"Disillusioned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ulterior motives to his friends, a course which only served to render him morbid and unjust; while his equally pitiless dissection of his own sensations often robbed them of half their charm. Even love and war, his favorite emotions, left him disillusioned, asking "Is that all it amounts to?" He always had a profound respect for force of character, regarding even lawlessness as preferable to apathy; but he was implacable towards baseness or vulgarity. Herein ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and working in the roar and rush of it, in a stifling atmosphere where the finer qualities of the soul were poisoned and withered over night. They lived their lives, almost without exception, by means of alcohol and coffee and tobacco; they were scornful, disillusioned, cynical beyond all telling and all belief. Their only god in heaven or earth or the waters under the earth was "copy". To such men there were two possible bonds of interest in a woman—the first being lust, and the second money. In the case of Henry Darrell ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... pink-lemonade stand; or, up at the other end, where the trapezes are, or in the middle, opposite the tank. Sometimes the band plays and sometimes it doesn't, but all you need in order to be thoroughly disillusioned is to stay to the concert, which bears about the same relation to the circus that marriage does to ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... are rather more serious though; we are disillusioned women at the age when they were ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... DISILLUSIONED BUT INDOMITABLE.—Dr. Stockmann, gagged and thrown back into poverty, is tempted to take flight, but determines to remain in his native place and fight for its moral, if not for its ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... half over, Jo felt so completely disillusioned, that she sat down in a corner to recover herself. Mr. Bhaer soon joined her, looking rather out of his element, and presently several of the philosophers, each mounted on his hobby, came ambling up to hold an intellectual tournament ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Very much disillusioned she ran to the morning room and burst in on the Colonel's dictation to his clerk. "Excuse me, but if you don't keep your soldiers in better order you will have very little to eat whilst you are here. They are killing and carrying off all ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... of M. Jean Marteau, aimless, extravagant, apocalyptic, and of all the dreams one ever dreamt, the most essentially dreamlike. The vision of M. Anatole France, the Prince of Prose, ranges over all the extent of his realm, indulgent and penetrating, disillusioned and curious, finding treasures of truth and beauty concealed from less gifted magicians. Contemplating the exactness of his images and the justice of his judgment, the freedom of his fancy and the fidelity of his purpose, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... difficult even to get into touch with them. In addition there was a lack of good-will on the part of the old Russian Government. Thus very often these prisoners, who regarded Russia as Bohemia's elder brother and liberator, were sadly disillusioned when they were left under the supervision of some German officers, and thousands of them died from starvation. Nevertheless they never despaired. Eager to fight for the Allies, many of them entered the Yugoslav Division which fought so gallantly in the Dobrudja. Nearly all the Czech officers ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... fear, no remorse, none of that Shakespearean horror after the murder, which, today, sceptic though I am and blase and utterly, utterly disillusioned, sets me shuddering whenever I am alone in a ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... reigning favorite was established at the Tampa Bay Hotel as a brigadier, and people began to get themselves a little settled into the idea that they knew who was in command, they were suddenly disillusioned by the appointment of another and senior brigadier to the command. They settled down to get acquainted with the new authority, and were just beginning to find out who was who, when the telegraph flashed the news that the deposed potentate had been ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... good old Maerchenland way. Well, he wouldn't have to look on and see them doing it, which was some consolation. He went back to the antechamber and regarded the sleeping forms of his family with disillusioned eyes. "We look like Royalties—I don't think!" he said to himself. "No wonder they've booted us out. Why, a ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... violence that it was impossible to avoid it. The ultimatum which preceded the preliminary Treaty of Buftea had also to be altered chiefly on the Dobrudsha question, as Bulgaria was already talking of the ingratitude of the Central Powers, of how Bulgaria had been disillusioned, and of the evil effects this disillusionment would have on the subsequent conduct of the war. All that Count Czernin could do was to obtain a guarantee that Roumania, in case of cession of the Dobrudsha, should at least be granted a sure way to the harbour of Kustendje. In ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... and success. They had both a certain afterthought, knowing dimly that the game was but a game, and that they were the helpless leaders in the game. They had a certain basic ordinariness which prevented their making any great hits, and which kept them disillusioned all the while. They remembered their poor and ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... isn't precisely the word. If he hoped for it, he would soon be disillusioned. You may give him a name, if he wishes it. But let me also give him a few ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... it, but this little Mary Ware who is coming, has a most exalted opinion of me. From what Joyce says she thinks I am perfect, and I don't want her disillusioned. It's so nice to have somebody look up to you that way, so I want to impress it on you that you're not to indulge in any reminiscence of my past while she is heah. You mustn't tell any of my youthful misdemeanahs that you are fond of telling—how I ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... them into battle? Nothing of the sort; he calls them to assembly." [Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 46.] But we ought not to have been led to suppose that the waking Agamemnon was so elated as the sleeping Agamemnon. He was "disillusioned" on waking; his conduct proves it; he did not know what to think about the Dream; he did not know how the host would take the Dream; he doubted whether they would fight at his command, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... itself had become a flourishing manufacturing town, and to our jaundiced and disillusioned eyes everybody and everything was as ugly as could be—and I can't say we made much of a bag in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... from the cathedral, she had even destroyed the passion he had. She was glad. He was bitterly angry. Strive as he would, he could not keep the cathedral wonderful to him. He was disillusioned. That which had been his absolute, containing all heaven and earth, was become to him as to her, a shapely heap of dead ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... fool! You can't win her back! She would never have loved me if you hadn't disillusioned, dishonored her! I'm not worthy of her, but I'll never dishonor her, and, please God, never disappoint her, and so I'll keep ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... to be sad. They studied no longer, fearing lest they might be disillusioned. The inhabitants of Chavignolles avoided them. The newspapers they tolerated gave them no information; and so their solitude was unbroken, their time ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... disillusioned, are you?" she said. "You simply shut your eyes and go it blind. A woman likes that in a man. It's what love ought to be. It's silly of me ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... Cousin Jasper so deeply, who could ruin John Massey, could harm neither him nor Janet in the least. Oliver had felt real dread as he came through the gate, he had been haunted by the vague terror of what Anthony Crawford might be able to do, but he looked upon him now with disillusioned eyes, knowing him for nothing but a small-minded, selfish, spiteful man whose power over ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... in many ways of late. He left his comrades in peace, did not annoy the novices, and though his spirit had not 'blossomed out,' as Kister had foretold, yet he certainly had toned down a little. He could not have been called 'disillusioned' before—he had seen and experienced almost nothing—and so it is not surprising that Masha engrossed his thoughts. His heart was not touched though; only his spleen was satisfied. Masha's feelings for him were of a strange kind. She almost never looked him straight in the face; ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hopes," murmured Tester. "It is a pity to think he will have to be so soon disillusioned. Very little remains the same for long. Pleasure ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... man. I seized the reins of power. The survivors—these old men—were disillusioned and docile. I made myself absolute. I brought Moon men and women to Eros to serve us as slaves. But in a few years the last of my father's old compatriots will have died, and thus it was I conceived ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... well fed and relieved of solicitude for the morrow returned home, flushed with victory, proud of the commanding position which they had won in the state, and eager to reap the rewards of their sacrifices. But they were bitterly disillusioned. They expected a country fit for heroes to live in, and what awaited them was a condition of things to which only a defeated people could be asked to resign itself. The food to which the poilu had, for nearly five years, been accustomed at the front was become, since the armistice, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... hand. But still 'twas with a most marvellously gluttonous glance that she eyed the roast of fresh meat on the table before me. 'Twas no matter to me, to be sure! for a lad's love is not so easily alienated: 'tis an actual thing—not depending upon a neurotic idealization: therefore not to be disillusioned by these ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... American Continent reached a peak, especially to Canada, where one of the settlements came to be called New Iceland—the title given to the last story in this book. Many of these emigrants suffered great hardships, and, as the story tells, several of them became disillusioned with the land of promise. Their descendants, however, have on the whole done well in the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... theatres which have filled me with amazement, wondering how it could be possible that such poor stuff should pass muster as conversation, or coquetry, or gallantry, with the youths and maidens of to-day. But when I have observed further, instead of an offended fair, or a disillusioned swain, behold! two young heads close together, two young faces sparkling with smiles and satisfaction. And the older person, who would fatuously join in with a sensible remark, spoils all the enjoyment. The fact is, the secret ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... surgical instruments out of the Southern ports; and the South could make few of her own. So, to be very sick or badly wounded meant almost a sentence of death in the South. Eighteen months of war had disillusioned Maryland. The expected reinforcements ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... for the allurement of the unsophisticated, who saw in this strained and overdone imitation of the old West the romance of their expectations. If they hadn't found it there thousands of them would have been disappointed, perhaps disillusioned with a healthful jolt. All the reality about it was its viciousness, and ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... were you disillusioned?" she asked him. "Two days ago you called me 'Princess'—in the garden here. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... young Savonarola away from Ferrara, had sounded in his ears, or met his eyes in some Virgilian Sortes. It would have been well if his father, disillusioned by the Amadigi's ill-success, and groaning under the galling yoke of servitude to Princes, had forbidden instead of encouraging this fatal step. He might himself have listened to the words of old Speroni, painting the Court as he had learned to know ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blase woman by this ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... love with Miss Langley, whom he sees in one of her walks accompanied by her maid, Susan. Through a misapprehension of personalities his lordship addresses a love missive to the maid. Susan accepts in perfect good faith, and an epistolary love-making goes on till they are disillusioned. It naturally makes a droll and delightful little comedy; and is a story that is particularly ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... those who glorify the carnage at a safe distance and fight the enemy with their lying tongues, are justified. They all are justified. But if, instead of victory, there is defeat, then they tremble lest they should be disgraced and lose their places, lest they should be victims of a disillusioned people's anger, lest they should forfeit their plunder, lest they should be called to account for the lies with which they fooled the masses. Defeat is the defeat of evil, victory is the victory ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... sordid indeed—he found her fresh. That had been the swift impression which he had formed in the few moments that he had seen her, spoken to her, on the top of the 'bus from Piccadilly Circus. At this second sight of her, he was not disillusioned. Even there, in the midst of offices, chained to the machine at which she worked, she seemed cut out from her surroundings—a ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... broken lines of Washington! No stronger voice than thine had then Called out the utmost might of men, To make the Union's charter free And strengthen law by liberty. How had that stern arbitrament To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, Shaming ambition's paltry prize Before thy disillusioned eyes; Breaking the spell about thee wound Like the green withes that Samson bound; Redeeming in one effort grand, Thyself and thy imperilled land! Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, O sleeper by the Northern ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... modern battlefield and am quite disillusioned about the splendour of war. The splendour is all in the souls of the men who creep through the squalor like vermin—it's in nothing external. There was a chap here the other day who deserved the V.C. four times over ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... Paquita Valdes presented him with a marvelous concentration of perfections which he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost nil with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment of love. Like old men and people disillusioned, he had no longer anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which, once satisfied, left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young people love is the finest of the emotions, it makes the life of the soul blossom, it nourishes by its solar power the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... effect she might be producing, Hanson had a full opportunity to study her, and, in that concentrated attention, the man and the manager were fused. He was at once the cynical showman discounting every favorable impression and the most critical and disillusioned of audiences. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... waterfalls and snow-capped mountain-peaks. Marietta could recall as piercingly as if it were yesterday, in how crestfallen a chagrin she and her mother had gazed at their parlor after this incident, their disillusioned eyes open for the first time to the futility of its claim to sophistication. As for the incident that had led to the permanent retiring from their table of the monumental salt-and-pepper "caster" which had been one of their most prized wedding ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... and simple was doubtless less absolute than the disillusioned Jarrett represents it to have been. Even in the South there were many gradations of wealth, and it was no uncommon thing for a man to rise, as Jarrett did himself, from mean birth to a considerable eminence. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... with the arrangement of these different prospects, and the shaping of two or three lovely phrases, she did not notice that the young people in the carriage were almost silent. Henry, indeed, had been included against his wish, and revenged himself by observing Katharine and Rodney with disillusioned eyes; while Katharine was in a state of gloomy self-suppression which resulted in complete apathy. When Rodney spoke to her she either said "Hum!" or assented so listlessly that he addressed his next remark to her mother. His deference ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... trousers, inspected minor sartorial and corporeal lacerations, set his hat firmly upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail curled up against his well-fed flank—disillusioned, disgusted, unapproachable. ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... entered the university of Leipzig in 1841 as a student of theology, but graduated as doctor philosophiae, and from 1847 devoted himself entirely to journalism and literature. In 1851 he went to America, but soon returned disillusioned to Germany, and published an account of his travels. During the next years he travelled extensively in the East and wrote books on Egypt, Greece and Palestine. From 1856 he was employed at Leipzig on the Grenzboten, one of the most influential German periodicals, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... from dismissing Byron with impatient contempt; nevertheless his genius and his in part splendid achievement are substantial facts. He stands as the extreme but significant exponent of violent Romantic individualism in a period when Romantic aspiration was largely disappointed and disillusioned, but was indignantly gathering its ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... beneath the steps that mounted from the rear to the front garret. This was wrapped in Cimmerian darkness—which is the strongest pigment known—and it extended from its mouth beyond the furthest stretch of leg. To the disillusioned, indeed, this cave was harmless, for it merely offset the lower ceiling of the bathroom below; yet to us it was a cave unparalleled. Little by little we ventured in, until in time we could sit on the snug joists inside with the comfortable feeling ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... sonnets as dictated psychically to Miss Sutton of South Dakota? he sniffed. As a matter of fact, his own taste ran to these latter, but as an employee at the Moonlight Quill he assumed for the working day the attitude of a disillusioned connoisseur. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... inherited from his maternal grandfather, Lord Culpeper, of unsavory Restoration memory. It was a piece of great good-fortune which threw in Washington's path this accomplished gentleman, familiar with courts and camps, disappointed, but not morose, disillusioned, but still kindly and generous. From him the boy could gain that knowledge of men and manners which no school can give, and which is as important in its way as any that a ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... cold and ill and left to himself. He only exists. From time to time, when there is movement going on around him, he has hopes of going out, rises and stretches himself, and bestirs his tail to incipient demonstration. But he is disillusioned, and lies down again, gazing past ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... They usually have one or two staying in the house, too. They keep open house for wastrels. A lot of them are aliens—Polish refugees, Russian anarchists, oppressed Finns, massacred Armenians who do embroidery; violinists who can't earn a living, decayed chimney-sweeps and so forth. 'Disillusioned (or still illusioned) geniuses, would-bes, theorists, artistic natures, failed reformers, knaves and fools incompetent or over-old, broken evangelists and debauchees, inebriates, criminals, cowards, virtual slaves' ... Anyhow it's a home for Lost Hopes. (Do you ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... he succeed that the hero pulls himself together, shaves off his beard, becomes our OWEN NARES again, and sallies forth, habited for conquest, to pay calls on all the three. From all the three he retires disillusioned, having found them as egoistic as himself, and in the end finds solace rather shamelessly, in the love of a devoted slave who might have been his for the taking any time in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... Louis, a military education. He was devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with friendliness and allowed her ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... very hour—while at last Myra slept, and the doctor watched, and mused, and wondered—in that very hour, under an Eastern sky, a strong man, sick of life, worn and disillusioned, fighting a deadly fever, in the sultry atmosphere of a soldier's tent, cried out in bitterness of soul: "O God, let me die!" Then added the "never-the-less" which always qualifies a brave soul's prayer for immunity from pain: "Unless—unless, O God, there be still some work left ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Petrarchan sonnet, where the thought divisions of quatrains and tercets are marked with exceptional clearness, Eugene Lee-Hamilton's disillusioned "Sea-Shell Murmurs": ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... how much value a thing has if one has put some effort into it. We were still as disillusioned with the country as we had been the first day, we felt as out of place on a homestead as a coyote sauntering up Fifth Avenue, we felt the tar-paper shack to be the most unhomelike contraption we had ever seen; but from the moment we ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Then—and the desire confused Sandy—he wished Treadwell would cut his visit short. The confession in the study had not drawn Treadwell nearer; it had driven him farther away. It was as if, by keener insight, Sandy had been cruelly disillusioned; had discovered that he, not Lans, was bound to bear a new burden of responsibility. Having confided in his friend, Treadwell, apparently, was eased and comforted; while Sandy was constantly thinking of a certain, vague, little suffering ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... man was thirsty. It had been boiled for safety and was served warm and tasted of disinfectants. The breakfast had been oatmeal and salty bacon swimming in congealed grease. The "boy" in the soldier's body was very low indeed that morning. The "man" with his disillusioned eyes had come to the front. Of course this was nothing like the hardships they would have to endure later, but it was enough for the present to their unaccustomed minds, and harder because they were doing nothing that seemed worth while—just marching about and doing sordid ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... own country via Constantinople, where he indulged in a little intriguing with the Greek Emperor Emanuel. This seems to have given the flamboyant Greeks the impression that Bohemia's King had become a vassal of their Emperor; they were disillusioned some years later when Vladislav assisted Stephen III on to the throne of Hungary against the Emperor ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... in the armythat disorganisation was accomplished years ago, by the old regime. Why arent the Russians fighting? I will tell you. Because the masses of the people are economically exhausted,and because they are disillusioned with the Allies! ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... in shadow. And whether it was simply due to her personality or to some really occult skill in her playing I cannot say: I only know that she gravely and deliberately set herself to satirise the beautiful music. It brooded on the air, disillusioned, charged with mockery and bitterness. I stood at the window; far down the path I could see the white figure glimmering in that pool of colourless light. A few faint stars shone; and still that amazing woman behind me dragged out of the unwilling ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... Thus, though disillusioned, he felt bound in honour to remain on call at his London address as long as there was the slightest chance of Marcia's reappearance, or of the arrival of some message requesting him to join her, that they might, after all, go to the altar together. Yet in the night he seemed to hear sardonic ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... Until students become disillusioned on this latter point, and are at the same time permitted to follow their natural bent with as little interference as possible from the exigencies of public taste, uniformity of aim will be impossible, and consequently the ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... "they would be disillusioned rather than disappointed. There is a difference. For instance, I would be disappointed rather than disillusioned in Reggie if he should blunder and miss his opportunity of becoming mayor ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... and rejoiced for she thought that Melchior was returning thanks to the holy saints for a safe journey, but she was disillusioned when she heard him open his lips and cry towards heaven an invocation which was neither German nor Latin, for she knew the sound of the latter tongue, having heard it so often at mass, but a combination of strange sounding words more like those that she used ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Aratov that even if she had had 'anything of the sort' in her mind, his behaviour during their interview must have effectually disillusioned her.... 'That was why she laughed so cruelly, too, at parting. Besides, what proof is there that she took poison because of unrequited love? That's only the newspaper correspondents, who ascribe every ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... briskly from point to point in a loose attacking formation. The first batch of aeronauts had probably been under the impression that the city was deserted. They had grounded in the open near Prospect Park and approached the houses towards the power-works before they were disillusioned by a sudden fire. They had scattered back to the cover of a bank near the water—it was too far for them to reach their machines again; they were lying and firing at the men in the hotels and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Verneuil in a procession, Hermia in the lead, the donkey following, and Philidor, now thoroughly disillusioned, bringing up the rear. He was thinking deeply, his gaze on the graceful lines of her intolerant back, aware that she had paid him in full for his temerity, and wondering in an aimless way how soon she would be taking the train for Paris. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... transient glory. We know the falsity of attitudinising, and we have probed the emptiness of certain dreams. The fire has licked up the scenery, has reduced the tinsel to ashes. We are now face to face with ourselves, perhaps more fully awakened, certainly more sincere and more disillusioned, for we have secret wounds to heal and great sufferings to lull in the shade! The passing of the days is like wormwood in the mouth.... How painful will be the transition, and how numerous will be the waifs! Already a fresh anguish oppresses our minds; ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... gay dinner, a memorable dinner. The mere ostensible occasion of its being in celebration of the publication of Steve Armstrong's first novel, "The Disillusioned," would of itself have been sufficient reason therefor. In addition, the resignation, by a peculiar coincidence to take effect the same day, of the former manager of the Traction Company, Darley Roberts, with a recommendation that was virtually a command ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... not consider a part of the joy of all the earth—the neighbors' dogs. On the next hill-top is an Airedale with a voice like a fog-horn. He is an ungainly creature and thoroughly disillusioned, because his family keep him locked up in a wire-screened tennis-court, where he barks all day and nearly all night. He can watch the motors on the coast road from one corner of his cage, and that seems to drive him almost wild. He ought to realize ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... report made this particular recommendation is an interesting question. With federal, state, and municipal authorities in existence, with courts, district attorneys, police all operating, they create another arm of prosecution. Possibly they were somewhat disillusioned about the present instruments of the taboo; perhaps they imagined that a new broom would sweep clean. But I suspect an inner reason. The Commission may have imagined that the four appointees—unpaid—would be four men like themselves—who knows, perhaps ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... cordially come in, and I need not say he is one of the first [men] in the State, for his character is known." This quotation is made from a letter of General Samuel Fessenden, of Portland, Me., to Mr. Garrison, dated December 14, 1832. Among the remarkable minds which the "Thoughts" disillusioned in respect of the character and tendency of the Colonization Society were Theodore D. Weld, Elizur Wright, and Beriah Green, N.P. Rogers, William Goodell, Joshua Leavitt, Amos A. Phelps, Lewis Tappan, and James ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the unknown Buonaparte. It was a beautiful dream! There are nine inns in a single day's journey between Milan and Mantua, and I wrote a letter to my wife from each of them. Nine letters in a day—but one becomes disillusioned, monsieur. One learns to ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at an alarming rate. The presence of all such people (they can not be called students) in various classes is a drag, and the wheels of the institution are clogged. These people themselves are soon disillusioned but ashamed to quit; the home people are dissatisfied with results; the university is unjustly blamed for not developing them into leaders—there is trouble all around. I am not speaking of our own institution alone; others are experiencing the same ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... annihilating surprise over the enemy as afterward was attained in the first battle of Cambrai; and the troops who had been buoyed up with the hope that at last the machine—gun evil was going to be scotched were disillusioned and dejected when they saw tanks ditched behind the lines or nowhere in sight when once again they had to trudge forward under the flail of machine-gun bullets from earthwork redoubts. It was a failure in generalship to give away our secret before ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... ROCHEFOUCAULD, Prince de Marsillac, was born in 1613, of one of the greatest families of France. His life is divided into two periods—one of passionate activity, when with romantic ardour he threw himself into the struggles of the Fronde, only to be foiled and disillusioned; and the other of bitter reflection, consoled by certain social successes, loyal friendships, and an unique literary distinction. His Maximes are the brief confession of his experience of life, an ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... of an Obermann. That prototype of all the disillusioned had to cut himself adrift from the society of the eagles on the Dent du Midi, to go and hang like any other ridiculous mortal on the Paris law-courts. Langham, whether he liked it or no, had to face the parsonic breakfast and the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that this cynicism and this bitterness came out of the hurt to the vanity that still insisted everything was a mistake. He'd received orders which disillusioned him about his importance to the firm and to the business to which he'd given years of his life. It hurt to find out that he was just another man, just another expendable. Most people fought against making the discovery, and some succeeded in avoiding it. But Cochrane ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... separation came, however, she was sufficiently disillusioned to make the actual parting without pain. When Imlay saw she would no longer consent to be his wife, he proposed to provide for her, but she declined the offer, fearing it would give him some claim upon her and upon their child. And so Gilbert Imlay sailed away to America and out of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... restricted home life of her past; the perpetual presence of the restless sea was a relief to the old monotony of the wheat field and its isolated drudgery. For Mary's youthful fancy, thinly sustained in childhood by the lightest literary food, had neither been stimulated nor disillusioned by her marriage. That practical experience which is usually the end of girlish romance had left her still a child in sentiment. The long absences of her husband in his fishing-boat kept her from wearying of or even knowing his older and unequal companionship; ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... much like going out for a night on the town. Instead, both agents climbed wearily into bed thinking morose and disillusioned thoughts. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Chinamen; the first half-a-dozen rounds were so true that the unseen watchers had no suspicion they were in dangerous quarters, or that it was possible that even the Duke's marksmen were fallible; the seventh round disillusioned them, for, from a slight fault in the elevation, the shot over-reached the target and pitched so close to the Chinamen that stones and rubbish came rattling down from everywhere about their ears; fear lent ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... set, like a garden, And the lights are flickering and low; And a Romeo with fat legs, Is telling a Juliet with dyed hair and tired, disillusioned eyes, That love—real love—is the only thing in ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... confirmation, that is, reinforcement or guidance, at all events, companionship. That Frederick von Kammacher's new intellectual companion was Max Stirner, was the result of a profound disillusionment. He had been disillusioned in his deep-seated altruism, which until now ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... is, has certainly never done anything worth speaking about." The Infirmarian, who had also overheard the remark, turned to Therese and said: "If you relied upon the opinion of creatures you would indeed be disillusioned today." "The opinion of creatures!" she replied; "happily God has given me the grace to be absolutely indifferent to that. Let me tell you something which showed me, once and for all, how much it is worth. A few days after ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... he commanded sternly. "Go home!" He started toward the dog with a well-feigned gesture of menace. Dunder, with a low howl, put his tail between his legs and loped off home, a disillusioned dog. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... plague me with unprofitable questions? What concern is it of ours how Messer del' Orca shall vent his wrath when he is disillusioned. Your duty now is to rejoin your mistress. Ride hard for Cagli. Seek her at the sign of 'The Full Moon,' and then away for Pesaro. If you are brisk you will gain the shelter of the Lord Giovanni Sforza's fortress long before Messer del' Orca again picks up the scent, if, indeed, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... haven't seen him kiss his sweetheart," Kay bantered the old man—and then blushed, in the guilty knowledge that her badinage had really been inspired by a sudden desire to learn whether Don Mike had a sweetheart or not. Pablo promptly and profanely disillusioned her. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... ignorant girl, their listener had been a grey- haired disillusioned man, he would have shaken his head, and perhaps remarked that they were a couple of foolish dreamers, that the light which inspired such splendid hopes was a light from the past—a dying twilight left in their souls by that sun of ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... music of the dawn From me had long since surged away; And in the disillusioned day Of ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed highly the intrepidity of that man, whom he valued but little, being disillusioned as to mankind in general, because of the particular instance in which his own manhood had failed. Having had to encounter singlehanded during his period of eclipse many physical dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous element common to them all: ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... hospitality and much kindness and it is always a pleasure to penetrate an unknown land, ride through great forests and see the new view open at the top of the pass. When the Belgrade police visaed my passport for the last time they bade me a friendly farewell. But I was severely disillusioned as to Great Serbia. Instead of brethren pining to be united, I had found a mass of dark intrigue—darker than I then knew—envy, hatred and all uncharitableness. No love was lost between Serb and Montenegrin. Alexander was to divorce his wife or go. "Something" would ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... plan for moving forward. The November elections were largely viewed as a referendum on the progress in Iraq. Arguments about continuing to provide security and assistance to Iraq will fall on deaf ears if Americans become disillusioned with the government that the United States invested so much to create. U.S. foreign policy cannot be successfully sustained without the broad ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... years ago, because he always proposed that tune at Sunday evening meetings, when the leader "called for hymns." I address him as Old Hundred still, though he is a learned lawyer in line for a judgeship. He was fretful, he said, because we were sure to be terribly disillusioned. But he is not a man accustomed in these later years to act on impulse, and the prospect of a night on a sleeping car, without pajamas, did not, I fancy, appeal to him, now that he faced it from the badly ventilated car aisle, instead of the club easy-chair. Yet perhaps he did ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... persuaded that he was the Messiah: "this conviction" (that a double miracle had been performed) "was the first to which the Apostles had to attain in the days of their humiliation after the Crucifixion." Yes—but how were they to attain to it, being now utterly broken down and disillusioned? Strauss admits that before they could have come to hold what he supposes them to have held, they must have seen in Christ even after his Crucifixion a prophet far greater than either Moses or Elias; whereas in point of fact it is very doubtful whether they ever ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... when you have granted the principles of any school, believe in the deductions from them, and take their consistency, false as it is, for a guarantee of truth. Then with some of you, hope travels through, and you die before you have seen the truth and detected your deceivers, while the rest, disillusioned too late, will not turn back for shame: what, confess at their years that they have been abused with toys all this time? so they hold on desperately, putting the best face upon it and making all the converts they can, to have the consolation of good ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... after the others, approached it, and seeing that it was occupied, he unhooked a lantern and stuck it under my nose to examine me more closely. Then he got undressed. As I watched him, I had no idea that he intended to get in beside me; but I was soon disillusioned, when he said to me roughly, "Shove over, conscript!" And got into the bed, taking up three-quarters of it, and began to snore loudly. I was unable to sleep a wink, largely because of the revolting odour ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... marked, scarcely a shot was fired either by day or night, and except for the last day their artillery gave few signs of life. As was proved time after time, the last thing desired by the weary and disillusioned Austrian was to provoke ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... as for the insatiability of the poet's love. If the poet's genius consists of his peculiar capacity for love, then in proportion as he outsoars the rest of humanity he will be saddened, if not disillusioned, by the half-hearted return of his love. Mrs. Browning ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... far the most "artistic" as he is the most disillusioned and ironical of Russian writers. With a tender poetical delicacy, almost worthy of Shakespeare, he sketches his appealing portraits of young girls. His style is clear—objective—winnowed and fastidious. He has certain charming old-fashioned ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... back on life, they can afford to see Man for what he really is—at his best a noble plaything for the gods. Yet they look forward, too, a little wistfully. They are of the world, after all, and nowise so tired of it, albeit disillusioned, as to have lost interest in the game or in the young who will carry it on. So Minos and his laws soon get left behind, and the talk (as so often befalls with Plato) is of the perfect citizen and how to train him—of education, in short; and so, as ever with Plato, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... with it a sort of lassitude in vital energy. One becomes blase, disillusioned, an old young man, past being diverted. How many young people are in this state! Upon them have been deposited, like a sort of mold, the traces of our decrepitude, our skepticism, our vices, and the bad habits they have contracted in our company. What reflections ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... spirit is not the fierce Nietzschean one whose glacial laughter is an iconoclastic battle-cry and whose freedom is a freedom achieved anew every day by a strenuous and desperate struggle. The real disillusioned spirit plays with illusions, puts them on and takes them off, lightly, gaily, indifferently, just as it happens, just as the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... by this cock-sure disillusioned, large person more delighted than by all the wisdom of Mr. Wilkins or the soothing of Mrs. Sessions. She felt that, except for Walter, it was the first time since she had come to New York that she had found an ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... There are enough sentimentality and emotion in her character to make it impossible for her to accept this manner of existence as ELFIE does. Hers is not a nature of careless candour, but of dreamy ideals and better living, warped, handicapped, disillusioned, and destroyed by a weakness that finds its principal force in vanity. WILL resumes his newspaper in a more attentive way. The girl looks at him and expresses in pantomime, by the slightest gesture or shrug ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... is; and mine shall never know peace. I have been disillusioned too soon. I should go mad in a convent. Did I not pass my youth in one,—to ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... moment when a genii should have pressed into his hand the book for disillusioned young men. But the book has not ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... youth, their bloom, their originality, their modesty. It thrusts the girls into a charnel house of sin, sickness, and death. It shatters the nervous system of nine out of ten, or it leaves them calm, steady, burnt-out women, who have been behind the scenes of life and are disillusioned. When that little pink and white thing sat there and told me of some of the awful situations that she'd been placed in, and over which she was made responsible, the tears rolled down my face. I forgave her lots ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... picture-palaces, some odds-and-ends. Those who affected theatres stuck firmly to Victor, and lured him on to talk about the idols of the stage. The dear boy might have told them things ... he might have disillusioned their golden heads about certain actor-managers of whom he has had intimate experience; but he didn't, and I rather liked him for it. While more recitations and more music went round, he told them heroic stories about their heroes. He told them strange stories and beautiful stories and funny ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... praises lavished on her simple verses over-seriously, and to have imagined herself in very truth a poet. She was more clear-sighted where the work of her fellow-scribes was concerned, and in a letter written about this time, she descants upon the dearth of good literature in a somewhat disillusioned vein. After expressing her desire that some mighty spirit would rise up and give an impulse to poetry, she continues: 'I am tired of Sir Walter Scott and his imitators, and I am sickened of Mrs. Hemans's luscious poetry, and all ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... begins, the knight who is about to become, illuminated or 'disillusioned' offers a prayer to the terrible goddess Durg[a], also one of the new, popular, and horrible forms of divine manifestation. In this hymn, VI. 23, Durg[a] (Um[a], P[a]rvat[i], K[a]li, etc.) is addressed as "leader ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... that I was to be disillusioned. That could not be. When first I saw McGraw she was a giantess to my eyes. The time was to come when I was to see her in a new light, to judge her from a new perspective, to realize the incongruity between her aspiration and accomplishment, to smile at her solemn adherence to ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... Shoreham. The cafe looked cheerful, as it always does. We ordered an extensive supper. It was good. There were pretty women in the room, but we looked at them with the austere eyes of disillusioned men, and talked cynically of life. I cannot recall any of the things we said, though I remember thinking at the time that both of us were being rather brilliant, in an icy way. I suppose it was mainly about women. That was to be expected. Women, indeed! What were ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... miserable mortal to be disillusioned by another miserable mortal?" Father Rowley demanded. "Our dear Lord when he was nailed to the cross said 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He did not say, 'I am fed up with these people I have come down from Heaven to save. I've had enough ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... mold will be hardened. So new truths, when they come, can but break it. Then men will feel distraught and disillusioned, and civilizations ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... was the change in Cherry. There was a certain hardening that impressed Alix at once. There was a weary sort of patience, a disillusioned concession to the drabness of married life. Alix, after meeting some of the other wives at the mine—there were but five or six—saw that Cherry had been affected by them. There was general sighing over the housework, a mild conviction that men were all selfish ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... of ice, through which project a few boulders and several carcases of mutton. The storeman rummages in the snow and discloses a pile of penguins, crusted hard together in a homogeneous lump. Dislodging a couple of penguins appears an easy proposition, but we are soon disillusioned. The storeman seizes the head of one bird, wrenches hard, and off it breaks as brittle as a stalactite. The same distracting thing happens to both legs, and the only remedy is to chip laboriously ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... to Chicago this last time I found Terry, as I have said, despondent and disillusioned; and intensely savage in his rejection, not only of capitalistic society, but apparently of all society. In a way, he had left his old moorings, the "proletariat" no longer appealed to him. This mood was not ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... advantage of a belief in the Almighty's personal interest," he answered, with a touch of irony: "whatever happens, one is not easily disillusioned." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... get rid of it; sorry we're not in the mirror industry; never thought of it before, but it ought to be profitable. Happier most of us, if mirrors never had been invented. Hope all our nice-natured clients will have the best kind of a time; forgive us for not answering letters; we are too disillusioned about ourself to make any resolutions to do better. We're going home now; on the way we'll think of a lot of nice things we might have said, write them down and use them to-morrow. Hope Dorothy Gish will get something nice in her stocking. Don't ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... other. If only I could find that green hill far away!' Of the songs of Theocritus, of the life of St. Francis, there is no more among the nations than there is of dew on grass in an east wind. If we ever thought otherwise, we are disillusioned now. Yet there is Peace again, and the souls of men fresh-murdered are not flying into our lungs with every breath ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... experienced in himself, in a shattered romance, in a disillusioned youth, when he was young like the lad somewhere in France. Lady Mary would see only broken conventions; but he saw immortal things, infinitely beyond conventions, awfully broken. He did not move. He remained like a ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... beforehand, about two thousand believers assembled to witness the ascension of their Elijah. By the prophet's instructions, the crowd knelt down and prayed while Elijah waved his arms frantically. Finally, with haggard mien, he flung himself down the hillside, and fell to the ground. The disillusioned spectators seized him and delivered him up to justice. He spent many years in prison, but in the end confessed ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... quietly malicious triumph. The result is that we become wary and cautious. The genuine ghost story, read by Ludovico to revive his fainting spirits when he is keeping vigil in the "haunted" chamber, is robbed of its effect because we half expect to be disillusioned ere the close. It is far more impressive if read as a separate story apart from its setting. The idea of explaining away what is apparently supernatural may have occurred to Mrs. Radcliffe after reading ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... absorbed by the flaxen-haired child of fiction? How deplorable that our mothers, the French infants may say, should have their unattained ideals in the nurseries of the imagination; how dismal that they should be perpetually disillusioned in the nurseries of fact! Is there then no sentiment for us? they may ask. Will not convention, which has been forced to restore the advantage to truth on so many other points, be compelled to yield on this point also, and reconcile our aunts ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... had been away for six months, had returned sobered and disillusioned about her family. She had found them kind and affable, had received many compliments on her beauty, which was really remarkable, but had not met with any encouragement in her desires for independence. She came home resolved not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... business was the chief function. It is generally admitted that in the early days thousands joined the order "for what there was in it;" believing that the organization furnished a means for abolishing the middlemen, and putting ready money into the pockets of the farmers. When these sordid souls were disillusioned, their enthusiasm went down to the zero of activity. They misunderstood, or interpreted too radically, a well-defined, conservative, legitimate purpose of the Grange to co-operate on business lines. The order ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield |
