"Fain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so well that they had ceased to put on for me the fictitious smiles of courtesy. Faces, houses, doors, and haunts,—where are they now? For me they are as though they had never been. They are among the things which one would fain remember as one remembers a dream. Look back on it as a vision and it is all pleasant; but if you realize your vision and believe your dream to be a fact, all your pleasure ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... "'But I'd fain see the Marines again,' says the drummer, handing him the trumpet; 'and you—you shall call once more for the Queen's Own. Matthew,' he says, suddenly, turning on my father—and when he turned, my father saw for the first time that his scarlet jacket had a round hole by the breast-bone, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... abhorrent to the piety of those saints who controlled the opinions of the Christian world. The world was full of misery and poverty, and it was these evils they sought to relieve. The leaders of Pagan society were abandoned to gains and pleasures, which the Christians would fain rebuke by a lofty self-denial,—even as Stoicism, the noblest remonstrance of the Pagan intellect, had its greatest example in an illustrious Roman emperor, who vainly sought to stem the vices which he saw were preparing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... drive out together. The young men in harness shouted for joy, and patiently waited the signal for the race. Some delay, however, occurred in taking our seats with suitable dignity. The carriage was very small, and my companion very large, so that I was fain to be content with a seat upon the edge, with a very good chance of losing my balance, had not her Majesty, to obviate the danger, encircled my waist with her stout and powerful arm, and thus secured me on my seat; our position, and the contrast presented by our figures, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... o'er With disgrace and torment sore; By those lips which fain would pray That it might but pass away; By the Heart which drank it dry, Lest a rebel race should die Be Thy pity, Lord our plea; Hear our ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... then answered, that it was the best coffee he had ever had in Switzerland; and upon that he turned determinately to Mr. Dillwyn and began to talk of other things, unconnected with Switzerland or the present time. Lois was fain to entertain Tom's wife. The two women had little in common; nevertheless Mrs. Caruthers gradually warmed under the influence that shone upon her; thawed out, and began even to enjoy herself. Tom saw it all, without once turning his face that way; ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... weapons, and with our own arts and sciences they overcome us. And indeed the Christians were put so to their shifts by this crafty means, and so much in danger to decline into all ignorance, that the two Apollinarii were fain, as a man may say, to coin all the seven liberal sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of orations, poems, dialogues, even to the calculating of a new Christian grammar. But, saith the historian Socrates, the providence ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... said so heartily, and appearing meanwhile so satisfied with the completeness of his reply, that I was fain to take some satisfaction in it myself. "What I wanted most to say to you," he went on, "is this: you remember you promised to tell me whatever you could learn about her—and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... same strain of Roland will I tell Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme, On whom strange madness and rank fury fell, A man esteemed so wise in former time; If she, who to like cruel pass has well Nigh brought my feeble wit which fain would climb And hourly wastes my sense, concede me skill And strength ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... to-day I would fain begin to be honourable,' I answered in a low voice. 'Because I dare not be generous at another's cost. I must go back ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... manes of speed, as they rushed at, rather than ran towards the shore: in their eagerness came out once more the old enmity between moist and dry. The trees and the smoke were greatly troubled, the former because they would fain stand still, the latter because it would fain ascend, while the wind kept tossing the former and beating down the latter. Not one of the hundreds of fishing boats belonging to the coast was to be seen; not a sail even was visible; not the smoke of a solitary ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... reeled in his saddle. He would have fallen to the ground had not some of his men rushed forward and helped him to dismount. In their anxiety for him, his soldiers would fain have borne him off the field; but Bayard, though dying, was Bayard still, and he said ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... et audivi, as we say in a Sasine, William.) Man, because my wig's pouthered do you think I havena a green heart? I was aince a lad mysel', and I ken fine by the glint o' the e'e when a lad's fain and a lassie's willing. And, man, it's the town's talk; communis error ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Abbe, "he was a devil incarnate—but what a magnificent man! What a wonderful huntsman! Notwithstanding his backslidings, there was a great deal of good in him, and I am fain to believe that God has taken him under His ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... kindly man. But not for long will I nurse bitter wrath, though indeed before I was grieved. For it was not for flocks of sheep, no, nor for possessions that thou wast angered to fury, but for a man, thy comrade. And I were fain thou wouldst even champion me against another man if a like ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... to account to himself for this peculiar sentiment. He turns his earnest gaze towards nature, and through this living vesture of the infinite he seeks to catch some glimpses of the living Soul. In some fact appreciable to sense, in some phenomenon he can see, or hear, or touch, he would fain grasp the cause and reason of all that is. But in this field of inquiry and by this method he finds only a "receding God," who falls back as he approaches, and is ever still beyond; and he sinks down in exhaustion and feebleness, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... I fain would learn How far we have to go; for the hill rises Higher than eyes of mine have power ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... much flattery, and utter censure in so caressing a manner, that the female heart, if it glow with a spark of low church susceptibility, cannot withstand him. In many houses he is thus an admired guest: the husbands, for their wives' sake, are fain to admit him; and when once admitted it is not easy to shake him off. He has, however, a pawing, greasy way with him, which does not endear him to those who do not value him for their souls' sake, and he is not a man to make himself at once popular in a ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... might be surmised in so sensitive a nature, drove him almost beside himself with its mysterious power of intensifying the dominant emotion. 'Whenever by any chance I hear the harpsichord,' he says, 'melancholy seizes me. The sound of the violin gives me such a heavy heart, that I am fain to leave the company and hasten home.' He tossed in his bed at night, thinking he heard the sound of weeping at Turin, making a thousand efforts to picture to himself the looks of that 'orphan child of a living father' whom he had never known, wondering if ever he should know her, and battling ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... mansion, in how many things would we, used to the minute refinements of this later age, have judged it wanting! Instead of gas, there would be candles, and not of the best quality, everywhere. Instead of stoves and furnaces with coal, we should have been fain to comfort ourselves with the cheerful blaze and genial glow, but scant and capricious warmth, of the wood logs, burning in the big open fireplaces. Lace curtains and moquette carpets would be nowhere ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... the outset of their literary work; Varro, for example, at the beginning of his work on agriculture, calls on all the agrarian deities (iis deis ad venerationem advocatis) before he goes on to mention even the bibliography of his subject.[522] Livy in the last sentence of his preface would fain imitate the poets in calling on the gods to bless and favour his undertaking. And in all time of their tribulation, even if not in all time of their wealth, the pious Romans sought help from the deities from whom help might be expected; if, at least, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... with Dorothy, and I'm fain on't if she'll give her a bit of her earnestness for pay. There's not as much lead to her heels in a twelvemonth as would last Doll a week.—So this is what thou calls a brown hood, is it? I call it a blue apron. Gramercy, the ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... and Erasistratus are said to have dissected many subjects under the protection of Ptolemy Soter in Alexandria itself: yet the public feeling of the Greeks as well as of the Romans continued the same as that of the ancient Egyptians; and Galen was fain—as Vesalius proved—to supplement his ignorance of the human frame by describing that of an ape. Dissection was equally forbidden among the Mussulmans; and the great Arabic physicians could do no more than comment on Galen. ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... gallantry, Raleigh won his way to the queen's heart by deftly placing between her feet and a muddy place his new plush coat. He dared the extremity of his political fortunes by writing on a pane of glass which the queen must see, "Fain would I climb, but fear I to fall." And she replied with an encouraging—"If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all." The queen's favor developed into magnificent gifts of riches and honor, and Raleigh received various monopolies, many forfeited estates, and appointments ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... She could fain have persuaded the lady to disregard circumstances, and stay with her, at least till the next day, but Mrs. Carleton was unpersuadable. She ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... at the toe and heels, and with great nails in the soles of his feet, which was mighty pretty: and, taking notice of them, "Why," says the poor man, "the downs, you see, are full of stones, and we are fain to shoe ourselves thus; and these," says he, "will make the stones fly till they sing before me." I did give the poor man something, for which he was mighty thankful, and I tried to cast stones with his horn crook. He values his dog mightily, that would turn a sheep any ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... If the Kvejtepig[9] could reach the Draug before, a knife or a gaff might surely do the same thing now, and he felt that he would gladly have given his life for one good grip of the being who had so mercilessly torn from him his dearest in this world and would fain have still more. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... laid: if all things fall out right, I shall as famous be by this exploit As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus' death. Great is the rumor of this dreadful knight, And his achievements of no less account: Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears, To give their censure ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... My hands I fain had folded Upon thy soft brown hair, Praying that God may keep thee So lovely, pure, and fair. —Trans, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... moodily, says he is not so bad as he seems, and hopes yet to make himself worthy of her kindness. He has been the associate of criminals; he has suffered punishment; he feels himself loathed by society; he cannot divest himself of the odium clinging to his garments. Fain would he go to some distant clime, and there seek a refuge ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... is told, but I fain would take my leave with words less sorrowful. If a man has no better legacy to bequeath than bid his fellow-beings despair, he had better take it with him to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Morgan had things which he would fain keep from public eyes. Mr. Morgan, the bill-discounter, gave goods as well as money to his customers. He provided young spendthrifts with snuff boxes and pins and jewels and pictures and cigars, and of a very doubtful quality those cigars and jewels and pictures were. Their display ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the exact dimensions as that used by la Peyrade) the solemn words: "Report to the Members of the Municipal Council of the City of Paris," followed, on a line by itself, by a magnificent Messieurs—nothing came of it! He was fain to issue furious from his study, complaining of the horrible household racket which "cut the thread of his ideas"; though really no greater noise than the closing of a door or the opening of a closet or the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... was transacted, the old earl would fain have renewed his carouse; but the citizen, alleging the importance of the deeds he had about him, and the business he had to transact betimes the next morning, not only refused to return to table, but carried with him to his barge Lord Glenvarloch, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... use in your affairs in this Country, and would labour in them most chearfully: but you know the constitution of things is such, that neither I, nor your other friends, can serve you agreeably to our wishes. I would fain hope that time will bring about some change, and that I shall see you again here esteemed and honoured as your great qualities deserve; which will give me no less pleasure than I received from your regaining your ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... still young and of attractive appearance, but his business affairs were in a bad way. For long he had been pretending not to understand the marked advances of the widow, and he treated her with a reserve and respect she would fain have dispensed with, and which sometimes made her doubt of his love. But it was impossible for her as a woman to complain, so she was forced to accept with resignation the persistent and unwelcome consideration with which he surrounded her. Maitre Quennebert was ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... some pious doubts arise, Some simple fears, which 'bold bad' men despise; Fain would he ask the parish-priest to prove His title certain to the joys above: For this he sends the murm'ring nurse, who calls The holy stranger to these dismal walls: And doth not he, the pious man, appear, He, 'passing rich with forty ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... forever, Ere I listen'd those words, when I felt with a start, The life-blood rush back in one throb to my heart, And saw the pale lips where the rest of that spell Had perished in horror—and heard the farewell Of that voice that was drown'd in the dash of the stream! How fain had I follow'd, and plunged with that scream Into death, but my being indignantly lagg'd Through the brutalized flesh that I painfully dragg'd Behind me:—O Circe! O mother of spite! Speak the last of that curse! and imprison me quite In the husk of a brute,—that no pity may name The man ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... "I would fain hope as much," replied Hanlon; "but as the matthers stand now, we're nearly as far from it as ever. Instead of gettin' any knowledge of the murdherer we want to discover, it proves to be the murdher of Sullivan that has been ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... and cloud Of shriek and plume, the Red Knight heard, and all, Even to tipmost lance and topmost helm, In blood-red armor sallying, howl'd to the King, "The teeth of Hell flay bare and gnash thee flat!— Lo! art thou not that eunuch-hearted King Who fain had clipt free manhood from the world— The woman-worshipper? Yea, God's curse, and I! Slain was the brother of my paramour By a knight of thine, and I that heard her whine And snivel, being eunuch-hearted too, Sware by the scorpion-worm that twists in hell, ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... not add that I hope and believe that I am in effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation and of every program of liberty? I would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to have come already upon the persons and the homes they hold ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... And them, like Mars and Erycine, display Both in each other's arms chained as they lay. Again, she knew not how to frame her look, Or speak to him, who in a moment took That which so long so charily she kept, And fain by stealth away she would have crept, And to some corner secretly have gone, Leaving Leander in the bed alone. But as her naked feet were whipping out, He on the sudden clinged her so about, That, mermaid-like, unto the floor she slid. One half appeared, the other half was hid. ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... elevator, men in buttons met them, and attended them to the door, and turned them over to still other uniformed attendants, who were fain to help them into the auto-car; for Lucius had managed to convey to the hotel a proper sense of his employer's money value. He himself was always close to his master's side, for lately Haney had taken to stumbling at unexpected ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... His sinking, Bleeding heart to weep is fain, But poor dumb creatures sees He drinking Deep the bitter cup of pain, Hears the wailing, anguished cry, Hears but curse and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sickness smiles at health; The old men love thee, they repeat thy praise, And say, like thee were youth in earlier days; While every village-maiden cries, 'How gay, How smart, how brave, how good is Colin Grey!' "Yet art thou sad; alas! my son, I know Thy heart is wounded, and the cure is slow; Fain would I think that Jesse still may come To share the comforts of our rustic home: She surely loved thee; I have seen the maid, When thou hast kindly brought the Vicar aid - When thou hast eased his bosom of its pain, Oh! I have seen her—she will come again." The Matron ceased; and ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... have softened many of the expressions the letter contained. 'I value it more than the praises of all the reviewers in existence'—would Amy be offended at that? 'Yours in gratitude and reverence,' he had signed himself—the kind of phrase that comes naturally to a passionate man, when he would fain say more than he dares. To what purpose this half-revelation? Unless, indeed, he wished to learn once and for ever, by the gentlest of repulses, that his homage was only welcome so long as it kept well within ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... of the fluttering fancies that engage The vain pursuits of a degenerate age, . . . Would fain the shade of elder days recall, The Gothick battlements, the bannered hall; Or list of elfin harps the fabling rhyme; Or, wrapt in melancholy trance sublime, Pause o'er the working of some wondrous tale, Or bid the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... change that has come over their lives since they found the wonderful secret of holiness by faith. And now they are seeking for this secret. They cannot understand that the secret comes to those who seek it not, but only seek Jesus. They might fain have a book in which all they need to know of Holiness and the way to it is gathered into a few simple lessons, easy to learn, to remember, and to practise. This they will not find. There is such a thing as a Pentecost still to the disciples of Jesus; but it ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... Below it spread out another gray valley, at the extreme end of which glistened a white spot that Link grimly called Douglas. Part of that white spot was Agua Prieta, the sister town across the line. Madeline looked with eyes that would fain ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... to be firmly seated on the throne again in 1818, the Marquis asked himself what a man of seventy should do at court; and what duties, what office he could discharge there? The noble and high-minded d'Esgrignon was fain to be content with the triumph of the Monarchy and Religion, while he waited for the results of that unhoped-for, indecisive victory, which proved to be simply an armistice. He continued as before, lord-paramount ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... somehow reminded her of the compact she had made in the morning with Sybil, and in a few moments the two girls were away together, talking so persistently to each other that Vancouver, who at first followed them and tried to join their conversation, was fain to understand that he was not wanted, so that he ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... believing it to be fruitful of the very noblest results, I have done my best to point out its possibilities to other earnest searchers after truth. Not until this new field has been faithfully examined and explored and proved to be sterile, shall I cease to recommend it to the attention of all who would fain see reason to believe that the Ethical Ideal is no Unreality, but rather the innermost Reality of the real universe itself. I speak only to those who have souls to hear and to respond; let the rest listen to Dr. Royce, and be dupes of ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... recur to the mill. But her hostess made no response; merely discouraged conversation on every topic. Mrs. Prichard had better not talk any more. The thing for her to do was to take her gruel and go to sleep. Perhaps it was. A reaction of fatigue added powerful arguments on the same side, and she was fain to surrender ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Breton. He had tried Government offices, Members of Parliament, colonial friends, every body he knew in any way who miyht possibly know of vacant posts or appointments, but each answer was only a fresh disappointment for him and for Ernest. In the end, he was fain to advise his peccant under-master, since nothing else remained for it, that he had better go up to London for the present, take lodgings, and engage in the precarious occupation known as 'looking about for something to turn up.' On the morning when Edie and he were to leave the ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... I talk of what may not be? For the pillow of him I fain would see Was changed long since from my motherly knee To the garden, under the willow-tree,— Weeping-willow and flowering moss. Over it riseth nor pile nor cross; We, who only have felt his loss, Needing no sculptured stone to tell How he battled, and how he fell, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... good herald, we fain would have you follow. Ask then Sir Percival to let us have the services of his page who seems a likely youth and bid this youth go hence after the two absent knights, Sir Gawaine and Sir Launcelot and give to them our message, beseeching their return. Tell not ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... extreme vanity indeed," returned the other, "but I would fain hope that the explanations which I can give of the danger of our peculiar trade, and the necessity we have for a strong crew, will induce Captain Montague to forego his undoubted privilege and right on ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... they clapp'd (As if they did applaud themselves), now flapp'd. And having lost th' advantage of the heel, Drunk with each other's blood, they only reel. From either eyes such drops of blood did fall As if they wept them for their funeral. And yet they fain would fight; they came so near, Methought they meant into each other's ear TO WHISPER WOUNDS; and when they could not rise, They lay and look'd ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and that its power only lasts during a few short hours in the morning of life. For many the early and wonderful days of marriage remain only as a tormenting memory, so entirely has the color faded out of their lives. And I know that the pain of such situations is so intense that I would fain speak of them ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... tended much to agitate England," writes a great French historian. "The British Press, arrogant and calumnious, as the Press always is in a free country, railed much at Napoleon and his preparations; but railed as one who trembles at that which he would fain exhibit as the object of his laughter." It may have been so, but it is not to be seen in any serious journal of that time. He seems to have confounded coarse caricaturists with refined and thoughtful journalists, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... England that sheltered Mazzini, Kossuth, Kropotkin, Stepniak, and that welcomed Garibaldi; the England that is the enemy of tyranny, the foe of autocracy, the lover of freedom, that is the England I would fain here represent to you to-day. To-day, when India stands erect, no suppliant people, but a Nation, self-conscious, self-respecting, determined to be free; when she stretches out her hand to Britain and offers friendship not subservience; co-operation not obedience; to-day let ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... Winterton very closely. His temper had begun to recover and he had nearly forgiven Quisante when suddenly Japhet Williams produced a far more severe and deadly shock. His action was a bomb, and a bomb thrown from a hand which Moors End had been fain to think was or might be friendly. Was not Japhet a neighbour, only two miles off along the Henstead Road, and did not Lady Mildmay and Mrs. Williams, religious differences notwithstanding, work together every year on the Committee of the Cottage Gardens and Window-Boxes ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... vague shaggy shape would emerge from the back of his mind, but it would refuse to condense into any recognizable face; which is as well, perhaps, else I might be tempted to pick up this forgotten flower, though I am fain to write no ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the water-carriage system is used, it is either intended to carry only sewage proper, viz., solid and liquid excreta flushed by water, or fain water and other waste water from the household in addition. The water-carriage system is accordingly divided into two systems: the combined, by which all sewage and all waste and rain water are carried ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... "I have loved you too, for you have been kind to me, and when I am gone, you will live here still and care for my child, whom we have called Fannie. It is a beautiful name, Dora—your mother's name, and for your sake, I would fain let her keep it—but," turning to Mr. Hastings, and laying her hand caressingly upon his head, "when I no longer live, I would rather you should call my baby Ella Grey; and if my husband"— here she ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... hour for angel-harp, The sky is dark, the Cross is near, The agony of Death is sharp, The scorn of men upbraids Thine ear. Fain would I leave all empty creeds, And make a music of ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... ever, received the magician, saying, to his great amazement: "I have made up my mind that Aladdin is dead, and that all my tears will not bring him back to me, so I am resolved to mourn no more, and have therefore invited you to sup with me; but I am tired of the wines of China, and would fain taste those of Africa." The magician flew to his cellar, and the Princess put the powder Aladdin had given her in her cup. When he returned she asked him to drink her health in the wine of Africa, handing him her cup in exchange for his, as a sign she was reconciled to him. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... debts which I know I can never pay? When it has been a question of food for the children I have been weak, but I will not be weak in such a matter as this. I will have no lawyer." She did not regard this denial on his part as very material, though she would fain have followed Mr Walker's advice had she been able; but when, later in the day, he declared that the police should fetch him, then her spirits gave way. Early in the morning he had seemed to assent to the expedient of going into ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... in the eyes And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise. It was true, what I'd time and again ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... And I into a Trance most deepe 60 Can cast the Birds that they shall sleepe When fain'st they would ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... the one hand, it is so hard to drive away the thought we would fain be rid of; so, upon the other, the pleasant imaginations which we would so gladly retain are, sooner or later, jostled away by the crowd of claimants for birth into the world of consciousness; which hover as a sort of psychical possibilities, or inverse ghosts, the bodily presentments of spiritual ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... any kind being novel to the lonely, motherless child, more accustomed to harsh, unsparing reproof than to any other language. Miss Preston, glad to see at least that her interest was excited, was fain to leave the germs of truth to take root and develope in her mind, under the silent ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... train, Plying his shafts, nor stays his conquering raid Till seven huge bodies on the ground lie slain, The number of his vessels; then again He seeks the crews, and gives a deer to each, Then opes the casks, which good Acestes, fain At parting, filled on the Trinacrian beach, And shares the wine, and soothes ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... cannot help thinking you laugh at me when you say such very civil things of my letters, and yet, coming from you, I would fain not have it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... saft at hame, the twa that sairved their king, Were they laid aside their ain kirk yett, i' the flower o' the ling. But whaur the road is twistin' through yon streets o' care an' sin, My third braw son toils nicht and day for the gowd he fain would win, Whaur ilka man grapes i' the dark to get his neebour's share, An' it's lang, lang strivin' ...
— Songs of Angus and More Songs of Angus • Violet Jacob
... Those who believed in the "sabbath" of witches must have felt their opinions confirmed by the testimony of the witnesses at Lancaster. Even the modern reader, with his skepticism, is somewhat daunted by the cumulative force of what purports to be the evidence and would fain rationalize it by supposing that some sort of a meeting actually did take place at Malking Tower and that some Pendle men and women who had delved in magic arts till they believed in them did formulate plans for revenge. But ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... theatre, the usual neat building of white and grey-brown basalt, informs us that it was built in 1852, ad honorem of two deputies. But Santa Cruz, the modern capital, has provided herself with a larger and a better house; ergo Las Palmas, the old capital, must fain do the same. The metropolis of Grand Canary, moreover, claims to count more noses than that of Tenerife. To the west of the older theatre, in the same block, is the casino, club, and ball-room, with two French billiard-tables and smoking-rooms. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to offer you my hand and heart. I have been charmed by your qualities of character and your beauty, and I fain would make you mistress of Halford Castle. I am soon to return to England, and I desire to take you with me as my bride. I have received the gracious permission of your honored parents to begin my suit, and I fondly hope that I may receive an ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... far and near, The organ sounds so loud to me I think I'm in the sacristy. There's not a soul in all the house; I hear a fly, and then a mouse. The sunlight now the window reaches And through the cactus stems it stretches, Fain o'er the walnut desk to glide, Some ancient cabinet-maker's pride. There it beholds with searching looks Concordances and children's books, On wafer-box and seal it dances And lights the inkwell with its glances; Across the sand it strikes its wedge, Is cut ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... my arms, though thou'st undone my fame, I can't forget to love thee. Pr'ythee, Jaffier, Forgive that filthy blow, my passion dealt thee: I'm now preparing for the land of peace And fain would have the charitable wishes Of all good men like thee, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... the suggestion, thinking that the duty might possibly fall within Miss Sally's department. As he said nothing further, and declined taking the hint, Mr Brass was fain to propose that they should go up stairs together, and make a last effort to awaken the sleeper by some less violent means, which, if they failed on this last trial, must positively be succeeded by stronger ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... methinks there are reasons for your desire to go down to the village weightier than the wheaten cake you would fain carry with you. Rest quietly at home; it may be Humphrey will be coming to let us know if Mr Sidney has arrived at Penshurst. Why such haste, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... answered. "Could you see the ideal woman as I would fain paint her to you, you would understand me better. The pleasure you enjoy in the society of a noble and beautiful woman should be but the refreshment by the wayside as you journey through life together. The day will come when she will be beautiful no longer, only noble and good, and true to you as ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... by Walter de Hemingford, the English historian, that when the castle of Dirleton, in East Lothian, was besieged by the army of Edward I., in the beginning of July, 1298, the men, being reduced to great extremities for provisions, were fain to subsist on the pease and beans which they gathered in the fields.*[12] This statement is all the more remarkable on two accounts: first, that pease and beans should then have been so plentiful as to afford anything like sustenance for an army; and second, that they should ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... daughter Ann to live in the house of a gentleman who, a little later, found that he could not keep her as he was purposing to decrease the size of his household. The mother writes to her son: "I shall be fain to send for her and with me she shall but lose her time, and without she be the better occupied she shall oftentimes move me and put me to great unquietness. Remember what labour I had with your sister, therefore do your best to help her forth"; as a result it was planned to send ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... one of Zoroaster's laws, which forbids the eating of a griffin. "Why," said some of them, "prohibit the eating of a griffin, if there is no such an animal in nature?" "There must necessarily be such an animal," said the others, "since Zoroaster forbids us to eat it." Zadig would fain have reconciled them by saying, "If there are no griffins, we cannot possibly eat them; and thus either way ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... presently to its former hardness? This was Jacob's fault: he made a vow when he was in distress, but he forgot his covenant, and God was angry with him, and chastised him in his daughter, Dinah, and in his two sons, Simeon and Levi; and at last God Himself was fain to call him from heaven to keep covenant; and after that time God blessed Jacob exceedingly. We read of David, that he professes of himself, "That he would go to God's house, and pay the vows which his lips uttered, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... plaints are heard in every wood, While I would fain conceal my woes; But vain's my wish, the briny flood, The more ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... so richly on the hard Mongolian Plain, and over its Eastern mountains and valleys. 'In due time we shall reap if we faint not.' His work goes on. He is now doing the Master's bidding in the higher service. There, we must fain believe, he is finding full scope for those altogether exceptional spiritual affinities, and powers and capacities which stand out so conspicuously all through the story of his inner life. Upon us who ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... Barker had retreated to the deck, and for an instant he thought the way was clear, but Lesly and Russen thrust him back with the muzzles of the loaded muskets. He struck at Russen with the cutlass, missed him, and, seeing the hopelessness of the attack, was fain to retreat. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Lucie?" asked Mad. de la Tour, with a faint smile; "I perceive there is something on your mind, which you would fain unburthen; and why should you hesitate to speak it ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... had flown up, and the cold, crumbling giant lay around; torn asunder were the gigantic spokes of the main-wheel, which once the very stream of ages drove. And in addition to all this, the moon shed down her light like eating silver-water upon the naked columns, and would fain have dissolved the Coliseum and the temples and all into their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was at 9.30, punctual to the stroke of Marie's conscience. At No. 30 Welham Mansions, Hampstead, were three little sleepers who depended upon her for all they needed in the world, and over them watched a tired old grannie who would fain go home to bed. Marie left the others suddenly, in case the strength of her resolution should fail her, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... which Columbus fain would have raised has crumbled to ruins, while that built by Vespucci, who labored without thought of himself, or hope of reward, has been strengthened by the lapse of time, and will stand so long as the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... inventiveness of his Inferno. But a reaction came with tears. Esther rose, threw her arms round the priest's neck, laid her head on his breast, which she wetted with her weeping, kissing the coarse stuff that covered that heart of steel as if she fain would touch it. She seized hold of him; she covered his hands with kisses; she poured out in a sacred effusion of gratitude her most coaxing caresses, lavished fond names on him, saying again and again in the midst of her honeyed ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... God to make him. The scents the wind brought him from field and garden and moor, seemed sweeter than ever wind-borne scents before: they were seeking to comfort him! He sighed—but turned from the sigh to God, and found fresh gladness and welcome. The wind hovered about him as if it would fain have something to do in the matter; the river rippled and shone as if it knew something worth knowing as yet unrevealed. The delight of creation is verily in secrets, but in secrets as truths on the way. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... letter, signed by the president, conveying in complimentary but formal terms this testimony of their approval and confidence, her lip trembled slightly, and a tear trickling from her light lashes dimmed her eye-glasses, so that she was fain to go up to her room to recover herself alone. When she did so she was startled to find a wire dummy standing near the door, and neatly folded upon the bed two elegant dresses. A note in the president's own hand ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... them away, they were lost. They were lost in the drawers—they were lost out And if for a miracle I had them safe under lock and key, why, then, I lost my keys! I was certainly the most unlucky person under the sun. If there was nothing else to lose, I was fain to lose myself—I mean my way; bewildered in these Aberleigh lanes of ours, or in the woodland recesses of the Penge, as if haunted by that fairy, Robin Good-fellow, who led Hermia and Helena such a dance in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Alas! that there ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... cannot pretend to say: you will be in a position to judge for yourself when you have finished this narrative. Our limited experience would lead us to believe that it was a phantom conjured up by some unusual condition of his own brain; but we are fain to confess that there certainly do exist in nature phenomena such as baffle human reason; and it is possible that, for some hidden purposes of Providence, permission may occasionally be granted to those ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... maiden! dear Athena! Goddess chaste, and wise and brave, From the snares of Polyxena Thou would'st fain thy favourite save. Tell me, is it not far better That it should be as it is? Jove's behest we cannot fetter, Fate's ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Sir Everard still unscathed? I fain Would know the truth." "Quite well, dear Lady, quite." She smiled in her content. "So many slain, You must forgive me for a little fright." And he forgave her, not alone for that, But because she was fingering his heart, Pressing and squeezing it, and thinking so Only to ease her smart Of painful, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... truth was that this remark now meant nothing. She thought Georges very nice and would have liked him as a companion, but as nothing else. Nevertheless, when he arrived daily at four o'clock he seemed so wretched that she was often fain to be as compliant as of old and would hide him in cupboards and constantly allow him to pick up the crumbs from Beauty's table. He hardly ever left the house now and became as much one of its inmates as ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... a pale face and an Indian heart; the earth be light to thee and thine. May the white Manitou clear for thee the mountain path, and may you never fail to remember Opishka Toaki (the White Raven), who is thy Comanche friend, and who would fain share with thee his home, his wealth, and his wide prairies. I ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... smoke, and sombre fog of murky hue Concealing thus his radiance from our eyes, And veiling that which makes her burn and shine. And so my soul, illumined and inflamed By radiance divine, would fain display The brightness of her own effulgent thought; The lofty concept of her song sends forth. In words which do but hide the glorious light, [C]While I dissolve and melt and am destroyed. Ah me! this lowering cloud, this smoky fire of words Abases ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... proceed from the depths of the composer's being, seem to us to belong to the singer alone who fanned the first spark within us. We hear her voice and record only what she has sung. It is, however, the inheritance of us weak mortals that, clinging to the clods, we are only too fain to draw down what is above the earth into the miserable narrowness characteristic of things of the earth. Thus it comes to pass that the singer becomes our lover—or even our wife. The spell is broken, and the melody of ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... comes a sound of waters; the riotous rushing of a torrent unchecked, that leaps sheer down from rocks a thousand feet high, thundering forth the praise of its own beauty as it tosses in the air triumphant crowns of silver spray. How the living diamonds within it shift, and change, and sparkle! Fain would I linger to watch this magnificence; but the coil of roses still unwinds before me, and the fairy voices still cry, "FOLLOW!" I press on. The trees grow thicker; the songs of the birds cease; the light around me grows pale and subdued. In the far distance ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli |
