"Dispiriting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our stay on the cape was drawing to a close. Only three days more remained, and they were to be occupied in collecting our books, packing trunks, and all the unpleasant little duties that become so tedious and dispiriting when, like a drop curtain, they announce the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... a toilsome, dispiriting march, as in single file we pushed our way forward into the interior, and I confess I soon began to tire of the monotony of the terrible gloom. But to all my ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... She had a dispiriting first month of hunting lodgings in the crowded city. She had to roost in a hall-room in a moldy mansion conducted by an indignant decayed gentlewoman, and leave Hugh to the care of a doubtful nurse. But ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... ever truant daughter so whimsically circumstanced as I am? I have sent my intended husband to look after my lover—the man of my father's choice is gone to bring me the man of my own: but how dispiriting is ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... my way, under the dispiriting drip, drip of the rain, and accompanied by a feeble old man, who is sexton, clerk, gravedigger, and anything or everything ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Meantime, he lived in a suite of three rooms on West Madison Street with his mother, who was a good woman, and lived where she did that she might be near her favorite meeting-house. She prayed, and cooked bad dinners, principally composed of dispiriting pastry. Her idea of house-keeping was to keep the shades down, whatever happened; and when David left home in the evening for any purpose of pleasure, she wept. David persuaded himself that he despised amusement, and went to bed each night at ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... inhabitants or cultivation; a land continuing for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, one expanse of long yellow grass, dotted here and there with groups of bastard palms. In front of the headland rolled the lonely South Atlantic; and, as if such conditions were not dispiriting enough to existence upon the Point, there was yet another feature which at times gave the place a still more ghastly look. A long way off the shore, the heaving surface of the ocean began, in anything like bad weather, to break upon the shoals of the coast. Viewed from the top of ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... few experiments by Mr. Theodore Martin, published in the notes to his translation of the Odes and elsewhere, constitute perhaps the whole recent stock of which a new translator may be expected to take account. In one sense this is encouraging: in another dispiriting. The field is not pre-occupied: but the reason is, that general opinion has pronounced its cultivation ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... tales had tried their fate in vain together, at length they were sent forth separately, and for many months with still- continued ill success. I have mentioned this here, because, among the dispiriting circumstances connected with her anxious visit to Manchester, Charlotte told me that her tale came back upon her hands, curtly rejected by some publisher, on the very day when her father was to submit to his operation. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Wiggins's birthday anniversary, and we usually dine at Aggie's and have a cake with thirty candles on it. Tish was not yet able to be about, so Aggie and I ate together. She always likes to sit until the last candle is burned out, which is rather dispiriting and always leaves me ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... because its beauty is as that of a dream. Sometimes it is black, wildly inhospitable and dispiriting - and suddenly, in calm, mild weather, the entire country with its trees, canals, cities and inhabitants sparkles in an indescribable tender radiance, enhancing everything with a deep mysterious meaning impossible to explain or describe more fully, and resembling ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... perhaps fortunate that their discovery about the oil was not delayed any longer, but nevertheless it came at a time when the outlook was dreary and dispiriting enough without additional discomforts. On the 6th Spud gnawed through his trace, and when Scott went outside before breakfast, one glance at the dog's balloon-like appearance was enough to show ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... a continuous stream; and the thousand nameless trifles—so precious because bearing the impress of home—were received daily in every mess from the Rio Grande to the Potomac. Still, as the winter wore on, news from the armies became gloomier and gloomier, and each successive bulletin bore more dispiriting accounts of discontent and privation, sickness and death. Men who had gone into their first fight freely and gaily; who had heard the whistling of bullets as if it had been accustomed music, gave way utterly before the unseen foes of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... There were beds to be had some ten minutes' walk from where we were, at a place called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked among the children for a guide. The circle at once widened round us, and our offers of reward were received in dispiriting silence. We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children; they might speak to us in public places, and where they had the advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to venture off alone with two uncouth and legendary characters, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a light snow on the ground, the weather underwent a considerable change during the night, and the next morning broke, gray and threatening. Heavy, sullen clouds dropped low in the sky, and by four o'clock that afternoon a raw, dispiriting winter rain had set in, accompanied by a moaning wind that made the day seem doubly dreary. Promptly at four o'clock Grace saw Tom swing up the walk without an umbrella. His black raincoat, buttoned ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... that they and their predecessors have hitherto made no advance towards what they and, as they also believe, all men sought and still seek. To them the history of Philosophy for say the last two thousand years is not the dreary and dispiriting narrative of repeated error and defeat, but the record of a slow but secure and steady advance in which, as nowhere else, the mind of Man celebrates and enjoys triumphs over the mightiest obstacles, kindling itself to an ever-brightening flame. Reviewing ...
— Progress and History • Various
... to divert us from the idea itself—the idea is as nearly nude as our limited senses and our modern respectability permit. And the idea being what it is, it follows that the play, after the drama once commences, is not only immoral, but also dispiriting and boring, and, to my thinking, inconsequential and pointless. The first act, the exposition, is from beginning to end magnificent: never were the lines on which a drama was to develop more gorgeously, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... to, and had a turn on the verandah before 5.55, when 'the child' (an enormous Wallis Islander) brings me an orange; at 6, breakfast; 6.10, to work; which lasts till, at 10.30, Austin comes for his history lecture; this is rather dispiriting, but education must be gone about in faith - and charity, both of which pretty nigh failed me to-day about (of all things) Carthage; 11, luncheon; after luncheon in my mother's room, I read Chapter XXIII. of THE WRECKER, then Belle, Lloyd, and I go up and make ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at hand showed her that some church or other stood within a few steps of the hotel archway, and saying nothing to Mrs. Goodman, she quietly cloaked herself, and went out towards it, apparently with the view of disposing of a portion of a dull dispiriting evening. The church was open, and on entering she found that it was only lighted by seven candles burning before the altar of a chapel on the south side, the mass of the building being in deep shade. Motionless outlines, which resolved themselves into the forms of kneeling women, were darkly ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... to him, "the fellow's name alone seemed to affect you. Is it possible that, full of triumph and delight as you were just now, the sight merely of that man is capable of dispiriting you? Tell me, have you faith in your ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as he christened his pretty parsonage at Coxwold, and as the house, still standing, is called to this day, soon became irksome to him. The very reaction begotten of unwonted quietude acted on his temperament with a dispiriting rather than a soothing effect. The change from his full and stimulating life in London to the dull round of clerical duties in a Yorkshire village might well have been depressing to a mind better balanced and ballasted than his. To him, with his light, pleasure-loving ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... The calculation was dispiriting; and after a night's lodging on the bare floor, damply enveloped in a few old sacks, the financial horizon did not look one whit less gloomy in the eyes of Citizen Delessert. Destouches, he sadly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... dispiriting utterances, Punin sighed expressively, assented, shook his head up and down, and from side to side; Musa maintained a stubborn silence.... She was obviously fretted by the doubt, what I was, whether I was a discreet ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... business for the season, or from indulging in any of the various light conversational diversions whereby barbers, Fulton street tailors, and other depressed gymnasts, are occasionally and wholesomely relieved from the misery of brooding over their equally dispiriting avocations. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... corn-fodder, leaned against the hill. I drew rein in front of the building, and was about to hail its inmates, when I observed the figure of a man issue from the stable. Even in the gloom, there was something forlorn and dispiriting in his walk. He approached with a slow, dragging step, apparently unaware of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... rafted together the foremast, the fore and main booms, and the fore and main gaffs. The wind was favourable, and I had thought to tow them back under sail, but the wind baffled, then died away, and our progress with the oars was a snail's pace. And it was such dispiriting effort. To throw one's whole strength and weight on the oars and to feel the boat checked in its forward lunge by the heavy drag behind, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... narrow duties and entrenched behind pious practices. Silent games of cards occupied the whole evening, and the two young girls under the ban of that Sanhedrim enforced by maternal severity, came to hate the dispiriting personages about them with their hollow ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... and loyalty did me good, and when I had struggled through with the letter and had confided it to his care, I felt easier and more hopeful. Hinge's first movement was up to London, and thence he returned to me within half a dozen hours with the dispiriting intelligence that Lady Rollinson and Violet had left town together an hour before his arrival without leaving any instructions as to the forwarding of letters. Hinge, in his occasional visits to the house, had contrived ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... trust in doubtful allies. But, even so, as I have shown, a careful examination of all the available evidence generally reveals the reasons for his confidence; and failures due to this cause are far less disastrous, because less dispiriting to the nation, than those which are the outcome of sluggishness or cowardice. Of those unpardonable sins Pitt has never been accused even by his severest critics. After the repulse of his pacific overtures by the French Directory in September 1797 his attitude was one almost of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... aware that inactivity is, of all things, the most dangerous and dispiriting to the soldier, who, used to the bustle and array of camps, doth fear nothing so much as a quiet home ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... now explain the cause of this gentleman's long absence, which had given rise to such gloomy and dispiriting surmises. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... out and carried it to the window, to examine it in the failing light. Too hopeless had I gradually grown, in my dispiriting search, to expect very much; and yet at a glance I saw that my basket of glass lay in fragments at my feet. No ingots or dollars were here, to crown me the little Monte Cristo of a week. Outside, the distant horn had ceased its ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... heart had been warmer towards his dead son George than to any one else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair as Andrew was dark; as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and dispiriting; as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother was slow and angular; as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was phlegmatic and sour—or so it seemed to the father and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Colony road would go out. We had dinner (I little realized how long it would be before I should eat again), and John tamely suggested driving about to look at some of the places of interest. I assured him that there was nothing so dispiriting as looking at places of interest, and he answered, cheerfully, after some moments of thought, that we could "shut our eyes when we went by ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of France and England. William, however, was found wholly immovable on this point, declaring that he would rather retire to his lands in Germany, and spend his life in hunting, than sell his country and liberty to France. Nor were the dispiriting representations made by the English ambassadors, that Holland was utterly lost unless he consented to the terms proposed, at all more influential; "I have thought of a means," he replied, "to avoid beholding the ruin of my country—to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... of the fountain before actually being reduced to boy's estate, and passing once more through the tumultuous experiences of that period. And of these, not having enough to eat is by no means the least common. The evidence as to execrable dinners is rather dispiriting, and one may end by saying that if there is a worse fellow than a bully, it is a master who does not see that his boys are supplied with plenty of wholesome food. He, at least, could not venture, like a distinguished headmaster, to preach and publish sermons on "Boys' Life: ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Cassione the wind shifted again and the weather improved as if by magic. The clouds gradually melted away, and the blue of the sky palpitated through the grey; the sun shone warm upon the barren, featureless coast, adding colour to the dispiriting grey of the limestone spotted with the dark green of shrubs, a characteristic of most of the Dalmatian islands, and the Velebit Mountains became clear, in some places to the summits, though the greater part of the chain was still cloud-capped and ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... was given him on the day he left home, and who will carry it till he returns, or till it is reddened with his blood. And when I see a man, in the face of ridicule and brutal scoffing, through long marches and weary days of dispiriting labor, clinging with fond tenacity to some little memento of the past, I set him down as a man with his heart in the right place, who will do his country and God good service when there is need. And—it is well to practise what one admires in others—I confess that I have a smoking ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... more or less direct encouragement from the officials) in the hope of getting commissions, we were turned away like tramps, and told that there was "nothing for us." It was all rather flattening and dispiriting. ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... now devolved upon the Duke of Saxe Weimar. The horse of Gustavus, galloping along the lines, conveyed to the whole army the dispiriting intelligence that their beloved chieftain had fallen. The duke spread the report that he was not killed, but taken prisoner, and summoned all to the rescue. This roused the Swedes to superhuman exertions. They rushed over the ramparts, driving the infantry back upon the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... space of the clearing affected him with a physical shrinking, why the neatly arranged interior of his cabin seemed hollow, abandoned, terribly dispiriting. He longed for the sound of a human voice, found himself listening for such a sound. The stillness was not like the stillness of a park, nor an empty street, nor any of the stillnesses he had ever experienced. It was not a kindly, restful stillness,—not ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to make, business to settle, and I must go hither and thither about the town. Sirocco, of course, dusks everything to cheerless grey, but under any sky it is dispiriting to note the changes in Naples. Lo sventramento (the disembowelling) goes on, and regions are transformed. It is a good thing, I suppose, that the broad Corso Umberto I. should cut a way through ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... the spring of 1283 that English troops at last forced their way among the defiles of Snowdon. Llewellyn had preserved those passes and heights intact until his death in the preceding December. The surrender of Dolbadern in the April following that dispiriting event opened a way for the invader; and William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, at once advanced ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... earnest, and that it was only reasonable to dismiss the possibility of going out, and spend the afternoon as he had spent the morning. But he permitted himself a few minutes' relaxation as he smoked his cigarette, and sat down by the window, looking out, in Lucretian mood, on to the very dispiriting conditions that ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... other. The wind, which always swept over Wingdam at night-time, puffed through the apartment from different apertures. The window was too small for the hole in the side of the house where it hung, and rattled noisily. Everything looked cheerless and dispiriting. Before Ingomar left me, he brought that "bar-skin," and throwing it over the solemn bier which stood in one corner, told me he reckoned that would keep me warm, and then bade me good night. I undressed myself, the light blowing out in ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... agree with him. Those who have been soldiers, and especially cavalrymen, know to the full how dispiriting is the sound of those few words: "It ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... to give than to receive, to serve than to use our companions; and above all, where there is no question of service upon either side, that it is good to enjoy their company like a natural man. It is curious and in some ways dispiriting that a writer may be always best corrected out of his own mouth; and so, to conclude, here is another passage from Thoreau which seems aimed directly at himself: "Do not be too moral; you may cheat yourself out of much life ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hands was by no means insignificant; and Swift felt that to make such a bill law would not only tend to impoverish, the inferior clergy, but would place them in a position of subjection at once degrading and dispiriting. He opposed the bill, with the consequence that the House of Commons ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... "Only this morning I have sent into her room several pressing and impertinent letters from her tradespeople, and I put some accounts of the most dispiriting character before her last night. She is in dreadfully ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Complaints abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Oeil-de-Boeuf. Besenval says, already in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy (such a tristesse) about Court, compared with former days, as made it quite dispiriting to look upon. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... employment, want, and suffering, and in a country like England where, without that, there is usually a "surplus population," to be discharged from work is the worst that can befall the operative. And what a dispiriting, unnerving influence this uncertainty of his position in life, consequent upon the unceasing progress of machinery, must exercise upon the worker, whose lot is precarious enough without it! To escape despair, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... that far-reaching system of defamation whereby the employers of labour pursue and punish the subordinate who incurs their displeasure. In the case of a mere operative this secret persecution often worked complete ruin; and even to a man of Amherst's worth it opened the dispiriting prospect of a long ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... one, dispiriting in itself even to those who could go about the streets and lose themselves in their tasks and round of duties. To me it was a dead blank, marked by such interruptions as necessarily took place under the prison routine. The evening hours which followed them ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... of dispiriting his followers, roused them to fury! No one asked or gave quarter; it was a fight to the death, and when finally we succeeded in breaking through the royalist horse, half of our number lay lifeless on the plain. Some there were—St. ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... with pity on the pale stranger. They hurried to and fro, talking Welsh to one another very fast; and Helen felt as if she were in a foreign land, and in a dream. The end of the matter was, that she had a low fever which lasted long. It was more dispiriting than dangerous—more tedious than alarming. Her illness continued for many weeks, during which time she was attended most carefully by her two new friends—by Miss Clarendon with the utmost zeal and activity—by Mrs. Pennant with ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... in the hands of those who had lately committed a great outrage on property, and were now about to kidnap, if not to murder me. I opened my eyes, it was to no purpose—all around me was dark, for a day had passed over during my captivity. A dispiriting sickness oppressed my head—my heart seemed on fire, while my feet and hands were chilled and benumbed with want of circulation. It was with the utmost difficulty that I at length, and gradually, recovered in a sufficient degree the power of observing external sounds and ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... It was a chill, foggy night; my clothing and hair were damp and I shook with cold. In my dressing- gown and slippers before a blazing grate of coals I was even more uncomfortable. I no longer shivered but shuddered—there is a difference. The dread of some impending calamity was so strong and dispiriting that I tried to drive it away by inviting a real sorrow— tried to dispel the conception of a terrible future by substituting the memory of a painful past. I recalled the death of my parents and endeavored to fix my mind upon the last sad scenes at their bedsides ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... energy, to two passed in private study or authorship. The sense of responsibility, we might say, is omnipresent. It does not cease with the recitation: it follows him to his study, and haunts him with the recollection of absurd blunders made by young men who should have done better—the dispiriting reflection that despite his best efforts the stupid and indifferent will not learn. If to this normal wear and tear and these every-day annoyances we add the participation in what is pleasingly styled enforcement of discipline—that is, protracted faculty-meetings, interviews with anxious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... of German philosophy affects him with a real sorrow; the scholar is outraged at the mockery. "Sterility," "eclecticism," these are the terms in which he sums up the teachings of the official professors, and they are almost too gentle to be applied to the dispiriting and disheartening doctrines which are taught to the English-speaking student of to-day under the name ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... the tired soldiers to find relief from their monotony. War is a dreary thing. With one fixed idea in the mind—to wait, to watch for some careless head over the mounded earth, and then to kill—war is drearier than slave labor, more nagging than an imperfect marriage, more dispiriting than unsuccessful sin. The pretty brass utensils of the dwellings had been pillaged. Canvas, which had once contained bright faces, was in shreds. The figures of Christ and his friends that had stood high in ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... written in Passion-week on abstraction and self-examination[640], and No. 110, on penitence and the placability of the Divine Nature, cannot be too often read. No. 54, on the effect which the death of a friend should have upon us, though rather too dispiriting, may be occasionally very medicinal to the mind. Every one must suppose the writer to have been deeply impressed by a real scene; but he told me that was not the case; which shews how well his fancy could conduct him to the 'house of mourning[641].' Some ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... giving us aid or comfort; and it virtually affirmed that any outlay of means or life by us in a cause seen to be impracticable would be reckless, sanguinary, cruel, and inhuman.—And, once more, to those among ourselves who are influenced by evil prognostications, it was most dispiriting to be told, as if by cool, unprejudiced observers from outside, that no uprising of patriotism, no heroism of sacrifice, no combination of wisdom and power would be of any avail to resist a foreordained catastrophe.—In these three harmful ways of influence, the ill-omened opinion reiterated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... in the swamp, a wretched, dispiriting, drizzling rain, falling from morn till night, bringing the temperature down to zero. They recommenced their journey at dark despite the weather; preferring to push ahead rather than seek shelter again, with their friends, and so delay their progress. Thus they tramped wearily along, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... work at machines which require practically no skill to operate, and dispiriting home surroundings have brought millions of men to a mental and physical condition which makes them little ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... these rooms were, they were yet scrupulously clean. I had nothing to complain of; but the effect was rather dispiriting. Having given some directions about supper—a pleasant incident to look forward to—and made a rapid toilet, I called on my friend with the gaiters and red nose (Tom Wyndsour), whose occupation was that of a "bailiff," or ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... adds, "Let us talk of things rather than of people." The building turns out to be a sugar-refinery, or some equally depressing place, and the unhappy children are initiated into its mysteries. What could be more cheerless and dispiriting? Lucy is represented as a high-spirited and somewhat giddy child, who is always being made aware of ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... were thoroughly soaked by the streams of water which trickled through between the planks. In the morning all was quiet, but an opaque, leaden mass of clouds overspread the sky, throwing a gloom over the wild landscape that had a most dispiriting effect. These squalls from the west are always expected about the time of the breaking up of the dry season in these central parts of the Lower Amazons. They generally take place about the beginning of February, so ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... that was not to be his name any longer, stood alone near the peak of a divide, and the mists of early morning lay thick below him. They obliterated, under their dispiriting gray, the valleys and lower forest-reaches, and his face, which was young and resolutely featured, held a kindred mood of shadowing depression. Beneath that miasma cloak of morning fog twisted a river from which the sun would strike darts of laughing light—when the sun had routed the opaqueness ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... everyday happenings, so petty in its rendering of petty things, that it bewildered and repelled her: why, some one might just as well write a book about Mother or Sarah! Her young, romantic soul rose in arms against this, its first bluff contact with realism, against such a dispiriting sobriety of outlook. Something within her wanted to cry out in protest as she read—for read she did, on three successive days, with an interest she could not explain. And that was not all. It was worse that the people in this book—the extraordinary person who was married, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... bad, or that Pembroke's proceedings at Froome had intimidated them, no symptom of such an intention could be discovered. A desertion took place in his army, which the exaggerated accounts in the Gazette made to amount to near two thousand men. These dispiriting circumstances, added to the complete disappointment of the hopes entertained from the assumption of the royal title, produced in him a state of mind but little short of despondency. He complained that all people had deserted him, and is said to have ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... render it. In fact, it is the work of Herrera, the architect who made the Escorial so grim, and is the expression in large measure of his austere mastery. If it had ever been finished it might have been quite as dispiriting as the Escorial, but as it has only one of the four ponderous towers it was meant to have, it is not without its alleviations, especially as the actual tower was rebuilt after the fall of the original seventy years ago. The grass springs cheerfully up in the crevices ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... on the right, upon what was called Lone Pine Plateau, was a dispiriting failure on the opening day. The dismounted troops of the Third Australian Light Horse, a magnificent body of men, were sent forward to storm the elaborate trenches of the enemy. The attack was made in three lines. The first was mowed down to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... somewhat dispiriting, to see this ancient archiepiscopal city now sadly deserted[198]. We saw in one of its streets a remarkable proof of liberal toleration; a nonjuring clergyman, strutting about in his canonicals, with a jolly countenance and a round belly, like ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... like the dreadful roar of the jaguar as it springs on its prey. Now it changes to the terrible and deep-toned growlings of the wild beast as he is pressed on all sides by his foes, and now it seems like his last dying moan beneath a mortal wound. Nothing can be more dismal or dispiriting than the fearful uproar. Hour after hour it goes on during the night, increasing as the dawn approaches. Now the howls come from one direction, now from another, and in far-off parts of the forest. Yet, terrific as they appear, they are produced by animals not much larger than a full-grown ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... hitherto been lying on the ground and making a very soft surface, for though the wind has always been blowing it has never been very strong. This snow and wind, which have now persisted for nine out of the last ten days, make most dispiriting marches; for there is nothing to see, and finding tracks or steering is a constant strain. We are certainly lucky to have been able to march as ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... opportunity he repeated to Rena all he had learned in the city, and told her what he proposed doing. The prospect that was so dispiriting to him removed her greatest care; but her eager thanks humiliated him as he felt his utter helplessness in the hands of fate. A sudden fear that she might hurt him before he could make her unconscious brought back her anxiety; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... a convulsion, nor could he at such times at all control their trembling. At last, however, with a huge sigh, he aroused himself to some perception of his surroundings, which he acknowledged were of as dispiriting a sort as he could well have conceived of. His recovering senses were distracted by a ceaseless watery din, for the breaking waves, rushing with a prodigious swiftness from the harbor to the shore before the driving wind, fell with uproarious ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... stairway, but you rarely know more of them than their names, and you certainly care nothing about them. The sociability of Europe, and more especially of Southern Europe, is shown abroad; under the domestic roof it dwindles and disappears. And indeed it is no wonder, considering how dispiriting and comfortless most of the houses are. The lower windows are heavily barred with iron; the wood-work is rude, even in many palaces in Venice; the rest is stone and stucco; the walls are not often papered, though they are sometimes painted: ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... from observation, he stood for a long time, watching at odd moments the ceaselessly varying phases of the strange scene about him, but always keeping an eye on the train he had himself arrived in. It was slow and dispiriting work. A dozen times his heart failed him, and he said to himself mournfully that he had had his journey for nothing. Then some new figure would appear, alighting from the steps of a sleeper, and hope revived ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... a good word, for he calls the Pickwickian room "a large, badly furnished apartment, with a dirty grate in which a small fire was making a wretched attempt to be cheerful, but was fast sinking beneath the dispiriting influence of the place." The dinner, too, seems to have been as bad, for a bit of fish and a steak took one hour to get ready, with "a bottle of the worst possible port, at the highest possible price." Depreciation of a hostelry could not be more damaging. Again, Mr. Pickwick's bedroom is ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... ever faced a more difficult or trying job than the President, when he embarked upon the George Washington on his voyage to the other side. The adverse verdict rendered against the President in the Congressional elections was mighty dispiriting. The growing bitterness and hostility of the Republican leaders, and the hatred of the Germans throughout the country, added more difficulties to an already trying situation. America had seemed to do everything to weaken him at a time when united ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... due course at longitude 103 deg. 31 min., but saw no island. This was dispiriting; but still Captain ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... orators appealed to traditions, to sentiments which had passed away, to glories which could not possibly return; and they spoke in vain. All they could do was to utter their manly and noble protests, and die, with the dispiriting and hopeless feeling that the seeds of ruin, planted in a soil of corruption, would soon bear their wretched fruits,—even ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... rose early and gazed across the cold misty Thames to the great factories and wharves upon the opposite bank. The outlook was indeed dull and dispiriting, I stood recalling how Moroni had walked with the beautiful girl in the streets of Florence, unwillingly it seemed, for he certainly feared lest his companion be recognized. I also recollected the strange ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Michelot to the Hotel de Luynes to make the same inquiry, and to return daily with the same dispiriting reply—that there was no news of Madame ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... was conscious of a rush of joy when he became completely absorbed in watching a man who was fishing for pickerel. Have you ever fished for pickerel through a hole in the ice? If so you will recall that it is chilly and rather dispiriting work, especially if the fish are shy. They certainly were shy that afternoon, for the individual in question had angled long and bagged nothing, as I gleaned from the answers to the direct interrogatories put by my urchin during the few ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... and a scene not calculated to encourage superstitious fancies, it may be, but still not likely to enliven any man's spirits—a quiet, dull, gray, listless, dispiriting morning, and, being country-bred, I ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... evasive tact which Miss Burton exercised towards his friend was not caused by his relationship to Ida, and yet was compelled to admit that her frank and friendly bearing towards himself was scarcely less dispiriting. Her manner, as a rule, was so plainly that of a friend only, that were it not for occasional and furtive glances which he intercepted, he would deem his prospects little better than Stanton's, in spite of all that had passed between them. Even ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the end of June till towards the end of July, but on the 26th of July, being then, as we esteemed, about three hundred leagues distant from the Ladrones, we met with a westerly wind, which did not come about again to the eastward in four days' time. This was a most dispiriting incident, as it at once damped all our hopes of speedy relief, especially, too, as it was attended with a vexatious accident to the Gloucester, for in one part of those four days the wind flattened to a calm, and the ships rolled very deep, by ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... the court to keep on the defensive and not endanger his troops by engaging them in hazardous adventures. Amida must protect itself, or at any rate not look to him for succor. Ursicinus chafed terribly, it is said, against this decision, but was forced to submit to it. His messengers conveyed the dispiriting intelligence to the devoted city, which learned thereby that it must rely wholly upon ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... appeal strongly to an adventurous imagination. This appeal is not always a charm, for there are estuaries of a particularly dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud- flats, or perhaps barren sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness. Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... upon Paris that day; a rain so fine and cold that it penetrated the soles of men's shoes and their hearts alike, a dispiriting drizzle through which the pale, acrid smoke of innumerable wood fires faltered upward from the clustering chimney-pots, only to be rent into fragments and beaten down upon the glistening tiles of the mansard roofs. The wide asphalts reflected the horses and carriages and trains and ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... have found these winter days very long had it not been for baby Jessie, for father was busily hauling wood from the Cedar River some six or seven miles away, and the almost incessant, mournful piping of the wind in the chimney was dispiriting. Occasionally Mrs. Button, Mrs. Gammons or some other of the neighbors would drop in for a visit, but generally mother and Jessie were alone till Harriet and Frank and I came home from ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... not wrong you so much as to marry you without loving you, and I shall never love any more," said Vixen, with a sad steadfastness that was more dispiriting than ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... twenty-third bars. Chopin's text is more telling. Like the vast reverberation of monstrous waves on the implacable coast of a remote world is this prelude. Despite its fatalistic ring, its note of despair is not dispiriting. Its issues are larger, more impersonal, more elemental than the other preludes. It is a veritable Appassionata, but its theatre is cosmic and no longer behind the closed doors of the cabinet of Chopin's soul. The Seelenschrei of Stanislaw Przybyszewski ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... October) with that dispiriting sensation that a hitch has occurred in a settled plan. It was explained when I went on deck, and I found the Dulcibella wrapped in a fog, silent, clammy, nothing visible from her decks but the ghostly hull of a galliot at anchor near us. She must have ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... depression to be set down in a solemn courtyard, lighted by a solitary gas-lamp. This in itself would be quite sufficient to make a weary traveller melancholy, without the tolling of a gruesome bell to announce our arrival. This dispiriting sound seems to affect nobody in the house, except a lengthy young man in a desperate state of unwakefulness, who sleepily resents our arrival in the midst of his first slumber (he must have gone to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... her in excellent spirits, and quite undamped in her enjoyment of the frequently ponderous rejoicings. In the Bilberry school-room, among dog-eared French grammars and lead-pencilled music, education did not appear actually dispiriting; and now, as she sat by the fire, with the bright, sharp little scissors in lier hand, and the pile of white merino on her knees and trailing on the hearth-rug at her feet, Griffith found her simply irresistible. Ah! the bliss ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in these dispiriting reveries, he heard a step not very far off in the passage. It seemed approaching. Instantly he flew to the jamb, which remained unclosed, and disappearing within, drew the stone after him by the iron knob. Owing to his hurried violence the jamb closed with a dull, dismal and singular noise. A ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... kind is far more dispiriting than Schopenhauer or Hartmann at their worst, nor are there really any grounds for supposing that the British workman enjoys ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Spanish ships and setting a third on fire, Hawkins saw that flight was their only chance, and, gathering his men together in two small tenders, he 'crawled out under the fire of the mole and gained the open sea.' The position of affairs was dispiriting in the extreme. Many men and three good ships were lost, besides treasure worth more than a million pounds, that had been won, by running innumerable dangers, during the past year. His ships were overcrowded, the store of food and water was scanty, and no harbour ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... received from her dominions fourfold the help in Europe that she had to lend them overseas. The rally to the British flag was to us one of the most inspiring, and to the Germans one of the most dispiriting, portents in the war; but it took time to bear its fruits, and meanwhile the cause of civilization had to rely upon the gallantry of French armies and the numerically weak British forces fighting on the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... this fluttering of the heart is! I know it is nothing organic, and that it is entirely nervous; but the sickening effects of it are dispiriting to a degree. Is it the body brings it on the mind, or the mind that inflicts it upon the body? I cannot tell; but it is a severe price to pay for the Fata Morgana with which Fancy sometimes amuses men of warm imaginations. As to body and mind, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... downpour is dispiriting at any time, excepting when one is snugly at home with plenty to do, and it is particularly so to the unlucky traveller who has to live through half-a-dozen long hours intervening between arrival at and departure from Venice on a ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Far more dispiriting was the news that reached the Austrian negotiators from the North Sea. There the British Government succeeded in eclipsing all its former achievements in forewarning foes and disgusting its friends. Very early in the year, the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... seemed utterly borne down by the greatness of the enterprise. He was wholly unable to infuse anything like spirit or hope into his followers. On the contrary, his appearance among them, when he did show {127} himself, had a dispiriting and a depressing effect on almost every mind. Those who remember the manner and demeanor of the late Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French, the silent shyness, the appearance of almost constant depression, which were characteristic of that sovereign, will, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... formed by damming the waters of the spring branch in the hollow across the road, was moving even now a stately procession of geese in single file. These simple belongings were the trophies of a gallant battle against unalterable conditions and the dragging, dispiriting clog ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to keep true to high laws and pure instincts in modern society than it was in days of martyrdom. There is nothing in the whole range of life so dispiriting and so unnerving as a monotony of indifference. Active persecution and fierce chastisement are tonics to the nerves; but the mere weary conviction that no one cares, that no one notices, that there is no humanity that honours, and no deity that pities, is more destructive of all higher effort ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... was a little afraid of her. Perhaps Letty was on the point of discovering that to be unable to bear disapproval was an unworthy weakness. But in her case it came nowise of the pride which blame stirs to resentment, but altogether of the self- depreciation which disapproval rouses to yet greater dispiriting. Praise was to her a precious thing, in part because it made her feel as if she could go on; blame, a misery, in part because it made her feel as if all was of no use, she never could do anything right. She had not yet learned that the right is the right, come of praise or blame what may. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... superb on clear days. Standing there, I looked inland and remembered all the places I had intended to see—Vieste, and Lesina with its lakes, and Selva Umbra, whose very name is suggestive of dewy glades; how remote they were, under such dispiriting clouds! I shall never see them. Spring hesitates to smile upon these chill uplands; we are still in the grip ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the cavern goes on with its usual dispiriting monotony. I pass hour after hour in my cell, meditating, hoping, despairing, following in fancy the voyage of my little barrel, tossed about at the mercy of the currents and whose chances of being picked ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... the desire of affording consolation to Oswald, and the lively interest she took in every thing they were to see together, inspired her with courage, and she said to him: "You know my lord, that, among the ancients, so far was the aspect of the tombs from dispiriting the living, that they endeavoured to excite a new emulation by placing these tombs on the public roads, in order that by recalling to young people the remembrance of illustrious men, they might silently admonish them to follow their ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... dramatic touches, as, for instance, when Daland asks if his ship is any the worse: "Mein Schiff ist fest, es leidet keinen Schaden," with its bitter double meaning; but on the whole things are very dreary and dispiriting until the south wind blows up and stirs the composer's imagination. The sweet wind carries off the mariners to their home; the water ripples and plashes gently; and to the last bar of the act all is peace and beauty. The music has not, perhaps, the point ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... The sullen pool—its ghost-like guardian—the dreary heath around, the rude features of the country beyond, and the apparent absence of all human habitation, conspired to make a scene of the most dispiriting and striking desolation. I know not how to account for it, but as I gazed around in silence, the whole place appeared to grow over my mind, as one which I had seen, though dimly and drearily, before; and a nameless and unaccountable ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... loss of one hundred thousand citizens, and this general flight still continued. But the arrival of the Spanish general could not be more hateful to the people of the Netherlands than it was distressing and dispiriting to the regent. At last, after so many years of anxiety, she had begun to taste the sweets of repose, and that absolute-authority, which had been the long-cherished object of eight years of a troubled and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... from nature to us, who are not boys: and though you speak as weary of life from sufferings, and yet with proper resignation and philosophy, it does not frighten me, as I know that any humour and gathering, even in the gum, is strangely dispiriting. I do not write merely from sympathizing friendship, but to beg that if your bile is not closed or healing, you will let me know; for the bark is essential, yet very difficult to have genuine. My apothecary here, I believe, has some ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... on the subject. In Calcutta (where I felt so self-righteous) nothing would have prevented me—but now I haven't the spirit. Mark, please, how the whirligig of Time brings its revenges! In Calcutta I thought myself a saint, in Takai I am regarded as a Brand Unplucked. It is rather dispiriting. I am beginning to wonder if I really am as nice as I ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas |
