"Melancholy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are the dice; we come to ravish hence Thy last poor cloth; we were not well content Thou shouldst depart owning a garment still." And when he saw the dice take wings and fly, Leaving him bare, to Damayanti spake This melancholy Prince: "O Blameless One, They by whose malice I am driven forth, Finding no sustenance, sad, famine-gaunt— They whose decree forbade Nishadha's folk Should succor me, their Raja—these have come— Demon and dice—and like to winged birds Have borne away my cloth. To such shame ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... to go alone, by night and day, if need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded metropolis. The manner in which all courage and self-reliance is educated out of the girl, her path portrayed with dangers and difficulties that never exist, is melancholy indeed. Better, far, suffer occasional insults or die outright, than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector. The best protector any woman can have, one that will serve her at all times and in all places, is courage; this she must get by her own experience, and experience ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... melancholy life I led, had so much declined that my affectionate father, the Duc de Penthievre, with whom I continued to reside, was anxious that I should emerge from my retirement for the benefit of my health. Sensible of his affection, and having always honoured his counsels, I took his advice ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... the North, medievalism, novelties and experiments), Chenier would inevitably have been excluded from the cenacle of 1827. On the other hand, he exhibits a decided tendency to the world-ennui and melancholy which was one of the earlier symptoms of the movement, and he has experimented in French verse in a manner which would have led to his excommunication by the typical performers of the 18th century. What is universally admitted is that Chenier was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the old home, there came another none less sharp. If Pomeroy Court brought back to her the recollection of the happy days once spent there, but now gone forever, it also brought to her mind the full consciousness of her loss. To her it was infandum renovare dolorem. She walked in a deep melancholy through the dear familiar rooms. She lingered in profound abstraction and in the deepest sadness over the mournful reminders of the past. She looked over all the old home objects, stood in the old places, and sat in the old seats. She walked in silence through ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... mien, but more melancholy than he had been on entering the prison, the Grand Pensionary proceeded towards ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... is too melancholy for me here in the open; and I begin to long for the dusk of trees and for the honest scalp yell to cheer me up. One knows what to expect in county Tryon—but ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... grass like happy children. The sound of the dashing, roaring water kept inviting me to cast for trout, but I didn't want to carry them so far, so we rested until the sun was getting low and then started for home, with the song of the locusts in our ears warning us that the melancholy days are almost here. We would come up over the top of a hill into the glory of a beautiful sunset with its gorgeous colors, then down into the little valley already purpling with mysterious twilight. So on, ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... happy day generally! for my parents contrived to make it really, and not nominally, the best of all the seven; but now, how dreary was the awakening to a Sunday which I expected to be only the melancholy repetition of the preceding ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... man, his suffering life, and the melancholy eclipse of his brilliant intellect, ethics as science is little concerned. In Nietzsche the marvellous literary artist it can have no interest. These things are the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... was exceedingly beautiful, and while Leonardo was painting her portrait he kept someone constantly near her to sing or play, to jest or otherwise amuse her, so that she might continue cheerful, and keep away the melancholy that painters are apt to give to their portraits. In this picture there is a smile so pleasing that the sight of it is a thing that appears more divine than human, and it has ever been considered a marvel that it is not ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... the three melancholic men in whose society she chiefly lived, her father was selfish and morose; Griggs was gentle, but silent and incomprehensible, though he exerted an undoubted influence over her; Reanda alone, though naturally melancholy, was at once gentle, companionable, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... knocked toward any quarter of the earth or sky; runners between bases could be pelted with it by any of the outfielders. I think that the score stood something like 60 to 40, and it was not in favor of Williams. It was a melancholy company that trailed homeward after this contest past the Lanesboro pond; but since then I ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... boy; and you mean what is quite right. I should be very glad to do anything for either of you, and to put an end to a melancholy state of affairs; but look here, my dear boy, I don't think that I should be doing right as an outsider, such a bird of passage as I am, to say more to Drinkwater than I have already done. He knows what I think; but I want to be friends with everybody here, and I ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... Melancholy is the reflection, indeed, that neither God's invitations on the one hand, nor his threatenings on the other, appear to affect their hearts; they are neither constrained by love nor fear. "Wide is the gate, and ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... raised has caused the ground to collapse and crack, as shown by the decrepit state of the buildings, many of which are broken-backed, twisted, and contorted—although the intermediate earth is about 200 feet in thickness. The place, therefore, has a sort of downcast look, and the streets have a melancholy appearance; whilst the sheds of the brine works, made to appear more murky by contrast with heaps of white salt refuse, suggest the thought that the town has gone into mourning. Exception must be ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... green gooseberries "cureth all inflammations," while the red gooseberry is good for bilious subjects. But it has been said that gooseberries are not good for melancholy persons. ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... an unusually melancholy and depressed tone of voice, which caused Miss Gwynne to look up from the papers, directly at him. He was paler than usual, and his lip quivered. He met her glance, and making an effort ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... it," he emphasized, and a strange smile passed over his lips, the utter melancholy of which was all ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth. It outdoes all other accidents because it is the last of them. Sometimes it leaps suddenly upon its victims, like a Thug;[2] sometimes it lays a regular siege and ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the main thoroughfares, and they met pretty maidens who smiled at them, melancholy minstrels who frowned at them, and grim-mouthed warriors whose eyes were too intent on future battles even to see them. Occasionally Rolf quietly saluted some young guardsman; and, to the thrall's surprise, the warrior answered not only with friendliness ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... scene, and bred melancholy in my heart; and about sun-down the wind southed a point or two, setting the sea more against the cliff, so that the spray began to fly even over my ledge and drove me back into the cave. The night came on much sooner than usual, and before long ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Rome. Civita Castellana lay between; yet perhaps a wheel might not be got at Civita Castellana. In that case a return to Rome was inevitable. What a momentous thought! Back to Rome! Ever since he left he had felt a profound melancholy. The feeling of homesickness was on him. He had amused himself with keeping his eyes shut and fancying that he was moving to Rome instead of from it. He had repented leaving the city. Better, he thought, to have waited. He might then have seen ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... face in the shadow of the newspaper a tall, lean young man entered the dressing-room with a swaggering gait. His melancholy eyes were deeply sunken above a nose like a crow's beak; his mouth was set in a petrified grin. The Adam's apple of his long throat made a deep shadow on his stock. He was dressed ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... mournful creature." Patricia motioned with her eyebrows to the opposite side of the room, where a large, stout young woman in somber cloak and wide-plumed hat was eating her way through a chocolate eclair with just such an air of tragic and settled melancholy as one sometimes sees in a child whose grief is ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... low-spirited, and may perhaps number—including the Attendants—eighteen. The only people in the front seats are, a man in full evening dress, which he tries to conceal under a caped cloak, and two Ladies in plush opera-cloaks. Fog is hanging about in the rafters, and the gas-stars sing a melancholy dirge. Each casual cough arouses dismal echoes. Enter an intending Spectator, who is conducted to a seat in the middle of an empty row. After removing his hat and coat, he suddenly thinks better—or worse—of it, puts them on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... year before to get intelligence: with whom Berreo himself had speech at that time, and remembered how inquisitive Jacob Whiddon was of his proceedings, and of the country of Guiana. Berreo was stricken into a great melancholy and sadness, and used all the arguments he could to dissuade me; and also assured the gentlemen of my company that it would be labour lost, and that they should suffer many miseries if they proceeded. And first he delivered that I could not enter any of the rivers with any bark or pinnace, ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... a music vain, With melancholy chords; Like cries from some old battle-plain, Like clash of ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... uniform parchedness and vacuity. And yet, while a man fancies himself thus wholly Divine, he is not aware how he is even then held down by his animal nature; and that it is nothing but the stillness and fixedness of melancholy that thus abuses him, instead ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... imploring her to be pleased, applied himself to playing with the dog, watching her face for some vestige of interest, and with so much gratification at the slightest sign of amusement as to show how melancholy must have been the state compared with which this ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at him anxiously, and was so shocked that he forgot the strange blithe little farm entirely. For Lionel was as wan and wasted as though he had been through a fever, and his rosy face was white, and his merry eyes were melancholy. And suddenly, as Hobb clasped him, he flung his arms round his big brother's neck and buried his face in ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... ate with a good appetite, except myself, who, feeling rather melancholy that day, had little desire to eat. I did not, like the others, partake of the pork, but got my dinner entirely off the body of a squirrel which had been shot the day before by a chal of the name of Piramus, who, besides being a good shot, was celebrated ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... me that his Wife had dreamt a strange Dream the Night before, which they were afraid portended some Misfortune to themselves or to their Children. At her coming into the Room, I observed a settled Melancholy in her Countenance, which I should have been troubled for, had I not heard from whence it proceeded. We were no sooner sat down, but, after having looked ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... together long enough to allow all the men to be taken on shore, which occupied three days, but with the loss of everything they had taken on board with them. The other regiments, we may hope, have been more fortunate, as they were not mentioned in the paper which gave this melancholy account of the ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... she, after an interval of silence, in soft, clear, melancholy accents. 'If you forsake me now, I must die—and I have lived so short a time on the earth, I have known so little happiness and so little love, that I am not fit to die! But you will protect me! You are good and brave, strong with weapons in your hands, and full of pity. You have defended me, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... upon a future day, in company of some literary friends. Truth to tell, our weather is suddenly become so wet, the roads so heavy with incessant rain, that king William's departure from his own foggy country, or his welcome to our gloomy one, where this month is melancholy even, to a proverb, could not have been clouded with a thicker atmosphere surely, than was mine to Milan upon the fourth ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the beagles had brought up the vision of their master who would never hunt with them again. Her voice became tinged with melancholy and Hennessey changed the subject, taking his seat in one of the armchairs that stood on ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... which does not swing such portcullises of massive dewy green from one tree to another as along the whole road where we travelled. Beautiful indeed it was. Spezzia wheels the blue sea into the arms of the wooded mountains; and we had a glance at Shelley's house at Lerici. It was melancholy to me, of course. I was not sorry that the lodgings we inquired about were far above our means. We returned on our steps (after two days in the dirtiest of possible inns), saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... shape and proportions. A plain mob cap on their heads, and a thick muslin handkerchief in many folds over their shoulders, completed their attire. They each held in their hands a pocket-handkerchief as large as a towel, and of almost the same substance. But the appearance of the women was melancholy and unnatural; I say unnatural because it required to be accounted for. They had all the advantages of exercise and labour in the open air, good food, and good clothing; they were not overworked, for they are not required to work more than they please; and yet there was something so ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... before. But was I not right? Did not lamentable events in the not far-off future give to the symbol a melancholy significance? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... recluse on the following morning. They found the ladies at the cottage happy to see them, and anxious to hear of the health of Jane, of whose illness they had been informed by note. After offering her guests some refreshments, Mrs. Fitzgerald, who appeared laboring under a greater melancholy than usual, proceeded to make them acquainted with the incidents ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... upset Elsa and generally cast a gloom over the festive evening. But the young people were not on that account going to be done out of their dancing; the older ones might sit round and gossip and throw up their hands and sigh, but that was no reason why the gipsies should play a melancholy dirge. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... came, lonely, mysterious, melancholy, elegant, with the romantic name of George Brandon—when he actually wrote a letter directed to a lord, and Miss Caroline and Becky together examined the superscription, Becky's eyes were lighted up with a preternatural look of wondering ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... took a melancholy, but interested stroll round the great court. They read all the Latin mottoes, and were horrified to find one or two which they could ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... deportment of two young ladies,[2] in particular, formed a specimen of natural strength of mind, finely modified by Christian feeling, that failed not to attract the notice and admiration of every one who had an opportunity of witnessing it. On the melancholy announcement being made to them that all hope must be relinquished, and that death was rapidly and inevitably approaching, one of the ladies above referred to, calmly sinking down on her knees, and clasping her hands together, said, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus," and immediately ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... that lovely wilding growth delicately nurtured into drama as limitless and lawless as life itself, owing no allegiance to plot, submitting to no rule or canon, but going gayly on to nothingness as human existence does, full of gleaming lights, and dark with inconsequent glooms, musical, merry, melancholy, mad, but never-ending ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... family abandoned the idea of church that day, and Fred found her before a cozy fire, but surrounded by parents, little brothers, and big sisters. The professor was talkative; Fred's mind might have been greatly improved, but with a window in range he preferred a melancholy contemplation of the snow, which had begun to fall in quantity. The professor talked until luncheon, throughout luncheon, and was well under way to fill the whole afternoon with talk, when Fred, repenting all the errors of his life, got ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... the flesh pleading powerfully, it prevailed; and he made a resolution to indulge himself in such carnal delights and pleasures as he was accustomed to, or that fell in his way. 'His neglecting his business, and following gaming and sports, to put melancholy thoughts out of his mind, which he could not always do, had rendered him very poor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with a melancholy sigh. "And what's more, if you can judge by the amount of criticism, I must be going to be extra great. Still, that's ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... "I sometimes dream melancholy dreams," answered Caroline; "and if I lie awake for an hour or two in the night, I am continually thinking of the rectory as a dreary old place. You know it is very near the churchyard. The back part of the house is extremely ancient, and it is said ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... approaching carriage is inelegant and also dangerous. To attempt to cross the street between the carriages of a funeral procession, is rude and disrespectful. The foreign custom of removing the hat and standing in a respectful attitude until the melancholy train has passed, is a commendable one to be ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... says:—"John Lombe's was the most superb ever known in Derby. A man of peaceable deportment, who had brought a beneficial manufactory into the place, employed the poor, and at advanced wages, could not fail meeting with respect, and his melancholy end with pity. Exclusive of the gentlemen who attended, all the people concerned in the works were invited. The procession marched in pairs, and extended the length of Full Street, the market-place, and Iron-gate; so that when the corpse entered All Saints, at St. Mary's Gate, the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... his wedded wife; (Marpessa her, Evenus' daughter, bore To Idas, strongest man of all who then Were living, who against Apollo's self For the neat-footed maiden bent his bow. Her parents call'd the child Alcyone, In mem'ry of the tears her mother shed, Rival of Alcyon's melancholy fate, When by far-darting Phoebus forc'd away). With her, retiring from the field, he nurs'd His wrath; resenting thus his mother's curse, Althaea; she her brother's death bore hard, And pray'd to Heav'n above, and with her hands Beating the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... laying siege to the citadel cautiously, as was his way. Bluff Jack Lorrimer's courage was paralyzed by his love, and he drank deep to dispel his melancholy. Harry Bent—who was already under the spell of Netty Swinton, Dick's sister's—was indifferent, and Carnaby had been rejected three ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... springs, the beauty of little waves, the bright thoughts of stars. Sometimes in certain modes, they could be sad, but it was the sadness of lonely homeless things, old dreaming spirits of wind and wave, not the sadness of such things as had known love and lost what they had loved, but the melancholy of such forlorn beings as by their nature were shut out from the love that dwells about the firelit hearth and the old roofs of homesteads. It was the sadness of the wind that wails in desolate places, knowing that it is lonely, but not knowing what it desires; or ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the intervening time in discussing the matter with his aunt. But not a word on the subject was spoken by him to Mountjoy, whom he met at dinner, and with whom he spent the evening in company with Mr. Merton. The two hours after dinner were melancholy enough. The three adjourned to the smoking-room, and sat there almost without conversation. A few words were said about the hunting, but Mountjoy had not hunted this winter. There were a few also of greater interest about the shooting. The shooting was ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... his eloquence. His melancholy duty in the Convention. Charged by the Mountain before the Revolutionary Committee. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the wood," he announced sonorously, "are wandering about, lost and homeless on this melancholy and moving day of October 1st, waiting for the little robins to come and bury them under the brown and withered leaves. Ain't it harrowing, Miss! Personally I should prefer to have the last sad dirge sung over me by a quail on toast, or maybe a Welsh ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... poison her existence by telling her, and if she knew all he had not the courage to listen to the sequel. Perhaps no other experience in life produces a more profound shock than a discovery like that upon which David had so suddenly stumbled. It leads to despair or to melancholy, and many a life of highest promise has been suddenly wrecked by it. While he brooded over this mystery the days slipped past the young mystic almost unnoted; he wandered about the farm, passing ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... She whirled the molinillo in each cup as it was filled, whipping the fragrant liquid to froth; pausing only to scold when her servant stained one of the dainty saucers or cups. Poor Rosa did not sing, although the spring attuned her broken spirit to a gentler melancholy than when the winds howled and the fog was cold in her marrow. She had been sentenced by the last Governor, the wise Borica, to eight years of domestic servitude in the house of Don Jose Arguello for abetting her lover in the murder of his wife. Concha, thoughtless ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... cent.; he meets too many faces to keep the one in constant and unchanging perpetuity sacredly before his thought. And so it happened that Mr. Raleigh became at last a silent, keen-eyed man, with the shadow of old and enduring melancholy on his life, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... common sense, two ounces of experience, a large sprig of time, and three quarts of cooling water of consideration. Set them over a gentle fire of love, sweeten it with sugar of forgetfulness, skim it with the spoon of melancholy, put it in the bottom of your heart, cork it with the cork of clean conscience. Let it remain and you will quickly find ease and be ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... and so he knew it was not a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so. And in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound. Nikita had guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall willows with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there. They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a threshing-floor. Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly in the wind, the horse suddenly planted ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... He examined with languid curiosity some trifles that stood there—a pair of Dresden figures, a blue Sevres vase of graceful shape, a bronze clock with gilded rose-wreathed Cupids; and then raised his eyes to the two portraits which hung above. One of these was familiar enough—the dark melancholy face of Felix Arnault, whose portrait by different hands and at different periods of his life hung in nearly every room of La Glorieuse. The blood surged into his face and receded again at sight of the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... came at last it was all very brisk and business-like, and soon I was passed as being sound in body and feet. With most of us the ordeal was equally successful; but one poor chap sat melancholy in a blanket, waiting for a second test. Then I straggled back to camp with Professor Corder, who confessed himself just under the age-limit of forty-five. In spite of his successful examination he acknowledged a little anxiety as to whether he could stand the work; has coddled himself, he acknowledges, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... It is melancholy to reflect, that Johnson and Savage were sometimes in such extreme indigence[473], that they could not pay for a lodging; so that they have wandered together whole nights in the streets[474]. Yet in these almost incredible scenes of distress, we may suppose that Savage ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... salamanders, human beings with faces ablaze and robes on fire dwelt in a firmament of glory; but these conflagrations were enclosed and limited by an incombustible frame of darker glass which set off the youthful and radiant joy of the flames by the contrast of melancholy, the suggestion of the more serious and aged aspect presented by gloomy colouring. The bugle cry of red, the limpid confidence of white, the repeated Hallelujahs of yellow, the virginal glory of blue, all the quivering crucible of glass was dimmed as it got nearer to this border dyed with ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... these few simple words, deep and melancholy, and sounding as the sea, as out of a well of the living waters of love, flows forth all In Memoriam, as a stream flows out of its spring—all is here. "I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me,"—"the touch of the vanished ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... In this melancholy state, he commanded messengers to recall his eldest son Abouzaid from the army. Abouzaid was alarmed at the account of his father's sickness, and hasted by long journeys to his place of residence. Morad was yet living, and felt his strength ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... that the persons employed in the old establishment, might, with greater public utility, be applied to other purposes; and lastly, that the civil magistrates would not be harassed with so many strifes and lawsuits, and so many melancholy victims of the monopoly, and its officers would cease to drag a wretched existence in the prisons and places of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... street in Padua. The traditions of some remote spots about Italy still connect his name with a ruined tower, a mountain glen, a cell in a convent. In the recollections of the following generation, his solemn and melancholy form mingled reluctantly, and for a while, in the brilliant court of the Scaligers; and scared the women, as a visitant of the other world, as he passed by their doors in the streets of Verona. Rumor brings him to the West—with probability to Paris, more ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... which led her grandmother to meet it with a merely provisional and somewhat sketchy answer. "Your ignorance would be melancholy if your ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... spoke to me after we were at Yarmouth, which was not till two or three days, for we were separated in the town to several quarters; I say, the first time he saw me, it appeared his tone was altered; and, looking very melancholy, and shaking his head, he asked me how I did, and telling his father who I was, and how I had come this voyage only for a trial, in order to go further abroad, his father, turning to me with a very grave and ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... kindly, that we might perhaps in time have forgotten our resentments. What we never shall forget will be this New Year's Day, which we have been forced to pass without news from our families. You at least have had letters from your Gretchens, astounding letters, very likely, in which the melancholy blends with blue eyes, make a wonderful literary salad, composed of sour-krout, Berlin wool, forget-me-nots, pillage, bombardment, pure love, and transcendental philosophy. But you like all this just as you like jam with ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life. This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... perfectly, being made to swing from a post that was wedged into the arch, by cutting it to the proper length. As this was the first attack upon the Rancocus that had yet been made, by axe or saw, it made the young man melancholy; and it was only with great reluctance that he could prevail on himself to begin what appeared like the commencement of breaking up the good craft. It was done, however, and the gate was hung, thereby saving the rest of the crop. It was high time; ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the greatest tongue-lashing of his life. Furthermore, he seemed to enjoy the chorus of reproaches and threats and recriminations. He chuckled over the eloquence of Andy Green, and he grinned at the belligerence of Pink and the melancholy of ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... jerked beef, most of which was destroyed by ants, cockroaches, and other vermin. We could not afford to boil the kettle once in the whole passage with fresh water, so that the crew became reduced to a very melancholy state by scurvy and other distempers. The sickness increased upon us every day, so that we once buried two in one day, the armourer and carpenter's, mate, besides whom the carpenter, gunner, and several others died, together with some of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the other was given up to a General Harlow, his wife (both with high profiles and opinions of themselves), a youngish newspaper proprietor from Manchester, evidently rich and a "catch," and a maiden lady doubtless of importance equal to her proportions, as she was allowed to bring to the table a melancholy marmoset. These people did their best to raise my spirits. The girls, who copied royalties in their hair-dressing, looked alike, dressed alike, talked and laughed alike, and entertained me with chat about high society in London. They had red cheeks, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... forehead, or scarred his cheek, would have destroyed one of the most beautiful Italian faces which a woman ever dreamed of in all its delicate proportions. This face, not unlike the type which Girodet has given to the dying young Turk, in the "Revolt at Cairo," was instinct with that melancholy by which all women ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... Jack, to raise feelings of compassion, and Mesty took his seat by our hero in a very sulky humour, probably because he did not like the idea of having again "to boil de kettle for de young gentlemen." Even Jack felt a little melancholy at resigning his command, and he looked back at the green petticoat, which blew out gracefully from the mast, for Jolliffe had determined that he would not haul down the colours under which Jack had fought so ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... But to pursue this melancholy, but necessary detail. I am next to open to your Lordships, what I am hereafter to prove, that the most substantial and leading yeomen, the responsible farmers, the parochial magistrates and chiefs of villages, were tied two and two by the legs together; and their tormentors, throwing them with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... very useful for summoning the feudal barons to the rescue in case of need, cost one sovereign his throne. He had a beautiful concubine, for the sake of whose company he neglected the affairs of government. The lady was of a melancholy turn, never being seen to smile. She said she loved the sound of rent silk, and to gratify her whim many fine pieces of silk were torn to shreds. The king offered a thousand ounces of gold to any one ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... a very beautiful and human piece. Alda was Roland's bethrothed and the music aims at suggesting her loveliness and her mourning for her lover. There are passages of intensely impressive melancholy in the Fragment and its human feeling is typical of MacDowell. Altogether the two pieces are music on a high plane and worth attention for their own intrinsic value, quite apart from their connection with the symphony that never materialised. They bear a stamp of seriousness ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... lamentation, no tearing of the hair or cutting the body; it effects no somber colors to deaden the emotions; no earth or ashes for the body — all widespread mourning customs among primitive peoples. However, when a child or mature man or woman dies the women assemble and sing and wail a melancholy dirge, and they ask the departed why he went so early. But for the aged there are neither tears nor wailings — there is only grim philosophy. "You were old," they say, "and old people die. You are dead, and now we shall place you in the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... a cat for your lively menage?" he said, pointing to the melancholy animal which Neeland recognised as the dignified property of the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the kindness of the ploughman and his wife; but he could not help noticing that though everything was neat and comfortable in the cottage, they seemed both to be very unhappy. He therefore asked them why they were so melancholy, and learned that they were miserable because they ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... absorbed in a melancholy silence, Scholastique left her old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting Madonna of the domestic hearth, and to beg her kindly watchfulness ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... be broken by music not exactly sacred (or melodious) was strange. The old year would be rung out in a few hours, in company with our Utopian expectations. All our hopes of a rare New Year were, like our Christmas phantasies, dashed to the ground. The morrow promised to be rare enough in a melancholy sense, but it would not be New Year's Day. There was but one ray of comfort to sustain us, namely, the approach of the hero of Candahar; for although a certain period of waiting had yet to be endured—ere ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the evergreens and holly, Bring the music and the song, Chase away the melancholy, By the pleasures bright, and jolly, Which to Christmas ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... was as tender to melancholy as a gentlewoman, caught him by the hand. "Are you teased by ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and Codfishery: these are serious blows our enemy has had. But then, to temper the joy over Louisburg, there was, at Ticonderoga, by Abercrombie, on the small scale (all the extent of scale he had), a melancholy Platitude committed: that of walking into an enemy without the least reconnoitring of him, who proves to be chin-deep in abatis and field-works; and kills, much at his ease, about 2,000 brave fellows, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Germantown, he at once sought out Janice and confirmed Andre's action. Though he found her working on the costume, it was with so melancholy a countenance ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... pieces, like frail crockery, in the crash of things; and already, in eleven short months, were in that Limbo near the Moon, with the ghosts of other Chimeras. There, except for rare specific purposes, let them rest, in melancholy peace. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... he lived in the contemplation of the ideas that had passed across his mind in the quiet of European galleries, and now became more definite impressions. The secret of those years, with their deep, slow current of refined and melancholy thought, is now sealed with him in eternal sleep; but from the works that remain to us as the matured fruits of his life, we may gain some hint of his experiences. It is not to be questioned that he drew from the New-England ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... It was strange that she had premonition of the recurring fits of her disorder; and when the ghost of unreason beckoned, Charles took her by the hand and led her to the appointed home. Charles Lloyd relates, that, at dusk one evening, he met them crossing the field together on their melancholy way toward the asylum, both of them in tears. In the smiles of Charles Lamb, and they were many, his friends always remarked a prevailing expression of sadness. The "fair-haired maid," who had been the theme of his first poetizing, appears not again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... it has been cold and disagreeable. The past winter, I am told, has been a very severe one, and the melancholy brown skeletons of all the eucalyptus trees in the place show the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... drinks old hock; he has a very fine temper; he is somewhat of a humourist, and a little tinctured with pride; he has a good, manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous; he has infinite vivacity; yet is at times observed to have a melancholy cast.' ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... years afterwards, he wrote the last line of the last page in his garden-house at Lausanne, and reflected joyfully upon his recovered freedom and his permanent fame. His second thought, however, will fitly close this notice with a moral from his own lips: "My pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... production of the vast monuments which now lie scattered in confusion about the valley of the Nile is certain; and some men contemplate this large expenditure of human muscle upon these rude masses, with a gentle melancholy that is not altogether called for. There was a spirit in the work that made it noble. And here it is well that the visitor shall see the opinion of a man whose conclusions were based upon profound erudition ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... considerable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir, and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold, exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffeted by all the winds of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now and then, and Warrigal would look at us from time to time with a flash in his hawk's eyes that we'd seen once or twice before and knew the meaning of. As for Jim, we were bound to do something or other, if it was only to keep him from going melancholy mad. I never seen any man changed more from what he used to be than Jim did. He that was the most careless, happy-go-lucky chap that ever stepped, always in a good temper and full of his larks. At the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... occurred under your kind auspices, I beg most respectfully to tender my services for the same, and crave your permission to invite your benign attention to the episodes of my chequered life, though of a doleful and sombre nature, and CONCATENATION of melancholy events that have made their visitations. My eldest brother died one year since, leaving an heritage of a relict and two female issues to bemoan and lament his premature and irreparable loss. And two months since my revered parent ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... as much sense as ever she showed when she was in all that muss. I am sure, come to think of it, I don't wonder. Things outside works in, somehow. I believe, if I didn't keep my window panes clear, I should begin to grow deceitful—or melancholy. And folks can't have clean hands ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... going even to remove the body and the wounded man, until several abolitionists and Friends had collected for that object, when others found courage to follow on. The excitement caused by this most melancholy affair is very great among all classes. The abolitionists, of course, mourn the occurrence, while they see in it a legitimate fruit of the Fugitive Slave Law, just such a harvest of blood as they had long feared that the law would ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the talk was over, what would it have gained us? Our minds would be filled with a lot of painful stuff better kept buried—meaningless hopes, scraps of vicarious living in "cultured" communities, memories that were nothing but melancholy given concrete form. The melancholy is easiest to bear when it's the diffused background for everything; and all garbage is best kept in the can. Oh yes, our talking would have gained us a few more days of infatuation, of phantom ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... a sad smile, and went hastily in-doors. He put his violin into its case, and sealed and directed his letter to Eve. He could not rest in-doors, so he roamed out again, but this time he took care to go on the lawn. Nobody would come there, he thought, to interrupt his melancholy. He was doomed to be disappointed in that respect. As he sat in the little summer-house with his head on the table, he suddenly heard an elastic step on the dry gravel. He started peevishly up and saw a lady walking briskly toward him: ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... life. He asked all travellers whether they knew a certain Colonel Lor Crawley—avec sa femme une petite dame, tres spirituelle. "Ah, Monsieur!" he would add—"ils m'ont affreusement vole." It was melancholy to hear his accents as he ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they must make up their minds to a sad case; that the terrors of that night had affected her brain, and that, through it, the whole nervous system had suffered, and was continuing to suffer the most melancholy effects. The only thing, he thought, in her favor was her youth; and added, that it might have a good effect, if they could leave the place where she had undergone such a terrible shock. But whether they did or not, kindness ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... laudable and beneficial exertions are universally made by evangelical Christians to remove every sectarian barrier, the 'Evangelical Church,' extending her pale, becomes more firmly established. And though we have melancholy evidence that the state and disposition of the present Romish Church calls loudly for a reformation, we must not omit the pleasing fact that many of her worthy members are conscientiously alive to the cause of truth ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... myself, "are you? Well, there is something else in you than dough pills, and salts, and senna, at any rate, and that is more than most of your craft have, at all events. I'll draw you out presently, for I never saw a man with that vein of melancholy in him, that didn't like fun, providin' his sadness warn't the effect of disease. So here's at you; I'll make the fun start or break a trace, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... will have received on the 24th ultimo my despatch of the 4th, by which your Excellency will have been enabled to acquaint the Porte with the feelings with which Her Majesty's Government had received the intelligence of that melancholy transaction. I have nothing to ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... the ideal, from the jar and bustle of the outward world in the silent and shadowy interior of thought and being. Her poems have the fault of nearly all modern poetry, inasmuch as they are over-informed with thought and sadness. By far the greater number of her themes are abstract and melancholy. It appears to us that her mind moves more naturally and finds readier expression in the picturesque than in the metaphysical; and in saying this we mean to say that she is really a poet, and not a rhymer of thoughts. "Midnight" is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... on the facade of the palace, a beautiful building dating from the late Renaissance. Owing to the topography of the region and the general decadence peculiar to all Etruria, the country about Nepi is forbidding and melancholy. The dark and rugged chasms, with their huge blocks of stone and steep walls of black and dark red tuff, with rushing torrents in their depths, cause an impression of grandeur, but also of sadness, with which the ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... mantle on the superficies of the earth, and bespangles the verdant grass with her beauteous adornments." A lover "enters a grove free from the frequentations of any besides the ranging beasts and pleasing birds, whose dulcet notes exulsecrate him out of his melancholy contemplations."[87] ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... of heavy footsteps on the stairs outside the half-open door aroused Brent from these melancholy speculations; he turned to see Bunning coming back, attended by several men, and foremost among them, Hawthwaite, superintendent of the borough police, whom Brent had met once or twice on his previous visits to the town. Hawthwaite, a big, bearded man, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... study of Gabriel Nash; on no further curiosity—he had only been looking round the room in a rummaging spirit—than to see how much or how little of it remained. It had become to his view so dim an adumbration—he was sure of this, and it pressed some spring of melancholy mirth—that it didn't seem worth putting away, and he left it leaning against a table as if it had been a blank canvas or a "preparation" to be painted over. In this posture it attracted Biddy's ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... house seems to weigh upon him, rendering even gloomier his melancholy thoughts. How intolerably quiet the night is, not even a breath of wind is playing in the trees outside. On such a night as this ghosts might walk and demons work their will. There is something ghastly in this unnatural cessation of ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... is a melancholy example of the fallacy of enlargements and of sequels. Neither Raspe nor the baron can be seriously held responsible for a single word of it. It must have been written by a bookseller's hack, whom it ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... its use increased rather than diminished. One of the warmest advocates of the plant was the Jesuit Don Antonio Julian, who, in a work entitled, "Perla de America," laments that coca is not introduced into Europe instead of tea and coffee. "It is," he observes, "melancholy to reflect that the poor of Europe cannot obtain this preservative against hunger and thirst; that our working people are not supported by this strengthening plant in their long-continued labors."[100] In the year 1793, Dr. Don Pedro Nolasco Crespo pointed out in a treatise the important ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... down the straw on each side the fireplace. Mars Plaisir sacrificed some of his own bundle to wipe down the wet walls; but it was all in vain. During the silence, while his master was meditating at the window, the melancholy sound of falling water—drip, drip—plash, plash—was heard all around, within and without the cell. When he had wiped down the walls, from the door in the corner round to the door again, the place from which he had set out was as wet as ever, and his straw was spoiled. He angrily kicked ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Ursuline Convent at Matanzas, while her noble brother is a slave, with felons, laboring with the cursed chain-gang in the same city to which we are bound. Now, boys, do you wonder that when I found myself under orders to go again to the scene of all this misery I was affected, and that a melancholy has possessed me which has increased as the voyage has progressed? I did determine at first that I would leave the ship at Gibralter and go home, but I dreaded to part with my shipmates. I shall ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... great clouds into the sky; in winter and after the autumn rains lost in the white curtain of mist that so often surrounds Ravenna, it is an almost impassable morass of mud and misery. Even at its best in spring time it is melancholy and curiously mean without any beauty or nobility of its own, though it commands so much of those vast spaces of flat and half desolate country which the sea has destroyed, on the verge of which stands ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... all this about? What has this to do with the play? Why, don't you see that it is the symbol of philanthropy, of gentleness, of melancholy sadness? The storm is over and there is nothing in Mrs. Harding's heart but pity. Don't you see that she is dressed in deeper black than ever, and do you notice that look on her face—that third-act ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... the melancholy rejoinder; "but neither in Italy nor in Germany would this circumstance fail to produce alarm. Heaven guard the monarch, and all who are near and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... himself. He had never kissed a woman in his life before—but now desire was awake, and from the deeps of him the most unexpected emotions came surging, sweeping him away. He was a prey to longings and terrors. Wild ecstasies came to him, and then followed plunges into melancholy. He longed to see her, and other things stood in the way, and he did not know why ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... and at whose house he often took his bed, received him with great pleasure. But the count was distressed to hear him say that his infirmities would not allow him to return there any more, and that the time of his death was hastening on. To mitigate the grief of such melancholy tidings, he entreated the Saint to leave him some memorial of their friendship; to which Francis replied, that he had nothing to give but the miserable habit he had on, but that he would willingly leave it him, provided he ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr. Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look, which woful look she now bestowed ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the air along that dark shore which accorded well with Stratton's sensations. The solemn melancholy of the place was calming; and as he watched the sheet of spangled gold before him softly heaving and appearing to send the star reflections sweeping at last in a golden cream upon the sands, life seemed, after all, worth living, and his cares ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... it were, through blood from the pavilion to the edge of the forest, and there was lifted to heaven, in a moment, among the angels. Michu, who had known he was not appreciated, and who mistook his wife's grieved and melancholy manner for lack of affection, and had left her to herself, living chiefly out of doors and reserving all his tenderness for his boy, instantly understood the meaning of her tears. She had cursed the part which her beauty ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... the bridges, its wailful, small waves licking the wharves, and bearing up the inky barges that look like the ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to feel vivaciously despairing, and he hugged himself in the belief that the Thames at nightfall tinged his soul with a luxurious melancholy, the capacity for which was not far from rendering him a poet. So he took his way by the river. As he neared Cheyne Row, he saw in front of him the figure of a man leaning over the low stone wall, with his face buried in his hands. On hearing his approaching footsteps the man lifted ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens |
