"Sickly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirit is stricken with awe. Hope still shows the way; but two others, Despair and Servitude, now take charge of him, and conduct him to Toil, who grinds the poor wretch down with labour, and at last hands him over to Age. He looks sickly now, and all his colour is gone. Last comes Contempt, and laying violent hands on him drags him into the presence of Despair; it is now time for Hope to take wing and vanish. Naked, potbellied, pale and old, he is thrust forth, not ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... though she never spoke to him, and a tall bright-faced fellow, who rather lorded it over the rest, quite won Miss Hetty's old heart by helping her across the street on a slippery day. They longed to mend some of the shabby clothes, to cheer up the dull discouraged ones, advise the sickly, reprove the rude, and, most of all, feed those who persisted in buying lunch at the dirty bake-shop over ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... for a brief space to France, went back into his pleasant captivity in England, leaving his country to be ruled by the Regent the Dauphin. In 1364 he died, and Charles V., "the Wise," became King in name, as he had now been for some years in fact. This cold, prudent, sickly prince, a scholar who laid the foundations of the great library in Paris by placing 900 MSS. in three chambers in the Louvre, had nothing to dazzle the ordinary eye; to the timid spirits of that age he seemed to be ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... wise! Oh, phantoms of the sickly mind! What? not content with seas and skies, With rainy clouds and southern wind, With common cares and faces kind, With pains and joys each morning brought? Ah, old, and worn, and tired we find Life's more amusing than ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... I heard the words that made him understand: The Body of our Lord—take and eat this! I rolled the small sour flakes beneath my tongue With him. I caught, with him, the gleam of tears, Far off, on some strange face of sickly dread. The Blood—and the cold cup was in my hand, Cold as an axe-heft washed with waterish red. I heard his last poor cry to wife and child.— Could any that heard forget it?—My true God, Hold you both in His arms, both in His arms. And then—that last poor wish, a thing to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the rest; and so, returning to Rome with great spoils, gave signal evidence of their superior wisdom, who, not mistrusting the weakness and age of a commander endowed with courage and conduct, had rather chosen him who was sickly and desirous to be excused, than young men who were forward and ambitious ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Women and girls were returning from the post-office, many of them with letters in their hands. Some of these were so impatient to know their contents that they were straining their eyes to read them in the sickly light that fell from a sparse row of electric lamps. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Marquis, like most men who chafe under a wife's superiority, saved his self-love by arguing from Julie's physical feebleness a corresponding lack of mental power, for which he was pleased to pity her; and he would cry out upon fate which had given him a sickly girl for a wife. The executioner posed, in fact, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... know, Scraggsy?" he faltered. "The whole bunch was runts—sickly, measly little fellers. Nevertheless an' agin, you shouldn't ought to have any kick comin'. You had a fine trip an' a heap of adventure an' me an' Bull paid your passage back to San Francisco. Come, Scraggs. Be sensible. What's the use holdin' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... herald, I thought upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen. Yet, forgive me, God, That I do brag thus! This your air of France Hath blown that vice in me; I must repent. Go therefore, tell thy master here I am: My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk; My army but a weak and sickly guard; Yet, God before, tell him we will come on, Though France himself and such another neighbour Stand in our way. There's for thy labour, Montjoy. Go bid thy master well advise himself: If we may ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... Tinsel seraphs with paint on their cheeks, playing rag-time harps out of tune! There's a sickly slaver of sentiment over everything he touches that would make ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 'Killing a calf.' 'What for?' 'To stop the murrain.' They went away as quickly as possible. On speaking to the clergyman he made enquiries. The people did not like to talk of the affair, but it appeared that when there is a disease among the cows or the calves are born sickly, they sacrifice (i.e. kill and burn) one 'for good luck.'"[743] It is not here said that the fire was a need-fire, of which indeed the two horrified ladies had probably never heard; but the analogy of the parallel custom in Mull[744] renders it probable that in Northamptonshire also the fire was ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... whole Scranton camp, as the horrible news was quickly circulated through the various groups. Boys turned to look at one another aghast, and the grins on their faces assumed a sickly ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... death's cheerless bourn; a canker wastes her fading charms; she is "stricken by some demon's curse;" from her eyes the tear-drops stream, and for very shame she turns them away; on her soul "there rests a stain;" she knows that to yield to her "sickly passion" would be "infamous;" yet she cannot suppress her wanton thoughts. Following the topsy-turvy, unchivalrous custom of the Greek poets, Euripides makes a woman—"a thing the world detests"—the victim of this ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Burgundy; but having made this choice from the usual motives of princes, she soon found reason to repent of the unequal alliance. She was a princess of a masculine spirit and uncommon understanding: the duke of Brabant was of a sickly complexion and weak mind: she was in the vigor of her age; he had only reached his fifteenth year: these causes had inspired her with such contempt for her husband, which soon proceeded to antipathy that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... of poor Harry came back to him, as he saw it first, poring over Polexander in the library; and, full of the joy of life himself, notwithstanding his past troubles, strong as a sunrise, and hopeful as a Prometheus, the quivering perplexity of that sickly little face smote him with a pang. "What might I not have done for the boy! He, too, was in the hands of the enchantress, and, instead of freeing him, I became her slave to enchain him further." Yet, even in this, he did Euphra injustice; for he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Toby's visit had hardly proved a success from her point of view. But Birdie was only partially ordinary. Her love and admiration for the opposite sex was so much the chief part of her composition that all other considerations gave way before it. Her heart thrilled with a sickly sentiment at all times. To her men were the gods of the universe, and, as such, must be propitiated, at least in theory. In practice it might be necessary to flout them, to tease them, even to snub them—on rare occasions. But this would only come after intimacy had been established. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... friends. He wore a tall white "stove-pipe" of the most obnoxious kind. In a twinkling it was seized and sent flying toward the roof with its softer predecessor. Its owner gave one glance over his shoulder, and "smiled a sickly smile," while it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... rule, it was left to the choice of the aged and infirm to say whether they would prefer to be buried alive or to be strangled first and buried afterwards; and having expressed a predilection one way or the other they were dealt with accordingly. To strangle parents or other frail and sickly relatives with a rope was considered a more delicate and affectionate way of dispatching them than to knock them on the head with a club. In the old days the missionary Mr. Hunt witnessed several of these tender partings. "On one occasion, he was called upon by a young man, who desired ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... in to see after Linton. He was asleep in a corner, wrapped in a warm, fur-lined cloak, as if it had been winter. A pale, delicate, effeminate boy, who might have been taken for my master's younger brother, so strong was the resemblance: but there was a sickly peevishness in his aspect that Edgar Linton never had. The latter saw me looking; and having shaken hands, advised me to close the door, and leave him undisturbed; for the journey had fatigued him. Cathy would fain have ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... debarred all rest or pleasure, Chained all day to my ledger and my pen; Too sickly even to use my little leisure To bear me from the strife ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... sickly-looking man, with a piece of red flannel tied around his throat, was standing on the steps, making a futile effort against the noise to explain ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... of what feeling most strongly possessed her. Foremost in her thoughts was the realization that she had won the fight she had been reared and trained for, that the climax of her worldly hopes had come; but with this she also experienced a sickly loathing for herself. During Bob's protestations of love she had fought a brief but disastrous battle. That moral perfidy which had been her teaching since childhood had influenced her decision no more perhaps than her terror at the plight in which her mysterious ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... remind one of the fact that this is Eastern Europe: tall, thin Jews in their long caftans and Jewish women with their unnatural wigs; male and female beggars there are in great numbers, and they are so hungry looking and ragged, so deep-eyed and sickly, that one can hardly manage to swallow one's food in their vicinity, if one happened to have chosen a seat on the terrace of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... 'virtus' far more nearly corresponded to [Greek: andreia] than to [Greek: arete] (Coriol. I)] It could not but be morally ill with a people among whom 'morbidezza' was used as an epithet of praise, expressive of a beauty which on the score of its sickly softness demanded to be admired. There was too sure a witness here for the decay of moral strength and health, when these could not merely be dissevered from beauty, but implicitly put in opposition to it. Nor less must it have fared ill with ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... grew afraid of her, and went slinking away. After this I didn't really recover my spirits until I had the satisfaction of hearing myself addressed as "Cabellero." I was hailed with this epithet by a ragged infant, with sickly eyes and a cigarette in his lips, who invited me to cast a copper into the sea, that he might dive for it; and even with these limitations, the sensation seemed worth the cost of my excursion. It appeared kinder, to my gratitude, to make the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... slightest notice of me. Both officers and domestics now shewed me the greatest respect. The emperor lodged in the first floor; his favourite Mameluke, an uncommonly handsome man, was constantly about his person. The second floor was occupied by the prince of Neufchatel, who had a very sickly appearance, and the duke of Bassano, the emperor's secretary. On the ground floor a front room was converted into a sallon au service. Here were marshals Oudinot, Mortier, Ney, Reynier, with a great number of generals, ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... the different organs, muscles, and other parts of the body, children require fresh air, a free use of their lungs, active exercise, and their bodies to be thrown into all manner of attitudes. Let a child mope in a corner, and he will become stupid and sickly. The march of intellect, as it is called, or rather the double quick march of intellect, as it should be called, has stolen a march upon health. Only allow the march of intellect and the march of health to take equal strides, and then we shall have "mens sana in corpore ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... carefully attended to as usual in every particular. We ought to mention that Billy was a great favourite with his mistress; and perhaps he had won her heart by the care and attention he had bestowed at every spare moment on one of her little ones, who was a very sickly, fretful child, but who, somehow or other, was always most quickly pacified by Billy. She soon learned the cause of his thoughtful silence, and kindly offered to remove two or three eggs from under a duck which was then sitting, and give their place to her cow-boy's single ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... together with a second reference to "the horrors" or the "evil one," all occur in a section of "Lavengro" equal to hardly more than a sixth of the whole. And further, when Borrow was writing "Wild Wales," or when he met the sickly young man at the "Castle Inn" of Caernarvon, he thought of himself as always having had "the health of an elephant." I should be inclined to conclude at least that when he was forty great mental suffering was still fresh in his mind, something worse than ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... or Base-minded, Good or Ill-natur'd, Publick-spirited or Selfish; and under what Fortune or Circumstance soever, whether the Contented or Miserable, Happy or Unfortunate, High or Low, Rich or Poor (whether so through Want of Money, or Desire of more) Healthy or Sickly, Married or Single; nay, whether Tall or Short, Fat or Lean; and of what Trade, Occupation, Profession, Station, Country, Faction, Party, Persuasion, Quality, Age or Condition soever, who have ever made Thinking a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this thing, by reason of its suitableness, the will tends, as to something good, because everything tends, of its own accord, to that which is suitable to it. Moreover this corrupt disposition is either a habit acquired by custom, or a sickly condition on the part of the body, as in the case of a man who is naturally inclined to certain sins, by reason of some natural corruption in himself. Secondly, the will, of its own accord, may tend to an evil, through the removal of some obstacle: for instance, if a man be prevented ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... instances of bombs that had been thrown at men of even greater eminence than himself; he recalled how the bombs had torn bodies to pieces, had spattered brains over dirty brick walls, had knocked teeth from their roots. And influenced by these meditations, it seemed to him that his own stout, sickly body, outspread on the bed, was already experiencing the fiery shock of the explosion. He seemed to be able to feel his arms being severed from the shoulders, his teeth knocked out, his brains scattered into particles, his feet growing numb, lying quietly, their toes upward, like those ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... afterwards to the priest how little real or active terror he felt. He was conscious of a certain sickly sensation, and of a sourish taste on his lips, as he licked them from time to time; but scarcely more than this, except perhaps of a sudden shivering spasm that shook him once or twice as the fog-laden ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... of that inward food, Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense. Yet if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... down his poop-deck as if in meditation, paying no regard to what was going on around him until a feeble cry was heard from one of the rowers,—a middle-aged and sickly man. The pirate captain looked carelessly on, while the overseer flogged this man; but the lash failed to arouse him, and the captain ordered the man ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... who desired to nurse her own children, and who did nurse six of them, it happened that the first child was sickly. The doctors, who cynically undressed her and felt of her everywhere, and whom I had to thank and pay for these acts,—these dear doctors decided that she ought not to nurse her child, and she was temporarily deprived of the only remedy for coquetry. A nurse finished the nursing of this first-born,—that ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... people on the decks of the ships. The large one was, we saw at once, an Indiaman outward bound. We knew that by the number of young men and the young ladies on board, and their clear ruddy complexions. Had she been homeward bound, there would be old yellow-faced generals and judges, black nurses, sickly ladies, and ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... only six weeks after that, when Charles was obliged to go to the West Indies on business for his father. It was the sickly season, and he would not let me go with him. He was to be back in England in five or six ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... shopkeeper's family, a quite stupid body, a character straight out of an Ostrovsky comedy; and secondly, a daughter much older than Clara and not like her—a very clever girl, and enthusiastic, only sickly, a remarkable girl—and very advanced in her ideas, my dear boy! That they were living, the widow and daughter, fairly comfortably, in a decent little house, obtained by the sale of the bad portraits and holy pictures; that Clara ... or Katia, if you like, from her childhood ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... delicate in childhood, and the stage of hardy naturalism which interposes itself between tender juvenility and the birth of self-consciousness did not in his case last long enough to establish his frame in the vigour to which it was tending. There was nothing sickly about him; it was only an excess of nervous vitality that would not allow body to keep pace with mind. He was a boy to be, intellectually, held in leash, said the doctors. But that was easier said than done. What system of sedatives could one apply to a youngster whose imagination wrought ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... half an hour, as he sent word he must get up his strength for the interview. Julia and myself alone were allowed to see him. He was propped up in bed with a number of pillows; with the room darkened by Venetian blinds, and a dim green twilight prevailing, which cast a sickly hue over his really pallid face. His abundant white hair fell lankly about his head, instead of being in crisp curls as usual. I was about to feel his pulse for him, but ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... with trembling, and bleached their rosy cheeks. Some, indeed, of the younger sort, affected to laugh and boast; but the generality returned silent and pensive, as from a funeral, hanging their lovely heads, like rows of sickly jonquils, when the sun has forsaken the garden, and faded nature mourns his departed beams. Sisters were often seen to turn pale and sigh, when they looked on their youthful brothers, while tender mothers, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... desirous, as is said, to compare the Ionian expense and luxury with the Cretan frugality and hard diet, so as to judge what effect each had on their several manners and governments; just as physicians compare bodies that are weak and sickly with the healthy and robust. There also, probably, he met with Homer's poems, which were preserved by the posterity of Cleophylus. Observing that many moral sentences and much political knowledge were intermixed with his stories, which had an irresistible charm, he collected them into ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... by the sickly moonlight, As I followed, bending low, That the walking of the stranger Left no ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of doctrine in which he had been bred. The prudent, well-weighed measures of the ripe scholar, studious theologian, and conscientious politician, formed by forty-two years' experience of an old and a new country, could not be looked for in the sickly, self-educated, enthusiastic youth who had been debarred from the due amount of study, and started with little system but that of "proclaiming the Gospel"—even though ignorant of the language of those to whom he preached. And yet that heart-whole piety and patience was blessed ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... would have induced me to have run the risk of another such encounter, yet only a few days after the incident of the head, I was again impelled by a fascination I could not withstand to visit the same quarters. In sickly anticipation of what my eyes would alight on, I stole to the foot of the staircase and peeped cautiously up. To my infinite joy there was nothing there but a bright patch of sunshine, that, in the most unusual fashion, had forced its way through from one of the slits ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the conversation goes on in the bosom of this fantastic barn and the great moving shadows that cross it; night is heaped up in its corners, and pointed by a few scattered and sickly candles. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... our little sail flapped lazily to and fro against the slender mast as we drifted slowly down the river. The evening being sultry and oppressive, dense grey mists were already arising from the Simunjan stream, enshrouding the pretty village in their sickly vapours, and the cries of the Malay "Hajis," praying at the setting of the sun for deliverance from the fatal scourge which was rapidly decimating their population, sounded in melancholy cadence over the ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... her lips, then smiled uncertainly. "You've got me scared," she said, stepped back and sat down, her hands in her muff. "What is it?" she asked; and in that moment of waiting she was sickly reminded of other moments in her life—of the nearing sound of Pierre's webs on a crystal winter night, of the sound of Prosper's footsteps going away from her up the mountain trail on ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... die out. A babble of conjecture and exclamation broke out, but Jim Silent, still sickly white around the mouth, swung up into ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... before, her aunt, Belle Barnard, had said, in her sickly, complaining voice, "Well, Mildred, I don't like to tell you, but I have been talking the matter over with the girls, and they think that we might as well be plain-spoken with you. Everybody thought that your Uncle Joe was a rich man, and so did we till we ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sickly stuff," Ingolf said. "It takes too much time and work. It is better to save the land for hay. Perhaps we can sometime go back to Norway ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... is, this only Brann we have; genius audacious, defiant, and sublime; whose stature, though his feet be on the flat of the Brazos bottom, towers effulgent over those effigies placed on pedestals by orthodox popularity, and sickly lighted ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... through How you quail'd with fear and dread, Heaps of dying and of dead At the leeches' door to view. To the tavern O how few To regale on wine repair; All a sickly aspect wear. Say what heart such sights could brook - Wail and woe where'er you look - Wail and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry "eternal truths" all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... Mr. Wood had shown me the day before, for me to sign; the jurat was executed and the ink was not yet dry on it. To give myself more time to examine, I hesitated in signing my name, I was so sickly (?) and weak, I had Mr. Ferry help guide my hand. I had by this time located Mr. "Arthur" in ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... were mingled inexpressible pangs. To all around me women were merely objects of contempt, and vainly did I try to separate this idea from that of the pleasure which was luring me. My mind was bewildered, and my irritated nerves imparted a violent and sickly strain to all my temptations. In other matters, I had as vile a disposition as my companions; if my heart was better than theirs, my manners were no less arrogant, and my jokes in no better taste. And here it may be well to give you an illustration of my youthful malice, especially as ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... to our having come on this particular train, in order for my companion to "see Russia." I am delighted to record the fact that not only the outside but the inside windows were frosted so thickly that they had to light the sickly tallow candle in a tin box over the door of the compartment, so she never got a peep at Russia or anything else ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... thought sence: howsever, 't isn't my place to judge him. Well, I was brought up on the farm, to hard work, like the other boys. Rachel Emmons,—she's the same woman that haunts me, you understand,—she was the girl o' one of our neighbors, an' poor enough he was. His wife was always sickly-like,—an' you know it takes a woman as well as a man to git rich farmin'. So they were always scrimped, but that didn't hinder Rachel from bein' one o' the likeliest gals round. We went to the same school in the winter, he an' me, ('t ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... indiscriminately. The children screamed and swore, quarrelled and played and fought, while a shrill-voiced mother occasionally took a hand in the diversion of the moment, usually to scold or cull some luckless offender. The sunshine radiated that sickly heat which precedes rain. ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... followed Bland down the car steps at Fifth Street, walked with him past a delicatessen store whence apartment dwellers were trickling, their hands full of small paper bags and packages. They looked pale and sickly and harassed to Johnny, to whom desert-browned faces were a standard by which he measured ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... and the cane, the banks of clay stood forth in hideous yellow nakedness, save for a lonely stunted growth, or a bare trunk that still stood tottering on the edge of a banks its pitiful withered roots reaching out below. The May weather was already sickly hot. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stomach to digest hath been much caused and confirmed by untimely going to bed, and then musing nescio quid when he should sleep, and then in consequent by late rising and long lying in bed, whereby his men are made slothful and himself continueth sickly. But my sons haste not to hearken to their mother's good counsel in time to prevent." It seems clear that Francis Bacon had shown his mother that not only in the care of his health, but in his judgment on religious matters, he meant to go his own way. Mr. Spedding thinks that she ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... fittings groaning and squeaking and complaining in a thousand keys. The hunters were still arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air was filled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces, flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth with the ship. Through the dim smoke-haze the bunks looked like the sleeping dens of animals in a menagerie. Oilskins and sea-boots were hanging from the walls, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... of consequences—and still consents to abandon the contest. I asked him, if he was not conscious that it was only like buying off the Picts and Scots, and that fresh demands would speedily follow with redoubled confidence; and he owned he was. It may prolong for a brief period the sickly existence of the Government, and if a dissolution comes speedily, Whigs and Radicals may act in concert at the elections; but if they attempt to go on with the present Parliament fresh demands will rapidly ensue, and then there ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... dab a piece of white clay on a wheel, and, with his foot turning the wheel, with his right hand he formed a handsome basin or cup in a minute or two. The china basins, cups, saucers, pots, jugs—everything was made here, painted here, by poor sickly looking boys and girls, for it was a very unwholesome trade—baked here; and they had a shop in London, which, I suppose, took off the bulk of their manufactured articles. I remember the great water-wheel which ground the clay—a fearful monster, sublime, I must say, for it 'hid its limits ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... weak imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... where the sickly taper shed Its light through vapors, damp, confined, Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, A new Electra by the bed Of suffering human-kind! Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, To that pure hope ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... be sickly in Hong-Kong in the summer season, and without entering into explanations of the cause, I merely state the fact, that during the summer of 1850, more than one-third of Her Majesty's fifty-ninth regiment were cut off by diseases ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... with a sickly, suffocating smell in her nostrils; and her eyes opened wide upon a face bent above her own. She had slept with a small lamp burning beside her, and by its dim light it seemed to her that ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... aged linger behind, a strong army of males bravely returns to rescue them at the danger of losing their own lives. Many of their brave deeds, if recorded in history, would compare favourably with those of mankind! Too often has a poor, sickly ape, which by his very feebleness allowed himself to be captured and placed in a zoo, been compared to human beings. Even in spirit and movements he has been considered as a human caricature and heaped with ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... be not even more than twice the value of the obligation, the poor ignoramus is delighted, and thanks and blesses you most fervently. The climate of Cattaro is not considered healthy. The inhabitants die of consumption in the winter, and fever in the summer, and they generally have a sickly appearance. There are smart silversmith shops, and many ornaments are wrought with much neatness. There are several also devoted to the sale of arms, as the Montenegrians here buy and repair the principal weapons they use. Pistols, guns, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... killed Corkran might have been butchery; no jury could have brought in a verdict of murder or even manslaughter, had I stabbed him with the knife he used to pound upon the table. I smiled the smile of a skull in a doctor's waiting-room, and in a sickly voice bleated my pleasure in meeting these new acquaintances. I hoped we might be—er —friends as well as shipmates. Then like a mass of jelly out of its mould I plopped onto my chair. The colonel had sneaked off to his own table and I was left to recover myself as best I might among ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... that I am fortunate? Who will doubt that I shall remain happy? Fortune would have a hard time if she undertook to shatter my happiness. Take this or that one from my treasured children; but when would the number of them dwindle to the sickly two of Latona? Away with your sacrifices! Take the laurel out of your hair. Go back to your homes and let me never see such ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... an impalpable shade quite impossible of realization—a bloodless thing, as you said, and quite unnatural —a sickly figment of the imagination. I ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... was the same field of sickly weeds and perishing vines, with here and there a shrub, and yonder a stunted olive tree, covered trunk and branches with edible snails. If it brought anything in the market, the crop, singular only to the Western mind, was plenteous enough to be profitable to its farmers. There too ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... find it true, that, before any vice can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather on sickly trees, not thriving ones; and the odious parasites which fasten on the human frame choose that which is already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian humorist, declared that he had such a healthy skin it was impossible for any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the sickly grin on Ad's face when we went out to milk the cows next morning that my first effort at poetry had nauseated him; he could not hold his head up all day, to look me in the face, without ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... beasts. He turned both canteens upside down and licked the bungs. A cow had had his last drink. Well, that would keep her alive several hours more. Hardly worth while; but spilled milk decidedly. Milk! That was an idea. He caught animal after animal, and got a few sickly drops. There was no gain in camping at this spot, no water for coffee; so Genesmere moved several hundred yards away to be rid of the ravens and their all-day-long meal and the smell. He lay thinking what to do. Go back? At the rate he could push the animals now that last hole might ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... him?" He does not love either discussion or noise, and when they quarrel all around him his lips form into a sickly grimace, and he endeavors quietly and reasonably to reconcile each with the other, and if he does not succeed in this he leaves the company. Knowing this, the Captain, if he is not very drunk, controls himself, not wishing ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... eyes was the kitchen yard, a gray and gritty expanse, with never a tree or bush to shade it except the lilac hedge bounding it on the garden side, and one sickly peach tree growing at the corner of "the house." Three hens and one rooster were scratching about the flat ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... awakened by an officer who came hurrying to tell him that the Indians had gone. Surely enough the great camp had vanished in the night. The captives had fled. Already they were safe in their marshy fastnesses. Families were reunited; all had had rest and food and clothes. The coming sickly season would make it impossible to pursue them till their growing crops were harvested. The Seminole war with all its ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... Prince's Island, and during the whole time of our run from thence to the Cape of Good Hope, the crew of the Resolution was in a much more sickly state than that of the Discovery; for though many of us continued for some time complaining of the effects of the noxious climate we had left, yet happily we all recovered from them. Of the two who had been ill of fevers, one, after being seized with violent convulsions, on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... forenoon a child, which had been some time sickly, died in the next tent; and the mother and relations immediately began the death howl. They were joined by a number of female visitors, who came on purpose to assist at this melancholy concert. I had no opportunity ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... with her? He questioned her, and she replied with the prudence that she used in all her conversation with him. He examined her medically, but found nothing to indicate a sickly condition which would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to make us doubt the wisdom of going lower. There is a hot, moist, sickly vapor, floating about as, which becomes more oppressive every moment; we are already perspiring at every pore, as we were told we should, and our hands, faces, jackets, and trousers, are all more or less covered with a mixture of mud, tallow, and iron-drippings, which we can feel ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... nay, you must let me be," and the words came brokenly and more passionately than any ever having passed her lips, "you, and you only, have ever had the power to subdue me." Here her face changed to a sickly pallor as of faintness, a tremor ran through her whole frame, and saying in a breathless whisper, "Great heavens! your life is in danger, follow my cue; will you take care of ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow on the trunk lower ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of that, my readers; think of the utter, utter destitution of a poor little sickly, helpless infant whose only relative would have been glad to see him dead! Our Ishmael had neither father, mother, name, nor place in the world. He had no legal right to be in it at all; no legal right to the air he breathed, or to the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... brought back to him. Three bees and a fly winging their way past, with the rise and fall of their varied hums, were sufficient to renew vividly for me the blackness of night over the sticky mud of Souville, and to cloud for a moment the scent of clover and dying grass, with that terrible sickly sweet odor of human flesh in an old shell-hole. In such unexpected ways do we link peace and war—suspending the greatest weights of memory, imagination, and visualization on the slenderest cobwebs of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... murmurings and her tears sent a shudder all along the long ridges of sickly corn blades, and they asked one of another, "Why does he murmur? and, Why does she weep? Are we not doing all we can? Do we slumber or sleep, and let opportunities pass by unused? Are we not watching and waiting against the times of refreshing? Shall we not be found ready at last? Why does he ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... murmur. "I know thee always by thine own hollow voice, lent to youth and age alike. How well I know thee and thy terrors, which are no longer such to me![253] I feel the dust that thy wings scatter in the air as thou comest; I breathe the sickly odour of it; I see its pale ashes fly, invisible as they may be to other men's sight. O! thou Inevitable One, thou art here, verily thou comest to save this man from his misery. Take him in thine arms like a child; carry him off; save him; I give him ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... oppressed, and ruined; he takes to himself double what would maintain them. His is unlike the generous rapacity of the noble eagle, who preys upon a living, struggling, reluctant, equal victim; his is like that of the ravenous vulture, who falls upon the decayed, the sickly, the dying, and the dead, and only anticipates Nature in the destruction of its object. His cruelty is beyond his corruption: but there is something in his hypocrisy which is more terrible than his cruelty; for, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the evening—were assembled in the corner devoted to old books and prints. The congregation, as he styled the meeting, was seated on such chairs, stools, and boxes as the place could afford. The darkness was made visible by a few sickly gas-jets and some half dozen candles in appropriate black glass candlesticks that looked suspiciously like bottles. Field was as busy as a shuttle in a sewing-machine. He announced that Elder Melville E. Stone would "preside over the meetin' and line out the hymns," which Mr. Stone, though no singer, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... audience] By the kind bounty which you now bestow You will assuage the pangs of human woe, To infant suffering and to aged grief You will afford prompt solace and relief, The famished penitent who stole for bread Snatched from his wants will once more raise his head The sickly wretch upon his bed of straw Will pine no longer, but will quickly draw From your resources, the comfort he requires To sooth his pains, and quench a fever's fires; And houseless strangers will no longer meet Their fete in storms, and ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... rarest exceptions, hardly ever lay fertile eggs. Many exotic plants have pollen utterly worthless, in the same exact condition as in the most sterile hybrids. When, on the one hand, we see domesticated animals and plants, though often weak and sickly, yet breeding quite freely under confinement; and when, on the other hand, we see individuals, though taken young from a state of nature, perfectly tamed, long-lived, and healthy (of which I could give numerous instances), yet having their reproductive ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... field will not yield over 25 bushels per acre. On the clay-spots, it looks now (June 13) as though there would be over 50 bushels per acre. It is all headed out handsomely on the clay-spots, and has a strong, dark, luxuriant appearance, while on the sand, the crop is later and has a yellow, sickly look." ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... curve of his nose, and in the lines around his mouth. His command of expression is extraordinary; his eyes, especially, alternately flash fire and grow dim with melancholy or tenderness. His figure is short, thin, and frail; his general appearance sickly, and not without cause, for poor Bouffe is consumptive, and, to judge from his looks, not long for this world. The only actor upon the French or English stage with whom we can compare him is the veteran Farren. But the comparison is to the advantage of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... by the bed, close to the window. And the flower had been planted by a fortunate hand; and it grew, threw out new shoots, and bore flowers every year. It became as a splendid flower-garden to the sickly boy—his little treasure here on earth. He watered it, and tended it, and took care that it had the benefit of every ray of sunlight, down to the last that struggled in through the narrow window; and the flower itself was woven into his dreams, for it grew for him and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... miles per hour. It is full of numerous, constantly shifting sand banks, and sunken trees, which, with the current, render the navigation (p. 092) tedious, difficult, and even dangerous. At its mouth the coast is very sickly, as indeed the country through its course also is; but when the land is cleared, it will doubtless become more healthy. When the current is very rapid, it requires four or five days to reach Cruces. The height of the land which intervenes between Cruces and Panama, has been accurately ascertained ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... table, and he wondered what Haddo's experiments had really been. The air was heavy with an extraordinary odour: it was not musty, like that of the closed rooms through which they had passed, but singularly pungent, disagreeable and sickly. He asked himself what it could spring from. Then his eyes fell upon a huge receptacle that stood on the table nearest to the furnace. It was covered with a white cloth. He took it off. The vessel was about four feet high, round, and shaped ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... adventure. The author of "The Oregon Trail" and the author of "African Game Trails" had a good deal in common, especially great force of will—you see it in Parkman's jaw. He was a physical wreck and did his work under almost impossible conditions; while Roosevelt had built up an originally sickly constitution into a physique ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... this yere solecism, as you-all well imagines, arouses interest, earnest an' widespread like I deescribes. I counts up when the smoke lifts an' finds that seven has sought eternal peace. Commonly two is the number; three bein' quite a shipment. Shore, it's speshul sickly when as many as ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... who might feel that she had wronged or aggrieved them. The duty of the directress of the novices is to exercise them in obedience, sweetness, and modesty; to clear from their minds all those follies, whims, sickly tendernesses, by which their characters might be enfeebled; to instruct them in the practice of virtue, the best methods of prayer and meditation; and to give them a wise and patient sympathy and guidance in ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and her notebook crushed up to her, Lilly's voice rang out like the crack of a whip, springing them apart. There were a whiteness and a sense of emptiness upon her and she wanted to crumple up rather sickly and cry, as if the blows ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... wooden stair to Sholto's new den, carrying a stable lantern in my hand, for it was getting late, and the carefully darkened room would be as black as ink. The other two followed close on my heels. I opened the door and called to the dog. A faint, sickly-sweet odour met me as I ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... pillars. And, as he roved about the quarry, his busy fingers touched packages and bales; he knew which parcels contained tobacco; he handled bales which he felt sure were silk, and avoided the piled-up kegs of brandy, whose sickly odour would always remind him ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... man's impression of his prospective pupil, who had come into the room as if to see for himself the moment Pemberton was admitted, was not quite the soft solicitation the visitor had taken for granted. Morgan Moreen was somehow sickly without being "delicate," and that he looked intelligent—it is true Pemberton wouldn't have enjoyed his being stupid—only added to the suggestion that, as with his big mouth and big ears he really couldn't be called pretty, he might too ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... obtaining the position of wireless man on board a fine ship, after he had looked for such a job for months in vain. But because Jack would not become the well-paid companion of Mr. Jukes' son Tom, a rather sickly youth, the millionaire became angry with the young wireless man. However, Jack was able, subsequently, to rescue Mr. Jukes from a drifting boat after the magnate's yacht had burned in mid-ocean and, following that, to reunite ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... hovel in the alley back of the flat, and the flat had been obliged to get another maid of all work. Time passed, a month, six months, a whole year went by. At length Maria gave birth to a child, a wretched, sickly child, with not even strength enough nor wits enough to cry. At the time of its birth Maria was out of her mind, and continued in a state of dementia for nearly ten days. She recovered just in time to make the arrangements for the baby's burial. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... of prayer Whose hearing ear is everywhere; He brings not back the childish days That ringed the earth with stones of praise, Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid The plinths of Philae's colonnade. Still less he owns the selfish good And sickly growth of solitude,— The worthless grace that, out of sight, Flowers in the desert anchorite; Dissevered from the suffering whole, Love hath no power to save a soul. Not out of Self, the origin And native air and soil of sin, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... which required a ticklish operation. One morning, a week after I had come off the table, I lay on my hospital bed, weak and weary. The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow. My doctor stood at my bedside on the verge of departure. He glared disapprovingly at ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... du Barri.(1091) Being too early for mass, we saw the Dauphin and his brothers at dinner. The eldest is the picture of the Duke of Grafton, except that he is more fair, and will be taller. He has a sickly air, and no grace. The Count de Provence has a very pleasing countenance, with an air of more sense than the Count d'Artois, the genius of the family. They already tell as many bon-mots of the latter as of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever forsook these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast! A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet. His reputation in Europe proved his originality. The fact is, American poets have been only English "with a difference." Tennyson might ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... in the eastern part of the city. Ramses at first looked at them with interest, but very soon he was disgusted with the sight of laborers who were timid, lean, sickly in complexion, and who had scars left by sticks on their shoulders. Thenceforth he stopped only briefly at factories. He preferred to look at the environs of the city of Anu. Far to the east he could ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... the canal fence, exhibiting more of his cool contempt for authority by helping himself over the sharp spikes with the aid of a "No Trespassing" sign. The sickly odor of raw cotton came floating to his nostrils from the open windows. He strolled to the head of a transverse canal which sucked water from the main stream. A sprawling tree shaded a foot-worn plank where an old man, with bent shoulders and a withered face, trudged to and fro, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... themselves as best they could, Walt, Ralph and Bob Harding were, nevertheless, driven back against the bushes. So far as Walt and Ralph were concerned, it was a real fight, but with Bob Harding it was different. His face was a sickly yellow, and in his eyes was a light that Jack had seen before—the expression ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... sickly smile, while the corpse swayed about with ghastly jerks over her left shoulder. She held it in position with her two left arms. "It's a pity we could not have met as friends, Maskull. I could have shown you a side of Tormance ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay |
