"Woful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... original wooden binding: wanting repair. Here are a few Roman Classics, which are more choice than those in the Public Library: as Reisinger's Suetonius, in 4to. but cropt, and half bound in red morocco, with yellow sprinkled edges to the leaves—a woful specimen of the general style of binding in this library. Lucretius, 1486: Manilius, 1474: both in one volume, bound in wood—and sound and desirable copies. Eutropius, 1471; by Laver; a sound, desirable copy, in genuine condition. Of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... see the Master-piece of Flatt'ry rise, Th' anointed Son of Dulness and of Lies: Whose softest Whisper fills a Patron's Ear, Who smiles unpleas'd, and mourns without a tear.[43] Persuasive, tho' a woful Blockhead he: Truth dies before his shadowy Sophistry. For well he knows[44] the Vices of the Town, The Schemes of State, and Int'rest of the Gown; Immoral Afternoons, indecent Nights, Enflaming Wines, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... wearied, look to find a home, And build thy walls, and bank them with a mound.' This was that famine; this the last to come Of all our woes, the woful term to bound. Come then, at daybreak search the land around (Each from the harbour separate let us fare) And see what folk, and where their town, be found, Now pour to Jove libations, and with prayer Invoke Anchises' shade, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... was reared a sacred fane, and there at the holy shrine my comrades and I knelt and joined in the solemn rites. Prostrate we lay before the shrine until morning dawned; then, accompanied by the 'woful, weeping, melancholy throng' that came pressing from the gates of the city, we ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... lastly showed him that a sleeveless vest[737] was only ten drachmae. At each place Socrates' friend exclaimed, "How cheap this city is!" So also we, when we hear anyone saying that our affairs are bad and in a woful plight, because we are not consuls or governors, may reply, "Our affairs are in an admirable condition, and our life an enviable one, seeing that we do not beg, nor carry burdens, nor live ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... ain sad thoughts, ye may think, at the time: it was in that very bay my blythe good-man perished, with seven more in his company; and on that very bank where ye see the waves leaping and foaming, I saw seven stately corses streeked, but the dearest was the eighth. It was a woful sight to me, a widow, with four bonnie boys, with nought to support them but these twa hands, and God's blessing, and a cow's grass. I have never liked to live out of sight of this bay since that time; and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... That's never dry, These woful times is fitting. A wrinkled face Adds solemn grace To ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... ever employ you to give advice?" demanded Henriette. "It is quite evident that you don't understand me. Do you suppose for an instant that I am robbing these people here in Newport merely for the vulgar purpose of acquiring money? If you do you have a woful misconception of the purposes which ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... misconception of the situation,—I might have made him understand that neither at Cetinale nor at Porto d'Anzio had Maria Dovizio sung the Hymn to Apollo, that in both places it was Imperia who had chanted, Imperia who had responded to Chigi's caresses, and so this woful misunderstanding might never have divided these young lovers. Maria, far from being Chigi's guest at the moment of the discovery of the Apollo, was in Urbino, awaiting in ever-increasing wonder and dismay some word of affection from her betrothed. Failing to receive it she came to Rome, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... beside an infant's couch, When light had left its eye— I saw the mother's bitter tears, I heard her woful cry— I saw her kiss its fair pale face, And smooth its yellow hair; And oh, I loved the mourner's home, For God ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Ballinamony'. Ye brave Irish lads, hark away to the crack, Assist me, I pray, in this woful attack; For sure I don't wrong you, you seldom are slack, When the ladies are calling, to blush and hang back; 60 For you're always polite and attentive, Still to amuse us inventive, And death is your only preventive: Your hands ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... frame of mine was wrenched With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it left me ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... things—the flutter of twilight linnets, the aching call of gulls along a shore to which the netted foam crept out of darkness, the island of Aengus and the elder gods and the eternal glories that never were, tall kings and women girdled with crusted gold, the woful incessant chanting ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... that most faithful lady, all this while, Forsaken, woful, solitary maid, Far from the people's throng, as in exile, In wilderness and wasteful deserts stray'd To seek her knight; who, subtlely betray'd By that false vision which th' enchanter wrought, Had her abandon'd. She, of nought afraid, Him through the woods ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... closely, and see, that, with all his subtle craft, he was a coarse-mannered brute, of gross tastes and grovelling nature, without a spark of gallantry, and as destitute of courtesy as of honor. We overrate his very subtlety; for we measure it by its effects, the woful and agonizing results it brings about; forgetting that these, like all results, or resultants, are the product of at least two forces,—the second, in this instance, being the unsuspecting and impetuous nature of Othello, Had Iago ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... destiny which shaped his ends had mercifully denied him that which is a boon to common men but a curse to public men. Jason Mallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; he never laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before now fallen into the woful error of doing one or both of these things. Wherefore they were forever after called humourists—and ruined. When they said anything serious their friends took it humorously, and when they said anything humorously their enemies took it seriously. But Congressman ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... transferred to Hog Isle, where another block house was built and garrisoned, and the garrison were permitted to take "exercise" in cutting down trees and making clapboards and wainscot. They were building a fort on high ground, intended for an easily defended retreat, when a woful discovery put an end to their ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token How the glories of thy godhead sound and shine: Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind's broad wings broken, Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine. Half the world abhors thee beating back the sea, and blackening Heaven with fierce and woful change of fluctuant form: All the world acclaims thee shifting sail again, and slackening Cloud by cloud the close-reefed cordage of the storm. Sweeter fields and brighter woods and lordlier hills than waken Here at sunrise never hailed the sun and thee: Turn thee then, and give them ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... back in the rest-house, where she shortly afterward died. Let it not be thought that this is an isolated case. He who is familiar with Indian life knows it is not, for daily he has to witness the woful limitations which caste ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... she hardly knew what she said, still less was she aware of the expression her face wore when she looked at the prisoner. Yes,—even as Sandy said, big wrists were chained together; he was more like a ghost than a man; his face was pale and hopeless, and woful beyond her understanding was the majesty of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... alive. There all the noble chevalrye Of Brittaine took their end Oh see how fickle is their state That doe on feates depend. There all the traiterous men were slaine Not one escapte away And there dyed all my vallyant knights Alas! that woful day! Two and twenty yeere I ware the crown In honor and grete fame; And thus by deth[4] ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... and saved Daniel in the horrible den. At last she floated into the English seas, and was thrown by the waves on the Northumberland shore, near which stood a great castle. The constable of the castle came down in the morning to see the woful woman. She spoke a kind of corrupt Latin, and could neither tell her name nor the name of the country of which she was a native. She said she was so bewildered in the sea that she remembered nothing. The man could not help loving her, and so took her home to live ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... AEgospotami sealed the fate of Athens. "That night," writes the historian Xenophon, referring to the night upon which the news of the woful disaster reached Athens, "That night ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... all the Spectators may get Good by the horrible Spectacle that is now before them! Let all the People hear and fear, and let no more any such Wickedness be done, as has produced this woful Spectacle. And let all the People beware how they go on in the Ways of Sin, and in the pathes of the Destroyer, after so Solemn Warnings; Lest thou shouldest not only leave them to the grossest Acts of Wickedness, but also give them up unto the most amazing Impenitency, when the Punishment of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... most elementary subjects are discussed. Booker Washington would tell and have told to these farmers matters which one would naturally assume any farmers, however ignorant, must already know. He never tried to deceive himself as to the woful ignorance of the Negro masses, and still he was never discouraged, but always said ignorance was not a hopeless handicap because it could be overcome by education. While he frankly although sadly acknowledged ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... unruly: where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion, and confused events, New hatched to the woful time. ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Launcelot] Now when the people of the town beheld that terrible blow they lifted up their voices in a great outcry, crying out: "Turn back, Sir Knight! Turn back! For this is a very woful thing for thee that thou hast done!" and some cried out: "Thou hast killed the giants' warder of the bridge!" And others cried: "Thou art a dead man unless thou make haste away from this." But to all this Sir Launcelot paid no heed, but wiped ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... nephew Henry was Richard the old, Gascony's gallant Count Acelin, Tybalt of Rheims, and Milo his kin, Gerein and his brother in arms, Gerier, Count Roland and his faithful fere, The gentle and valiant Olivier: More than a thousand Franks of France And Ganelon came, of woful chance; By him was the deed of treason done. So was ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... slender waist that lies, By the graces and the languor of thy body and thy shape, By the fount of wine and honey from thy coral lips that rise, O my hope, to see thine image in my dreams were sweeter far Than were safety to the fearful, languishing in woful wise! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... laughed at all over the country; he strove to enter Parliament, and failed again and again; middle age crept on him, and the shadows of failure seemed to compass him round. In one terrible passage which he wrote in a flippant novel called "The Young Duke" he speaks about the woful fate of a man who feels himself full of strength and ability, and who is nevertheless compelled to live in obscurity. The bitter sadness of this startling page catches the reader by the throat, for it is a sudden revelation of a strong man's agony. At last the toiler obtained ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... wretch! what ails thee?' then I said. And he replied, 'I woful am, and sad, Sweet brother, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... I might never have escaped from that terrific thralldom, if a city friend, after hearing my woful experience, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... had spoken, I sent Clara to her, that the sight of the lovely innocent might inspire gentle and affectionate thoughts. But neither the presence of her child, nor a subsequent visit from me, could rouse my sister. She looked on Clara with a countenance of woful meaning, but she did not speak. When I appeared, she turned away, and in reply to my enquiries, only said, "You know not what you have done!"—I trusted that this sullenness betokened merely the struggle between disappointment and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... government. Bustamente was hardly in the chair before Santa Anna, warring, as he pretended, for the constitution and for making it still more liberal, dispossessed him by deluging the country in a civil war, the horrors of which have not at this moment ended. Since his accession we have been woful witnesses that nothing but turmoil, anarchy and revolution have overshadowed the land, and that at last he has at one fell stroke, with an armed soldiery, turned congress out of doors, dissolved that body and proclaimed that the constitution ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... were of a quick and sudden temperament, a snatch of his humour rent his broad cloth, and he returned home with a woful tail, and slept not—for his nap was ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... silly charge against the Teuton of minuteness and futility of research as opposed to "good old English breadth and suggestiveness of treatment." And the consequence has been a "continuation" which serves as a standard whereby to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful falling- off and deficiencies of the sequel— the latter retaining of the former ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... enjoyed his christening with a gleeful face and a sparkle in his blue eyes. O, for the pencil of a Beard or a Bellew, to portray those saucy pug-noses, those dirty and begrimed faces! Faces with bars of blacking, like the shadows of small gridirons—faces with woful bruised peepers—faces with fun-flashing eyes—faces of striplings, yet so old and haggard—faces full ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... thy arms. 2. Is it a respect to prelacy that hinders thee, O Scotland? cursed be the day that ever they were born. 3. Is it a respect to the novations already come into Scotland? I may say cursed be these brats of Babel. It had been best to have rent them at the beginning, for many woful days have they brought on, and woful divisions have they brought in, and woful backslidings have they occasioned. Therefore away with these by-respects. 4. Is it a respect to the king? The Lord bless our king. Says not the covenant ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... page 139.) The treaty of Amiens was negotiated and signed while Baudin's ships were at sea. The British Government at that time was very anxious for peace, and was prepared to make concessions—did, in fact, surrender a vast extent of territory won by a woful expenditure of blood and treasure. It cannot be said that Australia was greatly valued by Great Britain at the time. She occupied only a small portion of an enormous continent, and would certainly not have seriously opposed a project that the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the difficult pathway rather than take advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth among our wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many pleasant gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with such woful and absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment grew tenfold more obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily into the fun, and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own breath, into their faces, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to beat furiously upon the house and the din was appalling, but these two men, keen-eared, trained to the life of their mountains, had heard a sound which was not the storm, nor of the forest creatures doling their woful cries beneath the ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... speak'st by woful Experience— but that I should miscarry after thy wholesom Documents— but we are all mortal, as thou say'st, Ned— Would I had never crost the Ferry from Croydon; a few such Nights as these wou'd learn a Man Experience enough to be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... 1767 formed the fourth period of American policy. How we have fared since then: what woful variety of schemes have been adopted; what enforcing, and what repealing; what bullying, and what submitting; what doing, and undoing; what straining, and what relaxing; what assemblies dissolved for not obeying, and called again without obedience; what troops ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... damsel, passing fair; Sunny at distance gleams her smile; Approach—the cloud of woful care Hangs trembling ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... unlovely and rude." No wonder that the factory, like too many more, though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes "a prime nursery of vice and sorrow." "Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement—a struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain." But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his book, and certainly the one which bears most directly on the general purpose of this article, is one in which he speaks of the effects of song ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... from his meditations by what he supposes to be a cow lowing close to his ear. He starts up and goes to the window, but instead of that quadruped he finds a man standing with a rope round his neck, and a woful countenance, holding out his palms, indicating that he wants charity. This man has had the misfortune to lose his cow; and as it died tethered, his religion imposes on him the penalty of begging from door to door without speaking, but imitating the cow, till he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting speech. I knew it when our ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... fell at a water-course—in a woful heap fell he, And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... told their story. The preceding winter had been one of much suffering, though by no means the counterpart of the woful experience of St. Croix. But when the spring had passed, the summer far advanced, and still no tidings of De Monts had come, Pontgrave grew deeply anxious. To maintain themselves without supplies and succor was impossible. He caused two small vessels to be built, and set ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... been possessed by devils. Every thing was topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and corner cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp, extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a deadly ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Crusader chiefs, with a real army of knights and men-at-arms, reached that locality, and marched to besiege Nicaea, the first important Turkish stronghold on their line of march, they saw coming to meet them a miserable band, with every indication of woful destitution, at whose head appeared Peter the Hermit. It was the handful of destitute wanderers that remained from the hundreds of thousands who had set out with such high ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... dilapidated piano: he is dumb as well as silly, and can only utter one sound—a cry of alarm of singular intensity; this cry forms the climax of pleasure to the wretches who dog his steps, and this, unmoved by his silent tears and woful looks, they goad him to shriek forth for their express gratification. We have stumbled upon him at near eleven at night, grinding away with all his might in a storm of wind and rain, perfectly unconscious of either, and evidently ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... About the closing up of dinner, they began to hear the noise of the poor persecuted woman, which drove them all to much admiration, desiring to know what it was, and no one resolving them they rose from the tables, and looking directly as the noise came to them, they espied the woful woman, the dogs eagerly pursuing her; the knight galloping after them with his drawn weapon, and came very near unto the company, who cried out with loud exclaims against the dogs, and the knights stepped forth in assistance of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... "It was a woful journey to the waters of Kilgore. Sleep weighed on Ederyn's eyelids, and haltingly he went the weary miles, footsore and worn. But midnight found him on the spot where one awaited him, another wraith-like envoy of the king, and it, too, ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... no Line escapes his Rage, And furious Foot-notes growl 'neath every Page: See St-ph-n next take up the woful Tale, Prolong the Preaching, and protract the Wail! "Some forage Falsehoods from the North and South, But Pope, poor D-l, lied from Hand to Mouth; {5} Affected, hypocritical, and vain, A Book in Breeches, and ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... the earth to hell, where she lay in prison four thousand years and more, she and her lord both, and taught all her offspring to leap after her to death without end. The beginning and root of this woful calamity was a light look. Thus often, as is said, 'of ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... This woful History began in my study of the Pelham Papers in the Additional Manuscripts of the British Museum. These include the letters of Pickle the Spy and of JAMES MOHR MACGREGOR. Transcripts of them were sent by me to ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... paragraph 17: replaced "woful" with "woeful" in "by woful experience" — it appears to ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... little girl among the daisies there comes to him in woful contrast the little girl in the crowded cities' wretched streets. She is denied the daisy field. Stars do not tempt her to wonder. The narrow streets filled with material things, pressing close, crowd out sun and moon. The name of God is familiar to her ears but ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... uncared-for feeling crept up to me, half from the words of woful meaning that I that afternoon had heard, and half the prisoned state, with fear, weak ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... answer the elderly major. Whately himself, in a revulsion of feeling common to his nature, felt that his cousin had been right, and that a miserable space for repentance was before him, not so much for the wrong he had purposed, as for the woful unwisdom of his tactics and their ignominious failure. His training as a soldier led him ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... courses in principle and practice, from that reformation purity, both in church and state (which, as the attainment of the nations of Britain and Ireland, was by them accounted their chief ornament and glory), that have taken place, especially in this kingdom, since our woful decline commenced: whereby the witnesses for Scotland's covenanted reformation, have been deprived of any legal benefit, as well, since as before the late revolution; in which the reformation, neither in civil nor ecclesiastical constitutions, was adopted. The intent, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... interrupted in my suavest tones. "And I pray your pardon again, Villehardouin, for my very great clumsiness. I pray your pardon a thousand times. The fault was mine, though unintentioned. In my haste to an engagement I was clumsy, most woful ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... on the well-remembered blue uniform undress; his cap which lay on her table, with its service symbols. Is it that the sameness of these material trifles seems to assert that nothing is changed, and so makes the change more incredible and dreadful? I cannot describe the woful pain which the sight of these things gave Diana. With them came the fresh remembrance of all the manly beauty and grace of Evan in which she had once sunned herself, and the contrast of her husband. Not that Basil's personal appearance was ever to be despised, any more than ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir—No; they was two for three ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot—‘For the Lord’s sake, let’s get out of this before our heads are chopped off,’ and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not having anything in particular to ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... Mop. What woful Ditty-making Mortal's this, That e'er the Lark her early Note has sung, Does doleful Love beneath my Casement thrum? -Ah, Seignior Scaramouch, is ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... locked the door, I stood; And through a chink I found, not only heard, But saw him, when he thought no eye beheld him. At first, deep sighs heaved from his woful heart Murmurs, and groans that shook the outward rooms. And art thou still alive, O wretch! he cried; Then groaned again, as if his sorrowful soul Had cracked the strings of life, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... from my heart, as continuously as the waters of a fountain, to the ear of my Creator. I have thought sometimes that, in this persistent wrestle of mind with matter, enduring so many weeks and months, so many weary, woful days and sleepless nights, the physical demon was exorcised at last, that had ruled my life so long, or was ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Baltimore, I found that so woful was the condition of the road between this city and the capital, that, although the distance is but thirty-seven miles, and that there remained full three hours of daylight, still no regular stage would encounter, until morning, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass 5 The hearts of others ... And when I went among my kind, with triple brass Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful mass! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... in, and being fast tied by his arm to Amyas's saddle, trudged alongside his horse for several weary miles, while Yeo walked by his side, like a friar by a condemned criminal; and in order to keep up his spirits, told him the woful end of Nicholas Saunders the Legate, and how he was found starved to death ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... but a single steam-vessel, a transport, though others could be dimly seen far out at sea, where they spent most of their time, which fact largely accounted for the woful lack of supplies at the front. A boat from the single ship that had ventured into the harbor lay on the beach discharging freight. To it Ridge hurried, and, addressing himself to the man who appeared ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... together behind their heads do make an hideous noise, crying and roaring as loud as they can, much praysing and extolling the Virtues of the deceased, tho there were none in him: and lamenting their own woful condition to live without him. Thus for three or four mornings they do rise early, and lament in this manner, also on evenings. Mean while the men stand still ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... aloud, which so frightened the tinker that he flung down the pudding and ran away. The pudding being broke to pieces by the fall, Tom crept out covered over with the batter, and with difficulty walked home. His mother, who was very sorry to see her darling in such a woful state, put him into a tea-cup, and soon washed off the batter; after which she kissed him, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... I ruminated these things with myself, and determined to set forth my woful complaint in writing, methought I saw a woman stand above my head, having a grave countenance, glistening clear eye, and of quicker sight than commonly Nature doth afford; her colour fresh and bespeaking unabated vigour, and yet discovering so many years, that she ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... from her hair She drew, and from a green-tress'd birchen tree She pluck'd a strip of smooth white bark and fair, And many signs and woful graved she, A message of the evil things to be. Then deftly closed the birch-bark, fold on fold, And bound the tokens well and cunningly, Three times and four times, with ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... as punctiliously, if not so heartily, as did their gentle friends. Not that the task was disagreeable. At fifty years of age, Mrs. Button was plump and comely; her fair curls unfaded, and still full and glossy; her blue eyes capable of languishing into moist appreciation of a woful heart-history, or sparkling rapturously at the news of a triumphant wooing; her little fat hands were swift and graceful, and her complexion so infantine in its clear white and pink as to lead many to believe and some—I need not say of which gender—to ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable; and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery and causes a woful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... frame of mine was wrench'd With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale, And then it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... are so personated to the life, that wantons are tickled with delight, and feed their palates upon them. It seems the goodness is not portrayed with equal accents of liveliness as the wicked things are; otherwise men would be deterred from vicious courses, with seeing the woful success which follows them'—a result scarcely to be claimed by the actors of the day. Massinger, however, shows more moral feeling than is expended in providing sentiments to be tacked on as an external appendage, or satisfied by an obedience to ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... sad, and a woful change; and one of ominous import for our children. Most woful to those of my countrymen who, like the reader's humble servant, have passed a happy half-score of years in the delightful society and the incomparable capital of the ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... me, I rode along farther, swam my horse over the river in the twilight, with much ado to keep clear of the dead horses and poor slaughtered comrades that cumbered the stream, and what was even worse, some not yet dead, borne along and crying out. A woful day it was to all who loved the kindly Duke of York, or this same poor house! As luck would have it, I fell in with Jock of Redesdale and a few more honest fellows, who had 'scaped. We found none but friends when we were well past the river. They succoured us at the ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forth unharmed, a woful spectacle of extremest wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter of her son, to the ravings of Constance, we shall perceive where Shakspeare's genius ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... grossest waste of valuable merchandise. The idea of voluntarily turning into smoke and ashes the most exquisitely grained bird's-eye maple, black walnut, heart-of-oak, cherry, and birch—it's a shame for you, Holt, not to raise your voice against such wilful waste, which will be sure to make woful want some day. Why, the cabinetmakers at home would give you almost any money for a cargo of such walnut as this under ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... silence and darkness of the night Sir Owen awoke by reason of a woful outcry and lamenting; and then he knew that Earl Cadoc, the Knight of the Fountain, was dead from the wound he had ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... illuminating that I knew the sufferer had again cleaned the platter on Tuesday, had attempted a boiled egg on Wednesday (you should have seen Irene chipping it in Pall Mall, and putting in the salt), but was in a woful state of ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... numberless local peoples. Whatever they touch is necessarily crude at first, but constantly gaining as they gain facility in working. A precedent of some kind they must have, and they find it close at hand in the Roman basilicas. Uncertain, from the result of woful experiments, of arches of great span, they pack their columns close together and surmount them with sturdy little arches that have scarcely any thrust. This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate arches is ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... with their own noise, must call in professional assistance: an artist in grief, with a fine repertoire of cut-and-dried sorrows at his command, assumes the direction of this inane choir, and supplies a theme for their woful acclamations. So far, all men are fools alike: but at this point national peculiarities make their appearance. The Greeks burn their dead, the Persians bury them; the Indian glazes the body, the Scythian eats it, the ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... to you a minute?" asked Polly, with a woful feeling at her heart. It seemed as if he ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... of this wayward girl. Oh, she is changed—and such a woful change! It breaks my heart to think on't. The bright eye Has lost its fire, the red rose on her cheek Is washed to whiteness by her frequent tears; And with the smile has fled the ruby glow From the twin ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the Antinomians (1644): "I never heard that the Indians in these parts did ever before commit the like outrage upon any one family, or families; and therefore God's hand is the more apparently seen herein, to pick out this woful woman, to make her and those belonging to her an unheard of heavy example of their ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... was not ready to surrender, though he knew now that he had committed a woful blunder. In fact, the knowledge that he was dealing with Frank Merriwell aroused him to a fierce resistance. He felt that it would simply be ruinous to be held and recognized by Merriwell, and he began to fight like ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... this woful fact until she had interviewed almost everybody she knew in the neighborhood. Sadie Goronofsky and her brothers and sisters scattered in all directions to find trace of Dot and Sammy. There was a mild panic when one child came shrieking into Mrs. Kranz's store that a little girl with a dog had been ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, were ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... hear the banshee keen, All woful is her cry. She comes along the gray boreen— Pray God ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... story sweet, There is no man hearkens it, No man living 'neath the sun, So outwearied, so foredone, Sick and woful, worn and sad, But is healed, but ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... from wound upon me / my mail-coat see'st thou red, Shall bring woful reprisal / on many a warrior's head. Now is my wrath aroused / in full 'gainst Hawart's thane. As yet in sooth hath Iring / wrought ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... all I have to say of Law. But a painful truth remains. I have to speak of the woful disorder in the finances which his system led to, disorder which was not fully known until after his departure from France. Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had flooded upon popular credulity had borne us;—not to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... is with therest of mankind: for where-ever any two men are, who have no standing rule, and common judge to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the state of* nature, and under all the inconveniencies of it, with only this woful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince: that whereas, in the ordinary state of nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and according to the best of his power, to maintain it; now, whenever his property is invaded ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... in woful reverie upon the edge of the bed, and then crossed the room to a beautiful writing-desk which Miss Ludington had given her. She opened it, and, taking out several sheets of paper, prepared to write. "If ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... that made its way to the gate of the town. Sir John led the way, the devoted six followed, while the remainder of the towns-people made their progress woful with tears and cries of grief. Months of suffering had not caused them deeper sorrow than to see these their brave ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sad and woful day to the cities of the South, when her rebel princes renounced their allegiance to the government, and raised the traitor arm of rebellion against its authority. Imagined evils, in connection with the Union, were ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master's hand. Sometimes,—to-night, for instance,—the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question. "Is this the End?" they say,—"nothing beyond? no more?" Why, you tell me you have ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... lies, Montijos and the others being mere satellites on their respective sides. Much battered upon, this Hyndford, by refractory Hanoverians pitting George as Elector against the same George as King, and egging these two identities to woful battle with each other,—"Lay me at his Majesty's feet" full length, and let his Majesty say which is which, then! A heavy, eating, haggling, unpleasant kind of mortal, this Hyndford; bites and grunts privately, in a stupid ferocious manner, against this young King: "One of the worst ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... such a woful figure by the door as she turned her head—no bonnet, no shoes, and a tattered frock, all draggled with dirt and rain, and the long, uncombed locks straggling about the child's shoulders, and such a blue, pinched look ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous
... same attraction it may draw one into the pit, over the precipice, to the bottom of the sea. What multitudes of lives does it yearly destroy! Why has it never occurred to some ingenious victim of a sluggish liver to represent Gravitation as a murderous monster revelling in blood? Surely there are woful considerations here that might be used with the happiest effect to enhance the sense of man's misery, and have been too ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... be the bloody sea: The wandering sailors of proud Italy Shall meet those Christians, fleeting with the tide, Beating in heaps against their argosies, And make fair Europe, mounted on her bull, Trapp'd with the wealth and riches of the world, Alight, and wear a woful mourning weed. ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps underwitted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his face,—a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the sickly blotches that covered its features,—and found means to express such a perfect confidence that it was going to be fondled and made much of, that there was no possibility in a human heart of balking its expectation. It was as if God ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... woful face. "P'raps you're not so much to blame, Mint. You don't know," he said, in a somewhat softened tone. "It's ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... terrible, Of dire combustions and cosfus'd events. New-hatch'd to th' woful time, the obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say the earth Was fev'rous ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... not here inquire minutely into its history. It is said to have originated in Arabia, the country of the false prophet. The aborigines of our forests never knew it. They could proudly tread on the rattlesnake and copperhead, but never fell before the worm of the still. O woful day when it found its way to our coasts; when here ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... who has so lightened for us the sorrow of mere bereavement, and made quick-coming death a little thing—for some of us, indeed, a lovely thing—has not taught us how to bear the sufferings of those we love, the woful ache of pity for pangs we are powerless to relieve and can ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... him. Nay, more than this; all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... like a griping usurer, does spare His money to be squander'd by his heir; Flutter'd away in liveries and in coaches, And washy sorts of feminine debauches. As for my part, whate'er the world may think, I'll bid adieu to gravity, and drink; And, though I can't put off a woful mien, Will be all mirth and cheerfulness within: As, in despight of a censorious race, I most incontinently suck my face. What mighty projects does not he design, Whose stomach flows, and brain turns round ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... To avert these woful afflictions was the cause of the extraordinary precautions on the part of Boone and Kenton, especially ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... Captain Judgment was making this oration to the town of Mansoul, it was observed by some that Diabolus trembled.[103] But he proceeded in his parable, and said, 'O thou woful town of Mansoul! wilt thou not yet set open thy gate to receive us, the deputies of thy King, and those that would rejoice to see thee live? "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... History of the Plague Year', Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the madder yells of ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... and I went, As one whom winds waft o'er the bending grass, Through many a vale of that broad continent. At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass 1705 Before my pillow;—my own Cythna was, Not like a child of death, among them ever; When I arose from rest, a woful mass That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever, As if the light of youth were ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... entrance, and rushed at him and scaled him and searched in his pockets, and pulled him about; nor that the day will never come when, growing into men and women, they will come to him for sympathy and guidance in their little trials and perplexities. Oh, woful to think that there are parents, held in general estimation too, to whom their children would no more think of going for kindly sympathy, than they would think of going to Nova Zembla ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... starts up with dagger drawn. The spectators rise in confusion and cry "Stop him!" Canio seizes Nedda and plunges his knife into her: "Take that! And that! With thy dying gasps thou'lt tell me!" Woful intuition! Dying, Nedda calls: "Help, Silvio!" Silvio rushes forward and receives Canio's knife in his heart. "Gesumaria!" shriek the women. Men throw themselves upon Canio. He stands for a moment in a stupor, drops his knife and speaks the words: "The comedy is ended." "Ridi Pagliaccio!" shrieks ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... with me, yea, but crouching low, I 2 Where Heaven-sent madness haunts his overthrow, Beyond my cure or tendance: woful plight! Whom thou, erewhile, to head the impetuous fight, Sent'st forth, thy conquering champion. Now he feeds His spirit on lone paths, and on us brings Deep sorrow; and all his former peerless deeds Of prowess fall like unremembered ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... good behaviour. Dugald was in the main a thoughtful, peaceable boy, the most advanced pupil in the entrance class, and a great mathematician. At first he was inclined to despise the teacher, setting little store by her beautiful face and fascinating smile, for on the very first day he discovered her woful mathematical inadequacy. Arithmetic was her despair. With algebraic formulae and Euclid's propositions her fine memory saved her. But with quick intuition she threw herself frankly upon the boy's generosity, and in the evenings together they, with Margaret's assistance, wrestled with the bewildering ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... palsy-stricken, churchyard thing, Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll; Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, Were never miss'd."—Thus plaining, doth she bring A gentler speech from burning Porphyro; So woful, and of such deep sorrowing, 160 That Angela gives promise she will do Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... ails thee so to smile? Chill August, pale September, Endured a woful while, And fell as falls an ember From forth a flameless pile: But golden-girt November Bids all she looks ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Incarnation of Jesu Christ. And the seven knights betoken the seven deadly sins that reigned that time in the world; and I may liken the good Galahad unto the son of the High Father, that light within a maid, and bought all the souls out of thrall: so did Sir Galahad deliver all the maidens out of the woful castle. Now, Sir Gawaine, said the good man, thou must do penance for thy sin. Sir, what penance shall I do? Such as I will give, said the good man. Nay, said Sir Gawaine, I may do no penance; for we knights adventurous oft suffer great woe and pain. Well, said the ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... heart-sick Baily was filled with "desponding jealousies," "disconsolate uneasinesses," gloomy fears, and thinks the words from his diary "may be profitable to some discouraged minds." Profitable! Ah, no; far from it! The overwhelming blackness of despair, the woful doubts and fears about destruction and utter annihilation which he felt so deeply and so continually, fall in a heavy, impenetrable cloud upon us as we read, until we feel that we too are in the "Suburbs of hell" and ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... frequently broke down after the first two or three sentences. He prepared what he intended to say with great exactness, and his favorite delusion was that he was about to astonish everybody with a remarkable effort. It never disturbed him that he commonly made a woful failure when he attempted speech-making, but he sat down with such cool serenity if he found that he could not recall what he wished to say, that his audience could not help joining in and smiling with him when he came to a stand-still. ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... between the disputants, and Mr "O'Grady" concluded an impassioned statement of his wrongs with "Voila tout, Mr Archdeacon, voila tout." "Waller tew," quoth churchwarden No. 1; "what ha' he to dew with it?" And there was the visit to that woful church, damp, rotten, ruinous. The inspection over, the rector said to my father, "Now, Mr Archdeacon, that we've done the old church, you must come and see my new stables." "Sir," said my father, "when your church is in decent order, I shall ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... much as the tough luck of it. I didn't make my trade in camphor after all and I lost in stocks, when if I'd only waited five minutes more in the office I'd have got the message from my brokers and saved my five hundred. Expensive, my time is, eh?" with a woful shake of the head. ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... "What a woful widow you will be," said Groeneveld to his wife, as she sank choking with tears upon the ground. The words suddenly aroused in her the sense of respect ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... those who would silence and crush her, and I fear our children will see the glory of England vanishing like Arthur in the mist; they will cry too late the woful cry of Guinever:— ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Tancred for days together, ever woful; till, falling asleep one night towards the dawn, the shade of Clorinda did indeed appear to him, more beautiful than ever, and clad in light and joy. She seemed to stoop and wipe the tears from his eyes; and then said, "Behold how happy I am. Behold me, O beloved ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... a woful falling off from Mr Cobden's wholesale colonial invoice of four and a half millions sterling! It amounts to a discount or rebate upon his statistical ware of L.2,550,000, or say, not far short of sixty per cent. Had the Leaguer been in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... suddenly and quietly without my knowing it, while we were alone together; but I got into a perfect agony now, for fear this last worst affliction should take me by surprise. I don't suppose five minutes passed all that woful night through without my getting up and putting my cheek close to her mouth, to feel if the faint breaths still fluttered out of it. They came and went just the same as at first, though the fright I was in often made me fancy they ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... most lamentable Impressions which the Devil makes upon the Souls of Men by way of punishment upon them for their Sins. 'Tis thus when an Offended God puts the Souls of Men over into the Hands of that Officer who has the power of Death, that is, the Devil. It is the woful Misery of Unbelievers in 2 Cor. 4.4. The god of this World has blinded their minds. And thus it may be said of those woful Wretches whom the Devil is a God unto, the Devil so muffles them that they cannot see the things of their peace. And the Devil so hardens them, that nothing ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... spirit of the Prince Was moved to see this world beyond his gates, This life of man, so pleasant if its waves Ran not to waste and woful finishing In Time's dry sands. "I pray you let me view Our city as it is," such was his prayer To King Suddhodana. "Your Majesty In tender heed hath warned the folk before To put away ill things and common sights, And make their faces glad to gladden me, And all the causeways gay; yet have I ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... which answered them again. After that they had sung, danced, and turned 3 times, they fel on running like vnbridled horses, through the middest of the thickest woods. And then the Indian women continued all the rest of the day in teares as sad and woful as was possible: and in such rage they cut the armes of the yong girles, which they lanced so cruelly with sharpe shels of Muskles that the blood followed which they flang into the ayre, crying out three times, He Toya. The king Audusta had gathered all our men into his house, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... the fixed, still, reproachful look of the dead. As if a spirit had leaped upon him, memory brought back his personality and his grief together. Men told afterwards, early laborers in the fields, of a cry from the Endicott woods, so strange and woful that their hearts beat fast and their frightened ears strained for its repetition. Sonia heard it in her adulterous dreams. It was not repeated. The very horror of it terrified the man who uttered it. He stood by a tree trembling, for ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... choruses still more than did his original; for his laying still stronger emphasis on sensuous effect than the Greek; nor for his taking up pieces like the -Thyestes- and the -Telephus- so well known from the immortal ridicule of Aristophanes, with their princes' woes and woful princes, and even such a piece as Menalippa the Female Philosopher, in which the whole plot turns on the absurdity of the national religion, and the tendency to make war on it from the physicist point of view is at once apparent. The sharpest arrows are everywhere—and that partly in passages ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... saw many trees moving about the field. Imagine my agitation, when one of the trees swept towards me, bent one of its branches, and, lifting me from the ground, carried me off, in spite of my woful cries, followed by an innumerable number of its companions of all kinds and sizes. From their trunks issued certain articulated sounds, which were entirely incomprehensible to me, and of which I retained only the words: Pikel-Emi, on account of their ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... doleful sight then gan he see; His wife and children three Out of the fire were fled: There they sat, under a thorn, Bare and naked as they were born, Brought out of their bed. A woful man then was he, When he saw them all naked be, The lady said, all so blive, "For nothing, sir, be ye adrad." He did off his surcoat of pallade,[FN572] And with it clad his wife. His scarlet mantle then ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... for Ptolemy then it shook itself. Thence it swooped flashing down on Juba; then wheeled again unto your west, where it heard the Pompeian trumpet. Of what it did with the next standard-bearer,[7] Bruttis and Cassius are barking in Hell; and it made Modena and Perugia woful. Still does the sad Cleopatra weep therefor, who, fleeing before it, took from the asp sudden and black death. With him it ran far as the Red Sea shore; with him it set the world in peace so great that on Janus his ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... from other nations; they attached supreme importance to their Abrahamic lineage as children of the covenant, "an holy people unto the Lord," whom He had chosen "to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth".[162] Judah had experienced the woful effects of dalliance with pagan nations, and, at the time we are now considering, a Jew who permitted himself unnecessary association with a Gentile became an unclean being requiring ceremonial cleansing to free him from defilement. Only in strict isolation did the leaders find hope of insuring ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... at me behind my Aunt Kezia's back; but I don't believe she really cared anything about it. She went to bed, of course; and it is dark now by half-past five. But she was not a bit daunted, for I heard her singing as she lay in bed, "Fair Rosalind, in woful wise," [Note 2.] and afterwards, "I ha'e nae kith, I ha'e nae kin." [Note 3.] If Father had heard that last, my Aunt Kezia would have had to forgive her and let her off the rest ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... Dominie Sampson on military matters; and, conceiving good provisions to be thrown away upon him, they stripped him nearly naked and dismissed him, like the barber in Gil Blas, with a kick in the breech, and sent him in to us in a woful state. ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... profound only in the technicalities of the profession; and a very keen study and acquaintance with these—certainly a too great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers—leads to a dreadful departure from elementary principles, and a most woful (sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of knowledge without which laws multiply at the expense of reason, and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those ignorant captains to whom good ships are intrusted, who rely ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... her in mourning robes, with a woful court about her,—trembling, sorrow-weighted, pitiful and unimpressive; and a low murmur of admiration just stirred the hush of the chamber as she took her place under the royal canopy and turned ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the real world to-night Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft passion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... rumour made a committee, that was very diligent and solicitous to make that discovery, there was never any probable evidence (that poor creature's only excepted) that there was any other cause of that woful fire than the displeasure of God Almighty: the first accident of the beginning in a baker's house, where there was so great a stock of faggots, and the neighbourhood of such combustible matter, of pitch and rosin, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy |
