"Dreary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had been driven by need, but as it was he would begin to yawn in ten or fifteen minutes, and then would put the book away. He went home to a noonday dinner rather early and came back in the afternoon, feeling sleepy and bored. Now the office, and indeed the whole town, seemed a dreary place to him. At this season of the year there were often high winds which mantled the town in a yellow cloud of sand, and rattled at every loose shutter and door with futile dreary persistence. Ramon would ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... in the resurrection world, while the believer only enjoys them in this state of being through faith, which baptizes him into the spirit of Christ. But if there be no resurrection, and nought is presented to our anticipation but the dreary prospect of a beamless eternity, then "preaching is vain," "faith is also vain," "christians are yet in their sins," "and they that are fallen asleep ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... on the floor, unconscious that she still knelt; seeing only the suffering woman in that dreary attic across the river, where sunken feverish eyes watched for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... cold in Naples, high up in the city, when the northeast wind comes screaming from the snowy Abruzzi, and when Vesuvius is clad in white almost to the lower villages. In Naples it is sometimes dreary when the water-laden southwest sends up its mountains of black clouds. But somehow in soft Posilippo the wind is tempered and the rain seems but a shower, and spring and summer, summer and spring, ever join hands amongst the ilexes ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... naturally to the heaven of the blessed.... We were then conducted through a long row of very low rooms ornamented with a variety of Buddhist statues that have never been dusted nor apparently disturbed, to an open terrace which overlooked a dreary waste of gray rocks and broken ledges and offered to our view the slender roadway that lay like a ribbon across the plain until it faded into the golden glow of the Eastern horizon.... When I looked at that single road, and ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... shore. Here, too, came oftener than elsewhere a flock of lories, making the dark low trees gay with flying living blossoms. And here she would lie with her feet towards the east, her sightless eyes towards that dreary ocean which ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... trumpet sounds. The fatal charge, and shouts proclaim the onset. Destruction rushes dreadful to the field And bathes itself in blood: havoc let loose, Now undistinguish'd, rages all around; While Ruin, seated on her dreary throne, Sees the plain strewed with subjects, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... himself delighted, and shook hands with Babington with a fervour which seemed to imply that until he had met him life had been a dreary blank, but that now he could begin to enjoy himself again. 'I should like to join you, if you don't mind including a friend of mine in the party,' said Richards. 'He was to meet me here. By the way, he's the author of that new piece—The ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... salt-bush plains and low monotonous scrub oppressed her when she wandered abroad. There was not one picturesque patch on the whole dreary run." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... before the dawn on their three diverging ways, and they were wailing their departure through the town that travellers might hear, in whatever place they lay sleeping. "Boo-wie! All aboa-rd!" came from somewhere, dreary and wavering, met at farther distance by the floating antiphonal, "Aboa-rd, aboa-rd for Grant!" and in the chill black air my driver lifted his portion of the strain, chanting, "Car-los! Car-los!" One last time he circled in the nearer darkness ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... ceased. Through the gray dimness the men and women, boys and girls, on the way to the factories and shops for the day's work, were streaming past in funereal procession. Some of the young ones were lively. But the mass was sullen and dreary. Bodies wrecked or rapidly wrecking by ignorance of hygiene, by the foul air and foul food of the tenements, by the monotonous toil of factory and shop—mindless toil—toil that took away mind and put in its place a distaste for all improvement—toil ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... time of Lady de Courcy's visit to town, and Alexandrina moved herself off to Portman Square. There was some apparent comfort in this to Crosbie, for he would thereby be saved from those daily dreary journeys up to the north-west. I may say that he positively hated that windy corner near the church, round which he had to walk in getting to the Gazebee residence, and that he hated the lamp which guided him to the door, and the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... replied the Queen; "but as you numbered up the lakes and rivers of my kingdom, imagination cheated me, as it will do, and snatched me from these dreary walls away to the romantic streams of Nithsdale, and the royal towers of Lochmaben.—O land, which my fathers have so long ruled! of the pleasures which you extend so freely, your Queen is now deprived, and the poorest beggar, who may wander free from one landward town ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... with a dreary night between, hour after hour passed heavily, wearily by. And there, at the door of her desolate home, still sat the widowed mother, waiting and watching, her eyes turned ever toward the perilous north—waiting and watching as only those can wait and watch whose hearts are telling them that any ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... everything badly, for just as they learn how, they progress to something new. It would be infinitely easier for us to follow Mrs. Lippett's immoral custom of keeping each child sentenced for life to a well-learned routine; but when the temptation assails me, I recall the dreary picture of Florence Henty, who polished the brass doorknobs of this institution for seven years—and I sternly shove ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... dusty-black dress and an old poke-bonnet; by her side, some gin-faced creature of the town, all blousy and draggled; a hollow-eyed foreigner, far gone in consumption; a bronzed young navvy, asleep, with his muddy boots jutting straight out; a bearded, dreary being, chin on chest; and more consumptives, and more vagabonds, and more people dead-tired, speechless, and staring before them from that crescent-shaped haven where there is no draught at their backs, and the sun occasionally shines. And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pall in the middle of the aisle—the cure in a black satin vestment; all the congregation in black. I went out before the end of the service. All the black draperies and the black kneeling figures and the funeral psalms were so inexpressibly sad and dreary. I was glad to get out into the sunshine and to the top of the hill, where the cemetery gates stood wide open and the sun was streaming down on all the green graves with their fresh flowers and plants. Soon we heard the sound of the chaunt, and the procession wound ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... been when we brought the schooner to an anchor off the harbour's mouth; there was a cold, dismal rain persistently falling, and the breeze, having freshened up considerably, was now sweeping over the sea with a dreary, wintry, moaning sound that distinctly accentuated the discomfort of our situation, while it had knocked up a sea that threatened to render our landing a work of very considerable difficulty and danger. ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... round him hung As of a dweller out of doors; In his whole figure and his mien A savage character was seen Of mountains and of dreary moors. 295 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... ridable gravel bring me to another village, and to four miles of horrible mud in getting through its fields and over its ditches. A raw wind is blowing, and squally gusts of snow come scudding across the dreary prospect—a prospect flanked on the north by cold, gray hills, and the face of nature generally furrowed with tell-tale lines of winter's partial dissolution. While trundling through this village, both myself and bicycle plastered to a well-nigh ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to Him the fruits of the vineyard, is to get the vineyard for their own, undisturbed. Christ's utmost retribution for obstinate blindness is to withdraw from our sight. All the woes that were yet to fall, in long, dreary succession on that nation, so long continued in its sin, so long continued in its misery, were hidden in that solemn departure of Christ from the henceforward empty temple. Let us fear lest our unfaithfulness meet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... shore between Ardrossan and Kilbride hill without the interchange of conversation. The wind came wild and gurly from the sea,—the waves broke heavily on the shore,—and the moon, swiftly wading the cloud, threw over the dreary scene a wandering and ghastly light. Often to the blast we were obligated to turn our backs, and, the rain being in our faces, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... to inherit a place in it; an awful thought, that there have been and now are servants employed in the conversion of sinners, and in building up the saints, who never did nor never will worship in that temple. Let us examine ourselves before we enter that dreary abode, to which we are hastening; 'for there is no work nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... be hardship and persecution, my Ermine—cold and hunger, nakedness, and peril and sword! This might be a somewhat dull and dreary life for thee, but were ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... officers of justice, was less intolerable than it is usually imagined to have been. 1. The confessors who were condemned to work in the mines were permitted by the humanity or the negligence of their keepers to build chapels, and freely to profess their religion in the midst of those dreary habitations. 2. The bishops were obliged to check and to censure the forward zeal of the Christians, who voluntarily threw themselves into the hands of the magistrates. Some of these were persons oppressed by poverty and debts, who blindly sought to terminate a miserable existence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... about three hours the Prince came upon a dreary-looking grey stone wall; this was the back of the building and did not attract him; but when he came upon the front of the house he found it even less inviting, for the old witch had surrounded her ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... to them by Lucy. It was only on Sundays that their dinner-table was graced by the male member of the family, and now he was driven away. "I am sorry that you are going to desert us, Frederic," said Lady Fawn. Lord Fawn muttered something as to absolute necessity, and went. The afternoon was very dreary at Fawn Court. Nothing was said on the subject; but there was still the feeling that Lucy had offended. At four o'clock on that Sunday afternoon Lord Fawn was closeted ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... What weary, dreary hours! I heard every one of them strike, as I lay tossing on the patent spring mattress, in that darkly shaded and sacredly secluded room, where I was wont to sleep the sleep of the sluggard, until I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a rather chilling picture of the Mounted Police surroundings at Fort Churchill where the weather indicator was for months hitting the bottom of the thermometer bulb, and where there was a general monotony in surroundings. He says, "The place is a dreary one, and there is nothing in the way of recreation for the men except reading and no place to go except the Hudson's Bay post and the English Church mission on a Sunday." This is a good tribute to the self-sacrifice of the missionary. Starnes goes on to say, "There was a gramophone, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... be said that he had a singular instinct for the underlying popular feeling, that he could scent it in the distance and in hiding; moreover, that he was always willing to run the chance of any consequences which might follow the performance of a clear duty. Still, as he looked over the dreary Northern field in those chill days of early March, he must have had a marvelous sensitiveness in order to perceive the generative heat and force in the depths beneath the cheerless surface and awaiting only the fullness of the near spring season ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... a car going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows of boarding—and rooming-houses. They alighted at a certain corner, walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to her account of the same intelligence: "I was told it all alone in a room full of people. If they had said the sun or the moon was gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in the creation than the words 'Byron is dead.'" Other letters of the same period, from London, are studded or disfigured by the incisive ill-natured sarcasms above referred to, or they relate to the work and prospects of the writer. Those that bear on the progress of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... to endure five, or it might be ten more years of profitless toil, ere he should gain a position which would make his talents available for more than the mere essentials of existence. Let those who have looked on so dreary a prospect—who have buckled on their armor for such a combat—judge of the grateful emotion with which he received the generous proposal of Mr. Cavendish. This proposal, while it gave him at once an opportunity for the exercise of his powers, secured to him for the first year one-fifth, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... you will. I hear everywhere of the splendid work you're doing. Don't think it flattery, but I do think we needed you here. What we have wanted is a message—something to lift us all up a little. It's so easy to see nothing but the dreary round, isn't it? And all the time the stars are shining.... At least that's ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... say," and Westcott, after one more glance, crept down the sand-heap and joined the waiting man below. Both stood intent and ready, revolvers drawn, listening. The heavy wheels grated in the sand, the driver whistling to while away the dreary pull and the horses breathing heavily. Moore pulled them up with a jerk, as two figures leaped into view, his whistle coming to ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... hull, and the Swiftwing was a hell of clanging noise and shuddering heat. Maintenance was working overtime, but the rest of the crew, with nothing to do, stood around in the recreation rooms, tried to play games, cursed the heat and the dreary dimness through the viewports, and twitched at the ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... decided to make an attempt to discover the sources of the Nile, his young wife determined to accompany him and share his dangers and hardships. On April 15, 1861, they started from Cairo, and after a twenty-six days' journey by boat they disembarked at Korosko, and plunged into the dreary desert. Their camels travelled at a rapid pace, but the heat was terrible, and Mrs. Baker was taken seriously ill before arriving at Berber. She was, however, sufficiently recovered to accompany her husband when he started off along the dry bed of the Atbara, and ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... was dying, the twilight was dreary, And eerie the face of the fast-falling night, But closing the shutters, we made ourselves cheery With gas-light and fire-light, and young ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and by magnifying the importance of that which now fell into her hands, she endeavoured to sustain herself under the secret misery which, for all her efforts, weighed no less upon her as time went on. It was a dreary make-believe. On the first night of solitude at Chelsea she shed bitter tears; and not only wept, but agonized in mute frenzy, the passions of her flesh torturing her until she thought of death as a refuge. Now she whispered the name of her lover with every word and phrase of endearment ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... by and by, not heavily, but a slow, dull, seeping fall that was inexpressibly dreary, and the thick, clammy darkness, shot with mists and vapors from the lake, rolled up to the very edge of the fires. Robert might have joined the sleepers, as he was detached from immediate duty, but his brain was still too much ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... two hands are together with the second hand "just past the forty-ninth second." This, then, is the time at which the watch must have stopped. Guy Boothby, in the opening sentence of his Across the World for a Wife, says, "It was a cold, dreary winter's afternoon, and by the time the hands of the clock on my mantelpiece joined forces and stood at twenty minutes past four, my chambers were well-nigh as dark as midnight." It is evident that the author here made a slip, for, as we have seen ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... helped to prolong the existence of the empire. In one respect, however, they must be pronounced a failure. They did not end the disputes about the succession. Only two years after the abdication of Diocletian there were six rival pretenders for the title of Augustus. Their dreary struggles continued, until at length two emperors were left—Constantine in the West, Licinius in the East. After a few years of joint rule another civil war made Constantine supreme. The Roman world again had ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... mind them; I remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don't care—I'm old, and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be with them, and in this house still.' The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness, that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing with her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were my wife and I ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... was in Chicago when Frohman bought the play, and he cabled her that she was to do the title part. She afterward declared that this news changed the dull, dreary, soggy day into one that was brilliant and dazzling. "To play Chantecler," she said, "is an honor ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... one of those vague thoughts that blew through her mind, as straws and dead leaves blow down a dreary street. But this straw caught, so to speak, and more straws gathered and heaped about it. The idea lodged, and another idea lodged with it: If, to get his child, he married Jacky's mother, Edith would never reach him! And if, by dying, Eleanor gave Maurice his child, he would always love her for ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... resorts and restaurants. He wanted to go out and spend those fifty francs that remained in his pocket. After all, why not telegraph to England for more money? "Oh, damn it!" he said savagely, and stretched his arms and got up. The Lounge was very small, gloomy and dreary. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... ever now, when left with the others, all so much less sympathizing, all saying sharp things of Philip, none to cling to her with those winsome ways that had been unnoted till the time when they were no more to console her, and she felt them to have been the only charm that had softened her late dreary desolation. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... continued campaign culminating in the adoption of a constitutional amendment in 1910 granting to women full political equality. This victory, so gratifying to the women of Washington, had also an important national aspect, as it marked the end of the dreary period of fourteen years following the Utah and Idaho amendments in 1895-6, during which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Scrope, in his interesting account of the geology of Central France, "are called 'causses' in the provincial dialect, and they have a singularly dreary and desert aspect from the monotony of their form and their barren and rocky character. The valleys which separate them are rarely of considerable width. Winding, narrow, and all but impassable cliff-like glens predominate, giving to the Cevennes that peculiarly intricate character which enabled ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... log upon the water. Six hours of weary work with the sweeps passed before the enemy came near enough to hail. The usual questions and answers were followed by the roar of the cannon, and the action began. The prospects for the "Alliance" were dreary indeed; for the enemy took positions on the quarters of the helpless ship, and were able to pour in broadsides, while she could respond only with a few of her aftermost guns. But, though the case looked hopeless, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... plaint of the wind on the moor, Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day, And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour, And the sound of the surge as it breaks on the beach of ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... train up the valley on his daily tour of inspection. He left behind him a new-fledged hero in the person of Jabez Rockwell, whose bold tactics had won him a powder-horn and given his comrades the rarest hour of the dreary winter ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... re-found friend, and Hardy showed more than his old anxiety to meet him half-way. His ready and undisguised sympathy soon dispersed the remaining clouds which were still hanging between them; and Tom found it almost a pleasure, instead of a dreary task, as he had anticipated, to make a full confession, and state the case clearly and strongly against himself to one who claimed neither by word nor look the least superiority over him, and never seemed to remember ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... on the right to rule, freemen will protect their lives and their liberties.—And is not the peace and tranquility of the State of importance? We have been told with more truth than sincerity that "life itself is a dreary thing" without "harmony in social intercourse." Happy would it have been if the author of that just and pertinent remark had not contributed more than any other man in the United States to embitter parties, and to render life indeed a ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... a solace for any man, after receiving such an unmistakable rebuff as he had just received from Maria Edgham. He had no conception of the girl plodding through the snow to her daily task. He did not dream that she saw, instead of the snowy road before, a long stretch of dreary future, brought about by that very rebuff. But she was quite merciless with herself. She would not yield for a moment to regrets. She accepted that stretch of dreary future with a defiant acquiescence. She bowed pleasantly to the acquaintances whom she met. They were not many that morning, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and had a cemetery half a mile off, so that people had to go in carriages. Mr. White had made himself responsible for expenses, and thus things were not so utterly dreary as poverty might have made them. It was a dreary, gusty March day, with driving rushes of rain, which had played wildly with Gillian's waterproof while she was getting such blossoms and evergreen leaves ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nostril spread, Snorts and scarcely seems to ruffle Fern leaves with his tread; Cool and pleasant on his haunches Blows the evening breeze, Through the overhanging branches Of the wattle trees: Onward! to the Southern Ocean, Glides the breath of Spring. Onward! with a dreary motion, I, too, glide and sing— Forward! forward! still we wander— Tinted hills that lie In the red horizon yonder— Is the goal ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... before Willa had fought resolutely against the vague memories which seemed to assail her at every turn, fearing the snare of mental suggestion, but now she strove wistfully to foster a sense of nearness and familiarity with the dreary scene. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... of Arran. The view on the right hand is limited to the foot of a range of abrupt mean hills, and on the left it meets the sea—as we were obliged to keep the glasses up, our drive for several miles was objectless and dreary. When we had ascended a hill, leaving Kilbride on the left, we passed under the walls of an ancient tower. What delightful ideas are associated with the sight of such venerable ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... incense, and salt, and wine—that the masterpieces of literature are more beautiful and memorable and delectable in themselves than fertile in results. They catch up the sum of their own possibilities, and utter it in such a fashion that there is no more to say in that fashion. The dreary imitation Iliads, the impossible sham Divina Commedias, the Sheridan-Knowles Shakespearian plays, rise up and terrify or bore us. Whereas these second-rate experimenters, these adventurers in quest of what ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... well-remembered gate; No need to knock; The easy lock Turned almost of itself, and so My spirit was "at home" once more. And then, within, how good to find The same cool atmosphere of peace, Where I, a tired child, might cease To grieve, or dread, Or toil for bread. I could forget The dreary fret. The strivings after hopes too high, I let them every one go by. The ills of life, the blows unkind, These ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... roaring suburbs with their out-going manufactures and their incoming wealth, and I live in the queer health-giving old city of the past. The wave of fashion has long passed over it, but a deposit of dreary respectability has been left behind. In the High Street you can see the long iron extinguishers upon the railings where the link-boys used to put out their torches, instead of stamping upon them or slapping them on the pavement, as was the custom in less high-toned ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... uniformity and directness were ploughed through Paris in all directions. "Nothing is more brutal than a straight line," says Victor Hugo, and there is little of interest in the monotonous miles of dreary coincidence which constitute the architectural legacy of the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... he said in a dazed, dreary sort of way, 'I'll see, but I want to play the last card I have in my hand before I go. It's ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... and woe; Loftiest aims by earth defiled, Gleams of wisdom sin-beguiled, Sated power's tyrannic mood, Counsels shared with men of blood, Sad success, parental tears, And a dreary ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Cape Horn in a full-rigged ship from New York to California. At the latter place I visited the scenes of "Two Years Before the Mast.'' At the old town of San Diego I met Jack Stewart, my father's old shipmate, and as we were looking at the dreary landscape and the forlorn adobe houses and talking of California of the thirties, he burst out into an encomium of the accuracy and fidelity to details of my father's book. He said, "I have read it again ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... impregnable fortress of Nora, on the borders of Cappadocia and Lycaonia, with five hundred horse and two hundred foot soldiers, and dismissed from thence with kind speeches and embraces, all of his friends who wished to leave the fortress, dismayed by the prospect of the dreary imprisonment which awaited them during a long siege in such a place. Antigonus when he arrived summoned Eumenes to a conference before beginning the siege, to which he answered, that Antigonus had many friends and officers, while he had none remaining with him, so that unless ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... rose and pulled up the blind and looked out. It was a dreary prospect. The rain had turned to sleet, and the wind was growing fast to a gale. The trees round the house creaked and ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... chief is landed on the Latian shore, Whatever ships escape the raging storms, At my command shall change their fading forms To nymphs divine, and plow the wat'ry way, Like Dotis and the daughters of the sea." To seal his sacred vow, by Styx he swore, The lake of liquid pitch, the dreary shore, And Phlegethon's innavigable flood, And the black regions of his brother god. He said; and shook the skies with his ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... a silence in the Hall of Dreams, where I was listening to the story of the other wise man. And through this silence I saw, but very dimly, his figure passing over the dreary undulations of the desert, high upon the back of his camel, rocking steadily onward like a ship over ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... a cold and dreary winter the awful carnage continued, with success so equally balanced that there was no prospect of any termination to this most awful of national calamities. Early in March, 1590, the armies of Henry IV. and of the Duke of Mayenne began to congregate in the ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... those months of spring and summer very dreary. She disliked the ways of Ansdore; she met no one but common and vulgar people, who took it for granted that she was just one of themselves. Of course she had lived through more or less the same experiences during her holidays, but then the contact ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to the fact that they were no longer lying motionless in the dreary yards, he leaped to his feet with a startled shout of alarm. Loraine sat up, blinking her eyes in half-conscious wonder. It was broad daylight, of course; the train was rattling through the long cut just below the city walls. With frantic energy he pulled open the door. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... relations of the locust, considering that 'the acacia, not less valued for its airy foliage and elegant blossoms than for its hard and durable wood; the braziletto, logwood and rosewoods of commerce; the laburnum; the furze and the broom, both the pride of the otherwise dreary heaths of Europe; the bean, the pea, the vetch, the clover, the trefoil, the lucerne—all staple articles of culture by the farmer—are so many species of Leguminosae, and that the gums Arabic and Senegal, kino and various ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... thus all day he idly went From dreary place to place, The saddest gloom of discontent For ever on his face; And when the stars began to peep, And night its shadows threw, He murmured in his restless sleep: 'I don't know what ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... violet in its mossy bed by the correspondent at Round Corners—these are the advance signs of the burgeoning season that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer sees nothing but winter upon his dreary fields. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... difficulty analogous to that which is supposed to beset the performance of the part of Juliet; it is rather nicely put in the title of one of Beranger's poems—and also of a rather dreary, once popular, novel, "Si Jeunesse Savait, si Vieillesse Pouvait." In youth one has intense sympathy with the lost causes, or, rather, with those that have not yet been found, and superb contempt for ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... judging the other insensible to the call of highest rectitude, neither of them knew how much his or her heart was confident of the other's integrity. In respect of them, the lovely simile, in Christabel, of the parted cliffs, may be carried a little farther, for, under the dreary sea flowing between them, the rock was one still. Such a faith may sometimes, perhaps often does, lie in the heart like a seed buried beyond the reach of the sun, thoroughly alive though giving no sign: to grow too soon might be to die. Things had indeed gone farther with Dorothy ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... our time, we put our fishing lines overboard, in sixty fathoms water, but without any success. As this was the only amusement our circumstances admitted, the disappointment was always very sensibly felt, and made us look back with regret to the cod-banks of the dreary regions we had left, which had supplied us with so many wholesome meals, and, by the diversion they afforded, had given a variety to the wearisome succession of gales and calms, and the tedious repetition of the same nautical observations. At two in the afternoon, the breeze freshened from the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... unsatisfactory, even sad and dreary, in this prospect of incessant migration. Must not the pilgrim pine and tire for a goal of rest? Exhausted with wanderings, sated with experiments, will he not pray for the exempted lot of a contented fruition in repose? One must ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the first leaf. The other was connected with the name on the despatch-box. Why did it haunt her? It had produced a kind of indistinguishable echo in the brain, to which she could put no words—which was none the less dreary; like a voice of wailing from a ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Watchman, and five passengers, who had left Mobile on the 31st ultimo. They had been detained here two days, living in a log-house; their only amusement watching the ducks and snipe whirling in search of fresh feeding-ground over the dreary waters of Lac Pontchartrain. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... they are pointed out," she replied, "by one who has the eye and ear for nature, these are the hardest to appreciate. Only the other evening I was standing upon the cliffs, and I thought what a dreary waste of marshes and sands the place was, and then a single gleam of late sunshine seemed to transform everything. There is hidden colour everywhere if one looks closely enough, and I suppose it is true that the most beautiful things in the world are those which remain ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... notion of a rattling journey to London, and a day or two of sport there. He promised that his pistols were good, and that he would hand the diamonds over in safety to the banker's strong-room. Would he occupy his aunt's London house? No, that would be a dreary lodging with only a housemaid and a groom in charge of it. He would go to the Star and Garter in Pall Mall, or to an inn in Covent Garden. "Ah! I have often talked over that journey," said Harry, his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Did I tell this, who would believe me?' said Isabel, as she went towards the dreary prison where her brother was confined. When she arrived there, her brother was in pious conversation with the duke, who in his friar's habit had also visited Juliet, and brought both these guilty ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... which we had not time to read yesterday, and our home news from the cold North-West. Two letters are from "The Grey City," both from authors, one with a word picture of that most dreary sight, our empty High Street on a Sunday morning, the poor people in their dens and the better class in St Giles; the other tells us that the "Boyhood of R. L. S." does well, as of course we knew it would; so ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... always governed by a sense of gratefulness. There are women whose hearts are like the grape, and give out their best juices to him who tramples on them. If anything is certain in all the coarse and dreary story of that Court, it is that Queen Caroline adored her husband—that she was too fond of her ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... was now almost insufferable—all nature seemed sinking under it. The distant country presented to the eye a dreary expanse of sand, with a few stunted trees and prickly bushes, in the shade of which the hungry cattle licked up the withered grass, while the camels and goats picked off the scanty foliage. The scarcity of water was greater here than ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... the best comic work of such ready writers as Middleton and Dekker. The dialogue has sometimes touches of real humor and flashes of genuine wit: but its readable and enjoyable quality is generally independent of these. Very witty writing may be very dreary reading, for want of natural animation and true dramatic movement: and in these qualities at least the rough-and-ready work of our old dramatists ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even at this day those enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the poet are forced to perform the latter part of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from any high road, on a dreary plain which, in wet weather, is often a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting car to pieces; and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most strongly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... found no trace of you, I think that even you would admit that I suffered enough for my madness and folly; and since I have been sick, memory has given me many a weary hour and adds many a thrust to wounds that are almost unbearable. It is hard to give up all hope and face the dreary future without you, for you have robbed my life of all happiness. If I must be sent hopeless away, tell me, at least, that the unfortunate past is forgiven; it would make ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... Peachy did not shriek these words with maniacal despair. She did not whisper them with dreary resignation. She breathed them with the rapture of one who looks through a narrow, dark tunnel to measureless reaches ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... against the windows. It was a lonesome sound to a little girl so far from her mother and father, and Faith was already thinking to herself that this big house, with its shining yellow floors, its white window curtains, and its nearness to a well-traveled road, was a very dreary place compared to her cabin home, when her chamber door opened and in came her Aunt Prissy, smiling and happy as if a rainy day was just what she ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... it." Polly's heart leaped guiltily. Oh! how could she think of holidays and good times, while this poor little girl, but fifteen, had only a dreary sense of boarding-school life to mean home to her. "And oh! I do think," Polly hastened to say, and she clasped her hands as Phronsie would have done, "it has made all the difference in the world to her. And she does just lovely—so much better, I mean, than other girls would in her place. I ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... were then, as now, a rolling range of dreary moors, unbroken by tor or tree, or anything save few and far between a world-old furze-bank which marked the common rights of some distant cattle farm, and crossed then, not as now, by a decent road, but by a rough confused track-way, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... It was in the dreary month of fog, misanthropy, and suicide—the month during which Heaven receives a scantier tribute of gratitude from discontented man—during which the sun rises, but shines not—gives forth an unwilling light, but glads us not with his cheerful rays—during which large ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... however perversely, the circumstance that kept him on the spot. Just there, he might have been feeling, just there he could best take his note. This observation was certainly by itself meagre amusement for a dreary little crisis; but his walk to and fro, and in particular his repeated pause at one of the high front windows, gave each of the ebbing minutes, none the less, after a time, a little more of the quality ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... three worlds, the physical, the psychic and the heavenworld; therefore his hair (aura) shows the three colours. He has the sevenfold vision also, indicated by the seven pupils in his eyes. Volumes of unutterably dreary research, full of a false learning, have been written about these legends. Some try to show that much of the imagery arose from observation of the heavenly bodies and the procession of the seasons. But who of the old bards would have described ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... I don't mind them; I remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don't care—I'm old and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be with them, and in this house still.' The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing with her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were my wife and I to get ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... may be called the spiritual character of the spot. If indifferent to those associations, we should see only hedgerows and ploughed land in the battle-field of Bannockburn; and the traveller would but look on a dreary waste, whether he stood amidst the piles of the Druid on Salisbury plain, or trod his bewildered way over the broad expanse on which the Chaldaean first learned to ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Prince Albert in 1851, and the Advance with Kane, in 1853, were kept prisoners by the ice for several weeks. The odd form of the Devil's Thumb, the dreary deserts in its vicinity, the vast circus of icebergs—some of them more than three hundred feet high—the cracking of the ice, reproduced by the echo in so sinister a manner, rendered the position of the Forward horribly dreary. Shandon understood the ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... very dark and dreary, but it now wore an air of brightness and freshness, thanks to the London upholsterers and decorators into whose hands ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... dreary plain over which he has been so long toiling, to Hamersley the valley appears a paradise—worthy home of the Peri who is conducting him down to it. It resembles a landscape painted upon the concave sides of an immense oval-shaped dish, with the cloudless ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... and flower, and all the revel of, the year, with which he ushers in the lady of his heart. It is this scene, in particular, which throws all the magic of romance about the old castle keep. He had risen, he says, at daybreak, according to custom, to escape from the dreary meditations of a sleepless pillow. "Bewailing in his chamber thus alone," despairing of all joy and remedy, "for, tired of thought, and woe-begone," he had wandered to the window to indulge the captive's miserable solace, of gazing wistfully upon the world from ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... was as dreary as possible. A lieutenant of the navy, the rector of the Episcopal Church at Stillwater, and a society swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had swallowed a couple of his buttons, and found the bullion rather indigestible; the rector was a pensive ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... which the town afforded. When the army went into winter quarters abroad, those of the officers who had interest or money easily got leave of absence, and found it much pleasanter to spend their time in Pall Mall and Hyde Park, than to pass the winter away behind the fortifications of the dreary old Flanders towns, where the English troops were gathered. Yachts and packets passed daily between the Dutch and Flemish ports and Harwich; the roads thence to London and the great inns were crowded with army gentlemen; the taverns ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... appearance of silver. These holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to drive them hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden ledge where the silver was. Some day! It seemed far enough away, and very hopeless and dreary. Day after day we toiled, and climbed and searched, and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of the promiseless toil. At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rock which projected from the earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou broke off some fragments ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... dreary night wore away; and, when the dreary morning dawned, they destroyed the artillery and the military stores, preparatory to their setting forth on their retreat. As all the horses had been killed or lost the day before, they had no ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... the long dreary weeks that followed I was glad that I had had that dinner at sunset and moonrise with him down in the cove at the spring that was away from all the world. All during the days that never seemed to end, as I went upon my round of duties, I put the ache of the memories ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... all be as it was," he went inspiredly on. "There was a thick clump of hedge, cold and dreary in the mist, that awoke pictures of a prison I used to dread the sight of when I was—I don't know how old. Once I partly thought I must be dreaming; so I put out my hand and touched the wet, sodden picket of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dreary still, however, with its smoke-stained ceiling and paper discolored by dampness and three chairs and dilapidated bureau, whose greasy surface no dusting could clean. Then while she washed herself and arranged her hair before the small mirror, he ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the Orangemen, when I saw them, were busy in the barn with a so-called "Tiny" threshing-machine, threshing Mr. Boycott's oats with all the seriousness and solemn purpose befitting their task. Nothing could have been more dreary and wretched than the entire proceedings. Mr. Boycott himself had discarded his martial array of yesterday, and appeared in a herdsman's overcoat of venerable age, and, as he grasped a crook instead of a double-barrelled gun, looked every inch a patriarch. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... an area of 7115 sq. m., and lies at an altitude of 900 ft. It has the shape of a broad crescent, about 430 m. long from W.S.W. to E.N.E., having its concave side turned southwards; its width varies from 36 to 53 m. Its north-western shore is bordered by a dreary plateau, known as the Famine Steppe (Bek-pak-dala). The south-east shore, on the contrary, is low, and bears traces of having extended formerly as far as the Sasyk-kul and the Ala-kul. The Kirghiz in 1903 declared that its surface had been rising steadily during the preceding ten years, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... purple clusters. From his pipe the smoke ascending Filled the sky with haze and vapor, Filled the air with dreamy softness, Gave a twinkle to the water. 240 Touched the rugged hills with smoothness, Brought the tender Indian Summer To the melancholy North-land, In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes. Listless, careless Shawondasee! 245 In his life he had one shadow, In his heart one sorrow had he. Once, as he was gazing northward, Far away upon a prairie He beheld a maiden standing, 250 Saw a tall and ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... steep mountains, where he frightened the eagles in their eyries; away down the clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble; away through the dark pine-forests, where the hungry wolves are howling; away over the dreary wolds, where the wild wind walks alone; away through the splashing quagmires, where the will-o'-the wisp slunk frightened among the reeds; away through light and darkness, storm and sunshine; away by tower and town, highroad and hamlet.... Brave horse! gallant steed! snorting ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... passing the night in the fields; and, for my part, I live in terror of starvation. I should think it was a man's mission to think twice about his wife. But it appears not. Nothing is their mission but to play the fool. Oh!" she broke out, "is it not something dreary to think of that man of mine? If he could only do it, who would care? But no - not he - ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exhausted; England had reached the zenith of her endeavour; Italy was not united in purpose. On every front he saw a black cloud rising and took a dyspeptic's delight in describing it as a little blacker than he saw it. There was an apostolic zeal about the man's dreary earnestness. He spoke with that air of authority which is not uncommon with civilian Government officials. The Americans stared rather than listened; this was not the mystic and utter courage which they had expected to find well-nigh incredible. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... than one awl, one Kniting pin, a half an ounce of vermillion, two nedles, a few scanes of thead and about a yard of ribbon; a slender stock indeed with which to lay in a store of provision for that dreary wilderness. we would make the men collect these roots themselves but there are several speceis of hemlock which are so much like the cows that it is difficult to discriminate them from the cows and we are affraid that they might poison themselves. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... entire type of human beings, a race of men who seem to have accomplished the work assigned them, and who die rather than abandon their native instincts and habits of thought and life. The fortunate possessor of the 'Old Hunting Grounds,' when shut up within the confined streets and dreary walls of a city, need only lift his eyes to the picture to dream dreams of the freshness and freedom of the wild woods, of the scented breeze snuffed by the browsing deer, of the rocking branches glimmering gold and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the period, two generations, one might compare it with the "jubilee" of ancient Israel—a word made familiar toward the close of Queen Victoria's reign. The great event always took place at midwinter, the most dreary period of the year, and when the five intercalary days arrived they "abandoned themselves to despair," breaking up the images of the gods, allowing the holy fires of the temples to go out, lighting none in their homes, destroying their furniture and domestic utensils, and tearing their clothes ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... "that He made the way rough, that He might help me over it; He made the waters deep, that He might carry me through them; He caused the rain to fall heavily, that I might run to Him for shelter; He made 'mine earthly house of this tabernacle' dreary and cold, that I might find the rest, and light, and warmth of His home above so much the sweeter. Yea, He made me friendless, that I might seek and find in Jesu Christ the one Friend who would never forsake me, the one love ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... that you like me—a little. Oh Fred, if you were to go and never to come back I should die. Do you remember Mariana? 'My life is dreary. He cometh not,' she said. She said, 'I am aweary, aweary; I would that I were dead!' Do you remember that? What has mother been saying ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... in, and the free air and smell of the sea, kept my spirits lively; but when I was once in the bush and began to climb the path I took it easier. The fearsomeness of the wood had been a good bit rubbed off for me by Master Case’s banjo-strings and graven images, yet I thought it was a dreary walk, and guessed, when the disciples went up there, they must be badly scared. The light of the lantern, striking among all these trunks and forked branches and twisted rope-ends of lianas, made the whole place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of turning ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three days I wrote forenoon and fagged afternoon. Kept up the ball indifferent well, but began to tire on the third, and suspected that I was flat—a dreary suspicion, not easily chased away when ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... master at Ferney, as well as shot a bolt at his ecclesiastical foes in Paris, by urging the people of Geneva to shake off irrational prejudices and straightway to set up a playhouse. Rousseau had long been brooding over certain private grievances of his own against Diderot; the dreary story has been told by me before, and happily need not be repeated.[146] He took the occasion of D'Alembert's mischievous suggestion to his native Geneva, not merely to denounce the drama with all the force and eloquence at his command, but formally to declare ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... their deep blue tint of reflected sky, and liquid sapphire! The gardens were becoming deserted as the loungers dropped off homeward one by one, and still the handsome young fellow sat moodily gazing down into the rushing waters of the arrowy Rhone, as if he fain would cast the dark burden of his dreary thoughts far away from him down into those darkling waters. But thirty-two years of age, Alan Hawke had already outlived all his wild boyish romances. The thrill with which he had first set foot upon the land of Clive ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... gently stroked the gleaming hair. But he did not look at her. He gazed out at the garden, which grew dark and dreary in the gathering gloom. His lips were tight set and his face pale ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... softened air, a fertile soil, and the Southern Cross above their heads; but to be solitary in a prolonged winter, to be alone with the Northern Lights,—this offered peculiar terrors. To be ice-bound, to hear the wolves in their long and dreary howl, to protect the very graves of her beloved from being dug up, to watch the floating icebergs, not knowing what new and savage visitor might be borne by them to the island, what a complication of ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Frank. "I am going; and I am going to do my duty, whatever it is. For a few minutes after I came to bed, thinking of what you had said, and of leaving you, and of"—here he choked—"I was almost sorry I had said a word about going; it looked so dreary and sad to me. But I said my prayers, and now I feel better about it. I don't think any thing can ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... Age after age the Moriche apples floated down the stream, settling themselves on every damp spot not yet occupied by the richer vegetation of the forests, and ennobled, with their solitary grandeur, what without them would have been a dreary waste of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... colouring—is gone through mainly with a view to the colouring; and if leave can be got to colour a book of prints, how great is the favour! Now, ridiculous as such a position will seem to drawing-masters who postpone colouring and who teach form by a dreary discipline of copying lines, we believe that the course of culture thus indicated is the right one. The priority of colour to form, which, as already pointed out, has a psychological basis, should be recognised from ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer |
