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Lamentable   Listen
adjective
Lamentable  adj.  
1.
Mourning; sorrowful; expressing grief; as, a lamentable countenance. (Archaic) "Lamentable eye."
2.
Fitted to awaken lament; to be lamented; sorrowful; pitiable; regrettable; unfortunate; as, a lamentable misfortune, or error. "Lamentable helplessness."
3.
Miserable; pitiful; paltry; in a contemptuous or ridiculous sense.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lamentable" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the Secretary of War announces to the armies of the United States the untimely and lamentable death of the illustrious Abraham Lincoln, late President of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... who can not keep a secret. Warm-hearted, open, and impulsive, she was ever on the watch for sympathy, and no sooner did she have a secret than she longed to share it with some one. She had divulged her secret to the Earl, with results that were lamentable. She had partially disclosed it to Mrs. Hart, with results equally lamentable. The sickness of the Earl and of Mrs. Hart was now added to her troubles; and the time would soon come when, from the necessities of her nature, she would be ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... if Christ came not to save us from our sins, but in our sins; not to take away sin, but that we might sin more freely at his cost, and with less danger to ourselves. I say, this ensnared divers, and brought them to an utter and lamentable loss as to their eternal state; and they grew very troublesome to the better sort of people, and furnished the looser with an ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn

... was at that moment in possession of the pontifical throne, and celebrating the jubilee, the periodical recurrence of which at the end of every fifty years had been decreed by Clement VI. in 1350; but Rome was even then in a lamentable state, and presages were not wanting of still more disastrous times. The wars for the succession of the kingdom of Naples, between Louis of Anjou and Ladislas Durazzo, were agitating the whole of Italy; and the capital of the ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... town.] Both Rieka and Triest were, therefore, living under practically the same conditions, separated from their natural hinterland, and knowing very well that as Italian towns their prospects were lamentable. It was significant that the Italian Government should after a time have studied the scheme of constructing a canal from Triest to the Save. Before the War one-third of the urban population (and all the surrounding country) ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... of our hearts polluted with materialistic desires, and uplifts us above the plain of sensualism; on the other hand, it destroys superstitions which as a rule arise from ignorance and want of the idealistic conception of things. It is a lamentable fact that every country is full of such superstitions people as described by one of the New Thought writers: 'Tens of thousands of women in this country believe that if two people look in a mirror at the same ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... "Trilogy of Plays," with twelve dramatic scenes,—issued by Allen & Co., of Waterloo Place. The first of the three, "Alfred," was put upon the stage at Manchester by that ill-starred genius, Walter Montgomery, who was bringing it out also at the Haymarket, a very short time before his lamentable death. He was fond of the play and splendidly impersonated the hero-king, in the opening scene having trained his own white horse to gallop riderless across the stage when Alfred was supposed to have been defeated by the Danes. The vision in act ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... boy at West Point now agreed to cut the colored boy. No one was to say a single word to him, or even answer yes or no. At the same time they would abuse him and swear at him in their own conversation loud enough for him to hear. It is a lamentable fact that every white cadet at the Point swears and chews tobacco like the army ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... next to Mark Twain, as a master of dialect above Lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to Bret Harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of American readers. If the author is dead—lamentable fact—his ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... my own fortunes, and with the purpose of writing which in an unvexed seclusion I had buried myself in this expedient hamlet on the South Coast, was withered in the bud beyond redemption. To this lamentable canker of a seedling hope the eternal harmony of the sea was a principal contributor; but Miss Whiffle confirmed the blight. I had fled from the jangle of a city, and the worries incidental to a life of threepenny sociabilities; and the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... the wife of a jealous and inexorable lord, and arranged her flirtations to evade him with a degree of skill so great that it was lamentable it should be thrown away on an agricultural husband, who never dreamt that the "Fidelio-III-TstnegeR," which met his eyes in the innocent face of his "Times" referred to an appointment at a Regent Street modiste's, or that the advertisement—"White wins—Twelve," meant that if she ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... reflection on the intelligence of the country if the lessons of the industrial acerbities of Europe and the United States should not be grasped. Meantime it is a duty which the foreign observer owes to Japan to speak quite plainly of attempts as silly as they are useless[155] to obscure the lamentable condition of a large proportion of Japanese workers, to hide the immense profits which have been made by their employers and to pretend that factory laws have only to be placed on the statute book in order to be enforced. But if he be honest he must also recognise ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... obliged to garrison the city with twelve thousand men of arms, but not against the Romans, not against his own subjects. It is the secret societies of atheism who have established their lodges in this city, entirely consisting of foreigners, that render these lamentable precautions necessary. They will not rest until they have extirpated the religious principle from the soul of man, and until they have reduced him to the condition of wild beasts. But they will fail, as they failed the other ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... Professor Edward Solly, at whose sale in 1886 I bought it; and he in his turn had acquired it in 1877, at Dr. Rimbault's sale. Probably what drew us all to the little volume was not so much its disclosure of the lamentable state of the Caroline navy, and of the monstrous toadstools that flourished so freely in the ill-ventilated holds of His Majesty's ships-of-war, as the fact that it had once belonged to that brave old philanthropist, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... Governor. The request was granted. The emissary went over the ground thoroughly. He declared that Platt would never yield. He explained that he was certain to win the fight, and that he wished to save Roosevelt from such a lamentable disaster as the end of his political career. Roosevelt again explained at length his position. After half an hour he rose to go. The "subsequent proceedings" he described ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... who must have been a witness of the dying scene of the poet, and probably received the volume which now preserves the sad memorial, and which recalled it to his mind, from the hands of the unhappy poet:—"What a lamentable thing to see so great a genius so ill rewarded! I saw him die in an hospital in Lisbon, without having a sheet or shroud, una sauana, to cover him, after having triumphed in the East Indies, and sailed 5500 leagues! What good advice for those who weary ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... much of cosmology as does his microbe. Goethe, the most comprehensive of Seers, must needs expose his incompleteness by futile attempts to disprove Newton's theory of colour. Newton must needs expose his, by a still more lamentable attempt to prove the Apocalypse as true as his own discovery of the laws of gravitation. All science nowadays is necessarily confined to experts. Without illustrating the fact by invidious hints, I invite anyone to consider ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... Then came lamentable sounds, like the peeping of a sick hen, which changed, as soon as the merchant had put his hand into his pocket, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... would have gone there again this year, but my daughter—we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the effect of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would ask thy Holy One—stand aside, rogue—a charm against most lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter's eldest. Two years back he ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... could only be used on the muddiest foreshore of the beach, far away from the bathing-machines and pierheads, below the grassy slopes of Fort Keeling. The tide ran out nearly two miles on that coast, and the many-coloured mud-banks, touched by the sun, sent up a lamentable smell of dead weed. It was late in the afternoon when Dick and Maisie arrived on their ground, Amomma trotting ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... beautiful American sailing-packets, the George Washington. It was only a small party, and amongst others present was the late Sir George Drinkwater, who related the following curious circumstance connected with Mr. Huskisson:—Sir George told us that the day before the lamentable occurrence took place, which deprived this town of a valuable representative, and the country of so distinguished a statesman, Mr. Huskisson called upon him at the Town Hall (Sir George being then Mayor), ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... exhaust their property and brave the prohibitions, by purchasing a commodity which inflicts injury upon their own vitals. Is not this supremely ridiculous! And that you part with your money to poison your own selves, is it not deeply lamentable! How is it that you allow men to befool you? Thus the fish covets the bait and forgets the hook; the miller-fly covets the candle-light, but forgets the fire. Ye bring misfortunes upon yourselves! Habits which are thus disastrous ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... termed Great Britain, on which I readily satisfied his curiosity, he entered into a detail of some of the stirring events relating to the period of his father's career in arms against the British; some of these were of a thrilling character, and strongly depicted the miseries of war, presenting a lamentable picture of the debasing influence of sanguinary struggles on the human mind. The barbarous mode of harassing the British troops, by picking off stragglers, which the lower orders of Americans pursued, in most instances for the sake of the wretched clothing ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... part of the manuscript, and in his bad French, translating excitedly as he went along so that Philip could scarcely understand, he read passages. It was lamentable. Philip, puzzled, looked at the picture he was painting: the mind behind that broad brow was trivial; and the flashing, passionate eyes saw nothing in life but the obvious. Philip was not satisfied with his portrait, and at the end of a sitting he ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... consisting merely in an advertisement in The True Briton of the resolutions passed at a public meeting to petition against his return to Parliament. The results of his bold attack upon the power of the House of Commons, his imprisonment, the riots, and lamentable loss of life which followed, are so well known as to render any particularizing of them here unnecessary. Originating with this affair was a Government prosecution of The Day, the upshot of which was that Eugenius Roche, the editor—who ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... The dreary solemnity with which these incidents are narrated renders them doubly tedious. A flash of humor might enliven them, but we never see a spark. Mr. Mackay's comic stories, too, of which there are not a few, are most lamentable specimens of wit, suggesting forcibly the poppy-seeds spoken of by Mr. Pillicoddy, which are soporific in tendency, and which, if taken incessantly for a period of three ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... has already been told the lamentable incident of the stolen cigarette and the small boy, and how the bishop, tormented by that shameful memory, cried aloud in ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... so early an age, that when Mistress Susan had twice found her and Antony Babington with their heads together over the lamentable ballad of the cold fish that had been a lady, and which sang its own history "forty thousand fathom above water," she began to question whether the girl were the attraction. He was now an orphan, and his wardship and marriage had been granted to the Earl, who, having ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... repaire my Barke, and to make her in a readinesse. [Sidenote: An Armenian sent to M. Ienkinson from the king of Georgia] And during my abode in Shammachi, there came vnto me an Armenian sent from the king of Georgia, who declared the lamentable estate of the same king, that being enclosed betwixt those two cruell tyrants and mightie princes, the said great Turke and the Sophie, hee had continuall warres with them, requiring for the loue ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... it seemed lamentable that he couldn't urge her; but to the Claude who might be there were higher things than the gratification of fastidious social tastes, and for the moment that Claude had some hope of the ascendant. It was that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... good it was to be young and free, and to be set down in such a splendidly romantic country. Above all, it was good to be heart- whole and unfettered by any woman's spell—men in love were unhappy persons, harassed by a thousand worries and indecisions, utterly lacking in poise. It was a lamentable condition of hysteria with which he decided to have nothing to do. He did not care for women, anyhow. One could scarcely have any dealings with them without becoming involved in some affair that unduly harrowed one's feelings. How much better it was to know the clean spirit of adventure and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... the end of a courtyard in the Rue de Rivoli, there was a sharp tap at his door, and two men in civil clothes came into the room, with that sleuth-hound look which belongs to stage, and French, detectives. They forgot to remove their bowler hats, which seemed to me to be a lamentable violation ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... with us the kinds are almost different animals. But in spite of all Gorky's superficial scepticism and brutality, it is to him the fall from humanity, or the apparent fall from humanity, which is not merely great and lamentable, but essential and even mystical. The line between man and the beasts is one of the transcendental essentials of every religion; and it is, like most of the transcendental things of religion, identical with the main sentiments of the man of common sense. We feel this gulf ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... thus read by Raleigh to Spenser at Kilcolman was the 'lamentable lay' to which reference had just been made—the piece in praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spenser's pastoral, the speaker is persuaded by Thestylis (Lodovick Bryskett) to explain what ditty that was that the Shepherd of the Ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... for a Territorial battalion it would be hard to find. Their unbending courage, their gallant bearing in danger, their cheerfulness and their care and thought for their men have been responsible in a great measure for the successes won by the Northumberland battalions and for the lamentable but noble sacrifices when success was denied. Gallant and devoted soldiers they have been, and well they have earned the love and admiration of their men. Always cheerful whatever was on foot, readiest of all to turn a danger passed into a jest. There could not be a better spirit in which ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley

... terrible scene which ensued? All Vondervotteimittiss flew at once into a lamentable state ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... courage, that the success she had is incredible. The impression that the people received was communicated everywhere, and soon gained all the provinces. The Court thus left Madrid for the second time in the midst of the most lamentable cries, uttered from the bottom of their hearts, by people who came from town and country, and who so wished to follow the King and Queen that considerable effort was required in order to induce them to return, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... wild look of despair in his eyes, she was frightened. Partly in disbelief; partly seeking to postpone this desperate resolve, to turn his thoughts and gain time for reflection; partly in that sentimental mood which at times affects this class of women—"Is Kibei truly ruined? Lamentable the fate of Tamagiku. Why not join him in death? But the idea is too new. Deign to postpone the execution for a space. To-night shall be a night of pleasure with the Kashiku Tamagiku. With the morrow's darkness she dies ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... all its original vileness is stimulated to greater activity, and thus made doubly injurious by this new element of evil. Not only our private houses, but our churches and school-rooms, our railroad cars, and all our places of public assemblage, are, to a most lamentable degree, either unprovided with any means of ventilation, or, to a great extent, supplied with those which are so wretchedly deficient ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... such a lamentable groan heard, enough to turn Ice into Ashes, which caused the Judge, and the rest of the Bench, to demand what the matter was; it was replied that the grave old Gentleman, Christmas, did sound (swoon) at the naming of ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... number in 1709. His friendship for Addison amounted almost to a passion; their intimacy was cemented by harmony of tastes and diversity of character. Steele was ardent, impulsive, warm-hearted, mercurial; full of aspiration and beset by lamentable weaknesses,—preaching the highest morality and constantly falling into the prevalent vices of his time; a man so lovable of temper, so generous a spirit, and so frank a nature, that his faults seem to humanize his character rather than to weaken and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... baths of molten material, and the deterioration of the bath, and other mechanical causes, limit the process to articles of comparatively small size and weight. The electro deposition of zinc has been subject to many patents, and the efforts to introduce it have been lamentable in both a mechanical and financial sense. Most authorities recommend a current density of 18 or 20 amperes per square foot of cathode surface, and aqueous solutions of zinc sulphate, acetate or chloride, ammonia, chloride or tartrate, as being the most suitable for deposition. ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown

... W. C. Burgess was a refugee minister from Lindley, in the Orange River Colony, and like Mr Wainman, was early chosen for service among the troops, joining General Gatacre's force just after the lamentable disaster at Stormberg. He was attached to the "Derbys," and found among them a goodly number of godly men, as in all the battalions and batteries that constituted that unfortunate column. Some of these were Christian witnesses of long standing, including no less than five Wesleyan lay preachers, ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... wrote "The Spanish Tragedy, containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio and Bellimperia with the pitifull Death of Old Hieronimo," first published in 1599, is certified by Heywood in his "Apology for Actors," and there is good authority for the opinion that it was acted as early as 1588. We quote ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... girl—she mustn't figure in a case of that kind, for all the facts will come out. You think you have another charge against him; well, prove it. That man killed John Millinborn and I believe you can put him behind bars. As the guardian angel of Oliva Cresswell you have shown certain lamentable deficiencies"—the smile in his eyes was infectious, and Stanford Beale smiled in sympathy. "In that capacity I have no further use for your services and you are fired, but you can consider yourself re-engaged on the spot to settle with van Heerden. I will pay all ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... the incurious are aware of, and are mighty in their effect, from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention, and from their numbers and fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... sagacious councillors together—the Intendant was not one of those summoned—to consider what steps it behooved them to take to provide for the public safety and to ensure the ends of justice in this lamentable tragedy. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Lincoln had this dream was the night before his assassination. On the morning of that lamentable day there was a Cabinet meeting, at which General Grant was present. During an interval of general discussion, the President asked General Grant if he had any news from General Sherman, who was then confronting Johnston. The reply was in the negative, but the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... three last sentences, it must be owned, are lamentable digressions; for we have not yet stated what the extraordinary thing was. It was not in the least degree extraordinary that the servants should all find out the secret of Laura's heart; for her eyes told it every time that she looked at Wilton; but it is very extraordinary, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... name he quickly understood that we were friends come on a visit, and no longer hesitated to approach us. He was fat and round, and evidently pleased to see us again. The hermit had lived on the lamentable remains of poor Sara, whom we had been obliged to kill here in September. Sara's lean and frozen body did not seem particularly adapted for making anyone fat, and yet our newly-found friend Peary ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... other, he deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, in our native country, I would have looked to the Doctor's personal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a thousand saintly clergymen would amply dazzle out any lamentable spot on a single brother's character. But in scornful and invidious England, on the idea that the credit of the sacred office was measurably intrusted to my discretion, I could not endure, for the sake of American Doctors of Divinity generally, that this particular Doctor ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in death. Let no man judge him, and least of all those who are strangers to the fascinating and infernal strength of his enemy. You may call it a grave mistake, a dreadful blunder, a doleful insanity, but do not assume to put him beyond the reach of mercy, or to decide that his lamentable end was not the iron door through which he may have passed to the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... explaining at the same time that he should not pledge himself to support Government, though he was at present well disposed to do so, and should be still more disposed when Lord Rosslyn became a part of it. Tierney said it was very lamentable that there should be such a deficiency of talent in the rising generation, and remarkable how few clever young men there are now in the House of Commons. The King did not like Lord Rosslyn's appointment; he hates all the Whigs; indeed, he hates the best men of all ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... old places they are, with galleries and passages and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories, supposing we should ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of inventing any, and that the world should exist long enough to exhaust the innumerable veracious legends connected with old London Bridge and its adjacent neighbourhood on ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... knowledge and as little prudence or humanity could not fail to produce calamitous effects. In the case under consideration, where all the worst passions of the heart were irritated and inflamed, the consequences were lamentable. The orders were executed in the spirit in which they were given. Numbers of persons were put to death; many were imprisoned and their property was destroyed or confiscated. The country was covered with blood and desolation, rancor ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... interfered, and I was carried away more dead than alive, in which state I long remained. As soon as I became sufficiently strong to be moved, I took advantage of a whaler calling at the island, homeward bound, to beg a passage. The captain heard my lamentable story, took me on board as soon as he could, and shewed a seaman's sympathy for ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... including most of the books and writing-materials of the three priests, and then left him behind, among the Algonquins of Allumette Island. He found means to continue the journey, and at length reached the Huron towns in a lamentable state of bodily prostration. Daniel, too, was deserted, but fortunately found another party who received him into their canoe. A young Frenchman, named Martin, was abandoned among the Nipissings; another, named Baron, on reaching the ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... night, too, they pursued her in dreams with pitiless iteration and fantastic change; and at dawn she was awakened by voices calling up to her from the Ursulines' Garden,—the slim, pale nun crying out, in a lamentable accent, that all men were false and there was no shelter save the convent or the grave, and the comfortable sister bemoaning herself that on meagre days Madame de la Peltrie ate nothing but ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... thou left us, and art thou gone?' At the same time he took him by the right hand, and the hand of the deceased came away, for it had been cut off with a sword by the Egyptians. He, at the sight of this, became yet much more concerned than before. The woman shrieked out in a lamentable manner, and, taking the hand from Cyrus, kissed it, fitted it to its proper place again, as well as she could, and said: 'The rest, Cyrus, is in the same condition, but what need you see it? And I know that ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... novels were the first "mystery and horror" tales to become popular.] at Nohant, with terror and delight. My companions had many another Scotch and Irish legend in their heads, all fit to set one's hair on end. The convent too had innumerable stories of its own lamentable events,—about ghosts, dungeons, inexplicable apparitions, and mysterious noises. All this, and the thought of finally discovering the tremendous secret of the victim, so kindled our imaginations that we were sure ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... better thus, and knowne to be contemn'd, Then still contemn'd and flatter'd, to be worst: The lowest, and most deiected thing of Fortune, Stands still in esperance, liues not in feare: The lamentable change is from the best, The worst returnes to laughter. Welcome then, Thou vnsubstantiall ayre that I embrace: The Wretch that thou hast blowne vnto the worst, Owes nothing to thy blasts. Enter ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... suns, under avalanches of ice and snow! What heroism, what miracles of bravery, were to be witnessed by these standards on many a battle-field! What fatigue, what suffering, what sacrifices, dangers, wounds, how many glorious deaths, what seas of blood, to come at last to the most lamentable disasters I Had the future been seen, those drums would have been draped in black. But the army imagined itself invincible. The thought of defeat would have called forth a smile of pity. Proud of itself, of its commander, it shouted with joy and pride ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... is no longer attended with the difficulties and disadvantages experienced by the early settlers, of which such lamentable, and perhaps exaggerated accounts have frequently issued from the press. The civilizing efforts of the Canada Company have covered much of the wild forest-land with smiling corn-fields and populous villages. Indeed, the liberal manner in which the Company have offered their lands on sale or lease, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... Catholic religion, it proved possible to find some—very few indeed and well-nigh frantic men—who, laying aside the very sense of humanity, and to the extreme disgust and indignation of other citizens of this town, were not withheld, by horror from triumphing openly and publicly over the most lamentable intestine war lately excited among the Helvetic people; which truly fatal war we sorrow over from the depths of our heart, as well considering the blood shed by that nation, the slaughter of brothers, the atrocious, daily recurring, and fatal discords, hatreds, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... supposition, that a self-announced genius of any sort in their midst was inevitably suspect. On the other hand, there was the ever-imminent danger of entertaining, and snubbing, an angel unawares. There had been the lamentable case of Sledonti, the dramatic poet, who had been belittled and cold-shouldered in the Owl Street hall of judgment, and had been afterwards hailed as a master singer by the Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovitch—"the most educated of the Romanoffs," ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... a general carry to battle a better plan of battle than Fighting Joe Hooker's at Chancellorsville (May 2-3, 1863), and rarely has one marched from a battle that had proved for his own side a more lamentable fiasco. Taking the offensive with vast advantage in numbers, he proposed to hold Lee in place with one of his wings while he thrust the other behind Lee's left, between the Confederate army and Richmond. But he had started a game at which two could play and had challenged a more ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... most deplorable of wardrobes. Well, too, he knew, and had experienced it, that for a man desirous of avoiding notice, the more wretched the clothes, the better. For who does not shun the scurvy wretch, Poverty, advancing in battered hat and lamentable coat? ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... Vidame: since the fact must be admitted that other antiquaries are not less firm in their convictions, nor less hot in presenting them, that the camp of the Roman general was variously elsewhere—and all of them, I regret to add, display a lamentable acerbity of temper in scouting each other's views. Indeed, the subject is of so irritating a complexion that the mere mention of it almost surely will throw my old friend—who in matters not ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... to such perfection and such extent as in the United States. We speak here of structures built by such engineers as Haupt, Adams, and Latrobe, —and not of those works, wretched alike in design and execution, which so often become the cause of what are called terrible catastrophes and lamentable accidents, but which are, in reality, the just criticisms of natural mechanical laws upon the ignorance of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... satisfied my neighbor," said Francesca. "Finding me in such a lamentable state of ignorance, he explained the principle of his own stupid Forth Bridge to me. When I said I understood perfectly, just to get into shallower water, where we wouldn't need any bridge, the Reverend Ronald joined in the conversation, and asked ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... grammar," said Cobbett, "to say of the House of Commons, 'It is a sink of iniquity, and they are a set of rascally swindlers.'" Of course, the bad grammar is almost immaterial. The expression is either a gross libel or a lamentable fact. "If a man," said Sydney Smith, "were to kill the minister and churchwardens of his parish nobody would accuse him of want of taste. The Scythians always ate their grandfathers; they behaved very respectfully to them for a long time, but as soon as their grandfathers became ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... have, no doubt, been caricatured by the London press,—and the temper of the man was more plainly observed to be sincere, fervent, and devoted to a certain set of religious preconceptions. The want of culture and of general intelligence was not so lamentable in such a neighborhood. He led, by many lengths, the Victoria and Surrey stage. If he had more deeply reflected upon the subjects which he handled like a simple-hearted boy, he would have failed to keep four thousand men and women ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... find the face of God[75].'" He continued, "You are idolaters, why do you pray to images?" "The English people do not pray to images," I rejoined. As he doubted my word, I was obliged to enter into explanations of the customs of Romanists and Protestants. It is amusing or lamentable to think, as we may sneer at or regret the matter, that these rude children of The Desert should have ground for charging upon the high-bred and transcendantally-polished nations of Europe, idolatry. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... apparently, because he thought he had been abominably fooled by a woman. They told me that his grievance was quite imaginary. He was a young man with a thin fair beard, huddled up on the edge of his bed, hugging himself forlornly; and his incessant and lamentable wailing filled the long bare corridor, striking a chill into one's heart long before one came to ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... was not meant by Providence for a tailor. He made lamentable work with the needle. It slipped and pricked his fingers, while his unfeeling friends jeered and Tam turned great eyes of sympathy upwards ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... towards all my countrymen, who generally by profession are Catholics, and that naturally I am inclined to affect [esteem] you, I have for these and other considerations abstained my forces from tempting to do you hindrance, and because I did expect that you would enter into consideration of the lamentable state of our poor country, most tyrannically oppressed, and of your own gentle consciences, in maintaining, relieving and helping the enemies of God and our country in wars infallibly tending to the promotion of heresy: But now seeing you are so obstinate in that which hereunto you continued ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... thought much of, that the Law should have satisfaction for their Thefts, and other Immoralities; by which means, Holiness to the Lord is more rarely engraven upon this sort of Servitude. It is likewise most lamentable to think, how in taking Negroes out of Africa, and selling of them here, That which GOD has joined together, Men do boldly rend asunder; Men from their Country, Husbands from their Wives, Parents from their Children. How horrible is the Uncleanness, Mortality, if not ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... portrays him as a moral philosopher and in his book, Memorabilia, he seems to eulogize his master. The latter however presents him as a thinker, and it is maintained by many critics that Plato put into the mouth of Socrates his own ideas. It is lamentable that this great philosopher committed nothing of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... had been done before. He complimented Mr. Carmady on the picturesque manner in which he described the emptying of the country, but he could not agree with Mr. Carmady regarding the causes that had brought about this lamentable desire to leave the fatherland. Mr. Carmady's theory was that the emptying of Ireland was due to the fact that the Irish priests had succeeded in inducing men to refrain from the commission of sin. Mr. ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... woe is me!" very lamentable events had occurred to Betsinda that morning, and all in consequence of that fatal warming-pan business of the previous night. The King had offered to marry her; of course her Majesty the Queen was jealous: Bulbo had fallen in love with her; of course Angelica was ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Wolff to himself. "That is the hero before whom Europe has trembled; the daring prince who caused the sun to rise upon his country, and awaken the spirits to cheerful life. Oh, how lamentable; how much to be regretted, that a hero, too, can grow feeble and old! Oh, cruel fate, that the noblest spirits embodied in this ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... interfere in the private and personal affairs of gentlemen until you have fitted yourself to understand them. I am going upon a journey in a manner which appears becoming to one who is responsible for these lamentable troubles. I shall leave my property here in your charge, but will ask you to accept such of those articles as are on the floor as may be of use to you. When you see me again it will be as your indulgent master; but he who now bids you farewell is ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... the Elector, as he sank down groaning into his leather armchair. "But I suppose you know it already. Schlieben is back, and our son comes not with him; he only writes us a lamentable letter, in which he explains that he can not come home at this season of the year, and in the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... angry—"have been combined with the rubbish, in this case irrelevant and actually harmful, that goes to make up the usual pretty young face. Mees Chrees, I could have wished you some minor deformity, such as many spots, for then you would not now be in this lamentable condition of being loved and responding to it. And if," he said as a parting shot, "Providence was determined to commit this folly, it need not have crowned it ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... at Domremi, and was accustomed to perform the coarsest offices, and in particular to ride the horses to a neighbouring stream to water. Of course the situation of France and her hereditary king formed the universal subject of conversation; and Joan became deeply impressed with the lamentable state of her country and the misfortunes of her king. By dint of perpetual meditation, and feeling in her breast the promptings of energy and enterprise, she conceived the idea that she was destined by heaven to be the deliverer of France. Agreeably ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... is not mistaken, lays a Miss Macartney to his charge; she is a companion to the Duchess of Richmond, as Madame Goldsworthy was; but Ossorio will rather be Wachtendonck (285) than Goldsworthy: what a lamentable story is that of the hundred sequins per month! I have mentioned Mr. Jackson, as you desired, to Sir R., who says, he has a very good opinion of him. In case of any change at Leghorn, you will let me know. He will not lose his patron, Lord Hervey, (286) ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... be, it is a lamentable situation that our high-salaried Board of Education, composed of the best trained intelligence of the country, should not be allowed to exercise its discretion efficiently. The people, no doubt, cannot be agreed as to the principles on which they desire to be educated, whether ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... Mr. Gladstone's and Lord Granville's diplomatic dealings with Germany in the years 1884 and 1885 displayed most lamentable weakness, even when Dr. Peters and others were known to be working hard at the back of Zanzibar, with the results that have been noted. In April 1885 the Cabinet ordered Sir John Kirk, British representative ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... lowing of these poor beasts pierced me to the heart. Jacques questioned me with his eyes; he would have liked to try and deliver them. Their agonising moans soon became lamentable, and a great cracking sound was heard. The oxen had just broken down the stable doors. We saw them pass before us, borne away by the flood, rolled over and over in the current. And they disappeared amid the roar of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... before light, as we lay listening to these lamentable roarings and grunts, and quite unable to sleep for heat and noise, came the blessed express, and presently we were away out of all the din, with the fresh air of the prairie blowing in; and in no time at all we were so sound asleep that it seemed ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... reconciled myself to an episode which, unlike the more serious events it now becomes my duty to relate, had only one result, and that unimportant. I mean the introduction to my service of the clerk Felix; who, proving worthy of confidence, remained with me after the lamentable death of the King my master, and is to-day one of those to whom I entrust the preparation of ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... poor girl catching her death) detains her on the front step with foggy allusions to the mysterious past. I may mention that his own conduct in the interval had been such as I can only regard as a lamentable relapse from the altitude of the earlier chapters. But it is all vastly serious—it would perhaps be unkind to say sententious—and wholly unruffled by the faintest suggestion of comedy. For which reason I should never be startled to learn that HARRY TIGHE was either ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various

... Bob, one day after John had cut a particularly lamentable figure, gouging a driver in a settlement, "don't you know that your ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... to see the magistrate at the suggestion of that not very admirable but certainly very sharp-witted wife of his. I do not suppose that Thomas Putnam was at all a bad man, but it is a lamentable sight to see, as we so often do, a good kind honest-hearted man made a mere tool of by some keen-witted and unscrupulous woman; in whose goodness he believes, in a kind of small-minded and yet not ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... found his voice, and pleaded for mercy. The prince questioned him closely concerning the burning of the castle. The little friar declared, that he had been in too great fear during the siege to know much of what was going forward, except that he had been conscious during the last few days of a lamentable deficiency of provisions, and had been present that very morning at the broaching of the last butt of sack. Harpiton groaned in sympathy. The little friar added, that he knew nothing of what had passed since till he heard the flames ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... properly; there is excellent reason for supposing things are very little better in America; and, to begin with, it must be the care of every good New Republican to bring about a better state of things in this most lamentable profession. Until the teacher can read and write, in the fullest sense of these words, it is idle to expect him or her to teach the pupil to do these things. As matters are at present, the attempt is scarcely made. In the elementary and lower secondary schools ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... the hidden misteries of their diuelish and wicked Inchauntmentes, Charmes, and Sorceries, the better to preuent and auoyde the danger that may ensue. And lastly, who were the principall authors and actors in this late woefull and lamentable Tragedie, wherein so much Blood ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... bade the sorceress lead the way into the place of horror, and when she had entered, he raised the magic wand yet again, and smote the rock; and lo! it closed for ever, and the sorceress was left to bellow forth her lamentable complaints ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... Clarke, who mentioned incidentally that he lectured at the college forty years ago, said that there was a rise from the {229} beginning of that reign to the period 1850-60, and that from the latter date there had been a very strange and lamentable decline to the end of the reign, would he thought, be amply demonstrated. A glorious galaxy of talent adorned the years 1850-60. There were two great poets, two great novelists, and two great historians. The two great ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's, facing the campus, Ramsey was still unable to talk of anything except the lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing efforts to console him of great avail, though Fred did become serious enough to point out that a university was different from a ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man?... Away, burn all the records of the realm: my mouth shall ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... to relate the history of the enterprise he seemed to get a saner adjustment of his mental focus. In the telling he had sight of the whole business as a lamentable, real piece of his personal life, even perceiving as he described the stormy incidents of that morning—more dramatic than anything in "The Basha's Favourite"—that it had not been without its humorous elements. He understood quite well, of course, that unless Cleo now found the requisite money, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... Tete quite lamentable," says Livingstone, but that of Sena was ten times worse. "It is impossible to describe the miserable state of decay into which the Portuguese possessions here ...
— 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

... father-visitor, on which account he incurred the great displeasure and resentment of many. By the death of Father Jeronimo de Salas, Father Sepulveda became a second time the ruler of the province, as rector provincial; but he did not change in the least his harsh and rigid mode of government. A lamentable and unexpected event put an end to his already harassed life, on August 21, 1617." ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... their birth. We all of sorrow have our share; But say, is yours without compare? Look round the world; perhaps you'll find Each individual of our kind Press'd with an equal load of ill, Equal at least: look further still, And own your lamentable case Is little short of happiness. 10 In yonder hut that stands alone Attend to Famine's feeble moan; Or view the couch where Sickness lies, Mark his pale cheek, and languid eyes; His frame by strong convulsion torn, His struggling sighs, and looks forlorn. Or see, transfixt ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... having traversed Europe, and dined with the best society of the world, has been led naturally, as a patriot, to turn his thoughts homeward, and cannot but deplore the lamentable ignorance regarding gastronomy displayed in a country for which Nature ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... faces disputed, and all their members hideously consumed with putrifying sores; so that the mind is horror-struck at the thought and the senses recoil from the sight! And what does God intend, through these lamentable specimens of our flesh and brotherhood, but to open the eyes of our mind, that we may see in how much more dreadful a guise the soul of the sinner shows forth its disease and decay, even though he himself go in purple and gold, and tie among lilies and roses, as a very child ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... during the somewhat tedious process of changing his morning clothes for the monotonous garb of Western civilization. His attention is generally fully claimed by the satisfactory adjusting of his tie and the precaution he has to use to avoid anything so lamentable as a crease in his shirt, and if his thoughts stray at all, it is seldom beyond the immediate matter of his toilet, or at most a little anticipation with regard to the forthcoming evening. If on the right side of thirty, a pair of bright eyes may ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... skull, which looked frail enough for Ossipon to crush between thumb and forefinger; the dome of the forehead seemed to rest on the rim of the spectacles; the flat cheeks, of a greasy, unhealthy complexion, were merely smudged by the miserable poverty of a thin dark whisker. The lamentable inferiority of the whole physique was made ludicrous by the supremely self-confident bearing of the individual. His speech was curt, and he had a particularly ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... grievance of which to complain, and it might have been thought very unlikely that any troubles would arise in connection with them; but circumstances seemingly trivial threw the whole community into commotion, and led on to disasters of a very lamentable character. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... remarks and the unanswerableness of their arguments. Happily, yesterday the Moses talk was brought to an end by the April baby herself, who suddenly remembered that I had not yet seen and sympathised with her dearest possession, a Dutch doll called Mary Jane, since a lamentable accident had bereft it of both its legs; and she had dived into the schoolroom and fished it out of the dark corner reserved for the mangled and thrust it in my face before I had well done musing on the nature and extent of my love for Moses—for I try to be conscientious—and ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... that time Glendenning's personal elevation remained invisible to us, and we began to wonder if he were not that most lamentable of fellow-creatures, a clerical snob. I am not sure still that he might not have been so in some degree, there was such a mixture of joy that was almost abject in his genuine affection for us when Mrs. Bentley openly approved us on her first visit. I dare say he would not have ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... drench'd with sweat, Bore Nestor and Machaon from the field; Achilles saw, and mark'd them where he stood Upon his lofty vessel's prow, and watch'd The grievous toil, the lamentable rout. Then on his friend Patroclus from the ship He call'd aloud; he heard his voice, and forth, As Mars majestic, from the tent he came: (That day commenc'd his evil destiny) And thus Menoetius' ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... was eminently successful too in his diabolical enterprise, although there was nothing prepossessing in his person or in his manners; but he had the reputation of being irresistible, and of course he was so; for, whatever may be the reason, it is a most lamentable fact, that to be called a professed rake, and reputed father of some half dozen illegitimate children, is a man's most irresistible passport, and powerful recommendation to the good graces and smiles of the fair sex ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... situation with lamentable accuracy. No option of a fine was given, and during the brief space that the prison doors closed upon him, Sara saw to the welfare of his invalid wife, thereby winning the undying devotion of Black ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... be less lamentable now, being one that takes care to redress itself, and perhaps any amateur purchaser of fish may find rogues enough now for his interest. But the rector's daughter pined for neither society nor scandal: she ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... man, and it would seem, that, like the rich man in the parable, he had had all his good things in this life; and now that he had come to the gates of death, he found himself in a sadly destitute and lamentable condition. He was afraid to die; and when he came to the very last, his shrieks of terror and distress were fearful. His mind was wandering, and he fancied some strong being was binding him with chains and shackles. He screamed ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... simply because she had scented in him that small portion of 'femininity,' that drop of superior essence of which I am myself aware; which, I gratefully acknowledge, has saved me from one or two misadventures in my life either ridiculous or lamentable, I am not very certain which. It matters very little. Anyhow misadventures. Observe that I say 'femininity,' a privilege—not 'feminism,' an attitude. I am not a feminist. It was Fyne who on certain solemn grounds had adopted that mental attitude; but it was enough to glance at him sitting ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... freedom they loudly vaunted.[11]—In Wuerzburg, the French ambassador reigned with the despotism of an Eastern satrap.[12] Saxe-Coburg[13] and Anhalt-Gotha,[14] where the native tyrant was sheltered beneath the wing of Napoleon, were in the most lamentable state.—In Saxony, the government remained unaltered. Frederick Augustus, filled with gratitude for the lenity with which he had been treated after the war and for the grant of the royal dignity, remained steadily faithful to Napoleon, but introduced ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... of thunder. But Pandora, heeding nothing of all this, lifted the lid nearly upright, and looked inside. It seemed as if a sudden swarm of winged creatures brushed past her, taking flight out of the box, while, at the same instant, she heard the voice of Epimetheus, with a lamentable tone, as ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... quarters at the old kotlar, or public meeting-place tree. During the day visitors continually called on them, all complaining of the misfortunes they had suffered. The condition of Sekeletu, however, was the most lamentable. He had been attacked by leprosy, and it was said that his fingers had become like eagles' claws, and his face so fearfully distorted that no one could recognise him. One of their head men had been put to death, it being supposed that he ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... old fellow!' interrupted the young gentleman in question] have interested us so much in his favour that we cannot but view with regret a habit he has of late fallen into, of turning everything into ridicule ['What a pity!' from the same individual], together with a lamentable addiction to the use of slang terms. Let me hope his association with such a polished young gentleman as Mr. Fairlegh may improve him ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... giving him any aid. He was sure, he said at last, that my visit in his family had convinced me that his children could not vary the destiny imposed upon them by their antecedents, without bringing upon others lamentable consequences. "Cunning pa," I commented internally. Had I not seen the misery of ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... the flesh of turtle on the south-western coast of Ceylon is avoided as poisonous, and some lamentable instances are recorded of deaths ascribed to its use. At Pantura, to the south of Colombo, twenty-eight persons who had partaken of turtle in October, 1840, were immediately seized with sickness, after which coma supervened, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... aversion to women. At the solicitations of his family he finally married, without any very intelligent idea as to what, if anything, might be expected of him in the marital relation. Absolute impotence—indeed, repugnance for association with his wife—was the lamentable sequence. A divorce was in contemplation when, fortunately for all parties concerned, the wife suddenly died. Being a man of more than ordinary intelligence, this individual, prior to seeking my ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... so used to the story of my lamentable pursuit of the eumoirous that I rattled it off mechanically after the manner of the sturdy beggar telling his mendacious tale of undeserved misfortune. To Dale, however, it was fresh. He listened to it open-eyed. When I had concluded, he brought his ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... as it were, her life and her death—were uttered in such lamentable tones that all present shuddered. Martha, in spite of her great age, darted out of the room, ran up the staircase and through the gallery, and knocked loudly on the ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... are too good a mother not to love all your children alike. You are too good a woman, besides, to have any of those lamentable preferences which have such fatal effects, as we lawyers have only too much reason to know. Society goes through our hands; we see its passions in that most revolting form, greed. Here it is the mother of a family trying to disinherit ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... of the "Black Horse". She was a slim, pretty, dark woman, quaint in her speech, whimsical, so that the sharp things she said did not hurt. She was oddly a thing to herself, rather querulous in her manner, but intrinsically separate and indifferent, so that her long lamentable complaints, when she raised her voice against her husband in particular and against everybody else after him, only made those who heard her wonder and feel affectionately towards her, even while they were irritated and impatient with her. She railed ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... The lantern itself must, she thought, have been made when the invention was in its infancy, and its pictured slides seemed the remnants of various outworn series. Those of the Rake's Progress were something too hideous and lamentable to be dwelt upon. And the ruinous, wretched old man did not merely seem to have taken to this as a last effort, but to have in his dotage turned back upon his life course, and resumed a half-forgotten trade—or perhaps only an accomplishment of which ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... knife stroke him into the bellie, in such wise, that the kings bowels fell out of his chest, and there presentlie died. The theefe was hewen in peeces by the kings seruants, but yet he slue and hurt diuers before they could dispatch him. This chance was lamentable, namelie to the English people, which by the ouertimelie death of their king, in whome appeared manie euident tokens of great excellencie, lost the hope which they had conceiued of great wealth to increase by his prudent and most princelie gouernement. His bodie was buried at Glastenburie ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... party is as sound and as true to principle as ever it was, and that on the restoration of international peace this will be seen to be the case. What interests us, however, specially, at the moment of writing, is the lamentable, yet undeniable, fact that German Social Democracy has, on this occasion, disastrously failed to prevent the outbreak of war, notwithstanding the vigour of its efforts to do so during the last week of July; and still more that it has failed up to date to stem the rising ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... the subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But alas! Instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... was not popular. This is not putting it strong enough. He was more than unpopular; he was hated by his neighbors, and slandered by the press at home and abroad. This lamentable condition of affairs was not due to any despicable qualities in the man, for Cooper was a kind father, an affectionate husband, a good citizen, and an honest, truth-loving man. These seem admirable qualities. Of few of us can much higher praise be spoken. Why then did the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... to have added to that treaty some conditions to which they supposed the lamentable state of the country would have extorted an acquiescence, even from the heart of a conqueror's power. But the Diet were deceived: they found such power was unaccompanied by humanity; they found that the foe, having thrown his victim ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... the Equalities; I sing the endless finales of things; I say Nature continues—Glory continues; I praise with electric voice: For I do not see one imperfection in the universe; And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... intrenchment, repudiates its old adage; justice, ashamed, retracts her maxims, and sorrow lowers her bandage over her blushing cheeks. And it was but yesterday that this progress in social philosophy began: fifty centuries required for the extirpation of a lie! During this lamentable period, how many usurpations have been sanctioned, how many invasions glorified, how many conquests celebrated! The absent dispossessed, the poor banished, the hungry excluded by wealth, which is so ready and bold in action! Jealousies and wars, incendiarism and bloodshed, among the nations! But ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... conduct of the Young Ladies' College aforesaid. It had come to his knowledge that the Principal of the College had granted, to certain of the pupils who desired it, permission to pray to Almighty God in the English language. The member forcibly contended that this lamentable state of affairs should not exist, but that every pupil in the College should be compelled to pray to God in the language of the country! A general discussion followed, but it was ultimately allowed that this matter did not come within the ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann

... obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act or a single event which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged, indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach their ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... moments on the alert, and the attack was entirely repulsed; the sleeping sentry was cast headlong down the rock; and Manlius was brought, by each grateful soldier, that which was then most valuable to all, a little meal and a small measure of wine. Still, the condition of the Capitol was lamentable; there was no certainty that Pontius had ever reached Camillus in safety; and, indeed, the discovery of his path by the enemy would rather have led to the supposition that he had been seized and detected. The best hope lay in wearying out the besiegers; and there seemed to be more chance of this ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it but weakness, miserable, lamentable weakness, that is spread out before us in the bitter invective speeches against Life by those who are called pessimists, by Schopenhauer, Wagner, Ibsen, dragged along as they were in the ebb of life toward the middle ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... British balloon section of the Army, and revealed services to which it was specially adapted, but which had previously more or less been ignored. The British Army possessed indifferent maps of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. This lamentable deficiency was remedied in great measure by recourse to topographical photographs taken from the captive balloons. The guides thus obtained were found to be ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... indulge in the exchange of a quiet bit of nautical humour or a harmless practical joke with their next neighbour. To-day, however, this sort of thing was conspicuously absent; and I was at first disposed to attribute the unwonted gloom to the men's horror and regret at the lamentable accident of the previous evening. But that, I felt again, would scarcely account for it; for, however sincere may be Jack's attachment to his shipmates whilst they are alive and with him, they are no sooner dead and buried than, from ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... she had a due sense of her crime towards me. But our meeting, I considered, was of no use, and could only occasion unpleasantness between us. If she repented, though at the eleventh hour, it was not too late, and I sincerely trusted that she was now doing so. And, would you believe her lamentable and hardened condition? she sent me word through Dinah, my woman, whom I dispatched to her with medicines for her soul's and her body's health, that she had nothing to repent of as far as regarded her conduct ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Committee of that School, that "in the district embraced by their Society, the consequences of ignorance were evident to the most superficial observer. Parents and children, appeared alike regardless of morality and virtue; the former indulging in profligacy, and the latter exhibiting its lamentable effects. ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... which I lost two fingers and much blood), prove beyond all question to me that, even in its most lurid and revolting passages, Blackburn's account is a mere record of fact, and not at all, as some apologists have sought to show, an exaggerated or overheated version of these lamentable events. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... incurred the execration of the Protestants. History exhibits many and greater despots than Ferdinand II., yet he alone has had the unfortunate celebrity of kindling a thirty years' war; but to produce its lamentable consequences, his ambition must have been seconded by a kindred spirit of the age, a congenial state of previous circumstances, and existing seeds of discord. At a less turbulent period, the spark would have found no fuel; and the peacefulness of the age would ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and ancient documents that beyond the limits of the known world there were, in addition, toward the west, large tracts of territory unexplored up to that time by anybody, he considered in his mind the immense multitude of those who were plunged in lamentable darkness, subject to insensate rites and to the superstitions of senseless divinities. He considered that they miserably led a savage life, with ferocious customs; that, more miserably still, they were wanting in all notion of the most important things, and that ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... Misled by the pleasure she found in these promenades, and secure in the consciousness of blameless conduct, the Queen would not see the lamentable results which must necessarily follow. This was very unfortunate; for besides the mortifications they brought upon her, it is highly probable that they prompted the vile plot which gave rise to the Cardinal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... "that is lamentable. And which wilt thou do?" "Heaven knows," said the Earl, "it will be better that my sons should be slain against my will, than that I should voluntarily give up my daughter to him to ill-treat and destroy." ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me and mine and the bulk of their fellow-creatures ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... At length they came up to the boat; but it is impossible to express their confusion when they found the boat aground in the creek, the tide ebbed out, and their two men gone; we could hear them call one to another in the most lamentable manner, telling one another they were got into an enchanted island; that either there were inhabitants in it, and they should all be murdered, or else there were devils and spirits in it, and they should all be carried away and devoured. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... whole affair. A thousand vague and undefinable suspicions crossed his mind. Was he in presence of a crime? Certainly, evidently not. But what was the cause then of the mystery and reticence he detected? Was he upon the track of some lamentable family secret—one of those terrible scandals, concealed for a long time, but which at last burst forth with startling effect? The prospect of being mixed up in such an affair caused him infinite pleasure. It would bring him into notice; ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... appears, these two above-mentioned roles were the especial puppetry in which Mr. Vanringham was most successful in wringing tears and laughter from the injudicious.—F.A.] She ran to him, and with disjointed talk and quavering utterance disclosed the present lamentable ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell



Words linked to "Lamentable" :   bad, sorry, pitiful, distressing



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