"Loneliness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only be when she was growing old that she would feel the loneliness of knowing that, apart from the passion which she had inspired because of her sex and her beauty, not a single human being had ever loved her. For the present she was Venus Victrix, a glorious creature, the desired of ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... stars was in striking contrast with the sameness of the white and deathlike desert. A profound melancholy took hold of me. I had ceased to fear, almost to think, my perceptions were blinded by excitement and fatigue, my spirits oppressed by an unspeakable sense of loneliness and helplessness, and the awful silence, intensified rather than relieved by the long drawn moaning of the unseen ocean, which, however far I might be from it, ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... with bricks in the outskirts of a town twilight was falling. A star or two appeared over the smoke, and distant windows lit mysterious lights. The stillness deepened and the loneliness. Then all the outcast things that are silent ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... of extreme loneliness. As its weird, half-availing notes ring out and are answered back from the distant rocks shrouded in night, and perhaps concealing the lurking foe, the soldier remembers that he is far away from home and friends—deep in the enemy's country, encompassed on every hand by those in deadly ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... instinctively feels ought to be for her the better task. She knows the standards and conditions are a matter of chance; that, while she may receive considerate treatment in one place, in another there will be no apparent consciousness that she is a human being. She knows and dreads the loneliness of the average "place." "It's breaking my heart I was," sobbed an intelligent Irish girl, serving a term for drunkenness begun in the kitchen, "alone all day long with never a one to pass a good word." ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... broad-clothed humanity proving more trying to their nerves than the dangers of the desert. I think that they feel lonely here, for it is a fact that is too little understood, though it has often been stated, that there is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to those who are unaccustomed to them. "What is there in the world," old Quatermain would say, "so desolate as to stand in the streets of a great city and listen to the footsteps falling, falling, multitudinous as the rain, ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... writer to a discussion with the company's officials as to the advisable size of a compact colony of the same nationality. They stated that if an immigrant family is established among settlers of another nationality, the family becomes lonely and desperate and after a year or two of such loneliness is apt to leave the farm, no matter how successful it has been in buying and cultivating the land. Therefore the company's policy is to settle the people of the ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... He was still holding her hand, and she made no move to free it, but seeming forgetful of it altogether, lingered on. "I shall miss you, monsieur. The chateau will seem lonely when I return, I shall feel its loneliness more than I ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... running away; who wrecked the churches and the homes of the helpless living, and bombed the tombs of the helpless dead; who wrenched families apart in the night, taking their boys to slavery and their girls to wholesale violation, leaving the old people to wander in loneliness and die; who in her raids upon England slaughtered three hundred and forty-two women, and killed or injured seven hundred and fifty-seven children, and made in all a list of four thousand five hundred and sixty-eight, bombed ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... sympathy, but by encouraging expectation and hope. When He said, 'Weep not,' He was pledging Himself to do what was needed in order to stay the flow of weeping. And He would encourage us, in the midst of our cares and sorrows and loneliness, not indeed to suppress the natural emotion of sorrow, nor to try after a fantastic and unreal suppression of its wholesome signs, but to weep as though we wept not, because beyond the darkness and the dreariness we see the glimmering of the eternal day. He encourages ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... coat grew sleek, his barrel rounded, his neck arched with new muscles and the very quality of mane and tail changed; he became the horse of which he had previously been the caricature. It was a lonely life in many ways but the very loneliness was sweet to the stallion. Moreover, there was much to learn, and his brain, man-trained by his long battle against a man, drank in the lessons of the wild country with astonishing rapidity. Had it not been for intervention from the Great Enemy, he might have ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... started down the steep descent on the other side of the divide a feeling of loneliness that was very akin to terror gripped the girl. The sunlight showed only upon the higher levels, and the prospect of spending the night alone in the hills without food or shelter produced a sudden chilling sensation in the pit ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... shadows press About the forest's nuns, That dream in loneliness Their dreams of birds ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... remembered all the way?—that the last time she visited the spot it was in company with Penn. Now she had come to meet him again—how unmaidenly the act! In darkness, in loneliness, far from the village and its twinkling lights, to meet an attractive and a very good looking young man! What would the world say? Virginia did not care what the world would say. But now she began to question within herself, "What would Penn think?" and almost ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... study window the Sunday afternoon her father left for Craig's Corner a sense of depression and loneliness stole over her. How much longer could her father continue those hard drives, she wondered. He was getting old. His hair was so white and his steps feeble. What was to become of him when he could perform his beloved work no longer? She knew very well how they were pressed for money, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Perched on his steadfast stool, in a deserted telegraph-house, hard by that bay of the broken promise, De Sauty, like Poe's raven, "still was sitting, still was sitting," watching, in forlorn, but hopeful loneliness, the paralyzed tongue of the Atlantic Cable, to catch the utterances that never came for all his patient coaxing; and ever and anon he iterated, feebly and more feebly, as if all his sinking soul he did outpour into the words, that melancholy monotone which was his only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... thought of killing and the joy it had experienced as the cat died scant moments before, was replaced by another thought. A thought of loneliness. ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... host and skipper. We helped the boy we had with us to haul the boat up on the landing-stage before we went up to the riverside inn, where we found our new acquaintance eating his dinner in dignified loneliness at the head of a long table, white and inhospitable like ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... their eternal vigilance, their eternal suspicion. Another phase of their nature weakened. Some of them were smiling and laughing for the first time in months, perhaps, of bitter labor and loneliness on the range. With the gates of good-nature opened, a veritable flood of gaiety burst out. It glittered in their eyes, it rose to their lips in a wild laughter. They seemed to be dancing more furiously ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... companion of the solitary saint. What beauty there is in that description of the isolated man, passing lonely amid his contemporaries, like a stream of pure water flowing through some foul liquid, and untouched by it, and yet not alone in his loneliness, because 'he walked with God!' The less he found congenial companionship on earth, the more he realised God as by his side. The remarkable phrase, used only of Enoch and of Noah, implies a closer relation than the other expression, 'To ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... breath of a foreign sympathy. Women are harpsichords: they have all the conditions of music in themselves, and only need to be struck. But, containing so much, their need of being struck is the greater. Charlotte Bronte, in her sad, weary life, full, as she expressed it, of loneliness, of longing for companionship, had two faithful and precious friends; her "dear, dear E.," and her "good, kind Miss W." To the former she writes, "I am at this moment trembling all over with excitement, after reading your note: it is what I never received before, the unrestrained ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... will, is insisted on again and again, as the true method to please him, and to obtain his protection against all dangers. There are few moods of the religious life that are not represented in the Psalms: penitence, intellectual perplexity, domestic sorrow, feebleness, loneliness, the approach of death, the excitement of great events, the agony of persecution, quiet contemplation of nature, each has its word. The imprecations of some of the Psalms show a trait of the national character without which the picture would be incomplete. It may be in part extenuated ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... his way homeward, his thoughts, by some unaccountable association, began to revert to such topics as the loneliness of man by himself, the need of kindred spirits, the solaces of sympathy, and other ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thread of distant dangling torrent foam. Sounds, too, beneath the mist are more strange. The torrent seems to have a hoarser voice and grinds the stones more passionately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds through the fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills. The bleating of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of the cowbells, are mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then, again, how immeasurably high ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Aldrich, Anne Reeve, Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, Alexander, Hartley Burr, Alexander, William, Allston, Washington, Ambercrombe, Lascelles, Anderson, Margaret Steele, Angelo, Michael, Arensberg, Walter Conrad, Aristotle, Arnold, Edwin, Arnold, Matthew, his discontent; on the poet's death; inspiration; loneliness; morality; religion; usefulness; youth; his sense of superiority. Arnold, Thomas, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... was sharp, he felt utterly at sea as to what he should do, and he was already beginning to experience the loneliness of a single mortal in a ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... within me a sense of loneliness. I began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was dug out. I might ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... loneliness, all hail! The whole earth seems still clothed in a white shroud, held in bondage by a load of ice, of pitiless crystals, so uniform, sharp, and agonizing. After the year 1200 especially, the world is shut in like a transparent tomb, wherein ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... up the steps, and did not let her go until they were in a small reception room, where they were asked to wait for a minute. He realized now more than he had done before her weakness and the sense of loneliness that was upon her. He stood beside her, hat in hand, wishing he had some right to let her know more definitely than he had ventured to do how sorry he was for her, and how she could count on his thinking about her as a brother might while she was ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... interesting to me as having so true a respect for woman. This feeling in him was not chivalrous; it was not the sentiment of an artist; it was not the affectionateness of the common son of Adam, who knows that only her presence can mitigate his loneliness; but it was a religious reverence. To him she was a soul with an immortal destiny. Nor was there at the bottom of his heart one grain of masculine assumption. He did not wish that Man should protect her, but that God ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... about a year ago. I wrote to tell my father of her death, and received a pitiful letter; indeed, I have had several of them. He implored me to come out to him and not to leave him to die in his loneliness, as he soon would do of a broken heart, if I did not. He said that he had long ago given up drinking, which was the cause of the ruin of his life, and sent a certificate signed by a magistrate and a doctor to that effect. Well, in the end, although all my cousins ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... let her stay behind here," said Sir Archie, "for who among them would be mindful of such a poor creature? She would be forgotten by all ere many months were past. None would visit her abode, none would relieve her loneliness. But when once I reach home, I shall rear a stately dwelling for her. There shall her name stand graven in the hard stone, that none may forget it. There I myself shall come to her every day, and all shall be so splendidly devised ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof
... whose coming somehow seemed responsible for the loss of her tender angel, for a long time was viewed with resentful hatred. It was a terrible, unspeakable grief. She remembered perfectly the helpless sense of loss and loneliness. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... much of her time with the sewing-maid, for Mrs. Garman was anxious that her dress should be in keeping with the rest of the establishment, and the Consul had given Miss Cordsen strict orders on the subject. It was a great relief to Madeleine, in her loneliness, to show herself kindly and almost affectionately disposed towards the timid girl. One evening when she had gone, Madeleine asked Miss Cordsen who she was, and the old lady, after scrutinizing her sharply, answered, "that Marianne was a granddaughter ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... this atmosphere of utter loneliness and inability to do anything right that Gordon's first week passed. Of the other new boys none of them seemed to him very much in his line. There was Foster, good-looking and attractive, but plausible and insincere. There was Rudd, a ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... in this ideal; every irksome job, every wearisome responsibility. The fact that we are not always aware of it in no way annuls the other fact that it is so. Boredom, monotony, drudgery, bereavement, loneliness, all the clamour of unsatisfied ambitions and aching sensibilities, have their share in this divine yearning of the spirit to grasp what as yet is beyond its reach. All of that hacking of the man ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... little hen in her loneliness, and singled her out from the flock for special attention. She very soon knew my voice, would come at my call, and used to slip through a gap in the fence and pay me a visit every day. If the kitchen door were open she walked in without ceremony; ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... England and the destitution in these distant lands. Here the ships are crammed into a dock, close up against one another, rubbing their yards upon each other; and away out yonder on the waters there are leagues of loneliness, where never a sail is seen. Here, at home, we are drenched with Christian teaching, and the Churches are competing with each other, often like rival tradespeople for their customers; and away out yonder a man to half a million is considered a fair allowance. 'Let ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hunger arm his hand To wring food from desert nude, his foothold from the sand. His neighbors' smoke shall vex his eyes, their voices break his rest; He shall go forth till south is north, sullen and dispossessed; He shall desire loneliness and his desire shall bring Hard on his heels, a thousand wheels, a people ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... this Florimond, that her loyalty to him was no more than her loyalty to her father's wishes. Nevertheless, he thought, what manner of hurt must not her pride receive when she learned that Florimond had brought him home a wife? Garnache was full of pity for her and for the loneliness that must be hers hereafter, mistress of a vast estate in Dauphiny, alone and friendless. And he was a little sorry for himself and the loneliness which, he felt, would be his hereafter; but that was by ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... forest-trees shut out All but the distant sky,— I've felt the loneliness of night, When the dark winds pass'd by. My pulse has quicken'd with its awe, My lip has gasp'd for breath; But what were they to such as this— The ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... propinquity to that simple and sincere creature. He was so happy, and his heart was so active, that he even made no caustic characteristic comment on the singular behaviour of the beings who had just abandoned them to their loneliness. He was also proud because he was sitting alone nearly in the dark with a piquant and wealthy, albeit amateur actress, who had just participated in a triumph at which the spiritual aristocracy of London ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... drifts on the sills. The fire had gone out and the bitter storm beat against the casements and howled in the chimney, and the dusk of the night began to mingle with the thick white flakes, and brought upon the solitary man a great gloom and horror of loneliness. It seemed to him that his life was done, and his strength gone from him. He had labored in vain for years, for this end, and he had failed to attain it. It were better to have died than to suffer ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... little farming, and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married—but it wasn't that: I'd thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless woman, and both were pretty 'ratty' from hardship and loneliness—they weren't likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I'd heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten's wife who'd gone out to live with them lately: she'd been a hospital matron in the city, they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... had come over him; he was standing by the outer wall, looking out. Jim went and stood beside him, his hand on his shoulder, and together they gazed through the cherry-crystal wall of their prison ship out on the loneliness of the immeasurable miles outside. For them, space was red, instead of the deep black they knew they would see through colorless glass. Brilliant pinpoints of light, millions of them, in all sizes, made up the infinite space ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... heart melt when at last Dahlia did get her voice? "This marriage can never take place!" he said, and was convinced of its being impossible. He forgot that while he was wasting energy at Fairly, Rhoda had sat hiving bitter strength in the loneliness of the Farm; with one vile epithet clapping on her ears, and nothing but unavailing wounded love for her absent unhappy sister to make ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reeled into oblivion like drunken goblins. It seemed to me, after my quiet meditative stroll, a monstrous invasion. We would flash round a curve with a whoop of the horn, and those pitiless rays would suddenly reveal in stark loneliness a man and a girl, clasped in each other's arms. Or they would loom up ahead, walking and lovemaking, and the sound of the horn would strike them to attitudes of paralyzed fear. Once we overtook a party in a trap, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... changed his mind and married. He brought his beautiful bride of half his age to this tiny wing,—it chanced to be tiny in this case,—and there she lived for seventeen years. The horrible loneliness of it, especially in winter, with not a neighbor for miles, unless one reckon the village at the park gate, which could not have furnished anything but human beings, and never a congenial companion for her! Needless to say that she never had ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... tell Hugo that also? Once or twice she really came very near doing it. For as her mind had become released from her first acute apprehensions, it had seemed to insist on turning inward a little; and there grew within her a sense of unhappiness, of loneliness, a feeling of her poor little self against the world. She longed for some one to explain it all to, to justify herself before; and who more appropriate in this connection than her lover? That Hugo might have been shocked, and perhaps disgusted, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of this long talk Milly learned everything about Ernestine Geyer's life contained in the previous chapter of this book and much more that only a woman could confide in another woman,—intimate details of her honorable struggle. Ernestine bared her hungry heart, her loneliness in her new home, and her feeling of helplessness in not getting, after all, what she wanted and what she had earned the money to ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... to accompany him to Liverpool, determined to delay their parting to the last moment, and dreading, more than he could express, the return to his estate in Essex County, when he would begin to realize something of the loneliness of his own situation. Wallace's illness, and the care which he had been forced to give him, he now realized had been a great blessing to him, for it had prevented, in a measure, his brooding ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... him with rare tact and tenderness, and spoke much of his loneliness and his need of a helpmate. Eddie resolved to ask her to marry him as soon as ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... turned indoors, and her home seemed very solitary. We can accustom ourselves to loneliness, but we should beware of infringing the custom. Once admit two or three faces seated at your hearthside, or gazing out from your windows on the laughing sun, and when they are gone, they carry off the glow from your grate and the sunbeam from your ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Soeren would throw down his ax and come racing over the grass of the downs with his tongue between his lips. "Heaven only knows what she is up to now," said he, and the two crept after her down the road. When she had wandered a little distance, in deep thought, she would suddenly realize her loneliness, and begin to howl, a picture of misery, left alone and forsaken. Then the two old people would appear on the scene, and she would throw herself into their arms overjoyed at finding ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... over the great snow-fields. The road, white upon white, outlined with fringes of trees, and here and there a stretch of stump fence, was as empty as the fields, the solitary sleigh with its solitary occupant seeming only to emphasize the loneliness. ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own. The end of these discourses was that one night during which she had shown every sign of unusual excitement, Mrs. Sinico caught up his hand passionately and pressed it ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... two drearier days than she had foreseen. She kept to her own room, creeping out only at night, when, like all cats, all wigs are grey. After an eternity of loneliness the third day dawned, and she went by pre-arrangement to meet the morning train. Ah, how gaily gleamed the kiosks on the boulevards through the grey mist! What jolly red faces glowed under the cabmen's white hats! How blithely the birds ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... was a footstep, and not a very stealthy one, approaching the house, and the dog bounded forward to the full length of his chain, but he was beaten down with a blow that stunned him. The men were too strong in numbers, and too secure in the extreme loneliness of the dwelling, to care about taking many precautions. Miss Anne and Stephen heard Mr. Wyley cross the floor of his room above, and open his window; but there was silence again, and the chime of the house clock striking eleven was the only sound that broke the silence until ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... befall him. Judith was not quite four when she took this memorable drive with her mother, but the impression of these things abided through all her years. It was to the measureless spaces of desert loneliness that she learned to bring her sorrows in the days of her arid youth, and to feel a kinship with all its moods and to hear in the voice of its silence ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and tries vainly to free itself from the consequences of its deeds, into a study of circumstances in their ruin of material happiness. And, frankly, the play cannot stand it. When this woman bows down under her fate in so terrible a spiritual loneliness, realising that we cannot fight against Fate, and that Fate is only the inevitable choice of our own natures, we wait for the splendid words which shall render so great a situation; and no splendid words come. The situation, to the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... two men went on to the place where Owen had found me, and there my father, judging from the dress and loneliness of the Briton that he might be able to ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... never experienced such loneliness as in the months that followed. All music was saddened by far-off echoes of past accompaniments. Embroidery lost its interest with no one to praise the work, or to be consulted in the choice of colors and patterns. The books Gerald ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... when he plays in the pension garden. We have heard that he is Count S——'s illegitimate child, and that the old woman is his mother. It seems quite probable when you think of the life on a big Polish estate—the loneliness, etc. These three people live together in one room. The samovar is always boiling and some one is always drinking tea there. The brothers share an adjoining room, but they are usually with those in there, who constitute all that remains of ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... and seldom attempted even the most timid suggestions as to her conduct. Once or twice he mentioned health-food and dieting, and was pooh-poohed into a corner. As for the women attendants, who had been sent along that they might be the companions of the Princess during the long hours of loneliness and seclusion, they were trained to act as hair-dressers and ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... in sudden loneliness, And whence they know not, why they need not guess; They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er Not that he came, but came not long before: No train is his beyond a single page, Of foreign aspect, and of tender age. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... in a whisper, but with a considerable anger in his voice. "Such a fancy as comes only to a man who has lost his judgment through much loneliness. See, he sits like any negro outside an Eastern harem! Sir, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... all-hearing and wise of speech, all alone had been journeying afar in the North Land of cold and white loneliness. He was lost, for the world in which he wandered was buried in the snow which lies spread there forever. So cold he was that his face became wan and white from the frozen mists of his own breath, white as become all creatures who dwell there. So cold at night ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... I replied; "and as for loneliness, not a bit of it. In the day time you will have Mrs. Posset and Uncle Jack to take care of you and pet you, and at night you will have me, and the dolls beside. I see that you have Sally Bradford here beside you. You will find ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... along with Bert, encountered the girls in the morning room, where, despite an hour of rag-time song and dancing and chatter, he was scarcely for a moment unaware of a loneliness, a lack, and a desire to see his hostess, in some fresh and unguessed mood and way, come in upon them through ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... buttons of her slippers. The tears were falling again; but not tears of anger or resentment—only of loneliness, of yearning. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... there in the moonlight were those two who to-morrow would be one, and here was she, alone. The world seemed all circling about that white chamber of hers, and echoing with her own consciousness of self, and a loneliness she had never felt before. She wondered what it might be. Was it all sadness at parting with Kate, or was it the sadness over inevitable partings of all human relationships, and the all-aloneness of ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and more effective to hitch our waggon to God, who, being a synthesis of our own higher selves, will naturally pull it in whatever direction we want. Thus the mass of mankind will escape from that spiritual loneliness which is so discomfortable to them, and will find, in one and the same personification, a deity to listen to their prayers, and a 'boss,' in the Tammany sense of the term, to herd them to the polling-booths. What we want is collectivism touched with emotion. By proclaiming ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... might attract mosquitoes or force her to draw the close shades. She stood undressed luxuriating in the sense of freedom of body. She was richly white in the gloom: her full young beauty gave her a feeling of contentment and strength, and, equally, a great loneliness. It wasn't corrupt, a "degenerate plant," she thought with a passionate ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... hiding in the undergrowth. Once, too, the sound of a rifle broke upon their ears, but it seemed to be a full mile away, in the depths of the forest, and gave them no alarm, its only effect being to make the solemn stillness more solemn and impressive, and to inspire a feeling of loneliness that was almost painful. Once or twice a ripple of the water was heard, such as might be supposed to come from the movement of an enemy stealing through the current, but each of the three knew it was not caused by friend or foe. They had noticed the same ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... hated by the only one whom he loves. The prospect of being left to die, in wifeless and childless loneliness— that terrible loneliness of soul which is so much worse to bear than any mere physical solitude. God, for some wise reason, has shut him up to Himself. He has deprived him of all human relationship and human love; has said to him, 'Lean on Me, and walk loose from ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... and sounds, not even the tick of an insect to break the black, dull, dark monotony, is a wet blanket to cheerfulness. I really think the stillness of a large prairie is one of the most painful sensations of loneliness, a man ever encountered. The sombre and dreary monotony of a dungeon, is scarcely a comparison; in fact, language fails to describe the essentially double-distilled monotony of these great American grass-patches—you can't call them deserts, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... fenced patch where corn and chile and beans were raised, and behind the house was a round goat corral of wattled brush. The skyward rocky waste of the mountain lifted behind the house, and the empty reach of the mesa lay before—an immense and arid loneliness, now softened and beautified ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... never be together, though their love must remain for ever unconsummated, still in her loneliness she would know ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... crept across the land, the great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him forth into the highroad. He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of bitter loss, his desolation, and his loneliness. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... mused the Exile, oft recalling The well-known clang of sword and lance, The yells, Night's icy ear appalling; His own blue sky—the sky of France; Where, in his loneliness forgetting His broken sword, his ruin'd throne, With bitter grief, with vain regretting, On his fair Boy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... truth, and he was so wildly in love with it all through that he could not feel the defect she did in it. He used to go gaily about the wide, harking old house at night, shutting it up, and singing or whistling while she sat quaking at the notion of their loneliness and their absolute helplessness—an invalid and a little woman—in case anything happened. She wanted him to get the man who did the odd jobs about the house, to sleep there, but he laughed at her, and they kept on with their usual ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... flows the burning tide— Dark storms of feeling sweep across her breast— In loneliness there needs no mask of pride— To nerve the soul, and veil the heart's unrest, Amid the crowd her glances brightly beam, Her smiles with undimmed lustre sweetly shine: The haunting visions of life's fevered dream The cold and careless ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... their huts, and begged him to come in and join them at their simple mid-day meal, and were quite hurt when he refused because his own dinner was prepared for him at home. These men loved him—they pitied his loneliness—they told him of their own cares, their own fears—and as he endeavored to console and encourage them, he felt his strength increase—he was more hopeful, more able to bear ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... felt more than half ashamed of those early letters to his mother, pouring out his misery of loneliness and longing; of frantic threats to run away or jump off the cliff, that had so strangely failed to soften his father's heart. It seemed, he knew all about it. He had been through it himself. But Mummy did not know; so she got upset. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of 1871 and 1872 led to the stations on the Herbert being thrown up, and the country, good as it was, lapsed into its original state of loneliness, and remained for many years ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... departure, but none of his letters had contained much news. He said very little either about his work or his employers, but from the dismal tone in which he drew comparisons between London and Liverpool, and between his present loneliness and days before their separation, it was evident enough he was homesick. In a letter ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... unvarying monotony of bleating sheep and lowing herds and at evening the hoot of owls. The brooding tenderness of the sky she did not see. The throbbing of the great, quiet southern stars stirred her only with a sense of helpless loneliness that was all but unendurable. And still, from who knows what source, she found strength to meet the days and her friends with that unfailing sweetness that was as poignant as the clinging fingers of a ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... rushed upon us a sea of that incredible loneliness, that longing for extinction that had assailed us in the haunted hollow where first we had seen Norhala. But its billows were resistless, invincible. Beneath them we fell; were torn by ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... thousands of my countrymen, as we deserved, in that we had departed from God, and had not kept his commandments. There God opened my unbelieving heart, so that I, although late, remembered my sins, and turned with my whole heart to the Lord my God, to Him who had regarded my loneliness, had had compassion on my youth and my ignorance, and had watched over me before I knew him; who, ere I knew how to choose between good and evil, had guarded and cherished me, as a father doth his ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... others of his kind, that gift which singles out a girl of ordinary appearance and leaves one of flawless beauty still wagging her pretty head in the front row of the chorus. From that point he began to speculate on the loneliness of personality, which so often robs its owner of the cheery companionship ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Franconia greets him with her vivacity, her pleasing conversation, her frankness and fondness for the old servants. No table is decked out with the viands of the season-Marston's viands have turned into troubles,—loneliness reigns throughout. It is night, and nothing but the dull sound of the keeper's tread breaks the silence. His (Maxwell's) mission is a delicate one. It may be construed as intrusive, he thinks. But its importance outweighs the doubt, and, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... been achieved I was astonished by the party's return. Inquiring as to the trouble, I learned that out toward the Staked Plains every sign of the Cheyennes had disappeared. Surprised and disappointed at this, and discouraged by the loneliness of his situation—for in the whole region not a trace of animal life was visible, Custer gave up the search, and none too soon, I am inclined to believe, to save his small ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... heard the whistle and snorting of the engine. We were now within civilisation, so far as convenience might go, but whether we were morally and socially better or worse is a very open question. The great distances, the open plains, and the loneliness and monotony which is generally characteristic of the western country, even in these days of comparative closer settlement, have formed the western character. It is a character hard, shrewd, and impatient in good times, but strangely patient and resourceful in times of floods, drought, or ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... it so earnestly that she drew back from the window lest she should be seen. And then, for no reason whatever, she changed her mind once more, and resolved to go to the dance. Gravely announcing this fact to the wife of her superintendent who kept house with her in her loneliness, she thought nothing more about it. She should go in her mourning, with perhaps the addition of a white ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... were! She was coming home after a year abroad which had begun in widowhood and loneliness and misery and shattered health, and was now returning, restored and comforted, to her friends and all that made life so engrossingly pleasant a business. No one deserved friends more thoroughly than she, and she was rich in that priceless capital of human affection. Sorrows and trials ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... seemed to melt away afterwards into the peacock colours of the dim green grass and the dark blue sky. Even Durand was invisible instead of being merely reverentially remote; and Madeleine set forth through the patch of black forest alone. She was not in the least afraid of loneliness, because she was not afraid of devils. I think they were ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... certain she would turn; for she regarded herself as much too precious to be left behind. But on and on the wise woman went, until she had vanished away in the dim moonlight. Then all at once the princess perceived that she was left alone with the moon, looking down on her from the height of her loneliness. She was horribly frightened, and began to run after the wise woman, calling aloud. But the song she had just heard came back to the sound of her own ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... of the great, uninhabited mountains, the dark forests, the immense loneliness and isolation, the thousand subtle and psychic influences which the wilderness exerts over the untried soul. There might be nothing to be scared of, as the man said. Wild animals are harmless, the trails are good. But he could not imagine any of the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... little fumes like fire burst out from the black yew trees as a bird settled clinging to the branches. One day bluebells were along the hedge-bottoms, then cowslips twinkled like manna, golden and evanescent on the meadows. She was full of a rich drowsiness and loneliness. How happy she was, how gorgeous it was to live: to have known herself, her husband, the passion of love and begetting; and to know that all this lived and waited and burned on around her, a terrible purifying fire, through which she had passed for once to come to this peace of ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... forgotten where they were, and that their friends were anxious about them, they should have enjoyed themselves amazingly, only that they should have preferred cooked fish to raw. As night, however, crept on, they began to feel the loneliness and helplessness of their position. Still, the calm continued, and the stars shone forth, each spark of light being reflected in the mirror-like ocean; and Harry made out the polar star, and wished that there was a good ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... impossible, both of us!" she declared. "But then, a poor creature like me must always be impossible. It isn't quite kind of fate, is it, to give any one a woman's heart and a woman's loneliness, and the poor frame of ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... forehead, and eyes though somewhat small, yet full and of a grayish blue, a charming smile and splendid white teeth. Always the same kindly gentleman and always a soldier. His life at Fort George had been one of great loneliness. He read much and rapidly, and would memorize passages from the books that had left the deepest impression. History, civil and military, especially ancient authors, was his choice, and maps his weakness. Over these, with his devoted ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... compared with that which those enjoy, who come together for the purposes of more complete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness "to be felt."—The Abbey Church of Westminster hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked walls and benches of a Quaker's Meeting. Here are ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... small copse, and by the side of a brawling rivulet, towards the back of the king's pavilion. But one solitary sentry, at the entrance of the copse, guarded the consecrated place; and its exceeding loneliness and quiet were a grateful contrast to the animated world of the surrounding camp. The monk entered the shrine, and fell down on his knees before an image of the Virgin, rudely ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by her journey, he did not listen to her reply, but plunged into an exact account of his own position at court and of his poverty and difficulties. His sister was weary, and an overpowering sense of loneliness possessed her; she had always known her brother to be an egoist, but a certain spontaneous, easy kindness had masked his self-love when he ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... by the jealousy of the emperor Constantius.) It is a touching and even a noble treatise. The nervous self-distrust which was habitual in Julian makes him write always with a certain affectation, but no one could mistake the real feeling of loss and loneliness that runs through the consolation. He has lost his 'comrade in the ranks', and now is 'Odysseus left alone'. So he writes, quoting the Iliad; Sallustius has been carried by God outside the spears and arrows: 'which malignant men were ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... man with whom I had talked that morning; now as our glances met, one of his bright eyes closed slowly and, nodding twice, he turned and elbowed his way through the crowd. Small liking had I for this fellow, but with his departure a sense of loneliness gripped me and needs must I lift my head to stare after him, whereupon a rotten egg struck me above the eye, causing a most intolerable smart; at this moment, too, the great fellow swung a cat's carcass by the tail, but, or ever he could hurl this stinking missile, a hand clouted him heavily ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... miraculous, and filled the house with boarders. And enjoyed the new venture thoroughly, too, although Mary Lou never suspected that. Perhaps Ma, herself, did not realize how much she liked to bustle and toil, how gratifying the stir and confusion in the house were, after the silent want and loneliness. Ma always spoke of women in business as unfortunate and hardened; she never spoke of her livelihood as anything but a temporary arrangement, never made out a bill in her life. Upon her first boarders, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... bitterest enemy, I might excite some sympathy for a personality which, I am all too conscious, must appear singularly devoid of charm. But I have nothing to go on. I never once saw Strickland at work, nor do I know that anyone else did. He kept the secret of his struggles to himself. If in the loneliness of his studio he wrestled desperately with the Angel of the Lord he never allowed a soul ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... at Sunnyside, Georgia, amid the loneliness of abandoned farms, the glory of cornfields, and the mysterious beauty of forest, he wrote "Corn," the first of his poems to attract the attention of the country. It was published in Lippincott's in 1875. Charlotte Cushman was so charmed by ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... of loneliness. She had a sudden realization of how dear that gaunt old figure was, with its grizzled face and ready smile. Her breath came quick and quicker, and she was at the point of bursting into a wild cry to Tewksbury when she heard a strange noise. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... all the loneliness of the solitude into which my lot was then cast, and it was in vain that I tried to appease my craving affections with the thought, that in parting with my son I had given him to the Lord. I durst not ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... to a sudden standstill. The first impression of the two men was that the Baroness had exaggerated the loneliness and desolation of the place. There was nothing mysterious or forbidding about the plain, brownstone house before which they had stopped. The windows were streaming with light; the hall door, already thrown open, disclosed a very comfortable hall, brilliantly illuminated. A man-servant ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and determined to hold her own, settled herself deliberately opposite her visitor, and was soon complaining in her shrill voice of the loneliness of the place and the damp of the climate. Melrose never once looked at his wife. He was paler than usual, with an eager combative aspect, quite new to Netta. He seemed for once to be unsure of his ground—both to expect attack, even ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... property? Will not Angela sustain you and tend you? O father, don't humiliate yourself a moment longer before this despicable monster. It is not we, but he, who is poor and miserable in the midst of his contemptible riches; for see, he stands there deserted in his awful hopeless loneliness; there is not a heart in all the wide world to cling lovingly to his breast, to open out to him when he despairs of his own life, of himself. Come, father. Leave this house with me. Come, let us make haste ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... to talk in front of this trackless plain, cela coupe la parole, flowing away to the south, to the west, to the east, ending— it was impossible to imagine it ending anywhere, no more than we can imagine the ends of the sky; and the desert conveyed the same impression of loneliness—in a small way, of course—as the great darkness of the sky; "for the sky," Owen said, half to himself, half to his companion, "is dark and cold the moment one gets beyond the atmosphere ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... loneliness of her existence troubled her very little. She had none of that eager longing for "society" or "fashion" wherewith young ladies who live in towns are apt to inoculate one another. She had no desire to shine, no consciousness of her own beauty; for the French girls at Madame ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... what a pathos is mixed with the sweet surprise of meeting a beautiful thing in strange and inferior surroundings, in circumstances that suggest an utter incongruity between the subject and the situation, and imply an awful weight of loneliness and an intolerable lack of sympathy. The Alpine harebell on the edge of the glacier, the caged lion gazing vacantly into a wearisome monotony of idleness, the shivering little Italian fiddling about our winter streets, make the same appeal, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting— "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... only when he reached a small building by the side of the road that he stopped. Pushing open the door, he entered. All was dark and silent within. The strange loneliness of the place would have smitten any one else with the feeling of dread. But the old man never seemed to mind it. Fumbling in his vest pocket, he found a match. This he struck and lighted a tallow dip which was stuck into a rude candle-stick upon a bare wooden table. One glance ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... told her. 'My father is dying and demands my care. From the altar to a death-bed may be sad for you, but it is an inevitable condition of your marriage with me.' And she had accepted her fate with a deep unspeakable smile it has taken me long months of loneliness and suffering to understand. ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... Mrs. Maldon against Louis. Louis was obviously the most innocent of beings. Mrs. Maiden's warning, "The woman who married him would suffer horribly," was manifestly absurd. "Suffer horribly"—what a stinging phrase, like a needle broken in a wound! She felt tired and weak, above all tired of loneliness. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Seminary of St Sulpice at Montreal, for example, was a veritable stronghold, rightly counted upon as a place of sure refuge for the settlers in time of need. Racked and decayed by the ravages of time, some of those old walls still stand in their loneliness, bearing to an age of smoke-belching industry their message of more modest achievement in earlier days. Most of these banal mills were fitted with clumsy wind-wheels, somewhat after the Dutch fashion. But nature would not always hearken to the miller's ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... of scurvy, an entire crew rotting alive in the forecastle and the ship broached to, dismasted; of mutiny; the sheer smothering finality of volcanic waves. He had never realized until now, in the misery of uncertainty, the hellish loneliness of a shipmaster at sea; the pride of duty, the necessity of discipline, that put him beyond all counsel, all assistance and human interdependence. Jeremy, who had arrogantly accepted this responsibility without a question, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... required a severer governor than he was inclined to be; and Alfonso did not attend to his requisitions for supplies. The candid and good-natured poet intimates that the duke might have given him the appointment rather for the governor's sake than the people's; and the cold, the loneliness and barrenness of the place, and, above all, his absence from the object of his affections, oppressed him. He did not write a verse for twelve months: he says he felt like a bird moulting[22]. The best thing got ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... darkness, the hoot of an owl, the faint wailing echo of a far-away lynx cry, the plunge of a mink in the lake. And now the wind began whispering in the balsams, singing gently its age-old song of loneliness, of desolation, of mystery, and Mukoki straightened himself and looked to where the red glow of the moon was rising above the mountain. After a little he rose to his feet, took his rifle, and climbed to the summit of the ridge, with a thousand ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... great woods overhanging the rolling Jumna are tilting forward as if to join the girl in her agonized advances while around her rise the bleak and empty slopes, their eerie loneliness intensified by frigid moonlight. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... arguing against this theory of bad lands, etc., as obstacles to ocean navigation—a theory which seems to be at least as old as Hipparchus—has a passage which finely expresses the loneliness of the sea:—[Greek: Hoite gar periplein epicheiresantes, eita anastrepsantes, ouch hypo epeirou tinos antipiptouses kai kolyouses, ton epekeina ploun anakrousthenai phasin, alla hypo aporias kai eremias, ouden ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... forgotten. The hum of voices, the cheerful clatter from the lighted supper-room, came up to her darkening apartment, and only increased her sense of loneliness and isolation. Her quick ear caught Van Berg's mellow laugh, evoked by one of Miss ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... it was a nightmare. Angela's impression was of one endless white wilderness, broken only by a network of frozen lakes and occasional icy precipices. At nights they pitched their tent amid the vast loneliness, banking it with snow to keep out the freezing cold. At times they were held up for days, confined to the evil-smelling tent with a blizzard blowing outside. The oilstove was a blessing, despite its sickening odor, and only the piled-up snow kept the small tent from being blown to ribbons. It ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild |
