"Repine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not, it is true, been deeply enough touched to feel either pique or melancholy at this discovery, but was so far heart-whole as to be rather inclined to laugh at the fickleness of the merry jilt, than either to repine or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... am so blest, I fear 'tis all a dream. Fortune, thou now hast made amends for all Thy past unkindness: I absolve my stars. What though Numidia add her conquer'd towns And provinces to swell the victor's triumph, Juba will never at his fate repine: Let Caesar have the world, if ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... beyond the average term of life. And even should the assurer himself live beyond the period at which his savings would have accumulated to more than the sum insured, he will not be disposed to repine, if he takes into account his exemption from corroding solicitude during so many ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... "Repine not, O damsel," counselled the Jinnee, "since it is for his welfare. For, though as yet he believeth it not, when he beholds the resplendent beauty of her countenance he will swoon away with delight and ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... of the tragedy she has gone through. The double tragedy; for, soon after the master of Dandaloo's death in a Melbourne lunatic asylum, the little son of the house had died, not yet fourteen years of age, in an Inebriate's Home. Far was it from Mary to wish her friend to brood or repine; but to have ceased to remember as utterly as Agnes had done had something callous about it; and, in her own heart, Mary devoted a fresh regret to the memory of the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... She had loved one man with a fidelity, a whole-heartedness, and a loftiness of self-sacrifice which are as rare as they are great in these days of pretense and hypocritical virtue, and she had paid the full price for her idealism. She did not repine or regret. She only suffered, not alone because of her unenviable notoriety, but because Death had taken her loved one from her. Surely this was indeed an evidence of real love in an unreal civilization, ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... accept these spiritual tyrannies, weak men repine at them, and great men break them down. But to defy the world is a serious business, and requires the greatest courage, even if the defiance touch in the first place only the world's ideals. Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... fatal asc['e]ndancy Do not tempt thee to mope and repine; With a humble and hopeful dep['e]ndency Still await the good pleasure divine. Success in a higher be['a]titude, Is the end of what's under the Pole; A philosopher takes it with gr['a]titude, And believes it ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... from Enfield, "we have been visited with that fell calamity, the collapse of Mr. Croker and his rule. We have seen the black last of him, and the very name of Croker already begins to be a memory. But why should one repine?" Lemon's sneer was deepening. "In every age the other great have come and ruled and gone to that oblivion beyond. They arose to fall and be forgot. It is the law. Then why not Mr. Croker? True, even while we consent, there ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... falls the snow, O lady mine, Sprinkling the lawn with crystals fine, But by the gods we won't repine While we 're together, We 'll chat and rhyme and ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... said, "repine, For Lanka's isle shall still be thine. Nor let the tyrant and his son Exult before the fight be done. These royal chiefs, though now dismayed, Freed from the spell by Garud's aid, Triumphant yet the foe shall meet And lay the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... then that it grows tiresome," said Margaret. "I am too happy to be of some use, and it is too bad to repine, but sometimes a feeling comes of its being always the same, as if a little change ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... About two weeks ago, I dreamed that my sweet little Jessie came running to me in her usual way, and I took her in my arms. O my dear babys, were mortal eyes permitted to see them in heaven, we would not repine nor grieve for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who fear God. If she refuses, call again; call weekly, if not daily, and warn her from me till she is ripe for glory. Tell the brethren at Broseley that I did my body an injury the last time I preached to them on the Green; but, if they took the warning, I do not repine. Give my love to George Crannage; tell him to make haste to Christ, and not to doze ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... why repine, my pensive friend, At pleasures slipped away? Some the stern fates will never lend, And all refuse to stay. I see the rainbow in the sky, The dew upon the grass; I see them and I ask not why They glimmer ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... to submit to Destiny, cultivating, as the things necessary to virtue, knowledge, temperance, fortitude, justice. We must remember that every thing around us is in mutation; decay follows reproduction, and reproduction decay, and that it is useless to repine at death in a world where every thing is dying. As a cataract shows from year to year an invariable shape, though the water composing it is perpetually changing, so the aspect of Nature is nothing more than a flow of matter presenting an impermanent form. The universe, considered ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... splendour of reputation is not to be counted among the necessaries of life, and therefore shall not much repine if praise be withheld till it is better deserved. But surely I may be allowed to complain, that, in a nation of authors, not one has thought me worthy of notice after so fair ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... wilful, haughty, angry boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him. The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not, indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not withstanding the clever defence that has been made for him, he has our pardon rather than our sympathy; ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... her with longing eyne * And grew anew my old repine For the gazelle, who captured me * Where the two lotus-trees incline: There was the water poured on it * From ewer of the silvern mine; And seen me she had hidden it * But twas too plump for fingers fine. Would Heaven that ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... children, alone in the world, she did not repine, but made herself useful, wherever she was, in teaching secular learning and religious truth, and in ministering to the sick and afflicted, the down-trodden and oppressed. She never sought to do any wonderful things,—but whatever her hand found to do, she did it with her might and with ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... she did not repine in the absence of these things. She was happy in the performance of her duties, whether they were easy or not, and enjoyed the few simple pleasures ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... with half a dozen men, (She calls them "boys" and "mashers") I trot along the Mall alone; My prettiest frocks and sashes Don't help to fill my programme-card, And vainly I repine From ten to two A.M. Ah me! Would ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... because, were we ever so much higher, there would be still room for infinite power to exalt us; and, since no link in the chain can be broke, the same reason for disquiet must remain to those who succeed to that chasm, which must be occasioned by our preferment. A man can have no reason to repine, that he is not an angel; nor a horse, that he is not a man; much less, that, in their several stations, they possess not the faculties of another; for this would be an ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... these unfavourable circumstances had been brought about by a contingency which no human power or judgment could have obviated, and at which, therefore, it would have been unreasonable, as well as useless, to repine. We lay here in rather less than five fathoms, on a muddy bottom, at the distance of one cable's length from the eastern shore of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... applying to the labours I am now to describe: "He that calculates the growth of trees has the remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and where he rejoices to see the stem rise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down." The days of the patriotic Count Mazzuchelli were freely given to his national literature; and six invaluable folios attest the gigantic force of his immense erudition; yet these ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to love like mine, Though uttered by a voice like thine, I still in murmurs must repine, And think that love ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... the "hope forlorn" I am doom'd to go, Still 'tis my duty, and I'll not repine! But I must perish, ere forget to know, Thy body fed the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... incident to every one whose fancy is active, and whose views are comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself because he has done much, but because he can conceive little.' But to labour and be forgotten is the common lot; and why should a literary man be more disposed to repine because his productions perish after serving a temporary purpose, than the gardener or farmer, whose vocation it is to supply the people with their daily food? If the provisions furnished, whether for mind or body, be wholesome, and if they serve their purpose, the producers must learn to be content, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... with, come to grief, fall a sacrifice to, drain the cup of misery to the dregs, "sup full of horrors" [Macbeth]. sit on thorns, be on pins and needles, wince, fret, chafe, worry oneself, be in a taking, fret and fume; take on, take to heart; cark[obs3]. grieve; mourn &c. (lament) 839; yearn, repine, pine, droop, languish, sink; give way; despair &c. 859; break one's heart; weigh upon the heart &c. (inflict pain) 830. Adj. in pain, in a state of pain, full of pain &c. n.; suffering &c. v.; pained, afflicted, worried, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Terrace; and regarding it as peace, joy, and honour, to be linked with it. The newly-found happiness, and the effort to be worthy of it, were to bear her through all uncongenial scenes; she had such a secret of joy that she should never repine again. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has been ever since. You know how you shared our feelings of delight that your brother had grown stronger, and would be able to take his own part, as his fathers had done before him, to become a brave and valiant knight, and assuredly it is not for you to repine now that a fair opportunity offers for him to prepare ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... well as in more coveted circumstances, are discontented with their position. They repine at their lot, and murmur against the Providence which has assigned it. This is not only wicked but absurd, since true happiness lies much less in changing our condition than in making the best of it, whatever it be. ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... days of life were ours; The worst can be but mine; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, Shall never more be thine. The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep; Nor need I to repine That all those charms have passed away, I might have watched ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... on the suite of rooms in which I have passed such pleasant days, I am filled with regret at the prospect of leaving them, but it cannot be helped, so it is useless to repine. We have two months to look about us, and many friends who are occupied in assisting us ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... old lady of Turkey, Who wept when the weather was murky; When the day turned out fine, She ceased to repine, That capricious old ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... chance of circumstance We have to go bare-foot, sir, We'll not repine — a friend of mine Has got no feet to boot, sir. This Happiness a habit is, And Life is what we make it: See! there's the trail to Sunnydale! Up, friend! and ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... name; kind hearts that feel with and for me; hearts upon which my own could be satisfied to rest; but then that parting, that forced, and often hopeless separation which too often follows such a meeting, makes me repine. I will not say, pettishly, that I could wish never to have known or seen a treasure I cannot possess: no! how can I think of you and feel regret that I have known you? As long as I live, the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the rash moods of terror and of pain, I did not think ye could, in such an hour, So steal from me, as in a sleep, a dream— What is't that comes between me and the light? Protect me, Jove! Lo, what untended flowers, That all night long, like little wakeful babes, Darkly repine, and weep themselves asleep, In the orient morning lift their pretty eyes, Tear smiling, to behold the sun their sire Enter the gilded chambers of the east— Strange ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... judgment now with them alone can dwell; Like Church of Rome, they're grown infallible. Dull superstitious readers they deceive, Who pin their easy faith on critic's sleeve, 100 And knowing nothing, everything believe! But why repine we that these puny elves Shoot into giants?—we may thank ourselves: Fools that we are, like Israel's fools of yore, The calf ourselves have fashion'd we adore. But let true Reason once resume her reign, This god shall dwindle to a calf again. Founded on arts which ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... because we have given him a pistol-shot through the head, do we imagine he will repent? On the contrary, if we but observe, we shall find, that he makes mouths at us in falling, and is so far from penitency, that he does not so much as repine at us; and we do him the kindest office of life, which is to make him die insensibly, and soon: we are afterwards to hide ourselves, and to shift and fly from the officers of justice, who pursue us, whilst he is at rest. Killing is good ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... till the last of this month. He damped my spirits greatly by telling me that the court had prolonged your stay another month. I was pleasing myself with the thought that you would soon be upon your return. It is in vain to repine. I hope the public will reap what ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... shake, Seest thou the Greeks by fates unjust oppress'd, Nor swells thy heart in that immortal breast? Yet AEgae, Helice, thy power obey,(195) And gifts unceasing on thine altars lay. Would all the deities of Greece combine, In vain the gloomy Thunderer might repine: Sole should he sit, with scarce a god to friend, And see his Trojans to the shades descend: Such be the scene from his Idaean bower; Ungrateful ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... almost alarmed, and starting from these thoughts, "I am betrothed to one who loves me—it is folly and dishonour to repent and to repine. I have gone through the best years of youth without finding the Egeria with whom the cavern would be sweeter than a throne. Why live to the grave a vain and visionary Nympholept? Out of the real world could I have made ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... son's earthly career had closed for ever; and both he and Helen had submitted to the bereavement with Christian piety and resignation, and had taught their wounded hearts to restrain every impulse to repine, and even to feel thankful that their beloved boy had been spared any protracted sufferings and trials, and had been permitted so speedily to enter into his rest. Had they known his actual late and condition, how much of painful anxiety would have ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... our labor, our ingenuity, is so much ready money which we are to lay out to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your own judgment: and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing, repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase. Such is the force of well-regulated industry, that a steady and vigorous exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... began with a severe aspect: "I regret to learn, Peas-cod and Bean-pod, that you are indulging in discontent; it is very wicked in any one to murmur or repine at his lot in this world. Learn from this mortal," she continued, placing her hand tenderly on Charley's head; "almost since his birth he has led a life of suffering, yet no repining falls from his patient lips; he is willing to live, and he will be ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... to repine, however, and he at once began to look about him for employment. He was sixty-seven years old, and it was hard to go out into the world to earn his bread again, but he bore his misfortunes bravely, and soon succeeded in obtaining the employment he desired. The great Clock Company of Chicago engaged ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... friends and promote the happiness of society. But notwithstanding I was thus secluded from my particular friends and acquaintances yet I enjoyed my share of comfort and worldly felicity. I felt no disposition to murmer and repine in my then condition. Every day afforded me its enjoyments excepting a time when I had a pretty severe attack with the ague and fever which reduced me low. The whole term of my Captivity was three years and three months lacking one day. I was exchanged on the 3rd day of Jany 1781. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... to last. But nothing can rob me of it now... Don't think that I repine. I am not even sad now. Yes, I have been happy. But I remember also the time when I was unhappy beyond endurance, beyond desperation. Yes. You remember that. And later on, too. There was a time on board the Ferndale ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... father was a wealthy Count: The inheritance now mine— Would I were poor! this wretched wealth 'Tis makes me to repine. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... strength to begin again the battle for a living. It was a hard, bitter blow for a young, ambitious man, right at the start of his career; a stroke of fate to make any man bitter and cynical. But his was not a nature to permit misfortune to narrow him or make him repine. He rose above it. It did not lesson his ambitions. It broadened, humanized them. It made him enter with still truer sympathy into other people's misfortune. And his trust in God was so strong, his faith so unshaken, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... will, repine at fate, And droop their heads in sorrow, I'll laugh when cares upon me wait, I know they'll ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... vintners' pots. His father kept a good house for honest men, his tenants that brought him in part; and his son keeps a bad house with knaves that help to consume all: 'tis but the change of time: why should any man repine at it? Crickets, good, loving, and lucky worms, were wont to feed, sing, and rejoice in the father's chimney; and now carrion crows ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Wauna, solemnly, "we deeply realize how useless it is to repine. We place implicit faith in the revelations of Nature, and in no circumstances does she bid us expect a life beyond that of the body. That is a life of ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... of God, working in conformity with impartial law, and seeking the equal good of all, often seems to be in sharp conflict with the interests of the individual self.—If his working is irresistible we are tempted to repine and rebel. If his will is simply declared, and left for us to carry out by the free obedience of our wills, then we are tempted to sacrifice the universal good to which the divine will points, and to assert instead some selfish interest of our own. Self-will is, from the religious point of view, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... though he had considerably lessened his plan. His eyesight, by long humouring in his native air, had grown stronger, but not sufficiently strong to warrant his attempting his extensive educational project. Yet he did not repine: there was still more than enough of an unambitious sort to tax all his energies ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... lord. With age, with cares, with maladies oppress'd, He seeks the refuge of monastick rest: Grief aids disease, remember'd folly stings, And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings. Speak thou, whose thoughts at humble peace repine, Shall Wolsey's wealth, with Wolsey's end, be thine? Or liv'st thou now, with safer pride content, [k]The wisest justice on the banks of Trent? For, why did Wolsey, near the steeps of fate, On weak foundations ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... of the world's exiled room, I live in wilderness of deep lament; No hope reserved me but a hopeless tomb, When fruitless life and fruitful woes are spent. Shall Phoebus hinder little stars to shine, Or lofty cedar mushrooms leave to grow? Sure mighty men at little ones repine, The rich is to the poor a common foe. Fidessa, seeing how the world doth go, Joineth with fortune in ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... ever get one like it. 'Tis poor, and badly print; its meaning's Greek; But what of that? 'Tis mine, and it's unique. So Bah! to others, Men and brothers— Bah! and likewise Pooh! I've got the best of you. Go sicken, die, and eke repine. That book you ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... journeys all day, To visit some far distant shrine; If he bear but a relic away, Is happy, nor heard to repine."— ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the peasantry in this part of France is very comfortable: they are temperate, unceasingly gay, and sufficiently clad; their wants are few, and therefore their labour, added to the fertility of the soil, is sufficient to satisfy them. They repine not for luxuries of which they ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... their union,—when they experienced the sweet solace of each other's sympathy, the outpourings of two hearts which beat as one, ever in unison, and filled with a mutual love which time impaired not,—then they remembered that it was useless and wrong to repine against the decrees of Providence; and, in this trusting faith in Heaven and in the enjoyment of each other's unwearying affection, they lived to a good old age—dying at length in the arms of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... not repine because of these things. Let the Grand Mujik mutter a thousand heresies, let three-quarters of the world accept and live them, you would not think the unaspiring three-quarters broken-spirited. You would hail them right practical. And if you held a thought ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... high renown with prince and peer Now liv'd sir Valentine: His high renown with prince and peer Made envious hearts repine. ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... Repine not, Gray, that our weak dazzled eyes Thy daring heights and brightness shun, How few can track the eagle to the skies, Or, like ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... my mind, To my sweet friend. Relinquishing my love, I gave my dearest hope of joy to her. If God, from out his boundless store above, Had chosen added blessings to confer, I would rejoice, for her sake—not repine That th' ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... is come our joyfullest part; Let every man be jolly; Each room with ivy-leaves is dressed, And every post with holly. Though some churls at our mirth repine, Round your foreheads garlands twine, Drown sorrow in a cup of wine, And let us all ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... whose Thoughts at humble Peace repine, Shall Wolsey's Wealth, with Wolsey's End be thine? Or liv'st thou now, with safer Pride content, The richest Landlord on the Banks of Trent? For why did Wolsey by the Steps of Fate, On weak Foundations raise th' enormous Weight? Why but to sink ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... and giving her another hug; "but, being a man, it wouldn't do at all to allow my feelings to overcome me in that manner. Besides, with my darling little wife still left me, I'd be an ungrateful wretch to repine at the absence of ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... A ship is bound to come along here some time or another, an' you mustn't repine, ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... friend," the preacher might say, "how much wisdom there is in John Jacob Astor's remark. What more has the Queen of England, or the richest peer in the land, out of all their riches than their board and clothing. 'So don't repine, my friend. Cheer up! I will come and fast on canvas-back duck with you to-morrow, for it's Friday; and whatever lives on aquatic food is fishy—a duck is twice-laid fish. A few glasses of champaine at dinner, and a cool bottle ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of late To shrink from happy boyhood—boys Have grown so noisy, and I hate A noise. They fright me when the beech is green, By swarming up its stem for eggs; They drive their horrid hoops between My legs. It's idle to repine, I know; I'll tell you what I'll do instead: I'll drink my ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... made us all sick, added to the wet, and cold of dawn; yet, when the day cleared a little, and we got a fire on deck, and some hot tea and biscuits, and the children seemed none the worse for their bad night and the swarms of mosquitoes which had feasted upon them, we could not repine. In the evening we passed the island of Burong, at the mouth of the Batang Lupar River, and Mr. Crookshank tried to stimulate the men pulling the sweeps to reach a Sebuyan village farther on, before the tide left us and it ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... should we repine? Could we but see Our lifelong journey with its ups and downs! Ambition, hope and longings all would flee, Indifferent alike to smiles and frowns. 'Tis better as it is. It must be so. We ne'er ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... we cannot but censure and expose the murmurings of the unthinking and the gay; who, going on in a continual round of pleasure and prosperity, repine at the will of Providence, as exhibited in the shortness of human duration. But let a weak and infirm old age overtake them: let them experience calamities: let them feel but half the miseries which the wretched Africans undergo, ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... candles with colored shades and some bonbon dishes. It was plain that Flossy admired her because she recognized her to be a fine and superior soul, and the appreciation of this served to make it more easy not to repine at the difference between their entertainments. Still the constant acquisition of pretty things by her frank and engaging friend was an ordeal which only a soul endowed with high, stern democratic faith and purpose ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... all the young Pitts and Lytteltons were pelting oratory at my father for rolling out a twenty years' peace, and not envying the trophies which he passed by every day in Westminster Hall. But one must not repine; rather reflect on the glories which they have drove the nation headlong into. One must think all our distresses and dangers well laid out, when they have purchased us Glover'S(1066) Oration for the merchants, the Admiralty for the Duke of Bedford, and the reversion of Secretary at war for ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... displayed the distress of a poet; in this the artist has exhibited the rage of a musician. Our poor bard bore his misfortunes with patience, and, rich in his Muse, did not much repine at his poverty. Not so this master of harmony, of heavenly harmony! To the evils of poverty he is now a stranger; his adagios and cantabiles have procured him the protection of nobles; and, contrary to the poor shirtless mendicant of the Muses that we ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Brothers who are out in the world, suffering hunger and a thousand tribulations, and also those others who are in hermitages or in miserable houses, when they hear of my sojourn with a cardinal will be moved to repine. 'We endure all privations,' they will say, 'while he has all that he can desire; 'but I ought to give them a good example—that is my ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... are the ways of God, And fear and blindness oft repine; We murmur 'neath his chastening rod, Because we ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... such ineffectual, efforts to change it. The modest lady pities, and blushes for, a sister thus regardless of proprieties. Her companions, successful by their very neglect to toil for success, will doubtless apply to her, and with some pungency, the epithet of "old maid." Ought she to repine at the fruit of her own indiscretion ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... have admitted of such consummate joy. The chain of necessity ever bringing misery must have been broken and the malignant fate that presides over it would not permit this breach of her eternal laws. But why should I repine at this? Misery was my element, and nothing but what was miserable could approach me; if Woodville had been happy I should never have known him. And can I who for many years was fed by tears, and nourished under the dew of ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... us try to believe that we will always love each other. Our food is not less grateful to us because it is possible that at some future day we shall have to go hungry. Oh, poor Fan, why should such thoughts trouble your young heart? Take the goods the gods give you, and do not repine because we are not angels in Heaven, with an eternity to enjoy ourselves in. I love you now, and find it sweet to love you, as I have never loved anyone of my own sex before. Women, as a rule, I detest. You can do, and are doing, more than you ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... travelling-carriage without stopping to watch it, and envying the postilion who drove it or the persons it conveyed. When she was ten or twelve years old, no reading had such a charm for her as books of voyages and travels; and then she began to repine at the happiness of every great navigator or discoverer, whose boldness revealed to him the secrets of lands and seas ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... it is too late to repine!' She added; 'The die is thrown: I have pronounced my vows, and dedicated myself to the service of heaven. I am sensible, how ill I am calculated for a Convent. My disgust at a monastic life increases daily: Ennui and discontent are my constant Companions; and I will not conceal from you ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... backsliding: But when thy wit I can confide in, When well I know thy just pretence To solid and exalted sense; When well I know that on thy head Philosophy her lights hath shed, I stand aghast! thy virtues sum to, I wonder what this world will come to! Yet, whence this strain? shall I repine That thou alone dost singly shine? Shall I lament that thou alone, Of men ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... operate only as a bounty upon the domestic article; while the planter and the merchant and the shepherd and the husbandman shall be found thriving in their occupations under the duties imposed for the protection of domestic manufactures, they will not repine at the prosperity shared with themselves by their fellow citizens of other professions, nor denounce as violations of the Constitution the deliberate acts of Congress to shield from the wrongs of foreigns the native industry of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... it, I must and will!' said he, lifting his head from the carved chimney-piece, where he had been resting it. 'I have been in will a murderer myself, and what right have I to repine like the Israelites, with their self-justifying proverb? No; let me be thankful that I was not given up even then, but have been able to repent, and do a little better next time. It will be a blessing as yet ungranted to any of us, if indeed I should bear to the full the doom of sorrow, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... friend, you haue too much liuing, and are vnseruiceable to your prince, lesse will serue you, and the rest will serue other men that are more able to serue, whereupon immediately his liuing shall be taken away from him, sauing a little to find himselfe and his wife on, and he may not once repine thereat: but for answere he will say, that he hath nothing, but it is Gods and the Dukes Graces, and cannot say, as we the common people in England say, if wee haue any thing; that is God's and our owne. Men may say, that these men are in wonderfull great awe, and obedience, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... If we fret and murmur; if we are impatient and unfaithful; if, when we plainly see that our duty lies in one path, we yet long to follow another; if we know that we cannot leave our present position without dereliction from right, and yet hate or despise the place in which we are; if we repine because God does not give us the earthly rewards we fancy we deserve, though we well know he promises only heavenly ones; if we do habitually any or all of these things, we may know that our faith is of the lip, and not of the heart,—that the life of charity is not yet begun within us. Such repinings, ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... answered the sibyl; "what would taking thy life pleasure them?—Trust me, thy life is in no peril. Such usage shalt thou have as was once thought good enough for a noble Saxon maiden. And shall a Jewess, like thee, repine because she hath no better? Look at me—I was as young and twice as fair as thou, when Front-de-Boeuf, father of this Reginald, and his Normans, stormed this castle. My father and his seven sons defended their ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... faces radiant-fair though afar from me they shine, * Are mirrored in our eyes whatsoever the distance be; My heart must ever dwell on the memories of your tribe; * And the turtle-dove reneweth all as oft as moaneth she: Ho thou dove, who passest night-tide in calling on thy fere, * Thou doublest my repine, bringing grief for company; And leavest thou mine eyelids with weeping unfulfilled * For the dearlings who departed, whom we never more may see: I melt for the thought of you at every time and hour, * And I long for you when Night showeth cheek ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... than was necessary for one occasion," said Alida, smiling on her admirer, in a manner that left him doubtful whether he ought most to repine, or to rejoice. "Thank you, good Francois; your duty for the night shall end with lighting the captain ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... wrong, dear heart," said Mr. Bird more cheerfully; "we will try not to repine, but to rejoice instead, that we have an ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... short of his own highest achievements in a large part of his work, and who is not open to the remark that his achievements are not all that we could have wished. It is doubtless best to take what we can get, and not to repine if we do not get something better, the possibility of which is suggested by the actual accomplishment. If Landor had united to his own powers those of Scott or Shakespeare, he would have been improved. Landor, repenting a little for some ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... slowly. What a happy thing a child is! Look, sir, at those little creatures playing about, and as merry now, and as unaware of danger, as if they were at home in their parlour. I often think, sir, it is a great blessing for a child to be called away early; and that it is selfish in parents to repine." ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... a mason for the last fourteen years; but I have to work hard enough for all that." "Weel, weel, it's our appointed lot; an' if we have but health an' strength, an' the wark to do, why should we repine?" Once fairly entered on our talk together, we gossipped on till the night fell, giving and receiving information regarding our old acquaintances of a quarter of a century before; of whom we found ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... sunshine of the Riviera. At least Tinker was enjoying it; the demands of a system required his father and Lord Crosland to spend most of their day in the darker, though hardly cooler air of the Temple of Fortune. But the system went well, and they did not repine. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... manner of life? At home am I burdened with cares that borrow Their color from a world of strife. The fields are burdened with toil, The seas are sown with the dead, With never a hand of a priest to assoil A soul that in sin hath fled. I have gold: I dread the danger by night; I have none: I repine and fret; I have children: they darken the pale sunlight; I have none: I'm in nature's debt. The young lack wisdom; the old lack life; I have brains; but I shake at the knees; Alas! who could covet a scene of strife? Give me peace in this ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... reputable existence,—a strange historical epitome of brushings and spongings, of camphor exile and patient patching. Quite evidently he was not among the prosperous, even in his stellar world. But not for that would he repine. This present planet was an admirable plot of ground, and here he stood, cheerfully ready to induct us, the Puritan-born, into the fictitious joys thereof. And popular prices prevailed; the floor of the hall itself confirmed ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the best. The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in a foreign land, and where they least expected it; so it was here—even here, where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... trade, A Spider heard the sighing maid, And kindly stopping in a trice, Thus offered (gratis) her advice: "Turn, little girl, behold in me A stimulus to industry; Compare your woes my dear, with mine, Then tell me who should most repine; This morning, ere you'd left your room, The chambermaid's relentless broom, In one sad moment that destroyed To build which thousands were employed. The shock was great, but as my life I saved in the relentless ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... persuade, inveigle. Color, hue, shade, tint, tinge, tincture. Combine, unite, consolidate, merge, amalgamate, weld, incorporate, confederate. Comfort, console, solace. Complain, grumble, growl, murmur, repine, whine, croak. Confirmed, habitual, inveterate, chronic. Connect, join, link, couple, attach, unite. Continual, continuous, unceasing, incessant, endless, uninterrupted, unremitting, constant, perpetual, perennial. Contract, agreement, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... resist and repine and rage and hunt another man who, on close acquaintance, would prove even less satisfactory," replied her grandmother. "Easy—if you honestly try." She looked down at the girl with the sympathy that goes out to inexperience from ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... then God. For this comunitie (so farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For the yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour and service did repine that they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompence. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, than he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was thought ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... collapse. The British nation will plan, and work and fight for ever, if need be. Our only danger is in the moral field. Though our power of action is undiminished, our power of endurance may ebb. We may begin to cry, in our impatience, "Lord, how long?"; to repine against the fate which condemns us to this protracted agony; to question within ourselves whether the cause which we profess to serve is really worth the sacrifices which it entails. It is just by mastering these rebellious tendencies that we can make our souls our ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... you. I am acting editor. The work is not light," he added gratuitously. "Sometimes the cry goes round New York, 'Can Smith get through it all? Will his strength support his unquenchable spirit?' But I stagger on. I do not repine. What was it that you wished ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Never pausing to repine, he orders Hennepin, the friar, to take two voyageurs and descend Illinois River as far as the Mississippi. Tonty he leaves in charge of the Illinois fort. He {139} himself proceeds overland the width of half a continent, to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the package to find therein a quantity of bound sheets. He selected one of the pamphlets at random and examined it with a sigh. "Drink and Depravity," he read. "Pots of beer cost many a tear. Be warned in time or you'll repine." ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... first place, my fee-farm rents, being of the yearly value of one hundred and twenty pounds, were all lost by his Majesty's coming to his restoration: but I do say truly, the loss thereof did never trouble me, or did I repine thereat. ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... joy, composure, and serenity of mind; well assured that it has pleased God to point me out as a subject through which some greatly useful (though at present unsearchable) intention of the divine attributes may be carried into execution for the future benefit of my country. Then why should I repine at being made a sacrifice for the good, perhaps, of thousands of my fellow-creatures; forbid it, Heaven! Why should I be sorry to leave a world in which I have met with nothing but misfortunes and all their concomitant ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... wrongs; let us now see what were their consolations, their resolves, and their hopes. First, they neither murmur nor repine; but with genuine religion and philosophy they recognize in these dreadful visitations the ways of a benign Providence, and find in them cause for thankfulness. The Council of Castile exhort the people of Madrid 'to cast off their lethargy, and purify their manners, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... is from his swoon revived. Naimes the Duke, and the count Aceline, Gefrei d'Anjou and his brother Tierry, Take up the King, bear him beneath a pine. There on the ground he sees his nephew lie. Most sweetly then begins he to repine: "Rollant, my friend, may God to thee be kind! Never beheld any man such a knight So to engage and so to end a fight. Now my honour is turned into decline!" Charle swoons again, he ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... "Dear Peter, do not repine; your lot is indeed hard, but it has its silver lining. You are the member of a partnership famous among all other bachelor-residences for its display of fireworks and its fine furniture. So valuable is the room in which you live that the insurance alone is the wonder and envy ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... but very poor philosophy. For myself —and some glimpses of sunshine this fair world has afforded me, fleeting and passing enough, in all conscience—and yet I am not so ungrateful as to repine at my happiness, because it was not permanent, as I am thankful for those bright hours of "Love's young dream," which, if nothing more, are at least delightful souvenirs. They form the golden thread in the tangled web of our existence, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always present with him two bulwarks of his purpose ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... that I repine, And feel abased in lonely woe, To lose thy love—or e'en to know That ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... with M. S——i, whose new 8vo edition of Buffon proceeds, I find, with becoming spirit. It is quite a journey to his residence; for he lives in one of the most retired quarters of Paris, However, I had no reason to repine at the distance, as the party was exceedingly cheerful. Naturalists and literati were ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... if we had known at Jerez that Granada was the lodestar, we could have reached Ronda in a run of four hours day before yesterday! But it was useless to repine, and ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... place of school and meeting, he yet deplores aloud, and in doleful terms enough, the want of these, and never ends a letter to a Merleville crony without an earnest adjuration to "come over and help us." But on the whole, it is believed that, in his heart, Deacon Fish will not repine while the grain grows and ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... rejected Romeo did not long repine. Two months after the tragedy at Bath, he was at Brighton, mingling with all the fashionable folk, and giving admirable recitations at routs. He was seen every day on the Parade, attired in an extravagant manner, very different to that he had adopted in Bath. A pale-blue surtout, tasselled ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... all getting along very well. We mess at Delmonico's. Do not repine for your son. Some must suffer for the glorious Stars and Stripes, and dear parents, why shouldn't I? Tell Mrs. Skuller that we do not need the blankets she so kindly sent to us, as we bunk at the St. Nicholas and Metropolitan. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the light of day—it could not have seen the daylight with its little closed-up eyes doomed never to open—and then it was withdrawn into darkness. They never had another child. When a pair are thus permanently childless, the effect is usually shown in one of two ways. They both repine and each secretly grumbles at the other—or if one only repines, that comes to much the same thing in the end—or else they are both drawn together with greater love and tenderness than ever. All the love which the wife would have given to the child is ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... been witness to such a waste of human blood, nor traced the gradual ruin of my country. I should not have seen our towns involved in flames, nor our helpless children the captives of fell barbarians. But it is in vain for human beings to repine at the just decrees of Providence, which have consigned every people to misery and servitude that abandon virtue, and attach themselves to the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... many children parents don't repine, If they are handsome; in their judgment shine; Polite in carriage are, in body strong, Graceful in mien, and elegant in tongue. But if perchance an offspring prove but weak, Him they revile, laugh at, defraud and cheat. Such ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... heartily wished she could gratify this very natural desire of her little boy; but she had the shop to mind, and many a little thing besides to do; it was impossible. But however much she might regret a thing, she was too faithful to repine. So, after a moment's thought, she said, cheerfully, "Go into the fields for a walk, and see how many wild flowers you can bring me home, and I'll get down father's jug for you to put them in when ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... comes but once a year: And why? we well may ask. Repine not. We are probably unequal To ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it draw the limits within which sorrow is sacred and hallowing, and beyond which it is harmful and weakening. Set side by side the grief of these two poor weeping sisters, and the grief of the weeping Christ, and we get a large lesson. They could only repine that something else had not happened differently which would have made all different. 'If Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.' One of the two sits with folded arms in the house, letting her sorrow flow over her pained head. Martha is unable, by reason of her grief, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren |
