"Spiritless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exploding thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties, —sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... become the wise, sensible, self-helpful, cultured mother, with proper opportunity to exercise maternal function for the highest good of the future child, and without being herself dragged into a spiritless machine, we must have her fortified, not only by a "higher education," but a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... against Richmond, Pope's defeat at the second Bull Run, McClellan's neglect to follow up the drawn battle of Antietam with energetic operations, the gradual change of early Western victories to a cessation of all effort to open the Mississippi, and the scattering of the Western forces to the spiritless routine of repairing and guarding long railroad lines, all operated together practically to stop volunteering and enlistment by ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... in keeping the incident for the benefit of Attila. That Gunnar should first detect the imposture, and should then recognise the heart of his brother, is a fine piece of heroic imagination of a primitive kind. It would have been wholly inept and spiritless to transfer this from Gunnar to Attila. The poet of Atlaml shows that he understands what he is about. The more his work is scrutinised, the more evident becomes the sobriety of his judgment. His dexterity in the disposing of his incidents is proved in every particular. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... apprehensions. Her form, always slender, was become more so. The change was striking in a single week. Her face, usually pale and delicate, was now haggard. Her walk was feeble, and without elasticity. Her whole appearance was wo-begone and utterly spiritless. Days and weeks passed, and my heart was filled with hourly-increasing apprehensions. I returned to the familiar church, but here I suffered a new alarm. That sabbath the family pew was unoccupied. While I trembled ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... church. The evening service had only just begun, there were very few people; I looked round me, and suddenly, near a window, caught sight of a familiar profile. For the first instant, I did not recognise it: that pale face, that spiritless glance, those sunken cheeks—could it be the same Liza I had seen a fortnight before? Wrapped in a cloak, without a hat on, with the cold light from the broad white window falling on her from one side, she was gazing fixedly at the holy image, and seemed striving to pray, striving to awake ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... anomaly of a candidate canvassing in his own behalf, the campaign was devoid of exciting incidents. The personal canvass of Douglas was indeed almost the only thing that kept the campaign from being dull and spiritless.[860] Republican politicians were somewhat at a loss to understand why he should manoeuvre in a section devoted beyond question to Lincoln. Indeed, a man far less keen than Douglas would have taken note of the popular current in New England. Why, then, this expenditure of time and ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... second or even third order. Nor is the music of M. Rachmaninoff ever quite completely new-minted. Has it a melodic line quite properly its own? One doubts it. Many of the melodies of M. Rachmaninoff have a Mendelssohnian cast, for all their Russian sheen. Others are of the sort of sweet, spiritless silken tune generally characteristic of the Russian salon school. Nor can one discover in this music a distinctly original sense of either rhythm of harmony or tone-color. The E-minor Symphony, for all its competence and smoothness, is full of the color and quality and atmosphere ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... on children by drunken parents are less frequent. When the Kindergarten was first opened, many of the children were quite listless, they did not know how to play, did not care to play. Now they play with pleasure and with vigour, and one can hardly believe they are the listless, spiritless children of ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... I beheld the man who "drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night." That messenger, I am sure, could not have presented a visage more pale, more spiritless than my Helvetian. Recollecting that he had served in the Swiss guards, I was the less at a loss to account for his extreme agitation. "In what part of the chateau were you, Jean," said I, "when these balls were ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... something pathetic in Mr. Mayhew's weary and disheartened manner. It was like that of a soldier who has suffered defeat, but who goes on with his routine in a mechanical, spiritless manner, because there is nothing else to do. He seemed to have no hope, nor even a thought of retrieving the past and of reasserting his own manhood. Accustomed as the young artist had ever been to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... continual wars and plunder. Nor could you so easily persuade them to cultivate the ground, or to await the return of the seasons and produce of the year, as to provoke the foe and to risk wounds and death: since stupid and spiritless they account it, to acquire by their sweat what they can gain ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... part she went through it at rehearsal in such a spiritless way that Laura could not have failed to remark it if she were not occupied with so many ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... peasant is poorer and yet more reckless than the Englishman; but he is not so sullen or so spiritless. His body is not so muscular or so strongly-set as that of the Anglo-Saxon husbandman, on whose frame the hard and unintermitted toil of thirty generations has stamped its unmistakable impress, and, correspondently, he is a less ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... what's the use of being wretched?" The topic seemed fruitless. Mrs. Edwards looked over to the slight, careless figure. He was sitting dejectedly on a large fauteuil, smoking. He seemed fagged and spiritless. She almost pitied him and gave in, but suddenly she rose and ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... from his long day of service in the Senate Chamber, sought the private apartments of the Doge, where Marina with her maidens was waiting for him, he found her lying back, wan and spiritless, in one of the great gold and crimson arm-chairs of the state salon; her eyes were closed, her lips were moving in prayer, but her rosary had dropped from her weak clasp. Some of her maidens, as thus doing their lady truest service, were still ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... smeary shade of blue in the eyes. He was not exactly a showy figure; his shoulders were high, his stature but middling—one leg slightly more bandy than the other. He shook hands, looking vaguely around. A spiritless tenacity was his main characteristic, I judged. I behaved with a politeness which seemed to disconcert him. Perhaps he was shy. He mumbled to me as if he were ashamed of what he was saying; gave his name (it was something like Archbold—but at this distance ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... farmhouse in the country, even though they did leave their husbands sweltering behind, but there were several points to be taken into consideration in this case. In the first place, Mr. and Mrs. Vincent had not yet learned how to maintain a separate existence. Life apart from each other was a tame, spiritless thing, simply to be endured, not enjoyed; then, too, Uncle Joshua's home was not a Paradise, although he and Aunt Patty were kind and pleasant. Faith had vivid memories of a few weeks spent there soon after her marriage. They lived on their farm, two simple-minded ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... fatalistic conception of life that caste is rooted; but for this belief that all things are predestined, no people would ever have been so spiritless as to submit to the tyranny of the caste system. Perhaps it should also be added that the belief in the transmigration of the soul has also had a not inconsiderable influence. Though you have fared ill in this life, a million rebirths may be yours ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... monsieur." This voice was, however, broken by fatigue, trembling with emotion. An instant after Fouquet called Gourville, who crossed the gallery amid the universal expectation. At length, he himself reappeared among his guests; but it was no longer the same pale, spiritless countenance they had beheld when he left them; from pale he had become livid; and from spiritless, annihilated. A living specter, he advanced with his arms stretched out, his mouth parched, like a shade ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... body is apt to get gross from exercise; but the intellect becomes nimbler by exercising itself. For what Caecilius means by "old dotards of the comic stage" are the credulous, the forgetful, and the slipshod. These are faults that do not attach to old age as such, but to a sluggish, spiritless, and sleepy old age. Young men are more frequently wanton and dissolute than old men; but yet, as it is not all young men that are so, but the bad set among them, even so senile folly—usually called imbecility—applies to old men of unsound character, not to all. Appius governed four sturdy ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's Curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him, half ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and succeed—charm him to her side—force him to pay her attentions which no other received, would, indeed, prove to her fashionable companions that she was not so entirely governed by her mother, so very simple and spiritless as they supposed. Her power should do that which all had attempted in vain. Her cheek glowed, her heart burned with the bright hope of expected triumph, and when she at length sunk to sleep, it was to dream of St. Eval at ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... Potomac, and after trifling away over one month's time, at last, on the 15th of July, got within nine miles of Winchester and Johnston's Army. Barring a spiritless reconnaissance, Patterson—who was a fervent Breckinridge-Democrat in politics, and whose Military judgment, as we shall see, was greatly influenced, if not entirely controlled, by his Chief of staff, Fitz John Porter—never got ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... silent; the father drooping, spiritless, as if struck by a galvanic shock; the daughter looking sorrowful, as though she had ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... they looked pasty-faced, spiritless beings. The prints that the girls were dressed in were rather washed out; Peter had outgrown his suit. They ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... was spiritless and she moved with an effort. She felt suddenly very tired, and she wanted to lie down somewhere alone in ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... incident, the fact that the wife of a subprefect had danced at the Moulin Rouge, forced the minister to face a vote of censure, and he was within a few votes of being defeated. According to general opinion, Paul Visire had never been so weak, so vacillating, or so spiritless, as ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... there was of it; motions most perfect when most automatic. Even the care forced upon them by the sea outside grew in time to be a thing instinctive rather than of thought. So, as the result of long service, the poor wretches became imbruted—patient, spiritless, obedient—creatures of vast muscle and exhausted intellects, who lived upon recollections generally few but dear, and at last lowered into the semi-conscious alchemic state wherein misery turns to habit, and the soul takes ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... was weary of the spiritless West, and who was as sick of Europe as I then was, this fragment of the East which moved cheerfully and changingly before my eyes was a refreshing solace; my heart enjoyed at least a few drops of that draught which I had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a dull, spiritless resignation settled down upon the remainder. The most mutinous were quelled, and accepted their unspeakable lot with the tragic fortitude ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... prepared for was the thing that befell. We had expected 'him' to be offensive, and he wasn't. He was, quite simply, insignificant. He was a South American, a Brazilian, a member of the School of Mines: a poor, undersized, pale, spiritless, apologetic creature, with rather a Teutonic-looking name, Ernest Mayer. His father, or uncle, was Minister of Agriculture, or Commerce, or something, in his native land; and he himself was attached in some nominal capacity to the Brazilian Legation, in the Rue de Teheran, whence, on state occasions, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... carried him away. Oppressed and thoughtful, Banneker walked slowly across the blazing, cactus-set open toward his shack. There was still the simple housekeeping work to be done, for he had left early that morning. He felt suddenly spiritless, flaccid, too inert even for the little tasks before him. The physician's pronouncement had taken the strength from him. Of course he had known that it couldn't be very long—but ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... patriot, at least he called himself a patriot, though he knew Russia little, had not retained a single Russian habit, and expressed himself in Russian rather queerly; in ordinary conversation, his language was spiritless and inanimate ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... The spiritless one shook her head. But no. The only other customers of the house thus far had been the postman and two soldiers. The party might have passed. She and her parents were too busy to take note of what went on outside. A faint chill of desolation touched ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Secretary under the spiritless premiership of the Duke of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a succession of moves which gave a new aspect to ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... bronze bangles; and their long tresses and their light bulging garments flutter around them, whilst with wild gesticulations they dance the most audacious of dances, compared with whose voluptuous movements the passion of the fiercest Spanish bailarina is almost tame and spiritless. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... surprised to find a difficulty made of his seeing the lady: but, insisting on it, he found her to be wholly spiritless, and in terror; afraid to speak, afraid to look, before her cousin Laurana; yet seeming to want to complain to him. He took notice of this to Laurana—O Father, said she, we are in the right way, I assure you: when we had her first, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... funds for this munificence must be found in war and rapine; nor are they so easily persuaded to cultivate the earth, and await the produce of the seasons, as to challenge the foe, and expose themselves to wounds; nay, they even think it base and spiritless to earn by sweat what they ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... in coffee," said the young lady in a spiritless tone; and then she leaned her arm and head against the kitchen mantelpiece, and hung listlessly ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... it against the whitewashed stone wall, using the palm of his hand. Flint joined him presently; Gary went over to the telephone, set the receiver to his ear and spoke to some officer in the distant valley on the French side, continuing a spiritless conversation while watching the handball play. After a while he rose, shambled out and down among the rocks to the spring where snow lay, trodden and filthy, and the big, black salamanders crawled half stupefied in ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... endeavouring to make a gentleman of AEneas, and succeeding too for a while in raising the more than equivocal character of his hero, by placing him in the picture-gallery of the Queen of Carthage, and giving him leisure to contemplate and to criticise, and poetically to describe to his silent and spiritless lounger-friend many noble and many touching works. In this passage we also obtain the great Latin poet's opinion of the ameliorating effect of "collections." The hero of the AEneid knew immediately he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... be danced in a deliberate manner, consonant with the dignity of the English character. It was, therefore, taken at half its original temps; it ceased to be the giddy, intoxicating whirl in which the Germans delight, and subsided into the comparatively insipid and spiritless affair known thirty years ago as the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... encircled by the coronet of Cooper's Hill, reposing beneath the sun, and shadowed by the passing cloud, is an object of reverence and beauty, immortalized by the glorious liberty which the bold barons of England forced from a spiritless tyrant. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... those gray, heavy days of the early winter—one of the vacant, spiritless days of portent that wait hushed and numb before a coming storm. Not a crow, nor a jay, nor a chickadee had heart enough to cheep. But little Hyla, the tree-frog, was nothing daunted. Since the last week in February, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... But I was too spiritless, then, to dare a refusal. I bowed my head meekly enough while Chepa—the smiling, good-natured negress—gathered up the rustling folds of the green silk petticoat and slipped it over my shoulders. I made no demur while she looped and twisted ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... each rising thought Are swept by a hand unseen; And I glide, and glide, With my music bride, Where few spiritless souls have been; And I soar afar on wings of sound, With my ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... observer in literary matters, tells us that correction is by no means practicable by some authors, as in the case of Ovid. In exile, his compositions were nothing more than spiritless repetitions of what he had formerly written. He confesses both negligence and idleness in the corrections of his works. The vivacity which animated his first productions failing him when he revised his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... in the high circles which her beauty and agreeable qualities so well fitted her to adorn. Ere long, however, it was surmised that Victorine found herself not quite so happy in her union with the object of her first affection as she had anticipated she should be; she was pale, spiritless, and absent; sometimes started when addressed, as if only accustomed to the accents of authority unmingled with kindness; her cheeks were hollow, her eyes sunken and ray-less, and her smile was the very mockery of mirth; evidently she was not happy, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... keep my house. I lead the life you see—a spiritless, womanish life, most men would account it—holding converse with Philosophy, with Plato, with Truth. From my high seat in this vast theatre, I look down on the scene beneath me; a scene calculated to afford much entertainment; calculated also to try a man's resolution to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... doubt, to get rid of what is tame and spiritless in art; and it must be owned that nearly everything that was done in architecture and decoration during the Georgian era was detestable. But it is one thing to reform, and another to revolutionise. Let us by all means go to nature for instruction; but nature under the exercise of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... he goes laggingly into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats himself upon a sofa with an air of melancholy ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to me!" exclaimed Matty. "There's nothing that I adore like Parade; often and often I've wished to have it. I'm quite astonished that Nelly should prefer that dull, spiritless ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... music, desultory, however, and spiritless, like everything else about the place that night, greeted us as Mrs. Ashley opened the door leading directly into the large ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... Graham spent many hours in the glorious entertainment of flying. On the third day he soared across middle France, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercises gave him restful sleep, and each day saw a great stride in his health from the spiritless anaemia of his first awakening. And whenever he was not in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his amusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention was brought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nigh glutted. One might fill a dozen ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... east and Ugogo the first plateau west—a distance of one hundred miles. Here water is obtainable throughout the year, and where slave hunts do not disturb the industry of the people, cultivation thrives, but these troubles constantly occur, and the meagre looking wretches, spiritless and shy, retreat to the hill tops at ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... long while; the child was afraid to speak. Both looked at the lights on the Christmas tree. "Let us sing something," said Philippina. She began with a hoarse, bass voice, "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht," and Agnes joined in with her high, spiritless notes. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... care for him, ye spiritless coofs, ye!" she replied; "gae tell him that Madge Gordon defies him and a' his men, as she despises you, and wad shake the dirt frae her shoon at baith the ane and the other o' ye. Shame fa' ye, ye degenerate, mongrel race! for, if ye had ae drap o' the bluid o' the men in yer veins wha bled ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... cold water had been dashed over him. Instead of crushing him entirely, and driving him to the last corner shrinking, beaten and spiritless, and no longer capable of resistance, it seemed to give him a new grip on himself, to set his courage and defiance again on the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... went on, but it was a spiritless affair. Every ear was turned to hear the muffled roar of the voices outside, which every moment increased in power as the mighty multitude ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... is want of love between man and wife. Love is that vivid principle that ought to inspire each organ in the act of generation, or else it will be spiritless and dull; for if their hearts be not united in love, how should their seed unite to cause Conception? And this is sufficiently evinced, in that there never follows conception on a rape. Therefore, if men and women design to have children, let them live so, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... up to the hovering great ships. The blueskins, said the reports were spiritless and cowardly. They permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had been observed that the population was streaming out of the city, fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... the open air, she found the servant seeking his comfort in the brandy-bottle, and the horses sunk in a spiritless stupor. She admonished him to take care of these, and charged him earnestly both with threats and promises of reward, to think about his employers and watch over their safety. She herself gave to her horse fodder and water, patting him the while, and speaking to him kind and encouraging ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... gloom, Jim Dodge crossed the empty library and paused at the open door of the room beyond. The somber light from the two tall windows fell upon the figure of the girl. She was sitting before Andrew Bolton's desk, her head upon her folded arms. Something in the spiritless droop of her shoulders and the soft dishevelment of her fair hair suggested weariness—sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a muffled sob escaped the quiet ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... excellent consul, and much attached to me, but he has lowered his influence by promulgating (though only for form's sake) an identical bill about Clodius. But the son of Aulus,[119] God in heaven! What a cowardly and spiritless fellow for a soldier! How well he deserves to be exposed, as he is, day after day to the abuse of Palicanus![120] Farther, an agrarian law has been promulgated by Flavius, a poor production enough, almost identical with that of Plotius. But meanwhile a genuine statesman is not to be found, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... neighbors. On one occasion, Joe Smith was himself on trial, and the Christian populace of the neighborhood, long incensed against him and his people, broke into the court-room clamoring for his life. The sheriff, a feeble-bodied and spiritless official, showed signs of yielding, and the judge, promptly assuming a power not vested in his office, appointed a stalwart Kentuckian sheriff, and ordered him to summon a posse and clear the room. By these means the defendant's life was saved, and Douglas, notwithstanding various decisions ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands, that perished in our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were, at last, whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... in a wordy contest a Limena is sure to come off triumphant. They have a great deal of decision of character, and a degree of courage which does not usually fall to the lot of the female sex. In these respects they are infinitely superior to the timid, spiritless men. In the various political revolutions of the country, the women have often taken an active, and, in some instances, a more ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... book and its author for all the rest of the day, as all the women in France were so soon to be enchanted.[1] This, as he expected, amply reconciled her to the uncouthness and clumsiness of his conversation, which was at least as maladroit and as spiritless in the presence of a duchess as it was in presences ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... long as human nature continues what it is. And I believe that past sorrows are a great reality in our present life, and exert a great influence over our present life, whether for good or ill. As you may see in the trembling knees of some poor horse, in its drooping head, and spiritless paces, that it was overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... home limping from the hunting-field; (11) just as want of strength and thinness of coat go hand in hand with incapacity for toil. (12) The lanky-legged, unsymmetrical dog, with his shambling gait and ill-compacted frame, ranges heavily; while the spiritless animal will leave his work to skulk off out of the sun into shade and lie down. Want of nose means scenting the hare with difficulty, or only once in a way; and however courageous he may be, a hound ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first,— Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance!— Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded, Spiritless outcast! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... refined; and I, the miller's child, am what you see me because my father was coarse and brutal; because my body and soul struggled with staring starvation,—physical, mental, and moral. Be just, and remember these things when you are tempted to despise me as a pitiable, spiritless parasite." ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... element of the social union, obedience to a government of some sort, has not been found so easy a thing to establish in the world. Among a timid and spiritless race like the inhabitants of the vast plains of tropical countries, passive obedience may be of natural growth; though even there we doubt whether it has ever been found among any people with whom fatalism, or in other words, submission to the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... all horses object to the branding process. Even the spiritless little Indian ponies, accustomed to many ingenious kinds of abuse, rebel at this. A meek-eyed mule, on whom humility rests as an all-covering robe, must be ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... and energetic dignity, she took an immediate fancy, once she found that he was born in Kentucky; this made of him a link between the old life and the new. But toward the women she felt a definite hostility. Myra, her future sister-in-law, seemed the essence of spiritless conversationality. Her conversation was so utterly devoid of personality that Sally Carrol, who came from a country where a certain amount of charm and assurance could be taken for granted in the women, ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that the University had also formed a regiment, in which he had the honour to be a corporal. How I envied them both! especially that odious Mick as I saw him in his laced scarlet coat, with a ribbon in his hat, march off at the head of his men. He, the poor spiritless creature, was a captain, and I nothing,—I who felt I had as much courage as the Duke of Cumberland himself, and felt, too, that a red jacket would mightily become me! My mother said I was too ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a spiritless child, but every day and all day her life slipped on in its dull groove and she did not ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... thought was to get away as quickly as possible. He read a very short psalm, in a spiritless voice, and they all knelt for a moment while he led in prayer. He took a hurried farewell of the family; the elder scarcely spoke and Mrs. Johnstone regarded him with a ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... Spiritless, and utterly indifferent to what his fate might be, Dick Varley rode along with his head drooping, and keeping his seat almost mechanically, while the mettlesome little steed flew on over wave and hollow. Gradually he awakened from this state of despair to a ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... was dull and spiritless. Something, for the moment, seemed to have passed from him. He seemed, indeed, to lack both inspiration and courage. Her fingers clung slightly to his. She was praying, even, that he might laugh to scorn her unspoken appeal. He moved a yard away and stood looking at her. Her ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Copley never was an exact man in matters of the toilet. It was not merely that. But Dolly's eye saw that his step was unsteady, his face dull and flushed, and his eye had a look which even a very little experience understands. His air was haggard, spiritless, hopeless; so unlike the alert, self-sufficient, confident manner of old, that Dolly's heart got a great wrench. And something in the whole image was so inexpressibly pitiful to her, that she did the very last thing it had been in her purpose to ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... easily strangle the filibuster force by seizing the ill-guarded Rio San Juan. Led by Spencer, they secretly cut a road through the forest on the Costa Rican side, found the forts scarcely watched by a few spiritless sick men, and overwhelmed and scattered them without difficulty. At the same time they surprised and seized all the Transit steamers on the river and lake, so that thenceforward communication with the Atlantic was closed to General Walker, and a large body of New Orleans recruits ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Westminster school, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1583. He became a fellow, and in 1592 was incorporated of the university of Oxford. About 1502 he produced at Trinity College his Latin tragedy of Roxana.1 It is modelled on the tragedies of Seneca, and is a stiff and spiritless work. Fuller and Anthony a Wood bestowed exaggerated praise on it, while Samuel Johnson regarded it as the only Latin verse worthy of notice produced in England before Milton's elegies. Roxana is founded on the La Dalida (Venice, 1567) of Luigi Groto, known as Cieco di Hadria, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... insult, because it endures it? Is not this what men of the world would say of such a one? "Such a man is unfit for life; he has no eye for any thing; he does not know the difference between good and evil; he is tame and spiritless, he is simple and dull, and a fit prey for the spoiler or defrauder; he is cowardly and narrow-minded, unmanly, feeble, superstitious, and a dreamer," with many other words more contemptuous and more familiar than would be becoming to use in Church. Yet such is the character of which ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... you know, my dear, is in some sense a superior; while the upbraided, if with reason upbraided, must make a figure as spiritless as conscious. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... true rivals of the ancients, who, by virtue of congenial talents and cultivation have walked in their path and worked in their spirit, have ever been as rare as their mechanical spiritless copyists are common. Seduced by the form, the great body of critics have been but too indulgent to these servile imitators. These were held up as correct modern classics, while the great truly living and popular poets, whose reputation was a part of their nations' glory, and to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... smiled absently at that worthy man. Sam Ogilvy and Harry Annan attempted to goad her into one of those lively exchanges of banter in which Rita was entirely capable of taking care of herself. But her smile was spiritless and non-combative; and finally they let her alone and concentrated their torment upon Valerie, who endured it with equanimity and dangerously sparkling eyes, and an occasional lightening retort which kept those ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... so far forgotten myself as to venture to think of applying for temporary assistance; however—" Dandy Joe began to shuffle off in a spiritless way, when— ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... me as being very spiritless, and as particularly anti-republican," said Mrs. Jarvis, rising to quit the room; "and if the Effinghams do not come this evening, I shall not enter their house this winter. I am sure they have no right to pretend to be our betters, and I feel no ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... went up to the hovering great ships. The blueskins, said the reports, were spiritless and cowardly. They permitted themselves to be robbed. They kept out of the way. It had been observed that the population was streaming out of the city, fleeing because they feared the ships' landing-parties. The blueskins had abjectly produced all they'd promised of precious ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... hoped to escape war by submission. The chance of revenge was offered as it had never been offered in forty years; yet she did not stir to grasp it. Her enemy gave every provocation, yet she stayed as still as if she were spiritless; and all the while she was the proudest nation on the earth, so proud that she did not need to threaten or boast. Then came the first failure, and she took it as if she had expected nothing better. She had to make war in a manner wholly contrary to her nature and genius, and she made it ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Mrs. Poe, or Miss Arnold, as she was still sometimes called, was, she had managed by a mighty effort of will and the aid of stimulants to appear once or twice before the footlights. But her acting had been spiritless and her voice weak and it finally became necessary for the manager to explain that she was suffering from "chills and fevers," from which he hoped rest and skillful treatment would relieve her and make it possible for her to take her usual place. But she did not appear. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... of the Imperialists departed. The cavalry of the left wing, already beaten, and only rallied by his exertions, no sooner missed their victorious leader, than they gave up everything for lost, and abandoned the field of battle in spiritless despair. The right wing fell into the same confusion, with the exception of a few regiments, which the bravery of their colonels Gotz, Terzky, Colloredo, and Piccolomini, compelled to keep their ground. The Swedish infantry, with prompt determination, profited by the enemy's confusion. To fill ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... practised by poets. Thus, to take a few examples from the Divorce pamphlets, a wife, who should be "an intimate and speaking help," "a ready and reviving associate," to comfort "the misinformed and wearied life of man" with "a sweet and gladsome society," is too often "a mute and spiritless mate," united to her husband in "a disconsolate and unenjoined matrimony," whereby the blessing that was expected with her is changed "into a familiar and coinhabiting mischief, at least into a drooping ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... stimulus was given on the one hand to the political activity, on the other, to the thought and knowledge of the world as a whole, but at the centre Greece was 'living Greece no more,' her politics sank to the level of a dreary farce, her philosophy died down to a dull and spiritless scepticism, to an Epicureanism {211} that 'seasoned the wine-cup with the dust of death,' or to a Stoicism not undignified yet still sad and narrow and stern. The hope of the world, alike in politics and in philosophy, faded as the ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... time, then the reaction came. A black melancholy fell upon her, and energy deserted soul and body. She found it a weariness to get up in the morning and weariness to lie down at night. She no longer cared even to seem cheerful, owned that she was spiritless, hoped she should be ill, and did not care if she died to-morrow. When this dark mood seemed about to become chronic she began to mend, for youth is wonderfully recuperative, and the deepest wounds soon heal even ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... black guns swinging at his sides. This time the sickening shock again visited her, it was, however, because a revealing flash of thought told her that it was not alone Lassiter who was thrillingly welcome, but also his fatal weapons. They meant so much. How she had fallen—how broken and spiritless must she be—to have still the same old horror of Lassiter's guns and his name, yet feel somehow a cold, shrinking protection in their law and might ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... toward her, but Captain Peek interposed his bulky form. Wonder of wonders! the whilom spiritless youth struck out with his right, and the hulking Captain went over in a swearing heap. Tansey flew to Katie, and took her in his arms like a conquering knight. She raised her face, and he kissed her—violets! electricity! caramels! champagne! Here ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... heaven for justice, and still smiling disdainfully, he remained immovable, with a firm heart, not permitting his tongue to accuse himself or any one else. And so at length, without having either made any confession, or being convicted of anything, he was condemned to death with the spiritless partner of his sufferings. He was then led away to death, protesting against the iniquity of the times; imitating in his conduct the celebrated Stoic of old, Zeno, who, after he had been long subjected to torture in order to extract from him some false ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... life's ambition be more explicit? It seems impossible for human ambition to stand still. Either a man loses all stimulus of self and becomes as spiritless as a fagged animal or ambition drives him always on—he is never content with any success achieved. The millionaire to whom the first million, when he was a boy, seemed the extreme limit of human wealth and desire, presses on insatiably with the first million ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... even if they have not been taken too seriously by the people of these islands, have for a long time past respected themselves, but the calling of a dramatist till quite of late has been but an invertebrate and spiritless concern. Pruned and prismed by the censor, exploited by the actor, dragooned and slashed by the manager, ignored by the public, who never even bothered to inquire the names of those who supplied it with digestives—it was a slave's job. Thanks ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... his appearance at that moment, as usual, with a child in either hand, and a very sad picture it was, so mournful and spiritless was his countenance, with the hectic tint of decay evident on each thin cheek, and those two fair healthful creatures clinging to him, thoughtless of their past loss, unconscious of that which impended. Little Owen, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife. Some called her a poor spiritless thing, and declared, that, with a little of her sister's spirit, she might have brought to reason any Sir Philip whatsoever, were it the termagant Falconbridge himself. But the greater part of their acquaintance affected candour, and saw faults on both sides; ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... 6th Massachusetts foot regiment, which was just leaving for the lake on its usual road-mending detail, stood in spiritless silence to see the artillery pass; their Major, Whiting, as well as the sullen rank and file, seeming still to feel the disgrace of Cherry Valley, where their former colonel lost his silly life, and Major Stacia was taken, and still remained ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... thro' the evening dusk, She now went slowly to that small kiosk, Where, pondering alone his impious schemes, MOKANNA waited her—too wrapt in dreams Of the fair-ripening future's rich success, To heed the sorrow, pale and spiritless, That sat upon his victim's downcast brow, Or mark how slow her step, how altered now From the quick, ardent Priestess, whose light bound Came like a spirit's o'er the unechoing ground,— From that wild ZELICA whose every glance Was thrilling fire, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the english with the french sailors. The british tar thinks his allowance of salt beef scarcely digestible without a copious libation of ardent spirits, whilst the gallic mariner is satisfied with a little meagre soup, an immoderate share of bread, and a beverage of water, poor cider, or spiritless wine. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... passions so dreadful as the dead calm of the soul. Why did R—— suffer my soul to sink into this ominous calm? The fault is his; let him abide the consequences. Why did he not follow me to England? why did he not write to me? or when he did write, why were his letters so cold, so spiritless? When I spoke of divorce, why did he hesitate? Why did he reason when he should have only felt? Tell him, my tender, my delicate friend, these are questions which the heart asks, and which the heart only ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... rendering of 'The first good joy,' or 'The angel Gabriel;' then take them off to church and let them sing these same ditties to an organ accompaniment. You will find that, strive against it as they may, the tune drags slower and slower; the poem has become a spiritless jingle, at once dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out into the fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum; stay it with flagons and comfort it with apples, for it is ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is to be courteous domestic doubtful spiritless jolly 76 77 An associate is an adversary ally antagonist emigrant ensign 77 78 To be Vigilant means to be aloof betrothed betwixt lawless watchful 78 79 Decisive means conclusive dazzled genuine ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley
... live with the horde came trouble. Red-Eye had had I don't know how many wives since the Singing One. She had gone the way of the rest. At present he had a little, soft, spiritless thing that whimpered and wept all the time, whether he beat her or not; and her passing was a question of very little time. Before she passed, even, Red-Eye set his eyes on the Swift One; and when she passed, the persecution of the Swift ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... in point of merit; some of them appearing harsh and crude, and others flat and spiritless, when compared with similar products by the old ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... flower-adorned alcove; she was reading the newspaper report of the debate in parliament, that apparently doomed her to hopelessness. That heart-sinking feeling was painted in her sunk eyes and spiritless attitude; a cloud was on her beauty, and frequent sighs were tokens of her distress. This sight had an instantaneous effect on Raymond; his eyes beamed with tenderness, and remorse clothed his manners with earnestness and truth. He sat beside her; and, taking the paper from her hand, said, "Not ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... to walk through such an experience as this into a condition of abject slavery—to waste their affection without return, until they have become poor, and spiritless, and mean. I have known them to lose their will—to become the mere dependent mistresses of their husbands—to be creeping cravens in dwellings where it should be their privilege to move as radiant ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... added to his enjoyment it would have been the possibility of being waylaid by bandits, or set upon in some desolate pass by wild animals. But, alas, the nearest approximation to a bandit that fell in his way was some shabby, spiritless tramp who passed by on the further side without lifting an eyelid; and as for savage animals, he saw nothing more savage than a monkish chipmunk here and there, who disappeared into his stonewall convent the instant he laid ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Where am I to find a surgeon who can put together my crushed bones? Daggers, indeed! Do you not suppose that in thinking of you I have often thought of daggers? Why have I not thrust one into your heart, so that I might rescue you from the arms of this puny, spiritless English girl?' All this time she was still seated, looking at him, leaning forward towards him with her hands upon her brow. 'But, Paul, I spit out my words to you, like any common woman, not because they will hurt you, but because I know I may take that comfort, such as it is, without ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... a certain back-country expertness. The road bent to show us its source. We were abreast of the forlorn little shack of a dry-farmer, weathered and patched, set a dozen yards from the road and surrounded by hard-packed earth. Before the open door basked children and pigs and a few spiritless chickens. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... "Spiritless, mad, or hypocritical!" cried Roland, with mingled wonder and contempt. Then grasping his strange companion by the arm, he cried, "Harkee, man, if you would not strike a blow for yourself,—would you not strike it for another? What if you had a wife, a parent, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... fall, pear flowers away be blown; Yet peach and pear will, when next year returns, burst out again in bloom, But can it e'er be told who will next year dwell in the inner room? What time the third moon comes, the scented nests have been already built. And on the beams the swallows perch, excessive spiritless and staid; Next year, when the flowers bud, they may, it's true, have ample to feed on: But they know not that when I'm gone beams will be vacant and nests fall! In a whole year, which doth consist of three hundred and sixty days, Winds sharp ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Penrod's own conviction; and with this corroboration of it he grew so spiritless that he could offer no retort. He slid to a despondent sitting posture upon the door sill and gazed wretchedly upon the ground, while his companion went to replenish the licorice water at the hydrant—enfeebling the potency of the liquor no doubt, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... campaign promised to be spiritless and without incident until John Van Buren, in his extended canvass for attorney-general, freely expressed his opinion of Horatio Seymour. Van Buren was not an admirer of that statesman. He had supported him ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... for the moment one would hardly have recognized the sallow, spiritless face, that with all the delicacy of boyhood still, at times looked so exceedingly old. "No, no, Mr. Halifax, who ever heard of a man beginning life ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... had now lasted uninterruptedly for more than an hour, when William seized the opportunity of turning the tide of battle against his spiritless adversary. Putting himself at the head of the left wing, he crossed the Boyne by a dangerous and difficult ford a little lower down the river; his cavalry for the most part swimming across the tide. The ford had been left unguarded, and the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... occasionally lifting my head to peer out at the gray, desolate sea, or watch the dim, mist-shrouded coast line. It was all of a color—a gloomy, dismal scene, the continuance of which left me homesick and spiritless. Never have I felt more hopeless and alone. It seemed useless to keep up the struggle; with every league we penetrated deeper into the desolate wilderness, and now I retained not even one friend on whom I ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... lad slipped back into the shadows of the Ogilvie woods, but for full ten minutes he held Lindley's thoughts away from the lady of his heart's desire. What could ail the lad to be so changed, so spiritless? Was his love so deep that to be weaned from Judith for even a few short hours could break his spirit thus? Or was it possible that the duel and the fatigues of that midnight encounter had been too much for his strength? Lindley could answer none of these questions, so the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... care of me for the sake of his bird! That smiling, spiritless, indolent-minded man would rule Egypt! Am I then so much wiser than other folks, or do none but fools come to consult Hekt? But Rameses chose Ani to represent him! perhaps because he thinks that those who are not particularly clever are not particularly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... planks laid on barrels made the counter, up to which from time to time rather worn-looking, spiritless negro women and girls would come to make their purchases, and then shuffle off again in their listless way. Once in a while a sturdy negro would drop in for tobacco, with a more independent, well-fed air. The Englishman served them all with a certain contemptuous indifference in ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... in a spiritless, tired fashion, beating out the fire with a wet gunnysack as it reached the fire-guard of the old hunter's making, and very carefully putting out any spark that the wind drove across it, working almost without thought. But as he topped the ridge and came ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... martial, and political education of the people. The aid of poetical song was called in to enliven and adorn the banquets of the great public assemblies, the Olympic and other games, and scarcely a social or public gathering can be mentioned that would not have appeared to the ardent Grecians cold and spiritless without this accompaniment. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... glorious entertainment of flying. On the third, he soared across middle France, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercises gave him restful sleep; he recovered almost wholly from the spiritless anemia of his first awakening. And whenever he was not in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his amusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention was brought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... They departed breathless without vehicles, and probably most of the adults had children to carry or to lead. At one moment the houses were homes, functioning as such. An alarm, infectious like the cholera, and at the next moment the deserted houses became spiritless, degenerated into intolerable museums for the amazement of a representative of the American and the British Press! Where the scurrying families went to I never even inquired. Useless to inquire. They just lost themselves on the face of the earth, and were henceforth ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... need for pity seems sometimes overwhelming, surpassing all imagining. I am sure that I myself would assuredly have gone mad had I not been able to lose myself a little in travel and change of scene. When the heart is tormented by some great pain, the spirit seems too utterly spiritless to do anything but despair. But life teaches us, among other things, some of the panaceas of pain. It teaches us that the mind finds it difficult to realise two great emotions at once, and that, where an emotion helps to take us out of ourselves, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... loved her, but thought her tame and spiritless in her disposition; and her father cherished as much affection for her as he was capable of feeling ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... faces pinched to the aspect of the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering about them. "There are Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat," the Major-General had said. It would have given his most spiritless followers the pith to run till morning across a strand of rock and pebble. They knew no tiring, they seemingly felt no pain in their torn and bleeding feet, but put mile after mile ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... a solemn path of usefulness and good, still to be trodden, though its flowers might have faded. Gradually as he awoke to outward things, and sought the companionship of her whom his lost one had loved, he became sensible that, spiritless as he had thought himself, he could yet, did he see fit, win and rivet regard; and so he married, loving less than he was loved, perchance at the time but scarcely so now. His marriage, and his present happiness, are far less mysterious than his extraordinary interference ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the dramatis personae, and now the performance must be going to begin. I could see how much our chance acquaintance had brightened the perspective for her, and how eagerly she had repaired all her illusions; and I thought how much better it would have been if she had been left to the dull and spiritless resignation in which I had first seen her. From that there could no fall, at least, and now she had risen from it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wall, across the Lisse, sentinels stood in the rain, peering out of their caped overcoats or rambling along the river-bank. A spiritless challenge or two halted him for a few moments, but he gave the word and passed on. Once or twice squads met him and passed with the relief, sick boyish soldiers, crusted with mud. Twice he met groups of roving, restless-eyed franc-tireurs ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... she talked, naturally and with ease, and before she had finished the first page of the story her listener had settled herself comfortably among her pillows, a look of interest on her usually spiritless face. ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... book is too often a flat, spiritless excuse for offering it to the public instead of being a hearty announcement in welcome terms of the arrival of a much-desired provision for a real need, so I will come to the essential point at once by saying that gathered here, in these pages, are my best recipes, truly "tried in the fire," ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... some living composers whose works are not without some merit; but they can scarcely be placed even in the second class. Their compositions, when compared with the works of the great continental masters, are tame, spiritless, and insipid; we find in them no flashes of real genius, no harmonies that thrill the nerves, no melodies that ravish the sense, as they steal upon the ear. Effort is discernible throughout this music, the best of which is formed confessedly upon Italian models; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... and Fleda had been doing some of the last jobs in her flower-beds. She was coming in with spirits as bright as her cheeks, when her aunt's attitude and look, more than usually spiritless, suddenly checked them. Fleda gave her a hopeful kiss and asked for ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Ella Liebling, a girl of five, to whom Ingigerd had given her doll, was sitting at one end of the couch, a cover wrapped about her legs, while Siegfried had established himself comfortably on the bed. With a spiritless expression for a child, he was playing a rather monotonous game of cards with ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Something in his spiritless mien and sorrowful voice made Dolly's eyes fill; but knowing she must depend upon herself now, and make the best of her position, she ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... the unbelievable change in him, upsetting all her preconceived notions of the man, appalled her. There had been times in the past when they had clashed, but he had never really matched his will with hers, and she had judged him weak and spiritless. Now, therefore, failing to dominate him as usual, she was filled with a strange feeling of helplessness ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... overtake the race long ago. History indicates that in ancient times they were fierce fighters, able to offer a stout resistance to the incomparably better armed and more civilized Japanese. To-day they are drunken, dirty, spiritless folk, whom it is difficult to suppose capable of the warlike role they once played. Their number, between 16,000 and 17,000, is virtually stationary. The Ainu are somewhat taller than the Japanese, stoutly built, well proportioned, with dark-brown eyes, high cheek-bones, short broad noses and faces ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... attack by those troops on the victors at Fort Mulgrave on its blind side might have retrieved the day; but a panic seized part of the supports, whom Sidney Smith describes as rushing like swine towards the sea though the enemy was only in a condition to attack "faintly." Hood was furious at this spiritless acceptance of defeat; and in his despatch to Whitehall censured the troops for not making a timely effort;[270] but as David Dundas had all along opined that the place was untenable, he decided to hold a council of war. It registered the wishes of the desponding chief. The officers decided ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... believing Woman, are particularly related," was given to the English public in 1742 as a work suited to inculcate the principles of virtue, and probably owed its being to the previous success of "Pamela."[1] In the original a dull and spiritless imitation of Marivaux, the work was not improved by translation, and met naturally the reception due its slender merits. But along with the English versions of Le Sage, Marivaux, and the Abbe Prevost, "The Virtuous ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... found out that already. It could not be apathy, for he heard nothing but complaint upon complaint bandied from mouth to mouth the whole evening. They seemed rather sunk too low in body and mind,—too stupefied and spiritless, to follow the example of the manufacturing districts; above all, they were too ill-informed. It is not mere starvation which goads the Leicester weaver to madness. It is starvation with education,—an empty stomach and a cultivated, even ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... and thus create confidence in the girl. Some authors say that for the purpose of winning her over he should not speak to her for three days, but the followers of Babhravya are of opinion that if the man does not speak with her for three days, the girl may be discouraged by seeing him spiritless like a pillar, and, becoming dejected, she may begin to despise him as an eunuch. Vatsyayana says that the man should begin to win her over, and to create confidence in her, but should abstain at first from sexual pleasures. Women being of a tender nature, want tender ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... Lamennais was wont to speak with contempt of Silvio Pellico, as being a weak, spiritless craven, who accepted with resignation when he should have plotted to end the thraldom of his country. Yet what can a man do, when the classes above him and those below him, when noble and priest and peasant, live contented in the silence of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune could not last indefinitely. Human nature's safety-valve is its extraordinary resilience. Hope springs eternal, etc. Nevertheless, it took a small shock or so to arouse these two women at the mill from their spiritless prostration. One night in early July, Carlisle came suddenly upon the name of Hugo Canning in the foreign tattle column of a London newspaper. She read, with intense fixity of gaze, that Hugo was in Europe: in short, that ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... had cherished a feeling of bitter resentment towards her. He would certainly have spared himself this mission, had he not been sure that she who had brought her lover to ruin was the only person who could rouse him from spiritless languor to fresh energy and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... disappointed and spiritless when she reached the ranchhouse, and very tired, physically. Agatha's questions irritated her, and she ate sparingly of the food set before her, eager to be alone. In the isolation of her room she lay dumbly ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... marvelous, constantly stimulated to greater efforts by the coarse shouts of the masculine audience, who evidently took the same sort of interest in the proceeding that they would in a dog race or a cock fight. The other was pale and spiritless, and it seemed with difficulty that she dragged herself along to keep upon the track until the last. At times she seemed to be almost fainting, as the result of the long-continued excitement and fatigue; but she managed to keep going until nine minutes before the slow moving ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... evil, none will deny. But that no effort of human courage or prudence can make one scale preponderate over the other, and that a decree of fate has fixed them in eternal equipoise, is an opinion which, if it were seriously entertained, must bind men to a tame and spiritless acquiescence in whatever disadvantages or inconveniences they may chance to find themselves involved, and leave to them the exercise of no other public virtue than ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... himself spiritless and spent, From thence as quickly as he could withdrew, And from young Leo's to his lodgings went; When it was midnight, armed himself anew, Saddled his horse, and sallied from his tent; (He takes no leave, and none his going view;) And his Frontino to ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... wish the woollen and cotton trades were as bad to do as the iron, and we should need no holiday as you say, Wilkins. However it will come. In the meantime the Poor-law pinches and terrifies, and will make even the most spiritless turn." ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... number still, probably, from exposure to fatigue and cold, and from falls among the rocks and glaciers, and diseases produced by destitution and misery. The remnant of the army which was left on reaching the plain were emaciated, sickly, ragged, and spiritless; far more inclined to lie down and die, than to go on and undertake the conquest of ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... bewitching, unhappy Clara! what must not she have gone through, ere a mind, naturally buoyant and elastic as hers, could have been crushed into a state of such utter dejection, such calm, spiritless despair! her only wish, to die—her only hope, to find in the grave a place "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest!" But brighter days were in store for her—it should be my ambition ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... profound obeisance to the reclining potentate, who acknowledged his presence with a spiritless motion of his hand not unsuggestive of the humiliating degree of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... was intruding on a household primitive in their hours, as in every thing else, and I rose to take my leave. But I could not be altogether parted with yet. It seems that they had found me a most amusing guest; while, to my own conception, I had been singularly spiritless; but the little anecdotes which were trite to me had been novelties to them. Fashion has a charm even for philosophers; and the freaks and follies of the high-toned sons and daughters of fashion—who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... oft invoked; or haply if thy call Rouse up the slumbering tribe, with heavy eyes Glazed, lifeless, dull, downward they drop their tails Inverted; high on their bent backs erect Their pointed bristles stare, or 'mong the tufts Of ranker weeds, each stomach-healing plant Curious they crop, sick, spiritless, forlorn. These inauspicious days, on other cares 380 Employ thy precious hours; the improving friend With open arms embrace, and from his lips Glean science, seasoned with good-natured wit. But if the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... hard work. There was nobody to help the new teacher; he wrought alone; that the teacher always did. The days were days of constant, unintermitted labour; the nights were jaded and spiritless. After spelling a great deal in the course of the day, and making up an indefinite number of sums in addition and multiplication, Winthrop found his stomach was gone for Latin and Virgil. Ears and eyes and mind were sick of the din ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Stupid, worthless, spiritless, sick, not more than a dozen years old, no delight in the eyes of the young men of her village, she had been consigned by her disappointed parents to the cooking-pot. When Captain Van Horn first encountered her had been when she was the central figure in ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London |
