"Forlornness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through his forlornness). Well, daughter? (They look at one another for a moment, with ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... for the feeling of insignificance and forlornness which is apt to overwhelm us when we begin to realise the immensity of the material universe, a little closer thought should make it obvious that nothing in the nature of mere bulk or bigness furnishes even a reasonable presumption, let alone ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... succeed in so rapid a train, that I fear I shall be unable to distribute and express them with sufficient perspicuity. As I look back, my heart is sore, and aches within my bosom. I am conscious to a kind of complex sentiment of distress and forlornness that cannot be perfectly portrayed by words; but I must do as well as I can. In the utmost vigour of my faculties, no eloquence that I possess would do justice to the tale. Now, in my languishing and feeble state, I shall furnish ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... (confound the woman!) he could well have spent an hour or two about the streets and the Quay, renewing old acquaintance. The whole town had heard of his return, and there were scores of folk to remember him and bid him welcome. They would chase away this feeling of forlornness, of being an alien. . . . Strange that, wide awake though he was, it ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... woman to preside over the Court, rather than the bloated rake who now lolled uneasily in the chair before him. He recalled the forlorn little smile with which she had accepted von Elmur's lover-like protestations at Madame de Sagan's doorway. Its forlornness had been lost upon Unziar, who had drawn but one merciless conclusion from the little scene. Close on the heels of these reflections a vivid recollection rose before Rallywood's mind of the first night he had met her. The lights and music of the grand salon of Sagan ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... quite different from the usual experience of lovers, the only woman in this world. Now that I had become suddenly sensible of the fatuity of the hopes I had begun to cherish, I suffered not merely what another lover might, but in addition a desolate loneliness, an utter forlornness, such as no other lover, however ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... in the capital of the British Empire early one morning, before the people were stirring. "When I stood in London," said he, "and considered that I did not know one soul in all this vast metropolis, I became suddenly impressed with a sense of forlornness, and burst into a flood of tears. An incident restored me. I had written a long letter to my father, giving him an account of my voyage, and expressing my filial affection—now not weakened by distance—and with this letter in my hand, I inquired of a rude fellow ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... solitude and sorrows seem to have grown unbearable. His fortitude broke down. One Sunday night he appealed to his father, with many tears, on the subject, not of his employment, which he seems to have accepted at the time manfully, but of his forlornness and isolation. The father's kind, thoughtless heart was touched. A back attic was found for Charles near the Marshalsea, at Lant Street, in the Borough—where Bob Sawyer, it will be remembered, afterwards invited Mr. Pickwick to that disastrous party. The boy ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... with very faint hopes, and no expectation, of ever returning. The longer I resided among this race of men, the melancholy and forlornness of my feelings declined. Prospects of satisfaction from the novelty and grandeur of the scene into which I had entered began to open upon me; sentiments of affection and gratitude for Holtz, and even for the Japanese lord, took ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... note, too, I found. But I could not write you. There was no way—no one to trust to mail it. And they had stolen my key," she whispered, and the confessing words with their quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those helpless ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... more than once with no more than the glimpse of a white face. An attendant from the hospital looked in now and again, at long intervals, to minister to his wants. The sufferer showed no sign of requiring or wishing anything more, and while his forlornness troubled me, I did not see that I could be of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Granville Street in the blackest mood which had yet come upon him. It differed from that strange feeling of terror which had taken him unaware the night before. He had fallen easy prey then to the black shadows of forlornness. He was still as acutely aware of the barrier which his disfigurement raised between him and other men. But with that morbid awareness there rose also now, for the first time, resentment against the smug folk who glanced at him and hurriedly averted their eyes. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... bounteous air, are warmed by this gracious sun, and, though poor and friendless, indeed, nor so agile as in your youth, yet, how sweet to roam, day by day, through the groves, plucking the bright mosses and flowers, till forlornness itself becomes a hilarity, and, in your innocent independence, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... attraction in a southerly direction: letters were to be forwarded to me at Grenoble, and there would probably be one from Jack or Molly Winston, saying when and where they might be expected to come upon the scene with Mercedes. Finding me stranded, they would doubtless take pity upon my forlornness, and offer me a lift in their car, down to the Riviera. And to the Riviera I still felt strongly impelled to go, though I had no longer the Contessa for an excuse. She had been engaged, in my little drama, for the part of "leading juvenile," with the privilege of understudying ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... silent spectacle! Yet sounds, 'tis said, On their forlornness broke; a hissing cry Of mockery and wild laugh, as, overhead, Those blight fantastic squadrons flaunted by:— And that false dawn, long nickering, died away, And the Sun came not forth, and Heaven withheld ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... fewer than of old, on the broad desk; but the bookcase was quite empty, and several of the shelves in it had supped from the horizontal; the front part of the shelves was a pale yellow, and behind that, an irregular dark band of dust indicated the varying depths of the vanished tomes. The forlornness of the bookcase gave a stricken air to the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... this lodging has no smiling appearance. It shows the ruggedness wherein the customs of Frenchmen were still immured in the time of King Henry IV., and it drives the soul to gloom and nearly to melancholy by the state of forlornness in which unhappily it has been left. How much sweeter it would be to climb the enchanted hillocks of Tusculum with the hope of hearing Cicero discourse of virtue, under the firs and pines of his villa so dear to the philosopher! And have you not observed, my boy, that all along yonder road neither ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... somewhat cloistered life in the stable which had been made over into a garage. He had wandered in one morning soon after Anne had come to teach in the school. Peter had suggested that he be killed and eaten. But Anne, lonely in her new quarters, had appreciated the forlornness of the old drake and had adopted him. She had named him Diogenes because he had an air of searching always for something which could not be found. Once when a flock of wild ducks had flown overhead, Diogenes had ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... splendid, had the power to fix and fascinate my vision—never felt before—as they shone above me, clear and crystalline as enthroned in space—judges, and spectators, cold and pitiless as it seemed to me, in the strangeness and forlornness of my condition—Arcturus, and the Ursas, great and little, and Lyra, and the Corona Borealis, Berenice, and Hydra, and Cassiopea's chair; these and many more. I marked them all with a calm scrutiny that belongs to terror in ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... rooms at the inn at Capua, where we slept, opened on a terraced garden, with orange trees, vines trained on arched trellises, marble fountains, &c., which, for ten shillings expense, might have been made very gay and attractive; but all was forlornness and disorder, the beds untrimmed, and the walks littered with dirt. Two magnificent plants of Opuntia vulgaris, which flanked one of the windows, the waiter said, were planted there 'per pompa' (for pomp's sake); a motive, unfortunately, so ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... melancholy to find, that, according to the authority of a certain great French author, "cooks, half stewed and half roasted, when unable to work any longer, generally retire to some unknown corner, and die in forlornness and want."—BLACKWOOD'S Edin. Mag. vol. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... heart was touched by the utter forlornness expressed in the youth's face when he heard how far away the surveyor's camp was located, so she ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the green, stood a small cottage, or hut. My second glance showed it to be tenantless, for the thatch was partly gone, the windows were broken, and the door had long since fallen from its hinges. Yet, despite its forlornness and desolation, despite the dilapidation of broken door and fallen chimney, there was something in the air of the place that drew me strangely. It was somewhat roughly put together, but still very strong, and seemed, save ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... mustn't make a scene with Ted. He mustn't. She cast an apprehensive glance around the room. Larry was invisible. A forlornness came over her, a despair such as she had never experienced even in that dreadful time after the wreck when she realized she had forgotten everything. She felt as if she were sinking down, down in a fearful black sea and that there was no help for her anywhere. Larry had deserted her. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... deeply resented. One tourist after another, exclaimed with blank despair: "Alas, poor Mull will get no news from London to-day." "What will Mull do without the London news?" "No news from London, what a misfortune for Mull!" This harping on the forlornness of the island caused the blood of the postmaster to boil with indignation, and he shouted in ire: "It is not Mull I will be sorry for, at all, at all. Mull can do without the London news. But what will poor London do, when she finds she will not be able to get any ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... stood looking back at the house. From the garden, which lay at the side and behind it, it showed all of its forlornness and ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... satisfaction of being any comfort to him; since he had been shut up as an unclean person, he had better keep himself quite apart from them. He would make his punishment still more hard, and purposely increased his forlornness, kept out of his thoughts everything that was near and dear to him, and dragged the painful things into the foreground. Ellen had of course forgotten him for some one else, and had perhaps turned the children's thoughts from him; they would certainly be forbidden to mention ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... pitiful exhibition of weakness—and to note whether she had made an impression upon his sympathies—she saw him just entering the house, a quarter of a mile away. To anger succeeded a mood of desperate forlornness. She fell upon herself with gloomy ferocity. She could not sing. She had no brains. She was taking money—a disgracefully large amount of money—from Stanley Baird under false pretenses. How could she hope ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... precepts and doctrines Jesus taught; because such a course would have been in the plainest antagonism to all those principles themselves, and because, too, they must have known both the utter wickedness and the desperate hazards and forlornness of such an attempt to give a fictitious sanction to moral truths. In such an enterprise there was before them not the faintest probability of even the slightest success. Every selfish motive would tend to deter them; ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... would not compass Willard's, one cannot imagine what would become of her. She would probably be seen wandering at late night, with bedimmed stars and bedraggled gauze, until some vigorous officer should lead her to the station-house for vagrancy. Thus when fascination and forlornness are at equal discount, when powers and penuries go down together, and common and uncommon sense fail alike, to what natural feeling shall one hope to appeal? There is no sound spot of humanity left to rest upon. It is a dilemma ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... sudden pang it occurred to him that once more she might have moved a step down the economic scale toward the furnished room in one of those dingy lodging-houses which she had dreaded; places where the heart sickens at the forlornness of its environment. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... yet relented, was taking an evening stroll with me, in the soothing company of the pedagogue; when we were hailed by Ned with an invitation to a mug of ale in the tavern. Struck with the man's apparent wistfulness for company, and moved by a fellow feeling of forlornness, Philip accepted; and Cornelius, always acquiescent, had not the ill grace to refuse. So the four of us sat ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... despised because it is not altogether or even largely ethical. The heart depressed by drudgery, hardship, forlornness, craves not merely moral guidance but exhilaration and ecstacy. Small wonder if it seeks it in whisky; better surely if it finds it in hymns and prayers and transports partly of the flesh yet touched by the spirit. Further, by faithful masters and mistresses there was given to the slave's ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... me more visionary than I am,' said Hazel with a shy glance and laugh. 'I did not mean anything quite silly. Of courseall the barren places,only God could fill them. But a touch to the sorrow, and a touch to the need, and a touch to the forlornness,that is what ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... It was thawing under the dull, soft April sky, and he saw the first bluebird perched on the clothes-line when he went out for the wood; his mother said there had been lots of them. He walked about the place, and into the barn, taking in the forlornness and shabbiness; and then he went up into the room over the shed, where he used to study and write. His heart ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... and noted with gloom the already neglected appearance of her front window. The Venetian blind, half drawn up, was five or six inches higher one side than the other, and a vase of faded flowers added to the forlornness of the picture. In his present state of mind the faded blooms seemed particularly appropriate, and suddenly determining to possess them, he walked up the steps and knocked at the door, trembling like a young housebreaker over his ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... nevertheless, the storm began to subside. But with it died the hope which is inherent in revolt; in proportion as she grew more calm the forlornness of her situation rose more clearly before her. At last that had happened which she had so long expected to happen. The thing was known. Soon the full consequences would be upon her, the consequences on which she dared ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... with a mind attuned to sparrow stalking. In a corner of an A.B.C. shop she found an unoccupied table, whereat she promptly installed herself, impelled by the fact that at the next table was sitting a young girl, rather plain of feature, with tired, listless eyes, and a general air of uncomplaining forlornness. Her dress was of poor material, but aimed at being in the fashion, her hair was pretty, and her complexion bad; she was finishing a modest meal of tea and scone, and she was not very different in her way from thousands of other girls who were finishing, or beginning, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... impression which it makes upon our feelings than by the vividness of the picture which it presents. Read the following description of the Battery in New York by Howells. Notice how the details which have been selected emphasize the "impression of forlornness." The sickly trees, the decrepit shade, the mangy grass plots, hungry-eyed and hollow children, the jaded women, silent and hopeless, the shameless houses, the hard-looking men, unite to give the one impression. Even ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks |
