"Tragic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eventually 'the General Assembly of the Church then in session was compelled to arrange its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great actress.' How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after one of her most splendid flights of tragic passion, 'That's no bad!' We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but her self-respect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies fainted by dozens during her impersonation of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Gradually, recital and dialogue were added, there being at first but a single speaker, then two, and finally three, which last was the classical number. Thespis (about 536 B.C.) is said to have introduced this idea of the dialogue; hence the term "Thespian" applied to the tragic drama. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... indeed a very tragic case," began Kennedy, "almost more tragic than if the victim had been killed outright. Mrs. Huntington Close is or rather I suppose I should say was—one of the famous beauties of the city. From what the paper says, her beauty has ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... romance—had they any existence? Yet why should Mrs. Alardyce live all alone in this gigantic mansion, and, if she did not live alone, with whom did she live? For its own sake, Katharine rather liked this tragic story, and would have been glad to hear the details of it, and to have been able to discuss them frankly. But this it became less and less possible to do, for though Mrs. Hilbery was constantly reverting to the story, it was always in this tentative and restless fashion, as though by ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... and strange experience—droll in one way, grotesque in another and when everything is said, tragic: at least an adventure. Harriet looks at me accusingly, and I have had to preserve the air of one deeply contrite now for two days (no easy accomplishment for me!), even though in secret I have smiled ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... said the fat man. He mopped at his forehead with a large handkerchief. "Tragic. But I'm sure that you men ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... request of the women of Rome, for the senate had decreed that any wish they might express should be gratified. As for Coriolanus, he is said to have lived long in banishment, bewailing his misfortune, and saying that exile bore heavily on an old man. The entire story, heroic and tragic as it is related to us, is not substantiated, and we do not really know whether if true it should be assigned to the year 488 B.C., or to a date ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... generations. Biographers inform us that Crebillon composed in a similar way. And this was, according to several critics, the cause of the incorrectness, of the asperity of style, which disfigure several pieces by that tragic poet. The works of Bailly, and especially the discourses that complete the History of Astronomy, invalidate this explanation. I could also appeal to the elegant and pure productions of that poet whom France has just lost and weeps for. No one indeed can be ignorant of his works; Casimir Delavigne, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... king thus petulantly scolded his great subject in the time-honored "I told you so" fashion, the whole chateau buzzed with opinions about the tragic event. "Vatel has played the hero," said some; "He has played the idiot," said others. Some praised his courage and devotion to his art; others blamed his haste and folly. But praise prevailed over blame, for, as all conceded, "he ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... clutched at Baynes as a drowning man clutches at a rope, and recovered himself. For a time he meditated on Baynes. He had never seen the poet, so his imagination had scope. It appeared to him as an exasperating obstacle to a tragic avenging of his honour that Baynes was a mere boy—possibly ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... artists with costly stones, such as lapis lazuli and malachite, crystals, blood-stone, jasper, agates and chalcedony, to represent fruit-pieces and magnificent groups of game or of musical instruments; while the pilasters were decorated with masks of the tragic and comic Muses, torches, thyrsi wreathed with ivy and vine, and pan-pipes. These were wrought in silver and gold, and set with costly marbles, and they stood out from the marble background like metal work on a leather shield, or the rich ornamentation on a sword-sheath. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... view of quite another soft of cafe—the best in the town, I believe, and the very one where the worthy Bovary and his wife, the romantic daughter of old Pere Renault, had some refreshment after the memorable performance of an opera which was the tragic story of Lucia di Lammermoor in a ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... well what true and good architectural ideas were brought to confusion in the re-building, the additions, and the restorations of the centuries. In painting, anachronisms may be quaint or even amusing; but in architecture, they are either grotesque or tragic, and in a church of such fine suggestiveness as Notre-Dame at Forcalquier, one is haunted by lingering regrets for what might and ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... away without saying a word, and as for the assistant chief-of-staff, seeing that he was caught in the act and knowing the fate which awaited him, he went to his house and blew his brains out with a pistol shot. This tragic event was hushed up by the Austrian government and not many people knew about it; it was announced that the assistant chief-of-staff had died of apoplexy. The French ambassador was said to ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... a good daughter to her mother, and an exemplary character in every way, but the odd thing was that few people liked her. This was the more tragic as it was the desire of her heart to be popular. Her appearance was attractive, and strangers usually began acquaintance with enthusiasm, but the attraction rarely survived the first hour's talk. She was like a very well-coloured and delightful-looking apple that is without flavour. She was never ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... vaguely, he utters for us in imperishable forms. In how many things Shakespeare has voiced the human soul! While poetry has rippling measures suited to our smiles, it belongs, in its richest form, to the deeper side of our nature. Its loftiest numbers are given to truth and righteousness, to the tragic strivings and sorrows of life, and to the mysteries ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... "Know ye not that whoever will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God?" When Saul was found in a certain company he had ceased to respect himself. This is why he was found there; and these two things were more than enough to sweep his life to its tragic close. How many of us have read this man's life-finish? Let me suggest to you something new to read. A story that has in it more elemental material than half the fiction that ever was written, or half the facts that mortgage the attention of a superficial ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... on her pillow, and he saw that she was smiling faintly. Her face bore no trace of the tragic truth she had uttered. But the tragedy was plain enough to him, even without her passionless words of revolt. The situation of this young, educated girl, aglow with youth, bettered, body and mind, to the squalor of Clinch's dump, was perfectly plain ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... summer of delight and forgetfulness of trouble, and the tragic condition of our days, was now opening to Harold Quaritch and Ida de la Molle. Every day, or almost every day, they met and went upon their painting expeditions and argued the point of the validity or otherwise of the impressionist ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... over our own small affairs of to-day, and to-morrow. Little cared we, as our white boat bore us southward, on the bosom of the sacred river—little cared we for the love-story of the Great Enchantress—pupil of Magician Thoth, —fair Isis, in whose honour that boat was named. Her tragic journey along this river, whose stream she could augment by one sacred tear, should have been followed by our fancy. We should have seen with our minds' eyes the lovely lady asking news of the painted boat which carried the dead body of her murdered husband Osiris, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... turned out to be a tragic episode was not without some little comic relief. There was consternation in Whitehall one evening, just before the dinner-hour, when tidings arrived that a couple of the transports conveying this force to its destination had passed the rendezvous where the convoy was mustering, and ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... For the "clever commonplace" person, though he may possibly imagine himself a man of genius and originality, none the less has within his heart the deathless worm of suspicion and doubt; and this doubt sometimes brings a clever man to despair. (As a rule, however, nothing tragic happens;—his liver becomes a little damaged in the course of time, nothing more serious. Such men do not give up their aspirations after originality without a severe struggle,—and there have been men who, though good fellows in themselves, and even benefactors to humanity, have sunk to the level ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... evening the four of us witnessed the tragic end of a Lap-longspur. Pursued by a fierce Skua Gull, it unfortunately dashed out over the lake. In vain then it darted up and down, here and there, high and low; the Skua followed even more quickly. A second Skua came ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... mercy to a woman—for happiness to her child. Both mother and daughter were close to him then. Time and distance were annihilated. He had faith—he saw into the future. The fateful threads of the past, so inextricably woven with his error, wound out their tragic length ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... expression in his gray eyes, and there were two straight lines between his brows—lines of anxiety which would not disappear, wholly. He was plainly perplexed and, also, as plainly frightened by the almost tragic climax that ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... I saw it all. Jermyn had been the unsuccessful suitor for Miss Fox's affections. But before I could piece out the rest of the tragic story, Kennedy had started the phonograph record at an earlier point which he had skipped ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... heard from the latter that it was Eldon's intention to make a clean sweep of mines, works, and settlements, though for a moment chagrined, he speedily saw that such action, by giving dramatic completeness to his career at Wanley and investing its close with something of tragic pathos, was in truth what he should most have desired. It enabled him to take his departure with an air of profounder sadness; henceforth no gross facts would stand in the way of his rhetoric when ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... had once more sat at the feet of this great and yet simple man, this exalted yet genial philosopher. I wished to revive and quicken my sick heart at this fountain of wit and wisdom. I come, therefore, not as Voltaire, but as the tragic Scarron of your century, and throughout my whole journey I have called myself the 'Invalid of the King of Prussia.'" [Footnote: Oeuvres ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... we cannot truly imagine them; and the reason is plain: it is that those advancements of civilization, those augmentations of material and spiritual wealth, all of the glorious achievements of which the tragic blunder has deprived the world, are none of them here; they have not been produced; and so we cannot say, as in the other case: "Look upon these splendid treasures of bound-up time, imagine them taken away, and your sense of ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... in gowns of satin, Or silk or cotton, black as souls benighted.— All, save the gowns, was startling, splendid, tragic, But gowns on men have lost their wonted magic. Childe Harvard, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... man whose sufferings were unique. His was no threadbare experience. Eighty minutes had seemed like two days to him! If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my point of view, would have lost its tragic value. ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... had felt, too, that the two old braves who had been brought East to adorn a city pageant, and who had stood gazing stoically for hours at the great bull buffalo through the barrier of the steel-wire fence, were fitted, before all others, to give him a name. Between him and them there was surely a tragic bond, as they stood there islanded among the swelling tides of civilization which had already engulfed their kindreds. "Last Bull" they had called him, as he answered their gaze with little, sullen, melancholy eyes from under his ponderous and shaggy front. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... whether between two boats, or two bullies in the ring, it at once assumed the magnitude of a national one, and no matter how conducted, the winner was always charged with unfairness. It so happened that Forrest and Macready were the two popular tragic actors on either side of the Atlantic. If they had stayed at home, nothing would have been thought of it, but each invaded the domain of the other, and laid claim to his laurels. Of course criticism followed, national ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... indeed to unite these two kinds, to give interest by action to the tranquil reveries of the shepherds, and to preserve a pastoral charm in the more violent expression of passion. The Orpheus, though divided into five acts, though mingled with chorus, and terminating with a tragic incident, is still an eclogue ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... only)—Ver. 620. By "ornamenta" he means the dress of Tragedy. The dresses of Comedy were essentially different from those of Tragedy. He means to say, "the man is mad; if he had only the Tragic garb on, you might take him for Ajax Telamon in his frenzy." On being refused the arms of Achilles, Ajax became mad, and slaughtered a flock of sheep fancying that they were Ulysses and the sons ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... Again before his eyes rose the old gray tower,—again in his ears thrilled the tragic tale of the Fletwodes. What was yet left untold held the young man in spell-bound ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... These tragic occurrences had done much to obliterate from the memory of all the cibolero and his deeds. True, there were some of San Ildefonso who, with good cause, still remembered both; but the crowd had ceased to think of either him or his. All had heard and believed that the outlaw ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... of amateur climbers are content to terminate their ascent of Mont Blanc. The experience of getting as far as this point and back again is, as the incidents just related show, anything but insignificant, and may prove not only exciting but even tragic. Yet, of course, the real work, the tug of war between human endurance and the obstacles of untamed nature, is above. The Grands Mulets formed the stopping place in some of the earliest attempts to climb Mont Blanc, more than a hundred years ago. Here Jacques Balmat, the hero of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... balance—do you think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you think he on whom I am bringing to bear all the resources of this brain—this!"—and again the big man tapped his forehead with tragic earnestness—"and whom you could as much move to side with us as you could move yonder peak of the Jura from its base—do you think he will deem better of ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... and his companions turned southward into the wide wastes of frozen desolation that lay between him and his friends. It was to be a journey of tragic experiences—a journey that was to try his metal as it ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a medium, it seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped into his mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street hard by, where he might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked. Thither, then, he bent his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above the pavement; and there, in the mouth of the entry, he found a man in a sleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Indignation of the Romans Antony gives up his Parthian expedition Returns to Alexandria Contest with Octavius Battle of Actium Wisdom of Octavius Death of Antony Subsequent conduct of Cleopatra Nature of her love for Antony Immense sacrifices of Antony Tragic fate of Cleopatra Frequency of suicide at Rome Immorality no bar to social position in Greece and Rome Dulness of home in Pagan antiquity Drudgeries of women Influence of women on men Paganism never recognized the equality of women with men It denied to them education ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... for the valiant defenders was no greater than his pity for the tragic fate of the attacking army, which, almost dying of starvation, had fought with the wild courage of despair, and had deserved a more honourable reward than to be driven along that terrible path of suffering to the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... strenuous one of trams, motor-busses, abbeys, and galleries, and though she realized an adventure might probably await her outside, it was pleasant to sit for awhile in the dimness of the quiet chapel. From her recess she could look out through the open doors upon the tragic Tower Green, where in the sunlight two sparrows were frivolously flirting. Even as she watched, the sparrows grew dim, her ridiculously tiny purse slipped from her hand, her head with its thick dark hair dropped against the pillar, and her ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... power, perfect in development and showing a true conception of the spirited Hibernian character as displayed in the tragic as well as the tender phases ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rich and touching tones, and is superior in power. Her talent is decidedly first-rate. Deep and genuine feeling, correct judgment, and the most perfect good taste, distinguish her play in every character. Her last act of Belvidera is superior in tragic effect to any thing I ever saw on the stage, the one great exception to all comparison, Mrs. Siddons, being ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... for the whole forest; but in the mighty solemnity of the forest his mourning for the lady that he feared he had lost no longer seemed the only solemn thing: indeed, the sombre forest seemed well attuned to his mood; and what complaint have we against Fate wherever this is so. His mood was one of tragic loss, the defeat of an enterprise that his hopes had undertaken, to seize victory on the apex of the world, to walk all his days only just outside the edge of Paradise, for no less than that his ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... made the harbour impossible for anchorage, he forbade so much as the mention in his presence of the name of Africa. But if he had done with Tangier, Tangier had not done with him, and five years afterwards he became concerned in the most unexpected way with certain tragic consequences of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Barrett,—I seem to find of a sudden—surely I knew before—anyhow, I do find now, that with the octaves on octaves of quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life's harp with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this morning, 'just escaping' &c. But if my truest heart's wishes avail, as they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... that his wife should be buried in an abbey which he founded partly to atone for the sin that he had committed in killing her; and he caused a beautiful tomb to be built, in which the bodies of his niece and the gentleman were laid together, with an epitaph setting forth their tragic story. And the Duke undertook an expedition against the Turks, in which God so favoured him, that he brought back both honour and profit. On his return, he found his eldest son now able to govern ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... think you?" says Fred, filling another bumper. "A half-crown, think ye?—a half-crown, Honeyman? By cock and pye, it is not worth a bender." He says this in the manner of the most celebrated tragedian of the day. He can imitate any actor, tragic or comic; any known Parliamentary orator or clergyman; any saw, cock, cloop of a cork wrenched from a bottle and guggling of wine into the decanter afterwards, bee buzzing, little boy up a chimney, etc. He imitates ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... two Powers, and to the whole world, that I have striven to set forth as fully as possible every incident, every misunderstanding, every collision of interests or feelings, that brought it to pass. No episode in the development of the nations of Europe is so tragic as this. That two peoples should, within the space of nine months, abjure their friendly relations and furiously grapple in a life and death struggle over questions of secondary importance leads the dazed ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... shall I requite thee? Interesting moment, with what palpitating emotions art thou fraught!'" And, quoting from the "Mysteries of Udolpho," he unlocked and opened the drawer with a tragic gesture. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... sad realization that our country is facing a far more serious crisis than most of us have ever known. A few days may determine whether our people are to be drawn into war at once or whether the break can be patched up and the more tragic circumstances postponed or ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... supper, I sat writing in my diary with feet stretched to the fire, for I was wet and it was cold that night. Suddenly I was startled to hear George exclaim in tragic tones: "Oh! look ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... that... Under fluorescent lights, he was threading wire through miniature grommets, hurrying to complete the full-size ionic drive. He said, "Hi, Frank," and let his eyes drop, again, into absorption in his labors. Mad little guy. Tragic, sort of. A cripple... ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... If the tragic condition of the world leaves us unstirred, if we draw no lessons from it, if there is no fiery stirring of will in Ireland to make it a better place to live in, then indeed we may lose hope for our country. Let us remember ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... times to throw pursuit off the track, Buck McKee and Bud Lane entered an arroyo to rest their mounts and hold council as to their future movements. During the flight both had been silent; McKee was busy revolving plans for escape in his mind, and Bud was brooding over the tragic ending of the lawless adventure into which he had been led by his companion. When McKee callously informed him that the agent had been killed in the encounter, Bud was too horrified to speak. A dry sob arose in his throat at the thought of his old friend lying dead, all ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... "Yonder is Paris,—laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To king's courts she lifted him; to thieves' hovels she thrust him down; and past Lutetia's palaces and abbeys and taverns ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... Wilderness, a tract of country covered with a dense growth of oak and pine, and after much hard fighting closed in around Richmond, laying siege to Petersburg. Bravely Lee and his gallant men resisted the Union forces until April, 1865, when, foreseeing the tragic end ahead, Lee left Richmond and marched westward. Grant followed, and on the ninth of April Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House. Johnston surrendered to Sherman near Raleigh, in North Carolina, about ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... called upon Mr. E. J. Custer, the father of the deceased general, whom he represents as nearly crushed by the melancholy news of his son's tragic death. The worthy old gentleman was very courteous, and showed him some photographs and an oil-portrait of the late general, together with some relics from the Indian country which the general had sent him at different times. Mr. Custer seemed greatly interested in the journey on horseback, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... is his life he is drawing away. The conception is fine and imaginative, and ought to rank with the best of those philosophical stories so fashionable in the last century. Its working-out in the every-day part is brilliant and pungent; and much ingenuity is shown in connecting the tragic and mysterious element in Jericho's life with the ordinary, vain, worldly existence of his wife and daughters. It is startling to find ourselves in the regions of the impossible, just as we are beginning to know the persons of the fable. But ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... intellectual in itself that it relieved the listeners of the necessity of thinking. There was not much of melody in it; little of the dance movement and very little of the lighter and gayer manifestations of life. It has been described as a sort of harmonious discord, typifying mysterious, tragic and awe-inspiring things. The people sat and ate their heavy food and drank their beer, their ears engaged with the strains of the orchestra, their eyes by the movements of the conductor, while their tired brains rested ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... of course; but who would know that he liked toast made hard and plenty of butter, or to leave his bed-clothing loose at the foot, Peter being very long and apt to lop over? The lopping over brought a tear or two. A very teary and tragic young heroine, this Harmony, prone to go about for the last day or two with a damp little ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to do with Alboin in another aspect,—his domestic relations, his dealings with his wife Rosamond, and the tragic end of all the actors in the drama of real life which we have set out to tell. The Longobardi were barbarians, and Alboin was no better than his people; a strong evidence of which is the fact that he had ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... the sun and exhibited him to the young people in all sorts of philosophic roles for the benefit of the industrial and military coalition. Nietzsche depicted in lines of fire the resurrection of heroism, his vision of the superman was that of an ardent soul, steeled by sufferings, meditating a tragic conception of life with serenity, and in his solitary individualism surmounting the infirmity of man and his own by the insistent ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in secret to know the developments of the Milky Way; especially as the length of time absorbed by Pershal and Miss Pray in walking between the two doors advised me with an only too tragic hint of the marvel and ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... good people! There, now, Charlotte, don't look like that," rushing up to the tall girl and standing on tiptoe to drop a kiss on the sallow cheek—"we won't go; we'll stay at home and be martyrs," and she began to tear off her hat with a tragic air. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... The tragic dance, Emmelia, was solemn; whilst that in comedy, Cordax, was frivolous, and the siccinis, or dance of Satyrs, was often obscene. They danced to the music of the pipes, the tambour, the harp, castanets, cymbals, etc. (figs. ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... lips almost without volition. I sensed something tragic, full of meaning for me behind ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... suspicion of the murder of her husband, and that it was only my presence here and the knowledge which I happened to possess which has saved her from the accusation? The least that you owe her is to make it clear to the whole world that she was in no way, directly or indirectly, responsible for his tragic end." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a tragic way. "I don't quite see through it all, but I do through some of it. Look here, Mr Gordon, sir, you mark my words, he's one of that gang we met at 'Frisco, only he plays the respectable game. He'd got me into their ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... he reads out his highly rational remarks from a manuscript. But his face says all the time—"You two paupers down there that make up my congregation, you don't believe a word I am saying; but never mind, I don't believe it either." It's a tragic business when people have outgrown their own conception of the divine. And we—we are certainly better than Jehovah. The dogma of the atonement, based on original sin and the bloodthirstiness of God, is revolting to us; we shrug our shoulders, and turn away with ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... she saw that he walked with his chin on his breast; when he reached the gate at the end of the avenue, he did not see it and bumped into it. "Dios mio!" she heard him mutter. "Dios! Dios! Dios!" The last word ended in tragic crescendo; he leaned on the gate, and there, in the white silence, the last of the Farrels stood gazing up the avenue as if he feared ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... more than that. He is bound to show extenuating or justifying circumstances, as much as the man who writes what he calls "poems." For, as the world is full of real histories, and every day in every great city begins and ends a score or half a dozen score of tragic dramas, it is a huge piece of assumption to undertake to make one out of one's own head. A man takes refuge under your porch in a rain-storm, and you offer him the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... prominent in the affairs of the State and influential in the councils of their party. The Chancellor, some years younger than Livingston, a large, handsome, modest man, was endowed with a remarkable capacity for public life. The story of his career is a story of rugged manhood and a tragic, mysterious death. He rose by successive steps to be mayor of Albany, member of the Assembly of which he was twice speaker, member of Congress under the Confederation, judge and chief justice of the Supreme Court, and finally chancellor. Indeed, so long as he did the bidding of the Clintons ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... well as tragic ones, are related of the Black Forest; and one of the most popular legends of enchantment, the Hen Trench, is as absurd as it is amusing. Children like this story, for among German children the industrious and useful hen is something ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... with interest, and talk of them with detail minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them she rarely exchanged a word. Hence it ensued, that what her mind has gathered of the real concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits, of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny—more powerful than sportive—found ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... already stated, the mother-right made earliest room for the father-right, but, as it seems, under strong opposition from the women, the transition is portrayed touchingly and in all the fullness of its tragic import, in the "Eumenides" of Aeschylus. The story is this: Agamemnon, King of Mycene, and husband of Clytemnestra, sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, upon the command of the oracle on his expedition against Troy. The mother, indignant at the sacrifice of her daughter, takes, during ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... study of the trial of Jesus gives a fresh impression of his greatness. He who but a few hours before was pouring out his soul in prayer that his cup might pass, stands forth as the one calm and undisturbed actor among all those who took part in the tragic doings of that day. His judges and foes were all swayed by passion and self-interest and were ready to make travesty of justice, from the leaders of the sanhedrin who condemned him on one charge and accused him to the ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... child, this has been no matter for jesting; it has been serious, and we who have watched this dawning love have realized that the great drama of life, so full of tragic possibilities, is being here enacted. We do not laugh, nor jest, but with the tenderest prayers we welcome you into the possibilities of God's divinest gift ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Summers, "would God that it were not. I have mentioned but one case, yet it is a fact that for every gale that blows dozens of wrecks take place on our coasts, each with its more or less tragic history. You remember the last gale? It is not three weeks since it blew. No fewer than one hundred and ninety-five wrecks took place on the shores of the United Kingdom on that night and the following day, and six hundred and eighty-four lives were lost, many of which would undoubtedly have ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... to speak the young man was gone. But she had no fear of any very tragic consequences when she saw the whole party standing together—David talking to Janetta, Mr. Roy to Helen, who looked so fresh, so young, so pretty, almost as pretty as Janetta. Nor did Mr. Roy, pleased and ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of Phidias; to the temple of the Dioscuri to see the paintings of Polygnotus. We indeed take our Sophocles or Aeschylus out of our coat-pocket; but, if our sojourner at Athens would understand how a tragic poet can write, he must betake himself to the theatre on the south, and see and hear the drama literally in action. Or let him go westward to the Agora, and there he will hear Lysias or Andocides pleading, or Demosthenes haranguing. He goes farther west still, along the shade of those noble ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... The two occupants of the car watched each other surreptitiously, mutually suspicious, like dogs. Scraps of talk were separated by long intervals. Mr. Prohack wondered what the deuce Softly Bishop had done that Angmering should leave him a hundred thousand pounds. He tried to feel grief for the tragic and untimely death of his old friend Angmering, and failed. No doubt the failure was due to the fact that he had not seen Angmering for ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... might refer to the oratory of Douglass, to the poetry of Dunbar, to the picturesque style of DuBois, to the mysticism of the paintings of Tanner, to the tragic sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller, and to a long line of singers and musicians. Even Booker Washington, most practical of Americans, proves the point, the distinguishing qualities of his speeches being anecdote ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... the empyrean, and his descent again, is always narrated. But as has often been said, the light and the truth may be on the side of the dreamer: a far wider view than the wise ones have may be his at that recalcitrant time, and his reduction to common measure be nothing less than a tragic event. The operation called lunging, in which a haltered colt is made to trot round and round a horsebreaker who holds the rope, till the beholder grows dizzy in looking at them, is a very unhappy one for the animal concerned. During its progress the colt springs ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... these tears?" interposed Caesar, adopting a well-known Latin phrase. He nodded to the painter, and continued, in a tone of amused superiority: "Go on performing as an orator, if you like; only moderate the tragic tone, which does not become you, and make it short, for before the sun rises we all—these worthy citizens and myself—desire to be ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... near-by: Briggs had told me of them. Would not they be watching for him? I began to be anxious. Not once, but several times, I had heard of the wounded soldier returning to his home and finding no home: both home and wife had gone. (Those are bitterly tragic tales, which a realist must write some day.) Still, as we came nearer, I saw nobody at the cottage door. "Is th' door open?" asked Briggs. Yes, it was open. When we were at the end of the cabbage-patch, and I could discern the interior of the cottage parlour (into which the door opened ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... value of the red man, and to find in the expression of the Sioux or Omaha a certain sorrowful dignity which fell parallel with his own grave temperament, for, despite his smiling face, his best work remained somber, almost tragic ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... fine, and he deigned to partake of my hospitality. Twenty-four hours later, when duty summoned him once more at the hour of tea, his eye was dim and he staggered slightly in his gait. He was still able to go his rounds, but since that tragic afternoon I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... friends by the dozen. I found it such an absorbing pursuit I could hardly wait to finish up one before I went on to another. There were such a bewildering lot of them, now that I had pried open my eyes. Would-be painters, sculptors, poets, dramatists, novelists, rich and poor, tragic ones and comic ones, with the meanest pettiest jealousies, the most bumptious self-conceits, the blindest worship of masters, the most profound humility, ambition so savage it made men inhuman. Many ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... the bright look of determination. His eyes shone. He was about to burst into the man's arena of glory. The woman, whom he drew up because she was a woman, and because he regretted having taken her prisoner, had the pallid look of a victim. Her tragic black eyes and brows, and the hairs clinging in untidy threads about her haggard cheeks instead of curling up with the damp as the Highlandman's fleece inclined to do, worked an instant's compassion in him. But his business was not the squiring of angular Frenchwomen. Shots were heard at the ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Grimes plead. Vanderbilt's name was expunged, and Southard was made the chief scapegoat. Although Vanderbilt had been tenderly dealt with in the investigation, his criminality was conclusively established. The affair deeply shocked the nation. After all, it was only another of many tragic events demonstrating both the utter inefficiency of capitalist management, and the consistent capitalist program of subordinating every consideration of human life to the mania for profits. Vanderbilt was only a type of his class; although he was ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... of the triviality of the occasion: they all seemed desperately searching for that something he had lost and which was overwhelmingly important to him; and all the while the music stuttered and mocked and confused a tragic need. Or it was like a momentary release from deadly confinement, a respite that, by its rare intoxication, drove the participants into forms of incredulous cramped abandon. Positively, he thought, they were grasping ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... heroine of The House of Mirth. At least Undine is not sloppy or sentimental, and that is a distinct claim on the suffrages of the intelligent reader. Furthermore, the clear hard atmosphere of the book is tempered by a tragic and humorous irony, a welcome astringent for ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... situation thus created there is much difficulty in determining. The sentiment of pity evoked by his tragic fate has been projected too strongly upon the pages of his annals to leave them quite legible. He had seen his elder brother and two of the latter's three sons done to death. He had seen the "removal" of several of his father's most trusted lieutenants. He had seen the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... times.' Build your house under the walls of the Eternal Help. Live in the Presence. Find the attitude of faith, and the act of faith will be simple. Trust in Him through every hour, and when a tragic hour comes one step shall take you ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... philosophy—to belittle my ambitions, to make of small worth my achievements, to bring home to me the fact that in spite of these I was neither contented nor happy though he kept his humour and his poise, he implied an experience that was far deeper, more tragic and more significant than mine. I was goaded into making ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... man, who understood the world in general as a place to be painfully clambered and tramped and even crawled over, to the accomplishment of the ulterior end of remaining upon it at all, and who paid very little attention to other people's affairs, except as they directly concerned the tragic pettiness of his own, wondered a little at the nature of the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... their beer. She would like to watch them, she knew; these little German Fraus-to-be serenely happy at their bier table on this bright afternoon. They closed in on her again. Emma in the gutter in front of her. She felt arms and hands, and the pleading voices besieged her again. Emma's upturned tragic face, her usually motionless lips a beseeching tunnel, her chin and throat moving to her ardent words made Miriam laugh. It was disgusting. "No, no," she said hastily, backing away from them to the end of the island. "Of course not. Come ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... not gone far before the narrative was changed for an actual occurrence, and I was in the midst of a real battle, such as the soldier had undertaken to describe. Another night I dreamed that I was reading a tragic poem, relating terrible deeds of blood and rapine, and suddenly I seemed to have become an actor or real spectator of that which I had at first read in a book. In another strange dream I was going over a difficult pass in a hired carriage, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... what word Betty is searching for, but I do believe these very things that you like best come very close to my own guess. For if love is the greatest thing in the world, the making of a home to shelter it is most important. I have an idea that love would come to a tragic end if, when it returned home to dinner, Polly should meet it in the character of Ophelia, with wild flowers in her hair, offering it rosemary and rue for dinner instead of meat ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... old cure of the village of Saint-Lange. Then she re-entered society at Paris. There, at the age of about thirty, she yielded to the genuine passion of the Marquis de Vandenesse. A child, christened Charles, was born of this union, but he perished at an early age under very tragic circumstances. Two other children, Moina and Abel, were also the result of this love union. They were favored by their mother above the two eldest children, Helene and Gustave, the only ones really belonging to the Marquis d'Aiglemont. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... simple truth, and because all the dignity and glory of human nature ultimately depend not on shrewdness but on honesty, Cato has played a greater part in history than many men far superior to him in intellect. It only heightens the deep and tragic significance of his death that he was himself a fool; in truth it is just because Don Quixote is a fool that he is a tragic figure. It is an affecting fact, that on that world-stage, on which so many great and wise men had moved and acted, the fool was destined to give the epilogue. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... see what I call the knot, the legitimate issue and the illegitimate issue, uniting in Marthe Rougon and her cousin Francois Mouret, to give rise to three new branches, Octave, Serge, and Desiree Mouret; while there is also the issue of Ursule and the hatter Mouret; Silvere, whose tragic death you know; Helene and her daughter Jean; finally, at the top are the latest offshoots, our poor Charles, your brother Maxime's son, and two other children, who are dead, Jacques Louis, the son of Claude Lantier, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... years a haunting report persisted that she had been captured by the pirates that then infested coastwise trade. So Theodosia—barely thirty years old—vanished from the world so far as we may know. The dramatic and tragic mystery of her death seems oddly in keeping with her life and that of her father. Somehow one could scarcely imagine Theo growing old peacefully ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... sailed from the Thames for Lisbon in the steamship London Merchant. The voyage was fair for the time of year, and was marked only by the tragic occurrence of a sailor falling from the cross-trees into the sea and being drowned. The man had dreamed his fate a few minutes previously, and had told Borrow of the circumstances on coming up from ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Uncle Hogan would often ask what my parents meant to do with me, and one day there occurred the most tragic of all scenes I have ever witnessed. Never can I forget it. He said, with the kindest intentions in the world, to my mother, that I was a likely boy and apt to learn; and he believed that if a basket were fitted out for me with knickknacks to sell, I could peddle them around the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... though I would—as though I could do anything so unutterable. But don't let us be tragic. Oh, don't let us be tragic. You know my plans—you know my plans inside out, from beginning to end—how can I, how ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... outside came rumblings of storm; the discontent of certain sections of the community with conditions unsettled or unattended to was gathering to a head. And on the third day after the session had opened, Charlotte said to her father with rather a tragic look, "Papa, do you know what is going to happen to-night?" ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... In "David Copperfield" Mr. Micawber is perhaps the only artistic creation of much permanent merit, unless it be the waiter who consumed David's dinner, and the landlady who gave him a pint of the Regular Stunning. In "Bleak House" Mr. Browne made some credible attempts to be tragic and pathetic. Jo is remembered, and the gateway of the churchyard where the rats were, and the Ghost's Walk in the gloomy ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... at the expense of Turks, Circassians, and Persians is a subject alien to this narrative; and the tragic story of the overthrow of Poland at the hand of the three partitioning Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, does ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... enthusiasm for the Dollon affair; for its interest was increasing, its mystery deepening! But Fandor was single-handed now! He had had a miraculous escape from the bomb which had blown up Lady Beltham's house on that tragic day when Juve had all but ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... immediate inquiries about my friends. Five, with the Captain, he said, were at the house, the rest were left near the river, unable to proceed; but he was too weak to relate the whole. He was conducted to the encampment, and paid every attention to, and by degrees we heard the remainder of his tragic tale, at which the interpreter could not avoid crying. He then gave me a letter from my friend the Commander, which indeed was truly afflicting. The simple story of Belanger I could hear, but when I read it in another language, mingled with the pious resignation of a good man, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... sustain. In private life, I cannot sustain a hatred or a resentment. On the stage, I can pass swiftly from one effect to another, but I cannot fix one, and dwell on it, with that superb concentration which seems to me the special attribute of the tragic actress. To sustain, with me, is to lose the impression that I have created, not ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... him into natural history, as a main production of the globe, and as announcing new eras and ameliorations. Things were mirrored in his poetry without loss or blur: he could paint the fine with precision, the great with compass, the tragic and the comic indifferently and without any distortion or favor. He carried his powerful execution into minute details, to a hair point, finishes an eyelash or a dimple as firmly as he draws a mountain; and yet these, like nature's, will ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Jews perished in the siege, the most awful that history records. The Holy City, together with the Temple, was destroyed, and a Roman camp was pitched upon the spot. We may still see in Rome the splendid arch that commemorates this tragic ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... under the protection of another aunt, Isabella d'Aragona, his father's eldest sister, the most unfortunate woman of the age, wife of Giangaleazzo of Milan, who had been poisoned by Ludovico il Moro. The figure of Isabella of Milan is the most tragic in the history of Italy of the period beginning with the invasion of Charles VIII—an epoch filled with a series of disasters that involved every dynasty of the country. For she was affected at one and the same time by the fall of two great houses, that of Sforza ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... regions of the land that are interested in the well-being of the mere men who dwell near them. Hallmund and the giant Thorir are the representatives of these powers in our saga. Of these Hallmund is the more interesting of the two, both for his human sympathies, his tragic end, and the poetry ascribed to him. At one time or other he has had a great name in the Icelandic folk-lore among the spirits of the land, the so-called land wights (land-voetir), and there is still existing ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... want to shatter it—if you don't want it shattered. I can't leave my work. I can't leave you. I want you to have—all that you have ever had. I've never meant to rob you. I've made an immense and tragic blunder. You don't know how things took us, how different they seemed! My character and accident have conspired—We'll pay—in ourselves, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... I do not know that I ever shared that derisive opinion in which the unthinking are wont to hold baldness. Nay, on the contrary, I have always had especial reverence for this mark of intellectuality, and I agree with my friend Judge Methuen that the tragic episode recorded in the second chapter of II. Kings should serve the honorable purpose of indicating to humanity that bald heads are favored with the approval ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... must have mistaken his victim for a constable; but when he came to his senses and found he had killed the groom to whom he had given orders to meet him early in the morning, he turned his sword against himself and fell—dead! And such was the tragic ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... either worth remark. The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day, I think, a boat shall put off from the Queen's ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and some frosty night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip upon the green shutters at ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... wondering at it all, he returned to the street as unobserved as they had entered. There was at least an hour to wait. He walked over to the Athletic Club, of which he was a remiss member, attending seldom during the recent months when his exercise had been more tragic than gymnastic work. In the library of the club house he sat down to study the volume which Helene had thrust into his hands ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the Resurrection I am always reminded of the "happy endings" that editors and actor managers are accustomed to impose upon essentially tragic ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the view which I first took of you was rather a tragic one. You see, when I saw a man lying prone on the grass I said to myself: 'H'm! What is that?' Next I saw a young fellow roaming about the cemetery with a frown settled on his face, and his breeches bulging; and again I said ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... day; and the young Dauphiness, coming from Versailles, by the Cours la Reine, elated with joy, brilliantly decorated, and eager to witness the rejoicings of the whole people, fled, struck with consternation and drowned in tears, from the dreadful scene. This tragic opening of the young Princess's life in France seemed to bear out Gassner's hint of disaster, and to be ominous of the terrible future which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... soap and tub and sponges, My nephew, fierce and ruddy, drives, Disgraceful edges, callous lunges. Twenty auriculas declare The zeal of his peculiar magic, Till every aunt is in despair, And even Job (the cat) looks tragic. ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... after the child was born and died, Margery came back to Willowfield to spend a week at home. She came to see Susan, and they sat together in the tragic little bare room and talked. Though the girl had been so delicately pretty before she left home, Susan saw that she had become much prettier. She was dressed in light, softly tinted summer stuffs, and there was something about her which was curiously ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of victory they had all momentarily forgotten the Plynck, though, when the fight was hottest, it had been the sight of her tragic drooping plumes among the blighted leaves that had nerved them to redoubled effort. Now Avrillia stepped softly under the tree and called gently, "O Plynck, dear Plynck! They're all dead, and Schlorge is going to make them into rules ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... who played the leaders' parts in this short and tragic drama of the backwoods few came to much afterwards. Cresap died a brave Revolutionary soldier. Of Greathouse we know nothing; we can only hope that eventually the Indians scalped him. Conolly became ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Hemisphere and of the seas adjacent thereto. We seek to keep war from our own firesides by keeping war from coming to the Americas. For that we have historic precedent that goes back to the days of the administration of President George Washington. It is serious enough and tragic enough to every American family in every state in the Union to live in a world that is torn by wars on other continents. Those wars today affect every American home. It is our national duty to use every effort to keep them out of ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... but thought he had no weapon; For he was great of heart. LODOVICO. [To Iago.] O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea! Look on the tragic loading of this bed; This is thy work:—the object poisons sight; Let it be hid.—Gratiano, keep the house, And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor, For they succeed on you.—To you, lord governor, Remains the censure of this hellish villain; The time, the place, the torture,—O, enforce it! Myself ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... aperture. The others saw him vanish, and a brief but terrible period of suspense followed. Then through the gap in the roof appeared the head of the young woman who was playing the romantic part of the Jewess, Rebecca. Through all this tragic happening she, must have managed to retain her self-possession in a way that was simply wonderful, for she was now able to do her part toward working up through the hole in the roof, assisted by the two ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... upon a long deal table. The spectacle presented, when the covering was removed, was one to have shocked less hardened nerves than those of Stuart and Dunbar; but the duties of a police officer, like those of a medical man, not infrequently necessitate such inspections. The two bent over the tragic flotsam of the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... fellow was killed—a wonder there were not more—and all hands were sorry for him; but tragedy and comedy so often bunk together, and men who adventure are more apt to dwell on the humorous than the tragic side of things. There was that about the code-books. The instructions to all ships are to get rid of the code-books if there is ever any likelihood of the enemy capturing the ship. The code-books are ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... envoys had no right to use them as upholstery," objected Bremen, in tragic tones. "They have now the appearance of being ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... noticed that the Marchese hasn't asked us a single question about your chateau?" she remarked. "He is a changed man since we came into this valley. I wonder if there was ever anything between him and that tragic-looking girl up there? Perhaps Sir Roger knows, and that's the reason he didn't ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... came upon the man Mrs. Bowse's boarders called his "Freak." He never called him a "freak" himself even at the first. Even his somewhat undeveloped mind felt itself confronted at the outset with something too abnormal and serious, something with a suggestion of the weird and tragic in it. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a smile or a sigh, as their mood dictates, that one half the world does not know how the other half lives. So far is that truism from comprehending the tragic reality of what poverty in London means, that I have no hesitation in saying this: there is no wider divergence between the lives of tigers and the lives of men than lies between the lives of English people, whose homes in some quarters ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson |
