange, Leibnitz, T. Mommsen, J. Muller, G. Niebuhr, C. Ritter (the geographer), Savigny and Zumpt. Frederick II. presented in 1768 A Dissertation on Ennui. To the Berlin Academy we owe the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and the Monumenta ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... prehistoric days a man who had to hunt animals or go hungry may often have gone hungry, but he was never bored by the sameness of his meals. A man who traveled on horseback often got to his destination late, but he was not troubled with ennui on the way. In overdrive, Bors's ship traveled almost with the speed of thought, but there was absolutely nothing to think about while journeying. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... insensible to his situation, for he was what the world calls ambitious; but the vigour of his faculties had vanished beneath the united influence of years and indolence and ill-humour; for his Lordship, to avoid ennui, had quarrelled with his son, and then, having lost his only friend, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... ashore were mere oases, separated by whole deserts of the most wearisome ennui. For weeks, perhaps, those who were not fortunate enough to be living hard and getting fatigued every day in the boats were yawning away their existence in an atmosphere only comparable to that of an orchid-house, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... supper, cards; and after cards, bed; to rise at noon the next day, and to tread, like a mill horse, the same trodden circle over again. Thus the days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... happened, there were no other passengers for the east-bound Flyer; and finding he still had some minutes to wait, Ormsby lounged into the telegraph office. Here the bonds of ennui were loosened by the gradual development of a little mystery. First the telephone bell rang smartly, and when the telegraph operator took down the ear-piece and said "Well?" in the imperious tone common to his kind, ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... they had fallen into a lower and narrower place in her affection, but that they saw Chateaubriand installed in a higher and larger place. They feared that her peace would be wrecked in wretchedness by an intimate connection with one so discontented and capricious, a sort of spoilt idol, a hero of ennui, filled with causeless melancholy, voracious of praise, querulous, exacting, his own imperious and inevitable personality ever uppermost. In vain they sought to warn and dissuade her from the new attachment. Montmorency seems to have fancied that the passion was not friendship, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... reflecting every hue of the spectrum, with broad, waving scarlet and hyaline fins, and strange, fish-like mouths and eyes. Their habits were as unpollywoglike as their appearance. I visited their micaceous pool again and again; and if I could have spent days instead of hours with them, no moment of ennui would have intervened. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... alone. All the movable property of the citizens was safe in the interior: and they were all safe in person. The dismay was for the French, when they found only a burning soil, tumbling roofs, and tottering walls, where they had expected repose and feasting after the ennui of a voyage across the Atlantic. For the court ladies, there existed at present only the alternative of remaining on board the ships, of which they were heartily weary, and establishing themselves on the barren island of Tortuga, the home of the buccaneers ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... her chin upon her ungloved hand. Was there pose in these depictions of Mr. Hugo Canning as a morose recluse? She thought not: his light bitterness rang true enough, the note of a man really half-desperate with ennui. And she read his remarks as a subtle sign of his confidence, an acknowledgment of acquaintance between ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "comme il faut"-ness was long nails that were well kept and clean; the third, ability to bow, dance, and converse; the fourth—and a very important one—indifference to everything, and a constant air of refined, supercilious ennui. Moreover, there were certain general signs which, I considered, enabled me to tell, without actually speaking to a man, the class to which he belonged. Chief among these signs (the others being the fittings of ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... tacit convention sacrificing to the amour propre of the rest. Every individual really occupied with his own particular role, but all apparently happy, and mutually pleased. Vanity and selfishness, indifference and ennui, were veiled under a general mask of good humour and good breeding, and the flowery bonds of politeness and gallantry held together those who knew no common tie of thought or interest; and when parted (as they soon will be, north, south, east, and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... other day, overwhelmed by the sufferings of my poor body, I began to re-read my treaty of Combourgeoisie with your city, to distract the ennui of my malady, when the countess' little dog who had been gamboling about me dragged off, while I was not looking, the ribbon and seal, which greatly annoyed me. I send you back the paper, therefore, asking you to be as good as to affix another seal, by which you ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... efficacious, effrontery, effulgence, effusion, egregious, eleemosynary, elicit, elite, elucidate, embellish, embryonic, emendation, emissary, emission, emollient, empiric, empyreal, emulous, encomium, endue, enervate, enfilade, enigmatic, ennui, enunciate, environ, epicure, epigram, episode, epistolary, epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... months off—with pay—if we will only do the younger generation the favor of pounding a modicum of knowledge into their heads. During that time, if we are very careful, we can try to prevent our muscles from going to flab and our brains from corroding with ennui, so that when we again debark into the infinite sea of emptiness which surrounds us to pursue our chosen profession, we don't get killed on the first try. ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... Paris and stay, but to use that magnificently courageous tragic city as a source of ideas for a Shuman revue was out of the question. As for the quiet place in the Virginia mountains, which Alice had suggested as an alternative, Rose would die of ennui there within three days. The only thing to do was to stick to her routine as well as she could, and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... informally, to the little circle of her fellow countrymen dwelling upon the skirts of the Champs Elysees. With many of these amiable colonists Mrs. Touchett was intimate; she shared their expatriation, their convictions, their pastimes, their ennui. Isabel saw them arrive with a good deal of assiduity at her aunt's hotel, and pronounced on them with a trenchancy doubtless to be accounted for by the temporary exaltation of her sense of human duty. She ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the supper-table they talked of Christal's journey. It was undertaken by invitation of Mrs. Fludyer, to whom the young damsel had made herself quite indispensable. Her liveliness charmed away the idle lady's ennui, while her pride and love of aristocratic exclusiveness equally gratified the same feelings for her patroness. And from the mist that enwrapped her origin, the ingenious and perhaps self-deceived young creature had contrived to evolve such a grand fable ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a pistol, cocked it, and said, laughing, "Here, gentlemen, is the universal panacea for all woes, the spleen, or ennui." He placed the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... the popularity of the recitations gradually decreased. No poet of equal attractiveness was left to hold them. So the ennui and disgust, which had perhaps long been smothered, now burst forth. Many people refused to attend altogether. They sent their servants, parasites, or hired applauders, while they themselves strolled in the public squares or spent the hours in the bath, and only lounged into ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... out one gets sick and tired of the one single topic of conversation. We are like the people at Cremorne waiting for the fireworks to begin; and I really do believe that if this continues much longer, the most cowardly will welcome the bombs as a relief from the oppressive ennui. Few regiments are seen now during the day marching through the streets—they are most of them either on the ramparts or outside them. From 8 to 9 in the morning there is a military movement, as regiments come and go, on and off duty. In the courtyard of the Louvre several regiments of Mobiles ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... peculiarities of Scottish manners as the other is of those of Ireland; and that we are far from placing on the same level the merits and qualities of the works. Waverley is of a much higher strain, and may be safely placed far above the amusing vulgarity of Castle Rack-rent, and by the side of Ennui or the Absentee, the best undoubtedly ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... stinks, and in which one can't walk after rain without goloshes. I had read so much and always with such intense feeling about this earthly paradise that when afterwards, holding up my trousers, I cautiously crossed the narrow street, and in my ennui bought some hard pears from an old peasant woman who, recognising me as a Russian, said: "Tcheeteery" for "tchetyry" (four)—"davadtsat" for "dvadtsat" (twenty), and when I wondered in perplexity where to go ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... grown thin, lost his broad and beaming smiles, and had taken to dressing in canvas. Ivan Petrovitch from time to time visited Groholsky's villa. He brought Liza jam, sweets, and fruit, and seemed trying to dispel her ennui. Groholsky was not troubled by these visits, especially as they were brief and infrequent, and were apparently paid on account of Mishutka, who could not under any circumstances have been altogether deprived of the privilege of seeing his mother. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... four whole days I sat counting the drops of rain that fell from the ceiling into a bowl beneath, or in burbling the chain of my watch for the pleasure of undoing it. 'Oh, Plato! what tasks for a philosopher!' At length in a frenzy of ennui I mounted a brute of a horse that could do nothing but trot, and rode till I was ready to drop from the saddle—just for diversion. I left my companions wondering when it would be fair; and when I returned ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... and ground-nuts, instead of men, women, and children, have reduced to ten. The air is sensibly drier and healthier than at the lower settlement, and apparently there is nothing against the place but deadly ennui and monotony. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... guests in the other salon, under the bright flood of light shed by the chandeliers; and when she was gone, it seemed to him that the little Japanese salon was positively empty and that night had fallen on it. Profound ennui at once overcame him, while Marianne, in a happy frame of mind, on returning to Kayser's studio, reviewed the incidents of that evening, recalling Vaudrey's restless smile, and seeming again to hear Rosas's confidences, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... my life. But that's rather touching too, his not knowing what to do with himself but fiddle around with his guns and tennis-racquets. They're all he has to keep him from being bored to death, and they don't go nearly far enough. Some day he will just drop dead from ennui, poor Arnold! Wouldn't he have enjoyed being a civil engineer, and laying out railroads in wild country! He'd have been a good one too! The same amount of energy he puts into his polo playing would make him fight his way through darkest Thibet." ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... entrance fees, exacted, not for any miserly helping out of the floor-sweepers' salaries, but for the sake of the visitors themselves, that the rooms may not be incumbered by the idle, or disgraced by the disreputable. You must not make your Museum a refuge against either rain or ennui, nor let into perfectly well-furnished, and even, in the true sense, palatial, rooms, the utterly squalid and ill-bred portion of the people. There should, indeed, be refuges for the poor from rain and cold, and decent rooms accessible to indecent persons, if they like to go there; ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... rail. Pepys calls it "a most sweet town, with bridges and a river in every street," and that is a tolerably accurate description. It seems thinly inhabited, and the Dutch themselves look upon it as a place where one will die of ennui. It has scarcely changed with two hundred years. The view of Delft by Van der Meer in the Museum at The Hague might have been painted yesterday. All the trees are dipt, for in artificial Holland every work of Nature is artificialized. At certain ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... accordingly he generously gave up his shop and his stock to his head man, set up his coach, and resolved to live like a gentleman; but, in less than a month, the man, used to business, found, that living like a gentleman was dying of ennui; upon which he bought his shop and stock, resumed his trade, and lived very happily, after he had ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the process, by a number of clever folk, English and foreign; and the result alternately pleased and tormented her. To be fastidious to such a point is to grow more so. And Victoria Tatham was nothing if not fastidious. She had money, taste, patience, yet ennui confronted her in many paths; and except for the son she adored she was scarcely a happy woman. She was personally generous and soft-hearted, but all "causes" found in her rather a critic than a supporter. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at rest, and the viscera are normal and give rise to no disturbing sensations, consciousness is then suspended, and natural sleep ensues. Either local fatigue of the muscles, or of the heart, or ennui, or exhaustion of some brain center usually leads us to seek those conditions in which sleep comes. The whole organism may sleep for the sake of the part. To avoid sleeplessness, we seek monotony of stimulus, either objective or subjective. In the latter case, we dwell on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... pen, ink, and knitting were on the pack-mule; it was very cold, the afternoon fog closed us in, and darkness came on prematurely, so that I felt a most absurd sense of ennui, and went over to the cook-house, where I found Gandle cooking, and his native wife with a heap of children and dogs lying round the stove. I joined them till my clothes were dry, on which the man, who in spite of his rough exterior, was really friendly and hospitable, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... interest she could not help feeling in him, an interest heightened by the mystery which hung over his birth, and by the fact that she knew that concerning him of which he was himself ignorant. At the same time, as I have already said, she had no little need of an escape from the ennui which, now that the novelty of a country life had worn off did more than occasionally threaten her. She began again to seek his company under the guise of his help, half requesting, half commanding his services; and Malcolm found himself admitted afresh to ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the Smoke that rises and is gone, Let your own Spirit lift from Dawn to Dawn And so bestartle Ennui that at last Even the Grave will quite forget ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... sentence: you see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than of the author. We have heard Germans use the word Langeweile, the equivalent for ennui, and we have secretly wondered what it can be that produces ennui in a German. Not the longest of long tragedies, for we have known him to pronounce that hochst fesselnd (so enchaining!); ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... talk was resumed it no longer furnished such "interesting" material. Captain Koenig's yawning became more pronounced, and Leimann was leaning back in his chair, dozing, with mouth half open. His wife, too, showed unmistakable signs of ennui, now that the scandal she loved no longer poured forth. Her features, a moment ago smooth and animated, now looked worn and aged, losing all their charm. Mueller was still digesting audibly, and hence it seemed the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... too. I was watching him while you were talking to him, Barlow, and such a look of ennui I never saw on a ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... own children, are employed some hours in the day in reading, writing, business, or conversation; during these hours, children will naturally feel the want of occupation, and will, from sympathy, from ambition and from impatience of insupportable ennui, desire with anxious faces, "to have something to do." Instead of loading them with playthings, by way of relieving their misery, we should honestly tell them, if that be the truth, "I am sorry I cannot find any thing for you to do at present. I hope you will soon be able to employ ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... a state of youth, in which health and pleasure kept me from ennui; but he had chosen one of old age. He was a savant, and cared only for science; and thus youth, with its thousand pleasures, would have constantly drawn him from its study. An old man meditates better than a young one. Althotas died a victim to his love ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... brilliant Langeac!—ye gentle hearts that knew how to beat in old times for the warm young Irish gentleman, where are you now? Though my hair has grown grey now, and my sight dim, and my heart cold with years, and ennui, and disappointment, and the treachery of friends, yet I have but to lean back in my arm-chair and think, and those sweet figures come rising up before me out of the past, with their smiles, and their kindnesses, and their bright tender eyes! There are no women ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was established and soon destroyed. The powerful Superintendent of Finance, with his eye for the beautiful and desire for the luxury of kings, built for himself such a chateau as only the magnificence of that time produced. It was situated far enough from Paris to escape any sort of ennui, and was surrounded by gardens most marvellous, within a beauteous park. It lay, when finished, like a jewel on the fair bosom of France. The great superintendent conceived the idea of pleasing the young king, Louis XIV, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Sauf le court episode du mauvais temps, ces trois semaines me font l'effet d'un charmant reve, d'un conte de fee, d'une promenade imaginaire a travers une salle immense, tout or et lapis-lazuli. Pas un moment d'ennui ou d'impatience. Si vous voulez abreger les longueurs d'une grande traversee, distribuez bien votre temps, et observez le reglement que vous vous etes impose. C'est un moyen sur de se faire promptement a la vie claustrale et meme ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... know, or of things which you don't know. If you don't know them, to speak is idle." (Here I confess Mr. P. spoke for exactly thirty-eight minutes, about physics, metaphysics, language, the origin and destiny of man, during which time I was rather bored, and, to relieve my ennui, drank a half glass or so of wine.) "LOVE, friend, is the fountain of youth! It may not happen to me once—once in an age: but when I love, then I am young. I loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, I loved thee—ah, how fondly! Wine, I say, more wine! ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the society; boredom; ennui; loss of purpose and direction; growing dissension; power struggle and avoidance of responsibility for trends that were little understood and generally beyond the control of ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... turn to the more intellectual emotions and faculties, which are very important, as forming the basis for the development of the higher mental powers. Animals manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from ennui, as may be seen with dogs, and, according to Rengger, with monkeys. All animals feel Wonder and many exhibit Curiosity. They sometimes suffer from this latter quality, as when the hunter plays antics and thus attracts ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... she must be missed; and could not think, without pain, of Emma's losing a single pleasure, or suffering an hour's ennui, from the want of her companionableness: but dear Emma was of no feeble character; she was more equal to her situation than most girls would have been, and had sense, and energy, and spirits that might be hoped would bear her well and happily through its little ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... self-expression, he went back again to his own kind—to the prattling, the well-groomed, the ultra-fashionables of both mind and body. And there on the shining tennis-courts and the soft golf greens, through the late yellow afternoon and the first gray threat of twilight, the old sickening ennui came creeping back to his senses, warring chaotically there with the natural nervous reaction of his recent adventure, till just out of sheer morbid unrest, as soon as the flower-scented, candle-lighted dinner hour was over, he went stalking round and round the interminable piazzas, hunting in ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... are betrayals of that predominant French weakness, which the French will persist in cherishing as a virtue,—the love of glory. M. Sainte-Beuve thinks Buffon's passion for glory saved him in his latter years from ennui, from "that languor of the soul which follows the age of the passions." Where are to be found men more the victims of disgust with life than that eminent pair, not more distinguished for literary brilliancy and contemporaneous success than for ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the marchioness's Sunday evening conver- saziones have obtained them the fashionable appellation of the Sunday-school. Lord Byron thought it highly dangerous for any wit to accept a second invitation, lest he should be inoculated with ennui. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... inaction is hard to find. Tacitus, feeling the same, offers a merely human motive. Soldiers of fortune often prefer war to final victory, and in these days the dangers of peace were only equalled by its ennui. Besides, Tacitus' explanation lends itself to an epigram which he would doubtless not have exchanged for ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... that Ruth should look upon his life-work as a pleasant pastime to save him from ennui. Even to his wife a man is not always eager to exhibit ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Pyetushkov bore up in an extraordinary way. He went out, and visited his comrades, with the exception, of course, of Bublitsyn; but in spite of the exaggerated approbation of Onisim, he almost went out of his mind at last from wretchedness, jealousy, and ennui. Conversations with Onisim about Vassilissa were the only thing that afforded him some consolation. The conversation was always begun, 'scratched up,' by Pyetushkov; ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... whiskers that emitted a rasping Bueno after every play. There was talk of Paris and possible new volumes of verse, homage to Walt Whitman, Maragall, questioning about Emily Dickinson. About us was a smell of old horsehair sofas, a buzz of the poignant musty ennui of old towns left centuries ago high and dry on the beach of history. The group grew. Talk of painting: Zuloaga had not come yet, the Zubiaurre brothers had abandoned their Basque coast towns, seduced by the bronze-colored ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... capital, he had inflicted a loss upon them which was certainly as great as his own, and he had again proved to them that it was vain for them to attempt to stand. A long pause followed at Pretoria, broken by occasional small alarms and excursions, which served no end save to keep the army from ennui. In spite of occasional breaks in his line of communications, horses and supplies were coming up rapidly, and, by the middle of July, Roberts was ready for the field again. At the same time Hunter had come up from Potchefstroom, and Hamilton had taken Heidelberg, and his force was about to join ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... produces, and though his books may be praised as if the little man were a Sophocles up to date, he and his works are a weariness to think upon. In them is neither beauty, mirth, nor terror, except the terror of illimitable ennui. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... young girls of her time, she had never been taught to read or write, as the benefit of such accomplishments was not appreciated in any general way—at least so far as women were concerned; but, once within the convent walls, from sheer ennui, Archangela began to study most assiduously, and finally published a number of books which present an interesting description and criticism of existing manners and customs in so far as they had to do with women and their attitude toward ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... back, London and "the set" seemed changed. She had sometimes suffered from ennui in Africa, even from loneliness in the first months there. She had got up dreading the empty days, and had often longed to have a party in the evening to look forward to. In England she realized that not only had she ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... into this room opened, these expectant ones moved nervously, each one hoping to be called. Then, as the door into the private offices closed, the ones left behind fell back with sighs to the magazines and illustrated papers with which they sought to distract their fears or their ennui. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... domesticated that their translation, or the use of an awkward equivalent, would be a greater mark of pedantry than the use of the foreign words. The proper use of such terms as fiat, palladium, cabal, quorum, omnibus, antique, artiste, coquette, ennui, physique, regime, tableau, amateur, cannot be censured on the ground of their ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... punctuated by nightmares, marvellously woven out of nothing, and with no psychological value—the human part of the book being a sort of picturesque pathology at best, the representation of a series of states of nerves, sharpened by the tragic ennui of the country. There is a cat which becomes interesting in its agonies; but the long boredom of the man and woman is only too faithfully shared with the reader. La-Bas is a more artistic creation, on a more solid foundation. It is a study of Satanism, a dexterous interweaving of the history of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... by but few strokes, could convert it into an agonising Stephen or Sebastian. As it is, the unimaginable touch of disease, the unrest of madness, made Caligula the genius of insatiable appetite; and his martyrdom was the torment of lust and ennui and everlasting agitation. The accident of empire tantalised him with vain hopes of satisfying the Charybdis of his soul's sick cravings. From point to point he passed of empty pleasure and unsatisfying cruelty, for ever hungry; until the malady of his spirit, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... not been often. The Opera Comique I visited only once; it was tolerably well, and no more, and, for myself, I find the tolerable intolerable in music. At the Grand Opera I heard Robert le Diable and Guillaume Tell almost with ennui; the decorations and dresses are magnificent, the instrumental performance good, but not one fine singer to fill these fine parts. Duprez has had a great reputation, and probably has sung better In former days; still he has a vulgar mind, and can ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... she need give up all gaiety and pleasure because of her change of heart. But Jean took her away from the court and all of its dissipations and dangers and brought her here to the old chateau, where she was literally buried alive in stupidity and ennui. ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... "I have thought of nothing else, for weeks and weeks, long before you came. I begged my father to find me a companion of my own age, not an Arab girl, but a European, to teach me things and make me clever like my mother. He believed I was pining with ennui; and because he had put real happiness out of my life, he was willing to console me as well as he could in some easy way. In spite of Aunt Mabrouka, who may have guessed what was in my mind, he trusts you completely, because ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... meanwhile, as the godfather is a second father, we beg the reader to lay to our account, and not to that of the Comte de la Fere, the pleasure or the ENNUI he may experience. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... always been sufficiently mastered by my will to let me busy myself to some result with history, positive sciences, and the finer parts of religious education, and when my suffering became more violent and for a time interrupted these occupations, I struggled successfully, nevertheless, against ennui; for the memories of the past, my resignation to the present, and my faith in the future were rich enough and strong enough in me and round me to prevent my falling from my terrestrial paradise. According to my principles, I would never, in the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... act opens with a dance given in honour of Tatiana's birthday. Onegin feels bored and out of sheer ennui he begins to flirt with Olga. The thoughtless girl willingly yields to the young man's attentions and promises to dance the cotillion with him, in order to punish her lover for his jealousy.—This tactless behaviour enrages Lenski to such a degree, that he challenges ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... London cad in clothes of painful newness and exaggeration of style, such as no gentleman by any chance ever wears in Britain; the young sprig of nobility with effeminate face and "fast" inclinations, who smokes a cigarette and ogles the girls, and utters sentiments of profound ennui in a light boyish tenor voice. He is the son of an English nobleman who has a Welsh estate, upon which he passes a portion of his time, and can trace his lineage back to one of the Norman adventurers who came over with William the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... as being, neither more nor less, ennui (in fact the thought now expressed on his face did resemble ennui), caused, they said, by the sudden cessation of business and the change from an active life to ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... made of them, at fear's pleasure, charcoal-burners, negroes, or demons, had a stupid and gloomy air, and it could be felt that they perpetrated a crime like a bit of work, tranquilly, without either wrath or mercy, with a sort of ennui. They were crowded together in one corner ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... changed his name from Santi to Raffaello, perhaps with an unconscious reference as well to the great Sanzio d'Urbino as to the archangel. He assured my friend that he had been 13 years in the hermitage and had never known melancholy or ennui. In the little recess for study and prayer, there was a small collection of books. 'I read only,' said he, 'books of asceticism and mystical theology.' On being asked the names of the most famous mystics, he enumerated ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of happiness—1. A life full of work.—Happiness should not be the main object of pursuit 19 Carlyle on Ennui 20 2. Aim rather at avoiding suffering than attaining pleasure 21 3. The greatest pleasures and pains in spheres accessible to all 22 4. Importance and difficulty of realising our blessings while they last 24 Comparison and contrast 26 Content not the quality of progressive societies ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... English people, who are accidentally thrown together in the course of a holiday, to get rid of the depression which results upon dishearteningly unpropitious weather. Music, as usual, was the gracious angel employed to banish the fiend of ennui, but among those who took no part either in the singing or playing, other than that of an enforced auditor, was the elderly gentleman, my quondam acquaintance of the porch, who stood apart in an alcove looking through a window. I stepped up to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... much of the cannon-fever, that I wanted to know what kind of thing it was. ENNUI, and a spirit which every kind of danger excites to daring, nay even to rashness, induced me to ride up quite coolly to the outwork of La Lune. This was again occupied by our people; but it presented the wildest aspect. The roofs were shot to pieces; the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... of drowning myself yet: and what I wrote to you was a sort of safety escape for my poor flame . . . It is only idle and well-to-do people who kill themselves; it is ennui that is hopeless: great pain of mind and body 'still, still, on hope relies': the very old, the very wretched, the most incurably diseased never put themselves to rest. It really gives me pain to hear you or any one else ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the fire, and allows himself to be pestered by the attentions of our womenfolk and annoyed by our children. To pass the time away he sometimes watches a mouse-hole for an hour or two—just to keep himself from dying of ennui; and people get the idea that this sort of thing is all that life holds for the cat. But watch him as the shades of evening fall, and you see the cat ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... weeks after this, I remained at the post with my solitary man, endeavouring by all the means in my power to dispel ennui; but it was a hard task. Sometimes I shouldered my gun and ranged about the forest in search of game, and occasionally took a swim in the sea. I was ignorant at the time, however, that there were sharks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, else I should have been more cautious. ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... been for the return, now and then, of the pains I had suffered in my delirium, mercifully less and less violent, which made the periods of their absence hours of comparative pleasure, I think I should have grown into a hopeless nervous invalid from sheer ennui. I had never been ill that I remember since the days of my childish maladies, and I fretted as only such an one can and must fret under the irksome novelty of pain, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... mountainside from Carmen's grave. Behind him trotted Mme. Glozel and Mme. Popincourt, like little magpies, attendants on this eagle of sorrow whose life-love had been laid to rest, her heart-troubles over. Passion or ennui would no more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beautiful. I was not vain, but as conscious of my beauty as I was of that of a flower, and sometimes it intoxicated me. For, in spite of the comforting novels of the Jane Eyre school, it is hardly possible to set an undue value upon beauty; it defies ennui. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... noise. She bent forth a little, and as she could not see them imagined them standing among the shrubs. She propped her elbows on the window-rail and listened, grateful for this bath of sweetness to her spirit after the day's profound ennui. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... obscure to someone who wasn't completely familiar with the field involved. Malone and cybernetics were not exactly bosom buddies, and by the time he finished reading through the report he was suffering from an extreme case of ennui. ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... night without robbing the day of its due meed of cheerfulness, can rise superior to frailties and weaknesses without despising those who cannot, can be serious without being testy and morose, can live for years in a cell or a desert or a convent-close without perishing of ennui or being devoured by restlessness, and can mingle with life, where all its currents meet, without losing their heads or swerving a hairbreadth from the straight line of a most uncommon and most ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... old servant. You see, then, my situation; here I must remain!—The die is cast, and that struggle is no more.—To keep off every other, to support the loss of the dearest friends, and best society, and bear, in exchange, the tyranny, the exigeance, the ennui, and attempted indignities of their greatest contrast,- -this ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... feel continual languor and listlessness, unless when under the influence of the stimulus which brought on the exhaustion. Every scene, however beautiful, is beheld with indifference by such patients, and the degree of ennui they feel is insupportable: this makes them have recourse to the stimulus which has exhausted their excitability, which in some degree removes this languor for a time; but it returns with redoubled strength, and redoubled horror, when the stimulant effect is over: and as this repetition ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... is a very clever and somewhat profane satire, such as Voltaire might have written had he been a German of the nineteenth century. It opens with Jupiter complaining to Mercury of ennui (eine langweilige Existenz), and that he is not what he was when young. Mercury advises a trip to Leipzig fair, where he may get good medical advice for his gout, and certainly will see something new. They ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... am very much alone myself. Without the visits of Monsieur Fortnoye I should be dead of ennui. I am so glad to find you know ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... for the toast and the kettle, but I do envy you your good spirits, Polly," said Fanny, as the merriment subsided. "I 'm so tired of everybody and everything, it seems sometimes as if I should die of ennui. Don't you ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... has a new responsibility and it adds to his strength of character to assume it in all its phases. Another thing it brings comfort and joy to the mother during the long days while her man is out in the fray. It drives ennui out of the household ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... be doing violence to my feelings,—submitting my will always to that of my superiors, never contentious, never sulky, finishing every work begun, in spite of dislike or ennui. ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... they are also interested in the distant past of other civilised nations; they make their poets tell them of the heroes of Greece and Rome, and immense metrical works are devoted to these personages, which will beguile the time and drive ennui away from castle-halls. These poems form a whole cycle; Alexander is the centre of it, as Charlemagne is of the cycle of France, and Arthur ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... not mean imitation—it means that the writers were all in the same atmosphere. There is everywhere the same reaction against philosophic optimism and the same antipathy to the ways of mankind 'so vain and melancholy,' They sought refuge from inborn ennui or irritability among the mountains, on the sea, or in distant voyages, and they instinctively embodied these moods and feelings in various personages of fiction, in the solitary wanderer, in the fierce outlaw, in the man 'with chilling mystery of mien,' who rails ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... should live on a housetop and eat cheese? Do you long for a cool stream without flies, and a carpet of golden sand? Do you want a coal fire and a husband home at six-thirty, or a third-class ticket to the realms of nonsense? Are you thinking of Lane's income, or Smith's cleverness, or the ennui of too many dinners? ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... then, Siberian anthology! Go! Thou wilt make many a coxcomb happy, wilt be placed by him on the toilet-table of his sweetheart, and in reward wilt obtain her alabaster, lily-white hand for his tender kiss. Go! thou wilt fill up many a weary gulf of ennui in assemblies and city-visits, and may be relieve a Circassienne, who has confessed herself weary amidst a shower of calumnies. Go! thou wilt be consulted in the kitchens of many critics; they will fly thy light, and like the screech-owl, retreat into thy shadow. Ho, ho, ho! Already I hear the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of some of our feelings it is not always possible to ascribe an objective side to them. A feeling of ennui, of impending evil, or of bounding vivacity, may be produced by an unanalyzable complex of causes. But interest, while it is related primarily to the activities of the self, is carried over from the activity to the object which ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... cows in their winter quarters. Clytie Summers had begged very prettily for her glimpse too of the country at this time of year. "It's rather soon, I know, for that spring barn-yard; but I should so enjoy the ennui of some village Main Street in the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... fireside are friendly to Contentment. Why are females so often restless and disquieted at their own abode? Why does ennui prey on their spirits, save when some visit or visitor is in prospect? How should it be, that daughters, blest as those of America now are, should pant for the excitements of a round of public pleasures? Providence designed our institutions for the promotion of woman's content and ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... myself. I am a woman who, since childhood, has had to labour for my livelihood and for that of those I love. You can know nothing of what that labour of the artist's life entails,—interminable journeys, suffocating ennui, the unwholesome monotony and publicity of a life passed in hotels and trains. It was not fit that a young and growing girl should share that life. As much as has been possible I have guarded Karen from its dust ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... increases one's powers for serious pursuits. Pursued wrongly, pursued as the main concern of life, amusement makes all serious work seem stale and dull; and finally makes amusement itself dull and stale too. Ennui, loathing, disgust, and emptiness are the marks of the amusement-seeker the world over. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. All things are full of weariness. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing"—this is the experience of the man who "withheld ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... moral sense, a well-regulated character, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with sentimentality and excitement, those tenderer emotions, those deeper passions, those nobler aspirations of humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far more than of the man; and which are potent in her, for evil or for good, in proportion ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... that of the savage, who can imagine no obstacles that are not solid and tangible. The obstacles that retard our progress in life neither display yawning chasms nor rows of teeth; they dwell within our own minds—they are versatility, disgust, ennui, thirst after the unknown, and love of change. These lead us to take bye-paths and long turnings, and fritter away the strength that should be used in promoting a single aim. Hence arise a multiplicity of hermaphrodite avocations and desultory studies, that terminate in nothing but ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... we four bold spirits, the ubiquitous McGuntrie, Van Blarcom, the young reservist Pietro Ricci,—a very good sort of fellow,—and I were herded together beyond escape. Also, a foursome at bridge seemed divinely indicated by our number, and to avert a sheer paralysis of ennui we formed the habit of winning each other's ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... call picnics are very rare, and when attempted, do not often succeed well. The two sexes can hardly mix for the greater part of a day without great restraint and ennui; it is quite contrary to their general habits; the favourite indulgences of the gentlemen (smoking cigars and drinking spirits), can neither be indulged in with ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... startled in my life. It was a dread revelation of dissatisfaction and ennui, that might lead ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... to the Ambition in Marie de Menzikoff, which I like much, but the love is mere brown sugar and water. The mother's blindness is beautifully described. My father says "Vivian" will stand next to "Mrs. Beaumont" and "Ennui"; I have ten days' more work at it, ten days' more purgatory at other corrections, and then, huzza! a heaven upon earth of idleness and reading, which is my idleness. Half ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... impressions rather than of my body. Such a man I found in the duke; but the duke is old, and old age neither protects nor consoles. I thought I could accept the life which he offered me; but what would you have? I was dying of ennui, and if one is bound to be consumed, it is as well to throw oneself into the flames as to be ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... his Corsica, ed. 1879, p. 204, uses a strange argument against infidelity. 'Belief is favourable to the human mind were it for nothing else but to furnish it entertainment. An infidel, I should think, must frequently suffer from ennui.' In his Hebrides, Aug. 15, note, he attacks Adam Smith for being 'so forgetful of human comfort as to give any countenance to that dreary infidelity which would "make us ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... is, and hard of heart, and like to die of ennui at times. And hence it welcomes with pathetic joy all who can bring some new fancy or trick to their castle-building, rejecting all other without remorse. To this World of Fashion Iola had offered herself, giving ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... midirons, and mashies. The woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether she is blond or not, and who regards Forty-second Street as the axle upon which the universe turns, would be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas, in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably be of delight—with a possibility of alcoholism as a contributing cause. And likewise, though Belleair has plutocrats in abundance, they are not starred for their wealth, as are ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... love and lovers, genuine travellers alone believe in; and, except genuine lovers, there is nothing more seldom met with in the world than genuine travellers. For those who travel from curiosity, from ennui, for health, or for fashion, or in order to write books, belong not to them, and know nothing of that intoxicating repose." * [* "Aus der Gesellschaft," by the ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... he did when I last saw him. You really ought to take up your abode here, or live somewhere near him. He mopes dreadfully, and needs nothing so much as the society of an old friend. You could rouse him from his blue fits and ennui, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... portion, part, participation; advantage, benefit, weal, behoof; usury. Antonyms: boredom, ennui, indifference, unconcern. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... an earth, belonging to somebody else, for he has very lax morals concerning property, and a great idea that right is established by possession. If he should be caught and put in confinement, he is very ferocious, or dies of ennui; but he is much too coy and clever to be easily entrapped. His cry is a sort of yelp, which, however, he is much too cautious to utter when he is ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... appeared on the scene, lounging against the doorway, drawling a little as he talked to his friends—evidently a lion, bored in advance with the whole proceeding and meaning to slip away as soon as he could. But when his eye fell on Mary, he stared at her unobserved for nearly a minute and his ennui ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... to his Grace of Guise. Most of my days between my fifteenth and twenty-fifth years were spent in the wars. At the age of twenty-five I returned to the chateau, there to reside as my uncle's representative, and to endure the ennui of peace. At the chateau I found a fair, tall girl, fifteen years of age: Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, soon afterward Queen of France and rightful heiress to the English throne. The ennui of peace, did I say? Soon I had no fear of its depressing effect, for Mary Stuart was ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... are in a state of profound idleness, which to me is a luxury; and we should all, I believe, have been in a state of high enjoyment, had it not been for the detestable cold gales and much rain, which always gives much ennui to children away from their homes. I received your letter of 13th June, when working like a slave with Mr. Sowerby at drawing for my second volume, and so put off answering it till when I knew I should be at leisure. I was extremely glad to get ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... without the faintest suspicion of the real state of the case, gradually neglected and ceased to take pleasure in her usual occupations; her books, her music, her needle, and her flowers, all seemed to be equally tiresome and unpleasant. While in this unhappy state of ennui and loneliness of feeling, peculiar to the youthful days, or some portion of them, of both sexes, when the mind, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... to each other's past. The chief is under sealed orders; both German and Russian had left their respective countries for good of Kaiser and Tsar; the American is an adventurous son of millionaire residing in New York. Weary of ennui in the metropolis, this Yankee aristocrat seeks diversion in trips to all parts of the globe. All of these ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... when he sees me occupied with a book, he won't let me rest till I close it. In fine weather he generally manages to get through the time pretty well, but on rainy days, of which we have had a good many of late, it is quite painful to witness his ennui. I do all I can to amuse him, but it is impossible to get him to feel interested in what I most like to talk about, while, on the other hand, he likes to talk about things that cannot interest me—or even that annoy me—and these please him—the ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... art, in its essence, is still divine. Men devoted to the pursuit of mere material well being, have been too long in the habit of regarding poetry and the arts as mere recreations, to be taken up at spare moments, pursued when we have nothing better to do; as a relief for the ennui of idleness, or an ornament for the centre table; without remembering how many good and great men have given up their whole lives to its advancement; without considering into how many hearts it has borne its soothing lessons of faith ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
