"Moroseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thus to burst the bonds that unite us; but be resolute, for you will suffer more to watch from day to day the slow workings of death and ruin in your husband. Would you stay with me, to see every vestige of what you once loved passing away—to endure the caprice, the moroseness, the delirious anger of one no longer master of himself? Would you make your children victims and fellow-sufferers with you? No! dark and dreadful is my path! I will walk it alone: no one shall go ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Brittany turned war into a brigandage. The proscription of princes, the destruction of religion, far from inspiring great sacrifices, were to the Chouans pretexts for mere pillage; and the events of this intestine warfare had all the savage moroseness of their own natures. When the real defenders of the monarchy came to recruit men among these ignorant and violent people they vainly tried to give, for the honor of the white flag, some grandeur to the enterprises which had hitherto rendered the brigands ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... bestow immense benefits spoil them by their silence or slowness of speech, which gives them an air of moroseness, as they say "yes" with a face which seems to say "no." How much better is it to join kind words to kind actions, and to enhance the value of our gifts by a civil and gracious commendation of them! To cure your friend of being slow to ask ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... had heard that Harlan had appeared at the Star and had been taken into the outlaw band by Haydon, Deveny had exhibited fits of a sullen moroseness that had kept his closest friends from seeking his companionship. Those friends were few, for Deveny's attitude toward his men had always been that of the ruthless tyrant; he had treated them with an aloofness that had in it a contempt which they could not ignore. More—he ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... list. And of all other women lean, hollow-eyed, old, beetle-browed women (saith he) are the most infectious.'[44] Why old women are selected as the most proper means of doing the devil's will may be discovered in their peculiar characteristics. The repulsive features, moroseness, avarice, malice, garrulity of his hags are said to be appropriate instruments. Scot informs us, 'One sort of such as are said to be witches are women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, and full of wrinkles, poor, sullen, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... degrees limitless power waxed into lawlessness, and suspicion and dread into moroseness and cruelty, and on this rank soil the red weeds of lust and hate and bitter pride sprang up and choked all that was sweet and gracious and lovable in the ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... have been a little man, of a contemptible presence; but the goodness of his humor, and his constant cheerfulness and playfulness of temper, always free from anything of moroseness or haughtiness, made him more attractive, even to his old age, than the most beautiful and youthful men of the nation. Theophrastus writes, that the Ephors laid a fine upon Archidamus for marrying a little wife, "For," said ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... begin with, while man becomes a weak graybeard suddenly and out of the fullness of his manly strength. The change is so great, the difference so significant and painful, that the consequence must be a series of unpleasant properties,—egoism, excitability, moroseness, cruelty, etc. It is significant that the very old man assumes all those unpleasant characteristics we note in eunuchs—they result from the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... grammarians of this reign was Apollonius Dyscolus, so called perhaps from a moroseness of manner, who wrote largely on rhetoric, on the Greek dialects, on accents, prosody, and on other branches of grammar. In the few pages that remain of his numerous writings, we trace the love of the marvellous ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... was seen to keep clear of the established religion. It was not that he hid, so much as that the world did not care to know, what he believed. In that day there were many rites and worships which kept to themselves—many forms of moroseness or misanthropy, as they were considered, which withdrew their votaries from the public ceremonial. The Catholic faith seemed to the multitude to be one of these; it was only in critical times, when some idolatrous act was insisted on by the magistrate, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... friends, he rendered it only subservient to the great wish of his heart—the promotion of learning, which, it cannot be denied, was at that time in danger of being overthrown by bigotry and fanaticism: for this reason it was that he opportunely interposed to shelter Oxford from the moroseness of Owen and Godwin. Well might his eye look dreamy. How could that of the author of a "Discovery of a New World" look otherwise? He openly maintained that, not only was the moon habitable, but that it was possible for a man to go there. His reply to the Duchess of Newcastle, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... crew, working on a bonus for work performed, kept the bolts of cedar gliding down the chute. The mill on the river below swallowed up the blocks and spewed them out in bound bundles of roof covering. Lawanne kept close to his cabin, deep in the throes of creation, manifesting strange vagaries of moroseness or exhilaration which in his normal state he cynically ascribed to the artistic temperament. Bland haunted the creeks where the trout lurked, tramped the woods gun in hand, a dog at his heels, oblivious to everything but his ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... told me," he explained; "and, Aaron, if you will only believe me, it tells me also that a little of the man you were still clings to you. Come out of the moroseness in which you have enveloped yourself so long. Think what a joy ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... less fierce for being restrained. He thought Darius a gross fleshly organism, as he indeed was, and he privately objected to many paternal mannerisms, of eating, drinking, breathing, eructation, speech, deportment, and garb. Further, he had noted, and felt, the increasing moroseness of his father's demeanour. He could remember a period when Darius had moods of grim gaiety, displaying rough humour; these moods had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... these have done, every one else surely can do. Cheerfulness is a Christian duty; moroseness, dulness, gloominess, as false, and wrong, and cruel as they are unchristian. We are too far advanced now in the light of truth to go back into the Gothic and conventual gloom of the Middle Ages, any more than we could go back to the exercises ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... instruction, will be disconcerted at the spirited yet modest rebuke of a pious young woman. But there is as much efficacy in the manner of reproving prophaneness, as in the words. If she corrects it with moroseness, she defeats the effect of her remedy, by her unskilful manner of administring it. If, on the other hand, she affects to defend the insulted cause of God, in a faint tone of voice, and studied ambiguity of phrase, or with an air of levity, and a certain expression of pleasure in her eyes, which ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... her that the Ship Inn had a breath of youth and cheerfulness infused into it. But for her, the absence and indifference of the host, and the moroseness of the disappointed hostess, would have ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... even where you might imagine the claims upon the body to be slightest—in the act of reasoning—who does not know the terrible stumbles which are made through being out of health? It suffices to say that forgetfulness, and despondency, and moroseness, and madness take occasion often of ill-health to visit the intellectual faculties so severely as to expel all knowledge (8) from the brain. But he who is in good bodily plight has large security. He runs no risk ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... gratification of his wrath, the object into which his whole intellectual existence resolved itself. All the stubbornness and implacability of his nature, all its hard impenetrable quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its exaggerated sense of personal importance, all its jealous disposition to resent the least flaw in the ample recognition of his importance by others, set this way like many streams united into one, and bore him on upon ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... you shall signify that I may ... whenever, acting in my best interests, you feel that it will not hurt you (weary you in any way) to see me—but I fear that on Saturday I must be otherwhere—I enclose the letter from my old foe. Which could not but melt me for all my moroseness and I can hardly go and return for my sister in time. Will ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... actually spoken with him whilst still Harrisson—although it must be admitted she had not kissed him—and the one next in importance, the cabman. The pawnbroker made a very bad third—in fact, scarcely counted, owing to his own moroseness or reserve. But the cabman! Why, Fenwick had it all now at his fingers' ends. He could recall the start from New York, the wish to keep the secret of his gold-mining success to himself on the ship, and his satisfaction when he found his ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... slight changes in Charlie's appearance, they nevertheless possessed a strangely brutalizing effect upon the refinement of his handsome face. And, added to them was an air of moroseness, of cold reserve, that suggested nothing so much as impotent resentment at the conditions under which ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... to his work discontentedly. His mother's moroseness annoyed him. His father's hard face had never looked so forbidding to him as it did that morning. Mrs. Slater's hearty welcome, her good-natured motherly smiles, Mr. Slater's genial and kindly ways, contrasted sharply with his own home life, and it ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... repetition of an ascertained fact, that the receptions of Lady TIFFIN are a model of all that is elegant and recherche, whilst the dresses and jewels of Mrs. JIFFS are always a subject of enthusiastic admiration to those amongst whom she moves; and it is only in moments of peculiar moroseness that we remember that neither of these two ladies is qualified by position or refinement for anything more than a passing smile. Yet to many, the mere fact that they are mentioned in paragraphs, is proof positive of their descent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... reminder of warnings given, none of that reiterated, "I told you so," in which, Ranny reflected, he might have taken it out of him. He also seemed to regard his son Randall as one smitten by God and afflicted, to whose high and sacred suffering silence was the appropriate tribute. His very moroseness provided the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... brother of the King, yet Clarendon found in him a perpetual obstacle to his plans, an intriguer whose selfish aims and jealous temper ever engendered fresh dissensions at Court, and a sullen bigot whose moroseness was redeemed by none of his brother's easy suavity of manner. The Duke's pride did not permit him openly to desert the interests of his father-in-law or to range himself with Clarendon's enemies. But his blundering tactlessness, his easily wounded vanity, and his ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... know," he answered, very gravely for him, for Ephraim is not at all given to moroseness and long faces. "God ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... anchoret. Theona was silent for thirty years together. Johannes, surnamed Silentarius, was silent for forty-seven years. I do not mention these as examples for your imitation, and would not have you become such a recluse. These are cases of an extreme kind,—cases of moroseness and sullenness which neither reason nor Scripture justify. "This was," as Taylor observes, "to make amends for committing many sins by omitting many duties; and, instead of digging out the offending eye, to pluck out both, that they might neither see the scandal nor the duty; for fear of seeing ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... with which his partner was connected, he learned from sweet experience that "it is more blessed to give than to receive," and that "it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting." Dear young reader, do not imagine that we plead in favour of moroseness or gloom. Laugh if you will, and feast if you will, and remember, too, that "a merry heart is a continual feast;" but we pray you not to forget that God himself has said that a visit to the house of mourning is better than a visit to the house of feasting: ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... her again until dinner time. She was as silent then as she had been the night before when Howells had sat with them, his moroseness veiling a sharp interest in the plan that was to lead to his death. Robinson's mood was very different. He talked a great deal, making no effort to hide his irritation. His failure to find any clue in the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... at all, since it is not right to heap fire on fire. He adds that older men like ourselves may indulge therein as an ally against the austerity of their years—agreeing, therefore, with Theophrastus who likewise recommends it for the "natural moroseness" of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... creatures together; out of his very melancholy and disgust, Huerlin would have grasped as for dear life at the first comer, if only to get rid now and then of the wretched feeling of loneliness and emptiness. The manager, who was displeased by the manufacturer's silent moroseness, did what he could also to bring his two charges together. But finally a sort of salvation, if a dubious one, came to all three. During the month of September there came to the house at short intervals two new inmates—two very ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... became tired of a woman whom he had never loved; cursed his own vanity, that had induced him to saddle himself with such an encumbrance as a wife; and by alternate violence and moroseness, irritated her feelings, and roused her spirit. Neglect on his part produced indifference on her side; and as the means of gaiety and expense melted away, so did all respect and esteem ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... it had been decided that the latter should to-day take Thyrza to inspect the house. Egremont had gained the surly compliance of the caretaker—the most liberal treatment made no difference in the strange old woman's moroseness—and Grail, promising himself pleasure from Thyrza's surprise, said nothing more than that he wished to see her at ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... there 's nothing in it for me," she complained with pouting-lipped moroseness. Her venality, he began to see, was merely the instinctive acquisitiveness of the savage, the greed ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... portraits the earliest shows him at the age of thirty-six, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery. A look of quiet, speculative melancholy seems to pervade it; there is, as yet, no moroseness, no evidence of severe conflict with the world, no shadow of stress or of doubt. The second and best-known portrait shows us Drayton at the age of fifty, and was engraved by Hole, as a frontispiece to ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... of this colossal old "bourru bienfaisant," as he was called in La Tremblaye, and believe that all his moroseness and brutality were put on, to hide one of the warmest, simplest, and tenderest ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... are important factors in the production of insanity and crime. Over fatigue means a weakening of the power of attention, and hence of will, a paralyzing of the highest brain centers, a lowered resistance to the more primitive instincts and passions. Chronic irritability, moroseness, pathological impulses of all sorts, generally betokens eyestrain, dyspepsia, constipation, or some other bodily derangement. With the regaining of normal health the unruly impulses usually become quieter, sympathy flows more freely, the man ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... business, which, I believe, consisted in their emptying together a mutchkin stoup of usquebaugh. While the worthy host and his guest were thus employed, the discarded steward, with a double portion of moroseness in his gesture and look, walked discontentedly into the kitchen of the place, which was occupied but by one guest. The stranger was a slight figure, scarce above the age of boyhood, and in the dress ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... them, and the stupid, half-vague and languid expression of the modern loafer or 'do nothing' creature, who just for lack of useful work plots mischief, was not to be seen on any of their countenances. A certain moroseness and melancholy seemed to brood like a delayed storm among them, and to cloud the very atmosphere they breathed, but apart from this, intellectuality was the dominant spirit suggested by their outward looks and bearing. Plebeian faces and vulgar manners are, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... he telephoned Miss Drew. She was not insensible to the significance of his inquiry if she would be in that afternoon. She had observed in him of late a condition of uneasiness, supplemented by moroseness and occasional periods of irascibility. Every girl whose occupation in life is the study of men recognizes these symptoms and knows how to treat them. Barbara had dealt with many men afflicted in this manner, and the flutter of anticipation that came with his urgent ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... denunciations of amusements which we now justly deem innocent, and without which or something equivalent to them, the wrinkles on the brow of care could not be smoothed, nor life preserved from dulness and moroseness. There is fanaticism in this no doubt: but in justice to the Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be remembered that the stage, card parties, and even dancing once had in them something from which even the ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... their poise and their silence in the presence of strangers is not due to moroseness or the absence of active thought. They have learned in the woods, if they are to be successful in their hunts, to be personally as unobtrusive as possible, often to remain motionless, and all the while to watch and listen alertly. Whenever they can be of real assistance, no one can more ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... melancholy are very opposite in nature; and melancholy is more nearly related to happiness than to moroseness. Melancholy attracts; moroseness repels. Hypochondria not only makes us unreasonably cross and angry over things concerning the present; not only fills us with groundless fears of imaginative mishaps for the future; but also causes us to ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... will reflect itself like an image in clear water upon the minds of those around one—that Nicanor was surprised into smiling back, uncertainly, it is true, but still smiling. Then it was as though a bit of that outer crust of moroseness melted, and left something of his old boyish shyness in its place. Without stopping in the least to think why he did it, he broke the bread and meat into two portions, and held out one, in silence, awkwardly, as a child who does ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... him in my service, and still keep him, as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... duties. While he was thus unbending his mind, the observant urchins had remarked, that he always directed his walk to a deep grove not far distant. They had, possibly, divined that the unequal tempers of his mind, and his rapid transitions from good nature to tyrannical moroseness, and the reverse, were connected with these promenades. The curiosity of young Boone had been partially excited. An opportunity ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... of Little Black Fox's protracted recovery, his lately developed moroseness. He knew whenever a council of chiefs took place, and much of what passed on these occasions. The presence of Nevil Steyne at such meetings was a matter which never failed to interest him. He was rarely seen in the company of the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... that I should have been so given up by God to my own intemperance as to shut my eyes on all these benefits; that, instead of modest and respectful gratitude, I should indulge for three weeks in continual moroseness towards all your family, in headlong passion and the utmost insolence towards yourself, who possess so many claims on my veneration, from your noble family, your extraordinary learning, and distinguished reputation. Whatever I have said or written against the person, the fame, the honour, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... retaining its freshness unchafed by the carking cares and vexatious trials to which he had been daily subject. While to some men association with so peculiar and trying a nature as Rusha Thornton's might have brought moroseness and all unloveliness, Duncan Lisle, like the philosopher of hemlock fame, had turned his wife's shrewishness into a coat of armor, within which he preserved his soul serene, contemplative, and peaceful. This is saying very ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... miserable days—when he and Laura were once more under the same roof, living the same household life. Like Laura, he clung to every hour; like Laura, he found it almost more than he could bear. He suffered now with a fierceness, a moroseness, unknown to him of old. Every permitted mortification that could torment the body or humble the mind he brought into play during these weeks, and still could not prevent himself from feeling every sound ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with which Catherine extricated herself from the snare in which her own religious zeal, the moroseness of the king, and the enmity of Gardiner had conspired to entangle her, has often been celebrated. May it not be conjectured, that such an example, given by one of whom she entertained a high opinion, might exert no inconsiderable influence on the opening mind of Elizabeth, whose conduct in the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... for all the treasure and all the risks? The more he gave his thought to Breitmann the more that gentleman retracted into the fog, as it were. On several occasions he had noticed signs of a preoccupation, of suppressed excitement, of silence and moroseness. Fitzgerald could join certain squares of the puzzle, but this led forward scarce a step. Breitmann had entered the employ of the admiral for the very purpose for which M. Ferraud had journeyed sundrily into the cellar and beaten futilely on the chimney. It resolved to one thing, and that ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... most concerned seemed perfectly satisfied. David Graham was positively transformed; his moroseness was gone from him, he lost his queer ways and wild manners, and became gentle and affectionate in the midst of this great and unexpected happiness. Miss Edith Crawford ordered her trousseau, and talked of the diamonds to her ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... genuine principles fully carried out, and could neither sympathise with nor understand religious feelings which looked elsewhere for satisfaction. Both were unaffectedly devout, without the least tinge of moroseness or gloom. Nelson specially delighted in Ken's morning, evening, and midnight hymns. He entreated his readers to charge their memory with them. 'The daily repeating of them will make you perfect in them, and the good ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... mechanical workmanship fair for the time, but the figure had become paralytic. It shrouded itself in a sack-like brocaded gown, had no feet at times, and instead of standing on the ground hung in the air. Facial expression ran to contorted features, holiness became moroseness, and sadness sulkiness. The flesh was brown, the shadows green-tinted, giving an unhealthy look to the faces. Add to this the gold ground (a Persian inheritance), the gilded high lights, the absence of perspective, and the composing of groups so that the figures looked ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... were Mr. Hamilton and the Marquis of Malvern in theirs; but now neither respect nor affection was extended towards him, except, perhaps, by Lilla, and unconsciously by Lady Helen. Severity constantly indulged, was degenerating into moroseness; and feelings continually controlled, giving place to coldness and distrust. It was fortunate for Lilla's happiness and, as it afterwards proved, for her father's, that she was now under the kindly care of Mrs. Douglas, for constantly ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Hesa must be circulating it, with biting comments, among the charcoal burners. Dan Hesa, although younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness among the charcoal burners that could only have come from the association of the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of Myrtle Forge with the founderman's daughter. Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... packer was a taciturn inhabitant of the wilds who seldom indulged in an unnecessary remark. There was, however, no moroseness about him; the man was good-humored in his quiet way, and his usual ruminative calm was no deterrent from apparently tireless action. For the most part, he lived alone in the impressive stillness of the bush, where he had a few acres ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... at her in a quick nervous way, and then looked back again at the fire. The sight of her delicate blanched face had in some respects a more and more poignant power with him as the years went on. His anger sank into moroseness. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... extraordinarily variable. There were moments when his moroseness became threatening. The canker at his heart was communicating itself to his whole outlook, and herein lay the ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... than the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them, grievously though they have mulcted me,—were it only that I am instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the weapon that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, On the Manner of Holding Parliaments, I have caused the marked passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... which those who have watched the course of politics in a democracy, as he had, will be inclined to share. His gentleness is all the more striking by contrast, like that silken compensation which blooms out of the thorny stem of the cactus. His moroseness,[80] his party spirit, and his personal vindictiveness are all predicated upon the Inferno, and upon a misapprehension or careless reading even of that. Dante's zeal was not of that sentimental kind, quickly kindled and as soon quenched, that ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... all personal sorrow should now be merged into the general grief. What is the fate of the individual, when his country is exposed to such danger? I know that you are as good a patriot as any Englishwoman, but it appears to me that it is necessary to prove it in these hours of danger. Anxiety and moroseness have at such times upon one's surroundings the effect of ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... back to the fireside. He began to poke the fire in protest, but a smile gave the lie to the moroseness and solemnity ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... 46. Surliness or moroseness is incompatible also with politeness. Such as, should any one say "he was desired to present Mr. such-a-one's respects to you," to reply, "What the devil have I to do with his respects?"—"My Lord enquired after you lately, and asked how you did," ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... where he came from. I had only heard that he had written some sort of article in a progressive Petersburg magazine. Virginsky had introduced me casually to him in the street. I had never in my life seen in a man's face so much despondency, gloom, and moroseness. He looked as though he were expecting the destruction of the world, and not at some indefinite time in accordance with prophecies, which might never be fulfilled, but quite definitely, as though it were to be the day after to-morrow ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... shivered in the cold; her toes were all bent in as if she were having a convulsion. "Yes," she said with marked moroseness, "that is what I would like ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of Business. of Accomplishments, of Love of Letters and "Wit Music. of Intrigue. of Sensibility. of Vivacity. of Silence and Importance. of Modesty. of Profligacy. of Moroseness." ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... the verdict of the coroner's jury, was the cause of Lord George Bentinck's death. If this story is true, much that has been so long mysterious becomes clear. Lord George's sudden and tragic death is explained; as also the fact that it was from this period that the Duke of Portland's moroseness and shunning of the world became so marked as to be scarcely distinguishable from insanity. If the death of a brother, however provoked and accidental, had been on his conscience, what could be more natural than that the fratricide should thus ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... corner of the baignoire and gave her conductor the best pretext he could have desired for asking Basil Dashwood to be so good as to escort her back. When the young actor, of whose personal preference Peter was quite aware, had led Mrs. Rooth away with an absence of moroseness which showed that his striking resemblance to a gentleman was not kept for the footlights, the two others sat on a divan in the part of the room furthest from the entrance, so that it gave them a degree ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... belief that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... weakness of his constitution; and partly, because he could not submit to the follies and impertinencies of the common people (which we Orators are forced to swallow) either, as it was generally supposed, from a peculiar moroseness of temper, or from a liberal and ingenuous pride of heart. After acquiring, therefore, in his youth, a tolerable degree of reputation, his character began to sink: but in the trial of the Vestals, he again recovered ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... on the road-side within a hundred yards of the local railway station. He was brought home and put to bed, and next day was seized with a severe fit of epilepsy. For weeks his life was in danger, and when at last he recovered strength of body, his mind remained in a state of moroseness that at times bordered on insanity. He became a fierce hater of women, and the chief victim of his frenzy was ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... at any rate for a time. From the evening on which he had shown me the terrible discovery in the Via del Giardino he seemed to have laid aside something of his care and depression. He now exhibited little trace of the moroseness and selfishness which had of late so marred his character; and though he naturally felt severely at times the fatigue of travel, yet we had no longer to dread any relapse into that state of lethargy or stupor which had so often baffled every effort to counteract ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... hand that his father was unwilling to send him away and to lose his services. There was no history of insanity or neurosis in the family, and no injury or illness in his own history. He had spells of moroseness and irritability, however, and had also been a masturbator. Women had no attraction for him, but he would copulate with the mares upon his father's farm, and this without regard to time, place, or spectators. Such a case would seem to stand midway between ordinary bestiality ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the one is being benefited and that of the other injured. Whoever has marked the effects of success and failure upon the mind, and the power of the mind over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent moroseness, or permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional depression. There remains yet another indirect result of no small moment. The relationship between teachers and their pupils is, other things equal, rendered friendly and influential, or antagonistic and powerless, according ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... position Swift seems to have led an uncomfortable life, ranking somewhere between the family and the upper servants. Sir William Temple was disposed to be kind, but found it difficult to converse with him on account of his moroseness and other peculiarities. At Shene he met King William III., who talked with him, and offered him a captaincy in the army. This Swift declined, knowing his unfitness for the post, and doubtless feeling the promptings ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... then I would hear him stop beside the window, where I knew the ice bowl and the decanter were placed upon a table which had stood beside the head of his bed so burdened since my early childhood. I had always dreaded his moroseness and instinctively felt the cause of it. I had never really loved him until just the last few days, and now I felt my love rise in a tide that threatened to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... or sorrow, the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, irritability and moroseness caused by disordered organs of digestion, change of acumen or morals due to injury of the brain or nervous system, and insanity produced by bodily diseases, are also accepted proofs of the effect of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... stupid that I saw not that even which was glaring to everybody. My stupidity did not, however, prevent me from finding in the baron a more jovial and satisfied appearance than ordinary. Instead of looking upon me with his usual moroseness, he said to me a hundred jocose things without my knowing what he meant. Surprise was painted in my countenance, but I answered not a word: Madam d'Epinay shook her sides with laughing; I knew not what possessed them. As nothing yet passed the bounds ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... doom was passed upon her that Michael made her acquaintance. Their first meeting, she sprang suddenly at him, a screaming, chattering little demon, threatening him with nails and teeth. And Michael, already deep-sunk in habitual moroseness merely looked at her calmly, not a ripple to his neck-hair nor a prick to his ears. The next moment, her fuss and fury quite ignored, she saw him turn his head away. This gave her pause. Had he sprung ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... astounding communication gave to Mrs Rimbolt can be more easily imagined than described. It explained everything—her instinctive dislike of the man from the first, his moroseness and insolence, and the cunning with which he had insinuated himself first into her husband's and then into Percy's confidence! How blind she had been not to see it all before! She might have known that he was a villain! Now, however, her duty was clear, and she would be wicked if ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... sure now that she had never before known John Pendleton. The old taciturn moroseness seemed entirely gone since they came to camp. He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp fire at night ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... of a refined community that penal laws, which are in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the poor. Government, while it grows older, seems to acquire the moroseness of age; and as if our property were become dearer in proportion as it increased, as if the more enormous our wealth, the more extensive our fears, all our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... straight. But the basest disowning of flattery is to be disagreeable without any purpose in view, and it shows an altogether inelegant and clumsy unfitness for social intercourse to shun by unpleasing moroseness the suspicion of being mean and servile in friendship; like the freedman in the comedy who thought railing only enjoying freedom of speech. Seeing then, that it is equally disgraceful to become a ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... direct imputation of indolence, heartlessness, and moroseness, Mr. Froude appends the following remarks on other moral characteristics of certain sable peasants at [203] Mandeville, Jamaica, given on the authority of a police official, who, our author ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... remorseful, for happiness is solely composed of kindness, frankness and gaiety in one's home; but how can I escape from the claws of the monster? I at once relapse into the somnambulism of my working hours, into the indifference and moroseness of my fixed idea. If the pages I have written during the morning have been worked off all right, so much the better; if one of them has remained in distress, so much the worse. The household will laugh or cry according to the whim of that all-devouring monster—Work. ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... real respect and good will that he fancied was his due, though to say truth he took no other means of obtaining them. When his fortune was gone, his pretended friends soon followed; and that occasioned the reserve and moroseness with which you must have observed his temper was tinctured. Inexperienced as you are in the world, wealth may prove but a treacherous snare; and as the fairy wisely says, you will probably fall a prey to wicked designers." "A truce, ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... to take a kind of melancholy pleasure in returning to what he considered his own failure, and Chris began to wonder whether the thought of it was not the secret of that slight indication to moroseness that he ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... in his way, good enough to look upon. He was well-built, his shoulders and physique all spoke of strength. His features were firmly cut, although his general expression was gloomy. But for a certain moroseness, an uncouthness which he seemed to cultivate, he might even ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on," said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, "I'll have this out with you. You've been at Doctor Manette's house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... control of the property being already then of a very injudicious nature, I confess that, having nursed it myself for eleven years with some success, I dreaded to think what it would become under his auspices. And so I agreed to remain. But the position increased in difficulty. Adrian's moroseness seemed to grow upon him; he showed an exaggerated horror of company; either flying from visitors as from the pest, and shutting himself up in his own apartments, or (on the few disastrous occasions when my persuasions induced him to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... is contagious; some one had followed the dynamite lead, detection never took place, but the fires ceased. Mat, of course, went for the longest period of penal servitude the law allotted. I should say that he did not himself know why he did it. That intense, brooding moroseness, that wormwood hatred, does not often understand itself. So much the more dangerous is it; no argument, no ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... law-making power, but that the laws it makes are little-minded and vexatious prohibitions of things innocent, demoralising restraints upon the freedom of joy and the healthy instincts of nature; that it favours hypocrisy, moroseness, and sometimes lunacy; that the only vice it has power to check is thoughtlessness, and its only beneficial effect is that of forcing into activity, though not always into healthy activity, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... bordering on moroseness, of a talker usually so brilliant led his host to surmise that Lightmark had ruined a picture, his hostess to conclude that he had quarrelled with his wife. He came home early, and occupied the small hours of the morning in forming an amended ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... humour was Mistress Fanshawe; she had found the evening a grand failure: completely upset as to temper, she gave way to the most uncontrolled moroseness as soon as we were seated, and the carriage- door closed. Her invectives against Dr. Bretton had something venomous in them. Having found herself impotent either to charm or sting him, hatred was her only resource; and this hatred she expressed in terms so unmeasured and proportion so monstrous, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... parish register. Why should any man retire from society whilst he is capable of contributing to the pleasures of it? Wit, vivacity, good-nature, and politeness, give an eternal youth, as stupidity and moroseness a premature old age. Without a thousandth part of your Lordship's shining qualities, I think myself much younger than half the boys about me, meerly because I have more good-nature, and a stronger ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... night when John Barleycorn had his will of me. And Larry, under the bridge, had no delirium like mine. I am confident that his sleep was stupefied and dreamless, and that he awoke next day merely to heaviness and moroseness, and that if he lives to-day he does not remember that night, so passing was it as an incident. But my brain was seared for ever by that experience. Writing now, thirty years afterward, every vision is as distinct, as sharp-cut, every pain as ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... startled eyes caught sight of him, a welcoming light came into her relaxed face. With her first spoken word some earlier touch of moroseness seemed to slip away from her. If it required an effort to shake herself together, she gave no outward sign of it. She had promised that there should be no complaining and no hesitations from her; and Durkin knew she would adhere to that promise, ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... traps and snares beyond recovery: but that which is the effect of folly is of a much different nature; it proceeds from a softness of spirit, and a flexibleness of good humour, and comes far nearer to virtue than that other extreme of friendship, namely, a stiff, sour, dogged moroseness: it refreshes our minds when tired, enlivens them when melancholy, reinforces them when languishing, invigorates them when heavy, recovers them when sick, and pacifies them when rebellious: it puts us in a method how to procure friends, and how to keep them; ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... desires to bring into his pictures is the power to move finely-touched and gifted men. Not only are such by very much the minority, but the more part of them being, by their capacity to be moved and touched, easily wounded, have developed a natural armour of reserve, of moroseness, of prejudice, of combativeness, of pedantry, which makes them as difficult to address as wombats, or bears, or tortoises, or porcupines, or polecats, or elephants. It is interesting to witness how Duerer's self-contradictions show him to be aware of the great complexity ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the strength of that outward life, that acuteness of the mere perceptive organization, and that tendency to social exhilaration, which prevail, will incline to such a fault in many cases. An English reserve inclines to moroseness, and Scotch perseverance to obstinacy; so this aerial French nature may become levity and insincerity; but then it is neither the sullen Englishman, the dogged Scotchman, nor the shallow Frenchman that we are to take ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... while reproached me with negligence, and repressed my sallies with supercilious gravity; yet, having natural good-humour lurking in his heart, he could not long hold out against the power of hilarity, but after a few months began to relax the muscles of disciplinarian moroseness, received me with smiles after an elopement, and, that he might not betray his trust to his fondness, was content to spare my diligence by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... no meaning for you. No English writer, whether in prose or poetry, has ever caught so completely the magic of the earth and the quaint humors, tragical and laughable, of those who live inured to her moods; who live with her moroseness, her whimsicality, her vindictiveness, her austerity, ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... came back to Frieda's face. Good cheer was much more natural to her than moroseness. From the face in the picture she turned her gaze to the tousled reflection in the mirror. "The Fatherland is not much honored by such a representative!" she said, and began taking down her hair with ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... its legitimate effects on the minds of the inmates, aside from driving to insanity and idiocy, namely, irritability, angry feeling, or moroseness. Under the former rule, the men, when leaving, would generally express much gratitude towards officers and friends for the interest taken in their welfare, apparently filled with a hope and inspiration here gained, prompting them to strive for their own best good, from ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... his powers nor his conversation were remarkable. He did nothing with much zeal but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away without benefit from books or anything else. He had, however, excellent spirits, which never seemed much affected by his wife's occasional moroseness; and he bore with her unreasonableness sometimes to Anne's admiration. As for the Miss Musgroves, Henrietta and Louisa, young ladies of nineteen and twenty, they were living to be fashionable, happy and merry. Their ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... captivity he had taken a fancy to the Professor, on whom he kept his eyes constantly. It was evident that more than the usual interest was displayed in watching his movements. From the first there was no sulkiness in the chief, nor did he exhibit any moroseness, or anything which indicated a spirit ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... thou mightst be soon known, even by the butterwomen, and fly through the world in bandboxes. If thou art of the dissembling tribe, it is thy office to rail at those books which thou huggest in a corner. If thou art one of those eavesdroppers, who would have their moroseness be counted gravity, thou wilt condemn a mirth which thou art past relishing; and I know no other way to quit the score than by writing (as like enough I may) something as dull, or duller than thyself, if possible. If thou art one of those critics ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... slow-wasting, obstinate sufferings. Well might she be corpse-like; well might she look grim, and never smile; well might she wish to avoid excitement, to gain and retain composure! Caroline, when she knew all, acknowledged that Miss Mann was rather to be admired for fortitude than blamed for moroseness. Reader! when you behold an aspect for whose constant gloom and frown you cannot account, whose unvarying cloud exasperates you by its apparent causelessness, be sure that there is a canker somewhere, and a canker not the less ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... brother's moroseness, attributed it to his strong feeling for a certain damsel, Silas turned on him in a fury. Ambition had even driven out all other feelings, and Dely Manly seemed poor and commonplace to the dark swain, who a month before would ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the shine on another's face to put the shine on our own. Nine-tenths of all loneliness, sensitiveness, despondency, moroseness, are connected with personal interests. Turn more of those selfish interests into unselfish ones, and by so much we change opportunities for disheartenment into their opposite. By a law of Nature part of her beautiful economy, he who lives most for others is ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... and in a moment his moroseness was lit up, chased away by the little pleasure of his own whim—'Some day Miss Foster must hear of Spello. May I not be the first person to tell her that she should ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sown in the sunny meadow of Childhood and in the broader fields of the Land of the Teens are harvested in the uplands of Maturity, and the harvest is always greater than the seed sown. The petulance and pouting of the child hardens into the gruffness, bad-temper, and moroseness of the man; the idleness and shirking of the youth becomes the shiftlessness and unreliability of the adult; the boy's neglect of duty and unwearied search for pleasure may be harvested in dissipation and ruin in mature life. It is, then, ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... fanatic fellows with us as in all causes," Evander admitted, "and some, it may be, who wear moroseness to gain favor. But these are no more than the fringe of a stout cloak. I am no exceptional Puritan, I promise you. Colonel ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... over. Imagination painted the present and future in hues of dazzling radiance. Everything was as delightful as it could be now, and would become more charming as time rolled on. But with Abe Bolton drinking tended to develop moroseness ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... must be examined carefully, so that those vices may not deceive us which appear to imitate virtue. For cunning tries to assume the character of prudence, and moroseness, in despising pleasures, wishes to be taken for temperance; and pride, which puffs a man up, and which affects to despise legitimate honours, seeks to vaunt itself as magnanimity; prodigality calls itself ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... in the patched, irregular structure. The speculative element both in government and education is superseded by a narrow economical or religious vein. The grace and cheerfulness of Athenian life have disappeared; and a spirit of moroseness and religious intolerance has taken their place. The charm of youth is no longer there; the mannerism of age makes itself unpleasantly felt. The connection is often imperfect; and there is a want of arrangement, exhibited especially in the enumeration of the laws towards the end of ...
— Laws • Plato
... creatures may drink deep without fear of deleterious effects. It is the cup that cheers and does not inebriate. The waking robins tipple on it and sing the more joyously, nor is there in their midday any of the moroseness ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... earth! A spell falling upon the spirit, which reminds us of a higher existence! A memory of bliss! A present delight! An earnest of future felicity! It makes hideousness beautiful and stupidity clever, old age young and wickedness good, moroseness amiable, and low-mindedness magnanimous, perversity pretty and vulgarity piquant. Truly it is sovereign alchemy and excellent flux for blending contradictions is our love, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... London he behaved much as usual, but fits of moroseness would seize on him, during which he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dinner that day had Amaryllis wondered why Dick Bellamy was so taciturn—silent and sombre almost to moroseness. But Randal had no ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... unusually harmonious meal. Hannah's satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided, and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of the pie crust. And in contrast to her usual moroseness and self-absorption, even Lise was gay—largely because her pet aversion, the dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from the cashier's cage. She became almost hysterical ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... charity, or require contemptuous crusade against equally honest, living toilers? Are antiquity and foreign birthplace imperatively essential factors in the award of praise for even faithful and noble work? We lament the caustic moroseness of embittered Schopenhauer, brooding savagely over his failure to secure contemporaneous recognition; yet after all, did he malign his race, or his age, when, in answer to the inquiry where he desired to be buried, he scornfully ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... seen a turnip lantern perhaps. Well, here I continue to exist: having broken my rural vegetation by one month in London, where I saw all the old faces—some only in passing, however—saw as few sights as possible, leaving London two days before the Exhibition opened. This is not out of moroseness or love of singularity: but I really supposed there could be nothing new: and therefore the best way would [be] to come new to it oneself after three or four years absence. I see in Punch a humorous catalogue of supposed pictures; Prince ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Nov. 15.-Separation of old friends in old age. Moroseness of retirement. Evils of solitude. Death of the Duke of Newcastle, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... moroseness to London in vile weather. At the best of times Jaffery grew impatient of the narrow conditions of town; yet there he was week after week, staying in a poky set of furnished chambers in Victoria Street, and doing nothing in particular, as far as I could make out, save riding on the tops ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... part in any other amusement. He all but quarrelled with Roderick, his most intimate friend, for trying to divert him, and refusing to pamper all his moping fantasies. In fact this overstrained irritability and moroseness must have been a disease that was gathering in his body: for you know he was attackt four months ago by such a violent nervous fever, that his life was for a long time despaired of. After his frenzy had raved itself out, and he returned to his senses, he had almost entirely lost his memory: ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Massy's savage moroseness was too disconcerting. It was an incalculable factor of the situation. You could not tell what there was behind that insulting ferocity. How could one trust such a temper; it did not put Sterne in bodily fear for himself, but it frightened ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... no doubt, has the advantage of us in the matter of climate; for, notwithstanding the traditional gloom and moroseness of English skies, they have in that country none of those relaxing, sinking, enervating days, of which we have so many here, and which seem especially trying to the female constitution,—days which withdraw ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Hardwicke determined that Miss Nadine should know his heart before long, and have also a chance to know her own mind. "The fact is, the old boy has lived the life of a recluse, that's all, but I'll find a way to pierce the shell of his moroseness. There's one comfort," he smiled, "No other ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Also Pinkey's moroseness of the morning and the ferocity of his expression took on special significance in the light of his strange absence. Instinctively Wallie looked at Miss Eyester. That young lady was watching him closely and saw his gravity. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... I remained. In a great degree, however, the habit of grieving was conquered by my application to work. My moroseness of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... for dullness, equanimity for moroseness, disinclination to bad company for aversion to society, abhorrence of vice for ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... some measure brought all mankind acquainted, and, by an extension of their uses, are every day promoting some new friendship. Through them distant nations became capable of conversation, and losing by degrees the awkwardness of strangers, and the moroseness of suspicion, they learn to know and understand each other. Science, the partizan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled earth, has long ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... uncontrollable caudillo's character. But it was soon eclipsed by the reckless deeds that followed each other in quick succession between his fifteenth and twentieth years. He speedily became notorious in the little town for his wild moroseness, for his savage ferocity when excited, for his inordinate love of cards. Gaming, a passion with many, was a necessary of life to him; it was the only pursuit to which he was ever constant; it gave rise to the quarrel in which, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... severity, tartness, asperity, malignity, sharpness, unkindness, bitterness, moroseness, sourness, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Strangers is no less engaging than their Solitude. A recluse Life, for the Fruits of it, generally speaking, produces Moroseness; Pharisaical Pride too often sours the Temper; and a mistaken Opinion of their own Merit too naturally leads such Men into a Contempt of others; But on the contrary, these good Men (for I must call them as I thought them) seem'd to me the very Emblems of Innocence; ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... whole of his life, Tiberius seems to have conducted himself with a uniform repugnance to nature. Affable on a few occasions, but in general averse to society, he indulged, from his earliest years, a moroseness of disposition, which counterfeited the appearance of austere virtue; and in the decline of life, when it is common to reform from juvenile indiscretions, he launched forth into excesses, of a kind the most unnatural and most detestable. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... here who has almost floored me; but I WILL NOT acknowledge myself beaten by a child of five. He alternates between sullen moroseness, when he won't speak a word, and the most violent outbursts of temper, when he smashes everything within reach. He has been here only three months, and in that time he has destroyed nearly every piece of bric-a-brac in the institution—not, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... no bid for your tail-coat, if that's what you mean," answered Mr Philp with sudden moroseness, pulling out his ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... from myself that an incident like the last-named may smack of childishness to a certain austere type of northern Puritan. Childishness! But to go into this question of the relative hilarity and moroseness of religions would take us far afield; for aught I know it may, at bottom, be a matter of climatic influences, and there we can leave it. Under the sunny sky of Italy, who would not be disposed to see the bright ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... opposed her religion began finding fault with her and kept doing so at every opportunity. The result was that that young life was beclouded and a deep melancholy settled down over her. Her cheerfulness gave way to sadness and moroseness. The song of joy, once so often upon her lips, was stilled. Some one had put a cloud over her sun, and her life was never what ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... hence imagine that Castor was a coward, or was in the least afraid of the strength of his brother; for he had lately given sufficient proof of his courage and resolution, in a battle he had been drawn into by Pollux, whose intolerable moroseness had brought on him the vengeance of a neighbouring dog. Pollux, after engaging his antagonist only a few minutes, though he had provoked the dog to try his strength, ran away like a coward; but Castor, in order ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... least, of the party, who was watching Lucia with most deep and painful interest. Lord Scoutbush was too busy with his own comforts, especially with his fishing, to think much of this moroseness of Elsley's. "If he suited Lucia, very well. His taste and hers differed: but it was her concern, not his"—was a very easy way of freeing himself from all anxiety on the matter: but not so with Major Campbell. He saw all this; and knew enough of human ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... passionate patriotism. Eccentricities he had in plenty; there was something morbid in his excessive reserve, his exaggerated secretiveness about the most important interests of his life, as there surely was in his moroseness, which deepened at times into black despair. Goethe was most unpleasantly impressed by this abnormal quality of Kleist's personality, and said of the younger poet: "In spite of my honest desire to sympathize with him, I could not avoid a feeling of horror and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for Prince Eugene to take part in our conference," said the duke, with his usual moroseness. "He is the only son you have in Paris, and, as the representative of the family, it is proper for him to hear what I ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... with sudden moroseness, "there are some hints that we cannot accept—some circumstances that we must not yield to. Why should a man, for instance, be subjected to an undeserved ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... to send after her brother, protesting she did not think even her life would be safe in making so long a journey with Mr Harrel in his present state of mind: his character, she said, was totally changed, his gaiety, good humour, and sprightliness were turned into roughness and moroseness, and, since his great losses at play, he was grown so fierce and furious, that to oppose him even in a trifle, rendered him ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... fill the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that exchequer bills[33] would not circulate under nine per cent, below par; ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... able to delineate her beauties. In this attempt Creech failed, and a shade was thrown over his reputation, which continued to obscure it to the end of his life. It is from this circumstance alleged, that Mr. Creech contracted a melancholy, and moroseness of temper, which occasioned the disinclination of many towards him, and threw him into habits of recluseness, and discontent. To this some writers likewise impute the rash attempt on his own life, which he perpetrated at Oxford, in 1701. This act of suicide ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... is thought to be identified with Thomas Crager, whose wife had been hanged in Salem as a witch, and whose only child had been stolen by Indians. After a long, vain search for the little one he gave way to a bitter moroseness, and avoided the habitations of civilized man and savages alike. It is a satisfaction to know that before he died he found his daughter, though she was the squaw of an Indian hunter and was living with his tribe on the shore ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... wished to be known in France as a great painter and a great sculptor, and because the artists and critics of France never seriously recognized his claims to this glory, he seems to have become a victim of the mania of persecution, and his naturally sunny nature was over-clouded with moroseness and suspicion. Hailed by some as the emulator and equal of the great names of the Italian Renaissance, and considered a great moral force—a "preacher painter"—by others he has been denounced as "designer in chief ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various |
