"Pitiful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his pitiful tale, Till Vulcan the weapon restored; "There, take it, young sir; try it now—if it fail, I will ask neither fee nor reward." The urchin shot out, and rare havoc he made, The wounded and dead were untold; But no wonder ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Rosalynde, who, poor soul, was as hotly burned as himself, but that she shrouded her pains in the cinders of honorable modesty. Whereupon, guessing him to be in love, and according to the nature of their sex being pitiful in that behalf, they suddenly brake off his melancholy by their approach, and Ganymede shook him out of his ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Fisher, now as cold as that stone she had got up from, "is the pose of the modern young woman. It seems to me pitiful, ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... back, in the little, hysterical, defiant note she left under the door. Her father and mother must wait and not worry. There are thousands of homes, I suppose, in which are buried just such letters as Minnie's farewell to her parents; rebellious, passionate, yearning, pitiful. Ah, well! The moth must break its chrysalis. The flower must rend its bonds toward the light. Little Minnie was "going on the stage." A garish and perilous stage it was, whereon Innocence plays a part as sorry as it is brief. And now ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... would be. You are not hard. You couldn't be. You must come close day by day in your life to so much that is pitiful. One can talk to you and you'll understand. This is my first chance, the first real chance I have ever had, ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... and that he may as well pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain—murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too—but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicetre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's feelings until his reprieve came, would, if properly divided into chapters, make a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... judges. They read to her the articles which had been founded on her answers, and the Bishop previously represented to her "that these doctors were all churchmen, clerks, and well read in law, divine and human; that they were all tender and pitiful, and desired to proceed mildly, seeking neither vengeance nor corporal punishment, but solely wishing to enlighten her, and put her in the way of truth and of salvation; and that, as she was not sufficiently informed in such high matters, the Bishop and the Inquisitor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... do not share it. He is the least respectful of the sentiments entertained by me. Pray, spare me the mention of him, as you say of your husband. He has that pitiful conceit in men, which sets them thinking that a woman must needs be susceptible to the declaration of the mere existence of their passion. He is past argument. Impossible for him to conceive a woman's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... yes, and the mass of inhabitants of English cities, have so unblushingly, for the mere sake of money, turned their backs on those principles of freedom of which they boasted for so many years, flouting us the while for being behind them in the race of philanthropy! It is pitiful and painful to see pride brought so low. We of the Federal Union are striving, heart and soul, to uphold our government—a government which has been a great blessing to England and to the world. Who shall say what revolutions, what tremendous disasters, would ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... not a mere impersonation of the powers of nature, but a personal Being, righteous and merciful, with whom man stands in the closest relations. Holy and awful, indeed, hating iniquity and exacting punishment upon the wicked, He is also tender and pitiful—a Father of the oppressed, who bears their burdens, forgives their iniquities, and crowns them with tender mercy.[18] All nature speaks to the Hebrew of God. He is no far-off creator, but immanent in all His works.[19] He presides over mankind, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... was near, and it seemed as if the pair of strugglers were doomed to perish when a pitiful eddy swept them both out of the deep pool into the foaming rapid below. Shank followed them in howling despair, for here things looked ten times worse: his comrade being tossed from billow to breaker, was turned heels over head, bumped against boulders, stranded on shallows, overturned ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... start forward again—was conscious of a confusion of lamentable sounds that rose into the night from out the engine's wake. Prolonged cries of agony, sobbing wails of infinite pain, heart-rending, pitiful. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... William Colleton, on the other hand, with means hourly increasing, exhibited a disposition narrowing at times into a selfishness the most pitiful. He did not, it is true, forego or forget any of those habits of freedom and intercourse in his household and with those about him, which form so large a practice among the people of the south. He could give a dinner, and furnish an ostentatious entertainment—lodge ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... you will, their theory is pitiful, and their tight little method squeezes all the life out of them. Filth and the flesh are their all in all. They deny wonder and reject the extra-sensual. I don't believe they would know what you meant if you told them that ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... undignified frivolity the Princess of Wales strove to support an anomalous position and find balm to her wounded pride and weak brain; while the passionate, all-human child-princess, Charlotte, awakening with pitiful precocity to the realities of an existence which was to deal with her but harshly, pitted her stormy soul against a destiny which decreed that before her the sweets of life were eternally to be ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... the innumerable multitude of people who can do nothing of the kind, and who take no real interest in anything except spending money and gossiping, are to be really pitied, is true. Some of them once had minds—and these are the most pitiful or pitiable of all. It is to be regretted that novels are, with rare exceptions, written to amuse this class, and limit themselves strictly to "life," never describing with real skill, so as to ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... rods and the stones of the Jews. It was the cruel custom in Asia Minor, a custom not yet extinct, for masters to wound their slaves with marks which made it impossible for them to escape recognition. And so St. Paul glories in the pitiful scars on his body, because they prove Whose he is ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... cried for vexation—when a curt and sour note from Southend told her the issue. The blow struck down her excitement and her exultation. Away went all joy in her encounter with Mr Disney, all pride in the skill with which she had negotiated with the Prime Minister. The ending was pitiful—disgusting and pitiful. She poured out her heart's bitterness to Major Duplay, who had ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... evident to everybody that Coulter was in a pitiful state, for he could not find the plate at all, and the next man went down on four balls, filling ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... and triumphs, and she blesses Thee, who art "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think" [Eph. 3:20]; for she perceived Thee to have given her more for me than she used to ask by her pitiful and most doleful groanings. For Thou didst so convert me unto Thyself, that I sought neither a wife, nor any other hope of this world—standing in that rule of faith in which Thou, so many years before, had showed me unto her. And thou didst turn her grief unto gladness [Psalm 30:11], ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... forward was pitiful in the extreme. Weeping women carrying heavy burdens and with their children clinging to their dress came along. Some searched up and down frantically for members of the family who had been lost in the ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... a little girl; she had large gray eyes, and brown hair smoothly parted over her forehead, while there was a pitiful expression round her mouth, that pleaded with you so earnestly, you could scarce help stopping, as you met her, to give her ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... but the treaty declared that no assistance should be given him. It was a gross injustice on the part of our Government, which did no special credit to itself, when, after the deposed ruler had made a pitiful appeal to Congress, that body presented him with a ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... of June 28 in this year 1863, Leila riding from the mills paused a minute to take note of the hillside burial-ground, dotted here and there with pitiful little linen flags, sole memorials of son or father—the victims of war. "One never can get away from it," she murmured, and rode on into Westways. Sitting in the saddle she waited patiently at the door of the post-office. Mrs. Crocker was distributing letters and newspapers. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... book it only penetrated the breast to the ribs, but it knocked him down and disabled him for the rest of the campaign. He was a most competent and worthy officer, and now lives in poverty in Chicago, sustained in part by his own labor, and in part by a pitiful pension recently granted. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Philip as much concealed by the scanty, blue-check curtain as he could manage to be. They heard a confusion of voices below, a hasty moving of chairs, a banging of doors, a further parley, and then a woman's scream, shrill and pitiful; ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... watched the flickering embers. Here he lived in his loneliness and cursed curses that were prayers, and here for near five decades he read and thought and dreamed and wrote. Here the spirits of Cromwell and Frederick hovered; here that pitiful and pitiable long line of ghostly partakers in the Revolution answered to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... sordid tale? Mate, I know a certain spot in this Land of Blossoms, where only foreigners are laid to rest, which bears testimony to a hundred of its kind—strange and pitiful destinies begun with high and brilliant hopes in their native land; and when illusions have faded, the end has borne the stamp of tragedy, because suicide proved the open door out of a life ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... more important than his subject. Look what an enchanting book Carlyle made out of the Life of Sterling. Sterling was a man of real charm who could only talk. He couldn't write a line. His writings are pitiful. Carlyle put them all aside with a delicious irony; and yet he managed to depict a swift, restless, delicate, radiant creature, whom one loves and admires. It is one of the loveliest books ever written. But, on the other hand, there are hundreds of fine creatures who have ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Prudence had moved her small bed out of the twins' room, and had placed it in the front room occupied by herself and Fairy. They asked if they might speak to Constance, but Prudence went in with them to say good night to her. The twins broke down and cried as they saw the pitiful little figure with the wan and tear-stained face. They threw their arms around her passionately and kissed her many times. But they went to bed without ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... are in a pitiful state, said Gudrun, what with the hay shortage, almost everyone is badly off, and not a single farmer with a scrap of hay to spare, except ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the benches and fanned themselves while the perspiration ran down their flushed faces. They looked so utterly miserable that we told the cook to give them a piece of cake which Mrs. Caldwell had sent us the day before. Their gratitude was pitiful, but, of course, they gave the larger share to ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... some little comfort, however, in the fact that beneath the pitiful cot that he called his bed he had a small tin trunk. Even that was destroyed, however, by the entrance of a thin young man called Smithers, who reached under the cot and dragging out the trunk proceeded to take out one of the pairs of ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for six half rations until she received help from her husband. This closed my day's work. On my return to the Garno House, Mrs. Halford informed me that the lady who went with me in the morning was sick, for she had hardly ceased weeping over those pitiful families we visited in ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... touch was a galvanic battery of human kindness. It thrilled and electrified me. No; he had not even seen my pitiful presence. I do not know where the people of the world get their manners; but these Artichokes got theirs, rough-coated though they were, straight ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... retain her self-control was pitiful. Then she broke down and cried, her head on the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... inflame them; they lap it up and long for more! I can't bear it if nothing is going to happen! Now you've pulled yourself out of the mire—and it's the same with everybody who has accomplished anything—one after another—either because they are contented or because they are absorbed in their own pitiful affairs. Those who are of any use slink away, and only the needy ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... came. "Twenty years and more—ay!—twenty years, and five over—and most of the time in Hell! Ah—run away, if you like—run away from your own son!" He released her arm; but though the terror had come back twofold, she would not run; for the most terrible maniac is pitiful as well as terrible, and her pity for him put her thoughts on calming and conciliating him. He went on, his speech breaking through something that choked it back and made it half a cry in the end. "Fourteen years of quod—fourteen ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... than I had hoped. Promises are cheaper than gold, and even here in Holland, where all is at stake, the burghers are loath to put their hands in their pockets, and haggle over their contributions as if they were to be spent for my pleasure instead of their own safety. It is pitiful to see men so fond of their moneybags. The numbers of men who can be relied upon to rise are satisfactory, and more even than I had hoped for; for in matters like this a man must proceed cautiously, and only sound those upon whom he feels sure beforehand he can rely. ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... on at something that I was ashamed to see. There was a kind of deliberate determination about their happiness and Clare's little body with her hair on the verge, as it seemed, of a positive downfall, had something quite pitiful in its deliberate rejoicing; such a child, my dear—I never realised how young until last night. Such a child and needing some one so much older and wiser than ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... they so conducted themselves their life was pitiful, and their death desired; but these lived and died praised, being brought up in the virtues of their ancestors, and on becoming men they kept their fame untarnished and exhibited their own valor. 70. For they brought many benefits to their country, and made good the ill-successes of others, and ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... excused; for the woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes and gray traveling dress, was very lovely, with black hair and great eyes full of tears. She was tall, with a fine figure, and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear. As soon as the Senior Subaltern stood up, she threw her arms round his neck, and called him "my darling" and said she could not bear waiting alone in England, and his letters were so short and cold, and she was his to the end of the world, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... that we could, although of these I did not see much, since all that day my time was occupied in attending to the wounded with the help of my son and a few rough orderlies, whose experience in doctoring had for the most part been confined to cattle. A pitiful business it proved without the aid of anaesthetics or a proper supply of bandages and other appliances. Although my medicine chest had been furnished upon a liberal scale, it proved totally inadequate to the casualties ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... exterior was the only way she knew of expressing courage! It seemed to Amherst that all means of manifesting the finer impulses must slowly wither in the Lynbrook air. As he approached his destination, his thoughts of her were all pitiful: nothing remained of the personal resentment which had debased their parting. He had telephoned from town to announce the hour of his return, and when he emerged from the station he half-expected to find her seated in the brougham whose lamps ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... a hand in the game and built others. In the contest, alas, America has been far behind until gradually she has let other countries slip in and usurp the major proportion of ocean commerce. It is a pitiful thing that we should not have applied our skill and wealth of material to building fine American steamship lines of our own instead of letting so many of our tourists turn their patronage to ships of foreign nations. Perhaps if the public ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... really pitiful," said Lucile, "and it made me so desperate to see all those thoughtless cruel boys following him, hooting at him, and laughing at him and calling poor old battered Bull all sorts of names. So I turned around and looked at them. I saw that little Bob Fletcher ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... burst of flame in the fireplace, and the little, pitiful letter, with its selfishness and pain and sacrifice, vanished—as Lily's handkerchief had vanished, and the braided ring of blossoming grass—all gone, as the sparks that fly upward. Nobody could ever know the scented humiliation of the handkerchief, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... His excitement was pitiful to behold; and I felt myself grow indignant with Northmour, whose infidel opinions I well knew, and heartily derided, as he continued to taunt the poor sinner out of his humour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... betting ring with a persistence almost pitiful, but he had neither the appearance nor the manner which begets confidence in unlikely tales, and in his mouth the truth itself sounded like a fabrication. He was a willing but an unconvincing liar, and the few who lingered long enough to listen to his clumsy ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... nights, evenings and mornings, before there was any sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is the cause of day and night—and what is called his rising and setting that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to suppose the Almighty to say, "Let there be light." It is the imperative manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and balls, Presto, be gone—and most probably has been taken ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... face of Age, with a pitiful smudge of Youth, Carmine and heavy and lined, like a jester's mask on Truth; And she laughed from the red lips outward, the laugh of the brave who die, But a ghost in her ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... in men, as anger, love, hatred, grief, joy, &c., but it is so much the worse, since the judgment, which is the only directive and guide of them, is troubled. Now they are set on wrong objects, they run at random, and are under no kind of rule, and so they hurry the poor man and put him in a pitiful case. Now indeed so it is with us,—since sin entered, the soul is wholly turned off God, the only true object of delight, in which only there can be solid gloriation. The mind of man is blinded, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... pitiful experience for you—one which has caused me many qualms of conscience," he muttered, "but I have tried to atone and would beg you to believe that all my happiness for the ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... feeling one had, on the top of the great building in that town older than Rome itself, of the continuity of human life and the futility of human conceit. The provincial vanity of modern States looked pitiful in the clear air above that vast ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... should be shotted, but not fired so as to injure the crews of our ally's ships; and, finally, that they should be used as hostilely and destructively as was necessary to accomplish the purpose of forcing Naples to let the Sicilian rebels alone. But then it is said, and it is the pitiful pretext of equal treatment to both parties, that the orders were alike to prevent action of the King's troops and the revolters. Was ever there a more wretched shift, a more hollow pretence, than this? Keep the Sicilians ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... their bodies. We've done our best by the boy, sir, but I don't guess he'll ever be any better. Once for a spell we tried keepin' him to home, but he got right sick and would o' died sure, if we hadn't let him go; it was pitiful to see him. Everybody 'lows there won't nothin' in the woods hurt him nohow; so we let him come and go, as he likes; and he just stops with the neighbors wherever he happens in. Folks are all as good to him ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... and to her lasting shame, Olive Keltridge's glance sought that of Brenton. Before the hurt and abased look in his deep gray eyes, her own eyes dropped, ashamed and pitiful. What right had she, in a moment so tragic, albeit so very, very petty, to spy upon him in his disappointment? What right to obtrude her honest ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Verily, for this reason, I would deem death to be preferable to life. O hero that never swervest from virtue, had I with my brothers met with destruction ere this at the hands of our enemies on the battle-field, I would not have found thee in this pitiful plight, thus pierced with arrows. Surely, O prince, the Maker had created is to become perpetrators of evil deeds. O king, if thou wishest to do me good, do thou then instruct me in such a way that I may be cleansed of this sin ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... their position; and Mr. Boffin, who heard it, rejoiced within himself, comforting himself with the reflection that his withers were unwrung, and thinking with what pleasure he might carry the anecdote into the farthest corners of the clubs. Poor Duchess! 'Tis pitiful to think that after such Herculean labours she should injure the cause by one slight unconsidered word, more, perhaps, than she had advanced it by ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... long way off. I am a poor creetur not to feel that the Lord knows best what I can bear. It don't seem as though I could suffer much more than I used to, seeing my mother's suffering. And I know the Lord is kind and pitiful, ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows: but strangely visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures, Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... with a sort of pitiful gayety, her song ran in the wise of saying how we should gather our rose-buds while we may. The warning could not have been addressed to me; I shall gather mine while I may—the unrifled rose of Georgiana's life, ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... inhabitants of an English town called N—-, when dressed in their Sunday's best. "Envy, malice, curiosity, and avarice," said he, "are here and there the sole springs of action; and both places are governed by a pitiful mercantile spirit, which prevents them from being grandly wicked or nobly virtuous. In short, Faustus, there is little to be done in either place by a man of spirit, and we will hurry away from hence as soon as you have brought the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... was with us on the raft, and whom the infuriated beings had thrown into the sea, as well as her husband, who had defended her with courage. M. Correard, in despair at seeing two unfortunates perish; whose pitiful cries, especially the woman's, pierced his heart, seized a large rope which he found on the front of the raft, which he fastened round his middle, and throwing himself a second time into the sea, was ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... in which this intellectual idiosyncrasy we have been describing gradually affected Amiel's life supplies abundant proof of its actuality and sincerity. It is a pitiful story. Amiel might have been saved from despair by love and marriage, by paternity, by strenuous and successful literary production; and this mental habit of his—this tyranny of ideal conceptions, helped by the natural accompaniment ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the ground, and the news soon spread that the Japanese surgeon had pronounced the little captain's case hopeless. I went to see him as soon as I could, and seldom have I seen a more pitiful sight. Lying on a coat thrown one the ground, with his side torn open by an iron bullet, the stricken man looked like a child who had met with a terrible accident. He could not have been more than five feet high, and his ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... emaciated animal, lashing his sunken sides with his restless tail, sniffing with terror and contempt at the fodder that is put before him, his eyes always turned toward the door, pawing the empty place beside him, smelling the yoke and chains his companion wore, and calling him incessantly with a pitiful bellow. The driver will say: "There's a yoke of oxen lost; his brother's dead, and he won't work. We ought to fatten him for killing; but he won't eat, and he'll soon starve ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... he said eloquently, "went together down the terrace in a fog of rain, into the shadow of the night, under one umbrella. And I said to myself as they went, dejected and pitiful, 'Well, that's the final exit of Foster from ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the imagination on other people's needs is not common with hopeful young gentlemen. Indeed we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong. But at this moment he suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was robbing two women ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... had taken only such articles as pertained to his maturer years. The pictures on the walls—the few shabby books that had drifted into his lonely and misunderstood childhood—remained. There was the locked box containing, Conning knew full well, the pitiful but sacred attempts at self-expression. The key was gone, but he recollected every scrap of paper which lay hidden in the old, dented tin box. Presently he went to the dormer window and opened it wide. ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... second fiddle even to the dying. So in all his praises of her and his laments for her he never failed to endeavor to impress on his hearers the idea of his own immense superiority to her and to everybody else. There is hardly anything in fiction so touching, so pitiful, so painful, as this exposition of a naked, brutal, yet not quite selfish, not wholly unloving, egotism. The Queen did not die on the Wednesday. Thursday and Friday passed over in just the same way, with just the same incidents—with the King alternately blubbering and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... died. After a year the body was claimed by his grandmother, who lived at this time in the Pensa district, and his remains were removed to be fitly honored in the family village of Tarchany. In connection with the tragedy, it is pitiful to remember that his grandmother wept herself blind over the ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... born of an earthy race, blood ran thick in our veins, we were sensuous and passionate, the breath and steam of pleasure stifled our brains, and our filmy eyes could not see heaven. Yes, yes, I needed it all; but, friend, it is pitiful. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of hopelessness and doubt. I often listen to the people speaking of blindness and the blind. They only see that the eyes are gone, that the glory which is spring is for ever dead; they perceive the hesitating walk, the outstretched groping hand which, to my mind, is more pitiful than the story of the Cross, and inwardly they murmur, "How awful!" and sometimes they turn away. But they have never seen the real tragedy which lies behind the visible handicap. Only their imagination is stirred by the outward ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... place immediately; not that I have any objections either to my Lady or you, sir; but, to be sure, it was a sad day for me that I engaged myself to her Ladyship. Little did I think that a lady of distinction would coming to such a poor pitiful place as this. I am sure I thought I should ha' swooned when I was showed the hole where I was ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... as Californians, whether this is a record in which we can take any pride. With the exception of the pitiful attempts of its loyal friends from time to time to revive the California Historical Society, absolutely no organization work whatever, except what has lately been initiated at Berkeley, has been done by any public institution to promote the ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... his orders, the troops, supplies, and arms requested by the governor of these islands. Will your Majesty also command that food and sustenance be provided for the soldiers, for their sufferings are most pitiful. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... of Anatole Dufour, he rented a small room on the heights of Montmartre, and lived by doing odd jobs wherever he could find them. He led a pitiful existence. Three times, he obtained regular employment, only to be recognized and then discharged. Sometimes, he had an idea that men were following him—detectives, no doubt, who were seeking to trap and denounce him. He could almost feel the strong hand of ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... when he used to laugh, and say that it was a pleasure to give up anything to be with my mother. Now he began to pace up and down the room while she looked after him with pitiful eyes. Suddenly she rose, and, going up to him, laid her hand on his arm. She gazed earnestly ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... that that ends all!" said the queen, with a burst of anger. "You think that, with a pitiful paying for the brilliants, you can atone for the disgrace which you have brought upon your queen? No, no, sir; I desire a rigid investigation. I insist upon it that all who have taken part in this ignominious deception be ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... inducement. He started forward with alacrity. In the wink of an eye he threw the cord around Beauvais's arms and pinned them to his sides. Beauvais swore, but the valet was strong in his fright. He struggled and wound and knotted and tied, murmuring his pitiful "Mon Dieu!" the while, till the Colonel was the central figure ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... The pitiful procession reached the sitting-room. "Sit down there," George commanded. "If you make a sound I shall probably cut your head clean off. What do you mean by ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... made a pitiful attempt to laugh, to speak lightly—"Teacher said ridin' horseback would keep you from gettin' fat. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... means an exhaustive collection, and for this reason was not specially referred to in the first chapter, it is impossible not to recognise that its three rather small volumes, of matter for the most part exceeding poor and beggarly, contrast in the most pitiful fashion with the scores and almost hundreds containing Early English Romances in verse. Malory of course brings the prose-scale down very considerably from its uncomfortably meteoric position, and some other things help: but the total of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... powerfully scented mixture of grease and ashes, with which their bodies were smeared. The buck—poor fellow!—was suffering from some horrible skin disease, which spread over his chest and back. He seemed to have but little power in his arms, and a pitiful object he was, as we uncovered him from his screen of branches. Having apparently satisfied them that it was not our intention to eat them, by signs we showed them our pressing need for water—these they ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Dame Weston make of it, softening her voice for the nonce into a shrill tremulous whine, and exciting the mingled pity and anger—pity towards herself, anger towards her husband—of the whole female world, pitiful and indignant as the female world is wont to be on such occasions. Every woman in the parish railed at Master Weston; and poor Master Weston was summoned to attend the bench on the ensuing Saturday, and answer the charge; and such was the clamour abroad and at home, that the unlucky culprit, terrified ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... 'twas pitiful—far worse beyond the hills, Where flashing gun and culverin were heard; There the unhappy bore their heavy cross, And suffered, more than elsewhere, agonising pain, Were killed and strangled, tumbled into wells; 'Tween Penne and Fumel the saddened ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Jennie must return to her school, and the poor old man be left to his weariness and vacancy. On the day of the child's departure, he looked vainly for her appearance until the time of her usual coming was passed, and then, with a low moan and a pitiful face, he sank back upon the bench. Old Simon tried to arouse and interest him, but he only shook his head, and looked about him with the old air of melancholy, and murmured, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... brother-in-law," returned Lumley, with a pitiful smile, "that your intellects are sinking to a par with those of the geese which fly over the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... night when she kep' a sinking and sinking, and turned away her head and didn't know him no mo', it was fitten to make a body's heart break to see him climb onto the bed and lay his cheek agin hern and call her so pitiful and she not answer. But bymeby she roused up, like, and looked around wild, and then she see him, and she made a great cry and snatched him to her breast and hilt him close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last po' strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... should be Employed here for further decency; I dare not say they are in office, though A service here they are appointed to: They must be very aged, trusty, meek, Such who have done much good, that do not seek Themselves; they must be humble, pitiful, Or they will make their service void and null. These are to teach the younger women what Is proper to their sex and state, what not: To be discreet, keepers at home, and chaste; To love their husbands, to be good; shamefac'd: ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... pitiful to see wee frost-pinched sparrows on cold mornings in the mountain groves shaking the snow from their feathers, and hopping about as if anxious to be cheery, then hastening back to their hidings out of the wind, puffing out their breast-feathers over their ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... occupation; she was dipping fresh-cut salad leaves into great bowls of water as quietly as if only her own little family were assembled before her. Once only she lifted her heavily-moulded, sagacious eyebrow at the irate dog-cart driver, as if to measure his pitiful strength. She allowed the fellow, however, to touch the point of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and the Church has drawn his breath for the conflict. His teeth are set—his weapon is in his hand—you will see the result within a year. We shall have a government in power, a government whose power will not be dependent on the faddists and the self-seekers—the ignorant, the blatant bellowers of pitiful platitudes, the platform loafers who call themselves labor-leaders, but whom the real laborers repudiate. Mark my words, their doom is sealed; back to the desert and the ditch! My dear Holland, pardon this digression. I feel that I need say nothing more to you than I have already said. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... his hand, and he stood looking at his daughter. His look was pitiful, and she could not bear to see him shake his head slowly from side ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... chair came to a halt, and the man, bending down, lifted the boy from the chair. With pitiful eyes, Theodora noted the limp helplessness of all the lower part of his body; but she also saw that the boyish face was bright and manly, and that his blue eyes flashed with a spirit equal to Hubert's own. She watched approvingly the handy way in which the man settled the cushions. Then he ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... stages of that great defence. We had no ammunition, and we were terribly short of gun stores, though the bare guns had all been saved. And our men were very short of steel helmets and box respirators, and the boots and clothing of many were in a pitiful condition. But a small supply of ammunition came through from France, and it was decided to send one Section of the Battery into action on the Piave and the remainder back to Ferrara to refit. All gun stores and men's equipment were to be pooled, and those going back ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... him: "It seems thy God Is a very pitiful kind of God: He could not shield thine aching eyes From the blowing desert sands that rise, Nor turn aside from thy old gray head The glittering blade that is brandished By the sun He set in the heavens high; He could not moisten thy lips when dry; The desert fire is in thy brain; Thy limbs are ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... turnpike-man relaxes, in favour of your 'pink,' his usual grimness. A tramping woman, with one child at her back and two running beside her, asks charity; you suspect she is an impostor, but she looks cold and pitiful; you give her a shilling, and the next day you don't regret your foolish benevolence. To your mind the well-cultivated land looks beautiful. In the monotony of ten acres of turnips, you see a hundred pictures of English farming ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... the bad, Poisoned with conflicting emotions, Proclaims at times, Through no fault of his, That for a surety the sins of fathers Become the heritage of sons Even to the fourth generation? Or that murdered chastity, That ravished motherhood— So pitiful, so helpless, Before the white hot, Lust-fever of the "master"— Has borne ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... Vansittart in French), "I take a daily promenade after coffee in the Oude Weg. I sit on the bench where you sat, and more often than not I see the sight that you saw. I am not a sentimental woman, but, after all, one has a heart, and this is a pitiful affair. Also, I have obtained from a reliable source the information that the new system of manufacture is more deadly than the old, which I have long suspected, and which, I believe, has passed through your mind as well. You and I went into this thing ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... echoed and re-echoed, was followed by a continuous shower of litter tearing or trickling down through the trees. Unnerving cries rose from a score or more stampeding horses in the adjacent camp; but the subtler human ear caught on the damp night breezes a sound that froze the blood ... pitiful low sobs of men dying from ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... general muster was made, and all appeared who had survived the perils of the wilderness, a more pitiful and humorous spectacle was exhibited than I had ever ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... made on the cutter, the captain intending to run for the Falkland Islands. The sufferings of the passengers increased from day to day; they soon ran short of water, until the day's allowance was reduced to about two tablespoonfuls for each person. It was pitiful to hear the little children calling for more, but it could not be given them: men, women, and children had to share alike. Provisions failed. The biscuit had been spoiled by the salt water; all that ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... she began to feel almost absurdly disappointed about the tea. She was hungry, too; she had had no lunch just because of the tea. It was to be a sort of family revel, and she had wished to enjoy it in every way, to make of it a real meal. Her abstention from lunch now seemed to her almost pitiful. Disappointment became acute in her. Yet even now her uneasiness, though definite, was not strong. If it had been she would not have been able to feel so disappointed, even so sorry for herself. She had given up the day to Dion. The nursery ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... found a pitiful little heap of wet and sodden rags, lying at the foot of a mound of earth and stones thrown upon the side of the track. It was little Titee with a broken leg, all ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... each other they would have no fear; they would laugh, and would openly march to the church door, in the face of every smile and every word. I have read about it in books, and I have seen it for myself. That is a pitiful love which chooses a secret course. Love naturally begins in secresy because it begins in shyness; but it must live openly because it lives in joy. It is as when the leaves are changing; that which is to ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... weather, although most favourable for to-day's excursion, betokened change. The light fleecy clouds playing about the summits of the Causses, on either side grew heavier in appearance. We must hasten on. We heard, too, a pitiful story of two American ladies who had lately made this journey in a perpetual downpour, arriving at Le Rozier drenched to the skin, and having seen nothing. We had not crossed the Atlantic certainly to shoot the rapids of the Tarn, but it would be deplorable even to have ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Mountains. While the summer lasted all went well with them; they, and the little son who was born to them, were content with the sustenance the forest afforded. But in the winter all was changed. Starvation stared them in the face. More and more pitiful became their condition, till at length Rudolph resolved to seek the baron, and give his life, if need be, to save ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... them and spoke to himself saying, "Ah, immortal steeds, why did I give ye to king Peleus, whose generations die while ye remain young and undying? Was it that ye should know the sorrows that befall mortal men? Pitiful, indeed, is the lot of all men upon the earth. Even Hector now, who boasteth in the armour that the gods once gave, will shortly go down to his death and the City he defendeth will be burned ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... merely accidentally, for he commanded only an "Army of Reserve," which nevertheless he had greeted with the title of Grand Army before he entered upon the campaign. It is scarcely conceivable that Bonaparte, possessing as he did an extraordinary mind, should have descended to such pitiful artifices. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... been built at the edge of the marsh, and three figures ran out from it as they came up: two boys and a heavy middle-aged man. It was for Mary Bell to tell Henderson that it would be hours before he could look for other help than this oddly assorted wagonful. The man's disappointment was pitiful. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Jewish writer, was born in London in 1864. He first won fame by interpreting the Jewish temperament as he saw it manifested in London's dingy, pitiful Ghetto quarter. "This Ghetto London of ours," he says, "is a region where, amid uncleanness and squalor, the rose of romance blows yet a little longer in the raw air of English reality, a world of dreams as fantastic and poetic ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... herself all the while stiff and erect. There was a certain sustaining pride in her close, firm-set mouth. There was never any sign of tears, though more than once her lips parted for a moment in a pitiful quiver. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more of him, than of a shepherd, goatherd, or neatherd: a lazy Coridon, occupied in milking and shearing his herds and flocks, but more rudely and harshly than the herd or shepherd himself. Do you repute any man the greater for being lord of two thousand acres of land? they laugh at such a pitiful pittance, as laying claim themselves to the whole world for their possession. Do you boast of your nobility, as being descended from seven rich successive ancestors? they look upon you with an eye of contempt, as men who have not ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the theme of many a magazine article, and years have come and gone; yet hundreds of people cross the pastures to the lonely spot each year, and wander through the house, and listen to the story of the joy of the first glad, hopeful days and the pitiful ending of this philosopher's plan for ...
— Three Unpublished Poems • Louisa M. Alcott
... never thought to fall so low as this, or that the time would come when we would feel moved—all but compelled, in fact—to betray to a cold and discriminating world our poor, pitiful, one-adjective state. ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... worried, Half maddened by his sting, Exclaimed, "Be off, vile fly— Mean, pitiful, base thing!" After the fly had ended his repast, Fully exhausted feels the beast at last, And roared so that he shook the earth, While the victorious fly Met in the spider's web ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... little ground parlour, or at least to hear the sound of merry voices and laughter in the rooms above; but no sounds of any sort awaited me; indeed the house seemed strangely silent for one so fully lighted, and, astonished at this, I pushed the door ajar at my left and looked in. An unexpected and pitiful sight awaited me. Seated at a table set with abundance of untasted food, I saw the master of the house with his head sunk forward on his arms, asleep. The expected guests had failed to arrive, and he, tired out with waiting, had fallen into a ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... very pathetic, this pair of eager eyes suddenly turned inward; this discovery of an empty soul; this comparison with his grandfather's golden hoard; and this pitiful confession of abject poverty. I felt sorry for him, just as I felt sorry for the lady in the tramcar. The lady in the tramcar looked into a purse that she thought to be empty, and suffered all the agony of a great loss. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... gloom, made him stumble. Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a rushing sound: the air grew so cold that all Martinswand might have been turning to one huge glacier. All at once he heard through the stillness—for there is nothing so still as a mountain-side in snow—a little pitiful bleat. All his terrors vanished, all his memories of ghost-tales passed away; his heart gave a leap of joy; he was sure it was the cry of the lambs. He stopped to listen more surely. He was now many score ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... help believing The lady had not forgotten it either, And knew the poor devil so much beneath her Would have been only too glad, for her service, {750} To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise, But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it, Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it. For though, the moment I began setting His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting (Not that I meant to be obtrusive), She stopped me, while his rug was shifting, By a single rapid finger's lifting, And, with a gesture kind but conclusive, And ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... women the strongest and holiest sentiment of life is affection for a personal embodiment of goodness and love, who once walked in Galilee and Jerusalem, existing now in the invisible realm, sympathizing with all human aspiration, pitiful to all human weakness and sorrow, inspiring to all effort and hope and trust. That sentiment is surely a blessed revelation to those in whom it exists,—the warm and living symbol of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... again, and this time his smile without words troubled her. It seemed the assertion of superior intelligence, contemptuous, if half pitiful of her ignorance. Once so serenely convinced of her superiority, Leam was now as suspicious of her shortcomings, and was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... blood-stained hole through his tunic. Bert Powel was so badly hurt that we exhausted our supply of field dressings in bandaging him. We found little Charlie Harrison lying close to the side of the wall, gazing at his crushed foot with a look of incredulity and horror pitiful to see. One of the men gave him first aid with all the deftness ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall |
