"Depressing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fancy—which, indeed, it helped to nourish—Asisi is a serious town. It has even an air of gentle melancholy, which is not, however, depressing, but which inclines to thoughtfulness and study. Travellers are familiar with its aspect—the crowning citadel with the ring of green turf between it and the city, which stretches across the shoulders of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... doorsteps. It was a most dismal spot, and I was so cold that I was afraid I would shiver, and Fiske might think I was nervous. So I moved briskly about among the graves, reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. Under the circumstances the occupation, to a less healthy mind, would have been depressing. My adversary, so it seemed to me, carried himself with a little too much unconcern. It struck me that he overdid it. He laughed with the local surgeon, and pointed out the moon and the lakes of mist as though we had driven out to observe the view. I could ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... produced in the republic by the defensive and uneventful campaigning of the year 1599 had naturally been depressing. There was murmuring at the vast amount of taxation, especially at the new imposition of one-half per cent. upon all property, and two-and-a-half per cent. on all sales, which seemed to produce so few results. The successful protection ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dejected, some confident, and others hid their feelings under a mask of stolidity. Winona joined them shyly. They were all unknown to one another, and so far nobody had plucked up courage to venture a remark. It is horribly depressing to sit on a form staring at twenty taciturn strangers. Winona bore for awhile with the stony silence, then—rather frightened at the sound of ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... the East-End streets, hoping for a glimpse of the big car and the brown-skinned chauffeur or of my scarred man from Paris. I frequented all sorts of public bars and eating-houses used by foreign and Asiatics. By day and by night I roamed about the dismal thoroughfares of that depressing district, usually with my flag down to ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... A) from the inner margin of the cornea, a little below its transverse diameter to the caruncle, then snipping through the sub-conjunctival tissue, he passes a blunt hook bent at an obtuse angle under the tendon of the internal rectus, and endeavours by depressing the handle to project the point of the hook at the wound. Then with successive snips of the scissors he divides the tendon on the hook, close to its sclerotic margin. Lest it should not be freely divided, various dips with the hook may be ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... MacNair was very rich had, on the whole, a depressing effect. Kate Dunlevy, who had expected to marry purely for love, found with a little chagrin that she was also marrying for money. The Judge was led to remark upon the curiosities of a speculative age and a fluctuating ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... his face set hard in determination. She had gotten the children up and dressed and had almost finished cleaning the room. The room looked, as always, dark and depressing with its sooty black ceiling and paper peeling from the damp walls. The dilapidated furniture was always streaked and dirty despite frequent dustings. Gervaise, devouring her grief, trying to assume a look of indifference, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... them—invited him to accompany them on their hunting excursions, bestowed particular notice upon him in various ways, and always treated him with much consideration. As regarded merely his physical comfort, Boone's situation was, at this time, rather enviable than otherwise; but he felt a depressing anxiety with regard to his wife and children, and doubted the safety and prosperity of the Station, without his own watchfulness and superintendence. He therefore determined to escape from his captors at the earliest ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... you," she declared. "I am tired. I have been losing all day, and altogether I have had a most depressing time." ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the shoulders squared, and a slow deep breath gradually inspired through the nose till the lungs are filled throughout with air. The expiration should be just as gradual with relaxation of every muscle. It is most important that the lower part of the chest should first be filled by depressing the diaphragm (the muscular floor of the lungs). Some practise is needed before this habit is acquired, but it is well worth cultivating. Place the hands on the sides of the abdomen while inspiring, ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... to the British agents that the Courts of France and Spain were by no means earnest and sincere in the wish for an immediate close of the war. With the hope of soon reducing Gibraltar, or of otherwise depressing England, they put forward at this time either inadmissible pretensions, or vague and ambiguous words. It therefore became an object of great importance to negotiate, if possible, a separate pacification with America. At first sight there appeared almost insuperable difficulties ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... into which he ushered D. Webster was of such a depressing drab that even the green and red bed-quilt failed to disperse the gloom. The sole decoration, classic in its severity, was a large advertisement for a business college, whereon an elk's head grew out of a bow of ribbon, the horns branching and ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... polyglot accomplishments may be called a many-sided woman, has been, both by Nature and education, most liberally endowed with intellectual gifts. The depressing influence of continual invalidism alone prevents her from taking that literary position which good health and application would soon secure for her. Nevertheless, Mrs. Trollope has for several years been a constant correspondent of the London "Athenaeum," and in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... study her environment to his heart's content, indeed—or to his heart's despair. For all this had rather the effect of chilling, of depressing him. It was very splendid; it was very luxurious and cheerful; it was appropriate and personal to her, if you like; no doubt, in its fashion, in its measure, it, too, expressed her. But, at that rate, it expressed her ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... to rain on October 29th. Banks of watery, leaden-hued clouds rolled lumberingly from the south-west; beneath a slow depressing drizzle the orchard became a melancholy vista of dripping branches and sodden muddied grass. The colonel busied himself with a captured German director and angle-of-sight instrument, juggling with the working parts ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... creatures have a respite, and may clothe ourselves in white garments; loose, soft, and in some degree shapely; but in the winter—the sombre winter, the depressing winter, the cheerless winter, when white clothes and bright colors are especially needed to brighten our spirits and lift them up—we all conform to the prevailing insanity, and go about in dreary black, each man ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... editor. It remains to give a short account of his labours as a contributor. Everything was on the same vast scale. His industry in writing would have been in itself most astonishing, even if it had not been accompanied by the more depressing fatigue of revising what others had written. Diderot's articles fill more than four of the large volumes of his ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... Administration two of the three groups that had taken a hand in choosing him for the Vice-Presidency were thoroughly sick of their bargain. The machine politicians and the great corporations found that their cunning plan to stifle with the wet blanket of that depressing office the fires of his moral earnestness and pugnacious honesty had overreached itself. Fate had freed him and, once freed, he was neither to hold nor to bind. It was less than two years before Wall Street was convinced that he was "unsafe," ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... let us think of disagreeable things to-day," she said. "God will spare you much longer than that, you depressing old wedding-guest!" ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... wished to be, I think that I never felt my loneliness as I did during the twenty-four hours which intervened between Rattray's departure and my own. They dragged like wet days by the sea, and the effect was as depressing. I have seldom been at such a loss for something to do; and in my idleness I behaved like a child, wishing my new friend back again, or myself on the railway with my new friend, until I blushed for the beanstalk growth of my ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... herbage of the hill. I approached near to them, without their perceiving me; I gathered a handful of fresh grass, and held it out; the little one nestled close to its mother, while she timidly withdrew. The male stepped forward, fixing his eyes on me: I drew near, still holding out my lure, while he, depressing his head, rushed at me with his horns. I was a very fool; I knew it, yet I yielded to my rage. I snatched up a huge fragment of rock; it would have crushed my rash foe. I poized it—aimed it—then my heart failed ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... beautiful things, in a regular arrangement. Scatter five thousand people through the scene, and I do not know how to make a better outline sketch. I was unquiet, from a hopelessness of being able to enjoy it fully. Nothing is more depressing to me than the sight of a great many pictures together; it is like having innumerable books open before you at once, and being able to read only a sentence or two in each. They bedazzle one another with cross lights. There never should be more than one picture in a room, nor more than one picture ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... had a most depressing influence on the boys, as well it might, during the entire day, and it was the principal topic of their conversation while together. During the two days following only brief references were made to the Professor, but the second evening ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... daily along the Thiaumont-Vaux front. Their "nibbling" process went on unceasingly, seizing some hundred yards of trenches, or taking batches of 200 or 300 prisoners with such frequency as to produce a decidedly depressing effect on the German commanders and on their troops, who in this sector represented the pick ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... sense of quality is observable even among those classes in which in other countries it is generally forestalled by a depressing consciousness on the subject of quantity. Watch your Parisian porter and his wife at their mid-day meal, as you pass up and down stairs. They are not satisfying nature upon green tea and potatoes; they are ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... rasping to the nerves. That the burden of strong natures is in proportion to their strength, that human nature in general is weak, and that the Devil still sometimes appears incarnate in the person of lovely woman, seem to form his theory of life. Hence his stories are ever sad, but they are not depressing; for his weak characters we sympathize with and do not despise, his strong and generous ones we sorrow for, his lovely women we reverence. And, however great one's admiration of Tourgueneff's books may be, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... black-edged with cards inserted by relatives in memory of officers who had fallen—"For King and Fatherland!" the cards always said. I counted thirteen of these death notices in one issue of a Cologne paper. Now they have almost disappeared. I imagine that, because of the depressing effect of such a mass of these publications on the public mind, the families of killed officers have been asked to refrain from reciting their losses in print. Yet there are not wanting signs that the grim total piles up by ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... briny deep, and be debarred from describing the things which he had most at heart. One more attempt he was bound to make, even at the risk of another failure. Accordingly in 1883 appeared "The Life Prisoner" (Livsslaven), which deserved a better fate than befell it. The critics found it depressing, compared it to Zola, and at the same time scolded the author because he lacked indignation and neglected to denounce the terrible conditions which he described. He replied to their arraignments in an angry ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the memory of that night when you couldn't fit your plans to mine which has made me write this letter. When I came home from Harbor Light I found Bettina waiting up for me, and she broke down as the depressing realities of your work were forced upon her. I was very toploftical, Anthony—and was prepared to read her a sermon on the duties of a doctor's wife, when all at once I had a vision of myself in that rosebud organdie. I hated your work ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... suddenly animated, as if after a period of depressing darkness she saw a large ray of sunshine. She had thought of possibilities when she had persuaded her husband to take her to St. Louis, but had not expected them to develop ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... placed, and commands fine views from its windows. Even in winter it must be, if not a cheerful, an interesting abode to dwell in. In duller days, when skies are leaden, and the more you see around you the less you like it, its dreamy look of age and strangeness within and without may have a somewhat depressing influence. The aches and agonies of so many generations may gain an ascendancy over the exuberant joys that made their life worth living. It would sometimes seem that if fondness for the supernatural must be indulged, an old edifice ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... and spirits,—"My own experience as to the best drink when on the road is most decidedly in favor of Tea. Tea appears to rouse both the nervous and muscular systems, with, so far as I can discover, no after-depressing effects." ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... got two months' leave I invited myself there as a matter of course, fully expecting to stay most of my time with them, but I made an excuse to get away after a week. The place was dismal and unendurable, the whole life and atmosphere indescribably depressing." He looked round with an instinct of caution, leaned forward earnestly, and dropped his voice. "Mr. Carrados, it is my absolute conviction that Creake is only waiting for a ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... self-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal because it now and then evades it. According to this conception, Christians are at best the victims of a depressing fate; their life is a penance; and their hope for the next world purchased by a slow ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... on one occasion, on defending a prisoner, said: "Drink has upon some an elevating, upon others a depressing, effect; indeed, there is a report, as we all know, that an eminent judge, when at the Bar, was obliged to resort to heavy drinking in the morning, to reduce himself to the level of the judges." Lord Denman, the judge, who had no love for Wilkins, bridled up instantly. His voice trembled ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... without stirring, without dreaming, and awoke naturally and, for the first time in weeks, refreshed. She felt her old self, as if some depressing weight had been lifted, or a shadow had been swept away from between her and the sun. Her head was clear. The seeming iron band that had pressed it so hard was gone. She was cheerful. She even caught herself humming aloud as she divided the fish into messes for Mrs. Olsen, Maggie Donahue, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... taken—as more salient and exciting—for the average: that side by side with ruffians like Gaston de Foix hundreds of honest gentlemen were trying to do their duty to the best of their light, and were raising, and not depressing, the masses below them—one very important item in that duty being, the doing the whole fighting of the country at their own expense, instead of leaving it to a standing army of mercenaries, at the beck and call of a despot; and that, as M. de Tocqueville says: "In ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... arrest, I felt, and I doubt not I looked, as ill at ease for the time being as the group of trembling townsfolk who stood near me. Reflecting that he should know his master's mind, I recalled with depressing clearness the repeated warnings the King of Navarre had given me that I must not look to him for reward or protection. I bethought me that I was here against his express orders: presuming on those very services which he had given me notice he should repudiate. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... we are on the road in Aislaby village. The steep climb from the river and railway has kept off those modern influences which have made Sleights and Grosmont architecturally depressing, and thus we find a simple village on the edge of the heather, with picturesque stone cottages and pretty gardens, free from companionship with the painfully ugly modern stone house, with its thin slate roof. The big house of the village stands on ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... bears from the deck of the schooner, we had made, at Messrs, R. & Co.'s machine-shop, a large rifle of about an inch bore, and set like a miniature cannon in a wrought-iron frame, arranged with a swivel for turning it, and a screw for elevating or depressing the muzzle. This novel weapon was, as I must needs own, one of my projection, and was always a subject for raillery from my comrades. Its cost, including the mounting, was ninety-seven dollars. In all, three hundred ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... and lower altitudes until the air grew intensely hot, physically depressing after the cold wine of the mountains; finally, ten minutes ahead of time, they drove into the doubly depressing village of Huntersville. It was no uglier than thousands of other villages and small towns that look as if built ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... aching heart, I put the finishing touches to Laurie's travelling gear, then went to bed, but not to quiet or refreshing sleep. There is generally something depressing, I think, in a very early setting out; my heart sinks now as I recall the breakfast by lamplight; faint, bluish dawn just marking the square outline of the window; the horses' tread, as our man servant walked them up and down before the doors—the last words and directions hastily ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... that filled her heart, while she pondered the depressing news from India, her face seemed etherealized, singularly sublimated; and as he watched the expression of child-like innocence, the delicate tracery of nose and brows, the transparent purity of the complexion, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... books, one might have supposed that they would be a Thomas-a-Kempis and a Taylor's Holy Living, and then how well it would have seemed! Two more were going for a rapid tour abroad in a steamer chartered for assistant masters. That seemed to me to be almost more depressing. They were going to ancient historical places, full of grave and beautiful associations; places to go to, it seemed to me, with some single like-minded associate, places to approach with leisurely and untroubled mind, with no feeling of a programme or a time-table—and least of all in the company ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be depressing, but it certainly is an instructive lesson to go back just a hundred years ago, when the condition of Europe was in many respects similar to that which prevails now. The problems that unrolled themselves before the nations afford ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... Bertram were in the highest possible spirits during this same month of August. Their mother seemed well once more, well, and gay, and happy. The hard rule of economy, always a depressing regime, had also for the time disappeared. The meals were almost plentiful, the girls had new dresses, and as they went out a little it was essential for them in ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... followed the Peace of Utrecht are a period of decadence and decay; a depressing period exhibiting the spectacle of a State, which had played a heroic part in history, sinking, through its lack of inspiring leadership and the crying defects inherent in its system of government, to the position of a third-rate power. The commanding abilities ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... mind is at peace, sleep is coming, I am getting sleepy, I am about to sleep." Never take any sleeping powders except upon the advice of a physician, for the majority of these sleeping powders contain some harmful drug, as morphine, codeine, phenacetin or acetanilid. The latter especially is very depressing to the heart and serves to weaken the nervous system. In fact many deaths may be laid at the door of these drugs. Treatments to tone up the nervous system and to improve the circulation often are indicated in these cases of "nerves." Control your nerves, ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... clumps of grass. A track, he saw, circled the dwelling to the back; but he walked steadily and directly up to the shallow portico between windows with hanging, partly slatted shutters. The house had been painted dark brown a long while before; the paint had weathered and blistered into a depressing harmony with the broken and mossy shingles of the roof, the rust-eaten and sagging gutters festooning ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... possesses some large lias quarries which have been prolific in fossils. The church is a disappointing building standing well back from the village street, mainly Perp., with a rather poor Dec. chancel; and is made still more depressing by the addition of a very debased modern N. aisle. There is a piscina and double sedilia in the chancel. The village is furnished with a good modern Institute, which contains a large assembly hall and a small museum ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... reign, without one act intended to make glad the hearts of the people. The depressing conditions in which he lived gradually undermined the health of the Emperor. He was carried in dying condition to Livadia, and there, surrounded by his wife and his children, ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... her unperceived. She greeted him with pleasure unfeigned. She was tired of her own morbid thoughts just then. Whatever he might be, he was at least never depressing. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... it depressing sometimes, but then there is so much about me here that is novel and interesting that my days are made up more of ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... an hotel. You could smell the bugs and the sanitary arrangements from the front-door step, and although the whole place had been lime-washed, dirt from all over the Near East was accumulating on the dead white, making it look leprous and depressing. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... higher degree of social virtue? Is melancholy an instance of the soul's reliance on Divine goodness? Do they not rather shew a rebellious disposition to Him from whom affliction proceeds, and a selfish disregard of those whose comforts are all blasted by the depressing influence of indulged despair? ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Paul had lost no opportunity to probe into the mystery of Norman's remark. In return, Norman had rapidly sketched an outline of Colonel Howell's proposition and of the present situation. Norman's rapid words seemed at first to have rather a depressing effect on young Zept, and then, when the whole idea had been put before him, his usual animation rose ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... depressing occasion. No one who had ever come back had changed as much as Banks. If he had worn a pigtail and talked Choctaw, he couldn't have grown farther away. It wasn't his fault. He tried his best. But he hadn't talked our language for years. He couldn't ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... bring out clearly the main phenomena, I have postponed till now the consideration of a point of some difficulty. To determine the influence of a reagent in modifying the excitability of the tissue, we rely upon its effect in exalting or depressing the responsive E.M. variation. We read this effect by means of galvanometric deflections. And if the resistance of the circuit remained constant, then an increase of galvanometer deflection would accurately indicate a heightened or depressed E.M. response, ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... would pass under far more depressing circumstances. In many homes the members of the family we left behind would be prevented from being in a festive mood, thinking as they were of the country's position, while mourning the dead, and pre-occupied with the fate of the wounded, of those who were missing, or ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... of the police, of the detectives, of the patriots. His complaints were pitiful and depressing. He had been arrested and had lost his job. It was easy to see that he had suffered. The gleam of hunger trembled ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... he demanded suddenly in the depressing silence of the tea-table, as if he had just discovered the absence of his ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... by us all, of plod, plod, plodding across the sand! That fatal monotony into which every man's life stiffens, as far as outward circumstances, outward joys and pleasures go! the depressing influence of custom which takes the edge off all gladness and adds a burden to every duty! the weariness of all that tugging up the hill, of all that collar-work which we have to do! Who is there that has not his mood, and that by no means the least worthy and man-like of his moods, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... there had not been sun enough to dry it sufficiently for use, so that the poor had want of fuel, and cold to feel, as well as want of food itself. Indeed, the appearance of the country, in consequence of this wetness in the firing, was singularly dreary and depressing. Owing to the difficulty with which it burned, or rather wasted away, without light or heat, the eye, in addition to the sombre hue which the absence of the sun cast over all things, was forced to dwell upon the long black masses of smoke which trailed slowly over the whole country, or hung, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... positions on the maps, excite the imagination of the traveller, and when the reality comes into view, and he enters their narrow limits, the commonplace architecture and generally unattractive surroundings have a most depressing effect, and he sighs, "What's in a name?" We find upon the map the name and appearance of a city, but it proves to be the most uninteresting of villages, though known as Amsterdam. We also find many towns of the Hudson duplicated in name on the Ohio, and pass Troy, Albany, Newburg, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... would have been discovered that the gaiety was somewhat forced. Each person present at the gathering was burdened by the intuitive perception of something ominous in the atmosphere; there was a portentous quality about the environment that had more or less a depressing effect upon Sally Gardner's guests, and each one was conscious of a determined, but silent effort to overcome this feeling, in the belief that he or she was the only one ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... but he would have been worth hearing on a rowan tree flaming red against a blue September sky. Look at that newly ploughed field so softly brown, and the faded gold of the beech hedge. November is a cheery time. The only depressing time of the year to me is when the swallows go away. I can't bear to see them wheeling round and preparing to depart. I want so badly to go with them. It always brings back to me the feeling I had as ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... position and qualities of the people around them. The servant, indeed, calls out the names of all the visitors as they arrive, but, in many instances, mispronounces them; so that it will not be well to follow this information, as if it were an unerring guide. In our opinion, it is a cheerless and depressing custom, although, in thus speaking, we do not allude to the large assemblies of the aristocracy, but to the smaller ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... not in a mood for laughing tonight. [She glances at Josephine.] At any rate it is always singularly depressing to go anywhere in order to laugh. And if this clown causes me even to smile he ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... Mrs. Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with a soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the day of retribution which was fast approaching. The act of transferring this title to a new family, could in fact be no otherwise regarded by the great house of Bourchier, which had long enjoyed it, than either as a marked indignity to itself, or as a fresh result of the general Tudor system of depressing and discountenancing the blood of the Plantagenets, from which the Bourchiers, through a daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, were descended. The late earl had left a married daughter, to whom, according to the customary courtesy of English sovereigns in similar circumstances, the title ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... people, often starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents because there was no place for them to go. The sky became more and more densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day and left nothing but a dull red glare 'extraordinarily depressing to the spirit.' In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, clinging to their houses and in many cases subsisting in a state of partial famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores in the shops of the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... head level. Whatever he felt and thought, he had nothing to offer on the altar of public suggestion. He knew that of all these irresponsible debaters he had the most to lose. Nor did he feel inclined to expose anything of the risk at which he stood. It was a depressing time for him, so depressing that he could see very little hope. His risk was enormous. He felt that the probability was that this raiding gang were well enough posted as to the store of gold he held in his cellars. He felt that, should James or any of his people decide upon a coup, the attack ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... a good thing that the King is leaving the Tower. It must be depressing for him to have only a wall between himself and the prisoners, and to see the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... about for "something that helps"—something that will strengthen men and women to fight down their lower nature, that will convince them that their higher nature is a reality, and that will give them a living sense of companionship in their difficult lives—lives often as drab and depressing as they are ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... me up for a tramp sometimes, or make disagreeable remarks about me. But generally I get along well enough. The undertakers are hardest on me. They say I exercise a depressing influence on their business by setting a bad example to other people; and one of 'em, over in Constantinople, he said a man who'd defrauded about fifty-four generations of undertakers ought to be ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... that things, as they are, are not very good, you will very soon be judging them by your own inherent standard of badness, and you will produce a bad ideal as I produce a good one, farther still from the truth, and extremely depressing to contemplate." ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... at large lay when Darwin announced his solution of the problem. The religious world had been, up to that time, chained to the anthropomorphic conception of Deity, and it was even less due to the purely scientific faculty than to the philosophic that Darwin came as a liberator from a depressing superstition,—the belief in the terrible Hebrew God, ingrained in the conscience of every reverently educated boy, and become in his growth inseparable from the maturer beliefs. The evolution of the human mind itself had finally reached the point at which this anthropomorphism became a thing ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the situation of the Negro in the United States to-day without blinking the facts, see it clear and see it straight. The present outlook for that race is gloomy and depressing, and this gloom and depression are nation-wide. Until the Negro gets in the South some measurable freedom in the use of the ballot, the present agencies at work for his advancement, like industrial and the higher education and the acquisition of property, and organized agitation ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... looked round the room, and at the picture of Samson and Delilah which hung on the wall, and at the circular beer-stains on the table, and at the spittoons underfoot filled with sawdust. The whole aspect of the scene had that depressing effect on Jude which few places can produce like a tap-room on a Sunday evening when the setting sun is slanting in, and no liquor is going, and the unfortunate wayfarer finds himself with no ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... uncertain brightness; dark clouds, heavy with snow, hung sullenly along the horizon; and above, the sky was of a somber, leaden hue. The air felt chill and clinging, like that of a vault; and heaven above, and earth beneath betrayed a severity of mood infinitely depressing. Norma shivered in spite of her heavy furs, and hurried on, burying her ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... these absences from home, however, had a depressing effect on him; when he had been previously much overworked it seemed as though the absence of the customary strain allowed him to fall into a peculiar ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... he said, getting up to go. "And I dare say it will do you no harm to be out of the way of all this church-going and confessing to priests, who are always depressing people even when they're not ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... work at expanding and depressing the lungs of the huge animal as he might have worked to bring ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... were never too propitious to the uncouth giant, who had to force his way by sheer labour, and fight for his own hand. Accordingly, the young scholar tried to coin his brains into money by the most depressing and least hopeful of employments. By becoming an usher in a school, he could at least turn his talents to account with little delay, and that was the most pressing consideration. By one schoolmaster he was rejected on the ground that his infirmities ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... looking at the result from their standpoint, they had cause to rejoice, for their victory was far-reaching in its results. It strengthened the opponents of temperance throughout our fair Dominion—yes, beyond its bounds—while it certainly had a depressing effect upon its staunch supporters, for they were well aware the failure would not be attributed to its true source —that is, the bitter opposition it had met with from its unprincipled opponents, the lethargy ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... of the woman whose youth he had made into a waste place and a prison to be made aware of the fact that it was quite impossible to stand in his presence and breathe easily. The air of the room in which Carovius chanced to be was heavy, stuffy, depressing. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... awaiting her visitor. The Dowager was downstairs before her, looking grave enough, and Jock, slim and dark, supporting a corner of the mantelpiece, like a young Caryatides in black. Lucy's brightness, her pretty shimmer of blue, the flower in her hair, relieved these depressing influences. She stood in the firelight with the ruddy irregular glare playing on her, a pretty youthful figure; and her husband's assiduities, and the entire cessation of any apparent consciousness on his part that any question had ever arisen between them, made Lucy's heart light ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Little Wood Cay, but as I said before, one cay was so much like another—all alike flat, low-lying, desolate islands covered with a uniform scrub and marked by no large trees—not unbeautiful if one has a taste for melancholy levels, but unpicturesquely depressing and hopeless for eyes craving more featured and ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... his long career, from the depressing indifference of his public to the true spirit of poetry. "An old college mate of mine," said James Madison—who was by tradition Freneau's roommate at Princeton in the class of 1771—"a poet and man of literary and refined tastes, knowing nothing of the world." When but three years ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... about which he was deceived, and which he imagined to be a chef d'oeuvre. It was well he had this happy faith to sustain him, as, according to the account of M. Jules de Petigny, the circumstances under which the play was composed must, to put the matter mildly, have been distinctly depressing. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... which separated two families of sincere worshippers. Yet we now see stronger and higher walls of partition than ever, between the children of the same God,—with a new law of the letter, more entangling to the conscience, and more depressing to the mental energies, than any outward service of the Levitical law. The cause of all this is to be found in the claim of Messiahship for Jesus. This gave a premium to crooked logic, in order to prove that the prophecies meant what they did not mean and could not mean. This ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... transformed her into a heroine—to have fallen so easily into the trap that had been set for him, being all the while profoundly impressed with the sense of his own cleverness—was, to say the least of it, depressing to the spirits of a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... don't tell a depressing dream before tea!" begged Alice, slipping her arms about his neck, and imprinting a kiss on a spot, which, if it were not already bald, was fast becoming so. "Wait until after supper—the rarebit will spoil if we don't eat it at once. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... search for specific purposes. During meals, three times a day, interesting topics of conversation are welcome; indeed, the dearth of conversation at such times, owing to lack of "something to say," is often depressing. There is often need of something to unite the family of evenings, such as a magazine article read aloud, or a good narrative, or a discussion of some timely topic. There are social gatherings where the people ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... foggy, with light head winds and a heavy swell; we have been confined closely to our seven-by-nine after-cabin; and its close, stifling atmosphere, redolent of bilge-water, lamp oil, and tobacco smoke, has had a most depressing influence upon our spirits. I am glad to see, however, that all our party are up today, and that there is a faint interest manifested in the prospect of dinner; but even the inspiriting strains of the Faust march, which the captain is playing upon a ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... have been unlovely and unwomanly in Maggie not to be happy; not to be a little excited, not perhaps, sometimes, to have been a little trying. For a great happiness is often depressing to those who have to witness its exultation, prolonged day after day. Ordinary mortals feel outside of it, and it strikes them with a vague, but certain, fear. Mary often said to herself—"I would not be so silly about any one as Maggie is about ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... college debating society, if I meant to do so, I became extremely nervous. There was only one more meeting of the society during that term, and the subject for debate was, "The modern novel has a depressing and decaying influence upon the mind of the British nation." Lambert, who spoke very fluently and not at all to the point, was booked to speak first at this debate, and any one who knew him could see his magnificent style in ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... visage of the plump little maid seemed to have captured some of the sunshine hidden away by the clouds; it radiated from her blue eyes, her yellow hair, her round rosy cheeks; Alene, turning from the depressing outside where the rain was steadily falling, felt an answering glow when she met that sunny gaze, ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... had walked hurriedly along quiet by-streets to the ROSENTAL. But before she had advanced a hundred yards, her courage began to fail, and the further she went, the more her spirits sank. Her surroundings were indescribably depressing: the smirched, steadily retreating snow was leaving bare all the drab brownness it had concealed—all the dismal little gardens, and dirty corners. Houses, streets and people wore their most bedraggled air. Particularly the people: ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Perkins Institution closed in June, Helen and her teacher went south to Tuscumbia, where they remained until December. There is a hiatus of several months in the letters, caused by the depressing effect on Helen and Miss Sullivan of the "Frost King" episode. At the time this trouble seemed very grave and brought them much unhappiness. An analysis of the case has been made elsewhere, and Miss Keller has ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... she informs me, with unnecessary glee, "You spend your time in trifles."—Is a Nautical Drama a "trifle," I should like to know? I can't be quite the thing, for this incident affects me almost to tears. I have had a depressing day. Bed in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... these over the card of pump-clips in the pane in the door with unseeing eyes. He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and the jacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shop was dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machines had never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellows who were "out," and of the approaching disputations of the afternoon. He thought of their new landlord, and of their old landlord, and of bills and claims. Life presented ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... there was an exception to the depressing rule. The prettiest girls, French, Spanish, and Algerian-born, all condescended to glance at the bleu who had "knocked out" the former champion of the Legion, and, taking his place in the match with the Marseillais, had kept ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... in many is excellent. But in smaller ones and in many industries the structures used were not intended for this purpose. Closely built buildings shut off both light and air, which must come wholly from above, thus preventing circulation, and producing an effect both depressing and wearing. The agents in a number of cases found employees packed "like sardines in a box;" thirty-five persons, for example, in a small attic without ventilation of any kind. Some were in very low-studded rooms, with no ventilation save from ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... interesting matter, but, on the whole, it is depressing. It seems very dull to be bad. Perhaps the editor desired to create this impression; if so, he has succeeded. Hannah More had fifty times more fun in her life than all these courtesans and criminals put together. The note ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... compunctions even come over the mind at having spoken harshly of Stenio and Trenmor. Stenio was always a fool and latterly a cad; Trenmor first a brute and then a bore. Albert is none of these (except perhaps the last), but he is madder than the Mad Hatter and the March Hare put together, and as depressing as they are delightful. He has hallucinations which obliterate the sense of time in him; he thinks himself one of his ancestors of the days of Ziska; he has second sight; he speaks Spanish to Consuelo and calls her by her name when he first sees ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... with its wreaths of beadwork and artificial violets, has ever a most depressing appearance. That of Monaco is like any other, we find the usual magnificence, and usual tinsel. Many beautiful trees, shrubs, and flowers, however, relieve the gloom, and every inch ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Fig. 2, and it will be found that any variety in the size of the cuneiform inscriptions may be produced by the same stylus, by simply depressing the angular end of it to a greater or less depth into the surface of the clay. In many of the most elaborate inscriptions, a certain lob-sidedness of the cuneiform character may be observed. This is due to the inscriber having held his stylus somewhat askew, as we do a pen in ordinary writing. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the ground covered by one map every day—learnt to his surprise that they were within a few miles of Paris. And so also, he thought, were the Germans! It rather looked as if they were heading straight towards the city, and that would mean a siege. It was no use worrying about things, but that depressing idea was in the minds of most of the Officers that evening. Not that the Subaltern cared much at the time—it would mean a stop to this everlasting marching, and perhaps the forts of Paris could stand ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... how the meal would have passed had Ambrose not been present. As it was, it was a rather formal affair, and would have been slightly depressing, if I had not caught, now and then, flashing glances from my husband's eye which assured me that he found as much to enchain him in my presence as I did in his. What we ate I have no idea of. I only remember that in every course there ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... market, is in the production of articles for which there is a steadily growing demand within this country. Even in this case the utmost care should be exercised to prevent the products of assisted labour from so depressing prices as to injure the wages of outside labour ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... predispositions in reasonings on life 12 Promotion of health by legislation, fashion and self-culture 12 Slight causes of life failures 14 Effects of sanitary reform 14 Diminished disease does not always imply a higher level of health 15 Two causes depressing health 16 Encroachments on liberty in sanitary legislation 16 Sanitary education—its chief articles—its possible exaggeration 17 Constant thought about health not the way to ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log house and sit there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party was never at an end. We did ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... I was not in nearly such a vainglorious mood as I had been back in the Swede's barroom, with the waterfront applauding me. If Newman had offered to dodge around the corner with me, I'd have gone. The aspect of that empty wharf was depressing, and there was something sinister about all these unusual circumstances surrounding our joining the ship. I began to feel that there was something wrong about the Golden Bough besides her bucko mates, and I possessed the superstitions of my kind. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... against my principles and against my conscience, and yet not altogether unwillingly. For we live in depressing times; and perhaps in such times it is the first duty of a writer for the stage to make concessions to his audiences and, above everything, to try to afford them a complete, if brief, distraction from the gloom which awaits them outside ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... with many wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman changed his dwelling. But to all households more change came than to Yew Nook. There the seasons came round with monotonous sameness; or, if they brought mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and depressing kind. Old Peggy died. Her silent sympathy, concealed under much roughness, was a loss to Susan Dixon. Susan was not yet thirty when this happened, but she looked a middle-aged, not to say an elderly woman. People affirmed that she had never recovered her complexion since that ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was proceeding everywhere. During daylight, at least, the sound is not sinister nor depressing, and the thought that perhaps a life had exploded with that crack is not ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South or one-third its intelligence and progress. We shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding, every effort to advance ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... the guests openly followed up the more substantial elements of the repast by dessert, more devastating even than the rear manoeuvres. At last there was nothing but an aching china blank. The men looked round the table for something else to "nash," but everywhere was the same depressing desolation. Only in the centre of the table towered in awful intact majesty the great Bar-mitzvah cake, like some mighty sphinx of stone surveying the ruins of empires, and the least reverent shrank ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Joyousness, a sacred gift long dethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and obscenity, rises like a flood miraculously out of the fetid dust and mud of the slums; rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from people among whom the depressing noise called "sacred music" is a standing joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in murderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and splendid red; Fear, which we flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and transfigured men and women carry their gospel through a transfigured ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... their weird noises, were lonely and depressing. Only her ability to sleep quickly and soundly made them endurable. The first night that she spent in her completed house behind barred windows and barricaded door was one of almost undiluted peace and happiness. The night noises ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with regard to America was a pressing necessity. The measures of retaliation adopted by the colonists were depressing trade at home. Petitions against the stamp act were presented from the merchants of London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and other towns, setting forth the loss inflicted on manufacturers and their work-people by the stoppage of the American trade, and the difficulties arising from the non-payment ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... times, and she bored me so unutterably. I want just you, and no one else; but don't trouble your head about me for another year. Live your own bright life. I would not for the world shorten your girlhood or make you old before your time. It won't be a very depressing thought, dear, will it, that somewhere a hundred miles away a man is loving you, and trying to live a better life because of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with anchors on them. That he stood beside the remains of a brother seaman, who had probably been cast on that island, as he himself had been, seemed very evident, and the thought filled him with strange depressing emotions. As it was by that time too dark to make further investigations, he left the place, intending to return next day; and, going as cautiously as possible out of the wood, returned to his abode, where he kindled a fire, ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... house in which he was accustomed to live, Saul had felt the vigour of the morning, and eaten his cold fat bacon, sitting on the cart, without discontent. But now it was afternoon—which, we all know, brings a somewhat more depressing air—and the budless thickets stood so close, so still, Saul became conscious that his load was a corpse. He had hoped, in a dull way, to fall in with a companion on this made road; the chances were against it, and the chances prevailed. Saul ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... he confidently expected him, having made Roderick give him a solemn promise to spend the evening with him, in order to hear what it was that for several weeks had been depressing and agitating his pensive friend. Meanwhile Emilius wrote ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... sent to Government, and correspondence entered into with the Indian Department, and in the end we were permitted to take possession of one acre of land on the lot of a Church Indian named Antoine Rodd. The opposition, however, was very bitter and rather depressing, and our opponents went so far as to threaten to deprive the old ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... of them only if you never cross their thresholds. If you take this step you are lost, for you have parted with the correctness of your attitude. Venice becomes frankly from such a moment the big depressing dazzling joke in which after all our sense of her contradictions sinks to rest—the grimace of an over-strained philosophy. It's rather a comfort, for the curiosity-shops are amusing. You have bad moments indeed as you stand in their halls of humbug and, in the intervals of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the propriety of wearing their sable garments. Romeo, disliking the trouble of changing, argued that Allison ought to see that their grief was sincere. Juliet insisted that the sight would prove depressing. ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... out, and your brothers want you, and if you refuse to enjoy yourself it hurts them: if you even betray that you would rather be doing something else, you spoil their pleasure, for a "martyr" to home duty is a most depressing sight to gods and men. And the complexity lies in the fact that you enjoy going, and conscience pricks you every now and then because you never read, and you seem to go through the day in a slipshod way, with no definite rule,—no daily cross-bearing, no self-restraint to give ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby |
