"Tragedy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment was unspeakable,—and she spoke it not. But as she broke from the profaning clasp, as escaping to the threshold she cast on the unworthy wooer one look of such reproachful sorrow as told at once all her love and all her horror, the first act in the eternal tragedy of man's wrong and woman's grief was closed. And therefore ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... p. 168.).—Dr. Peter Barwick, in the life of his brother, Dr. Jno. Barwick (Eng. Edit. Lond. 1724, 8vo.), after describing the treatment of the University by Cromwell, adds (p. 32.) "But Mr. Barwick, no inconsiderable part of this tragedy, together with others of the University, groaning under the same yoke of tyranny, and each taking a particular account of the sufferings of his own college, gave a distinct narrative of all these barbarities, and under the title ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... only a shallow spoiled child! You'd cease to love anything the moment you won it. And I—well, I'm no good, you say. But their love! My God, what a tragedy! You've no idea, Sally. They've hardly spoken to each other, yet ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... she had been sitting here ten minutes! Grasping the arms of her chair and bracing herself, she rose with a labored effort and went resolutely back to the ticker where, as one draws aside a veil which may reveal tragedy, she picked up the tape again. She saw no name this time, and suddenly it occurred to her that the monstrous thing had passed callously on to other news—as ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... just as they were, and desired that until a new order of things nothing should be altered. "I am sorry for it, monsieur le marechal," I replied. "Whilst I am in this precarious situation, whilst I remain in a corner of the stage as a confidante of tragedy, I can do nothing for my friends, particularly for you, monsieur le marechal." "On the contrary, madame," he replied, "the king will be more disposed to listen to you whilst he will suppose that your influence is unknown." "Oh," cried I ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... his own danger from the Uhlans. He had told Lorraine, partly because he wished her to understand their position, partly because the story of his capture, trial, and escape led up to the tragedy that he scarcely knew how to break to her. But he had done it, and she, pale as death, had gone silently to her room, motioning him away as he stood awkwardly ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... referred to.) About the time that Booth played Pescara in the 'Apostate' at Ford's Theatre, Weichmann attended the theatre in company with Surratt and Atzerodt. At the theatre they were joined by Herold. John T. Holohan, a gentleman not suspected of complicity in the great tragedy, also joined the company at the theatre. After the play was over, Surratt, Holohan, and himself went as far as the corner of Tenth and E Streets, when Surratt, noticing that Atzerodt and Herold were ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... our tea, Mr. Home's tragedy of Douglas was mentioned. I put Dr. Johnson in mind, that once, in a coffee house at Oxford, he called to old Mr. Sheridan, 'How came you, Sir, to give Home a gold medal for writing that foolish play?' and defied Mr. Sheridan ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... down; and though to recall this woeful history will be to tear open old wounds afresh, I will do so; and when you have heard it, you will know how blameless we both—your mother and myself—really were, and how deep has been the tragedy of my life as well as hers—the difference between us being that hers is a dead trouble, from which she rests eternally, while mine is a living and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... "Shakspeare's Historical Tragedy of Richard III., adapted to Representation by Colley Cibber," (I quote the full title for its matchless impudence,) makes a pamphlet of fifty-nine small pages. Of these, Cibber was good enough to write twenty-six out of his own head. Then, modestly recognizing Shakespeare's superiority, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... his youth had humbled, perhaps, the host of the Hotel de Rochefoucault. At the battle of St. Antoine, where he had distinguished himself, 'a musket-ball had nearly deprived him of sight. On this occasion he had quoted these lines, taken from the tragedy of 'Alcyonnee.' It must, however, be premised that the famous Duchess de Longueville had urged him to engage in the wars of the Fronde. To her these lines ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... plan, quite vaguely and instinctively, he shook himself free from Muckluck, and rushed down to the scene of the tragedy. Muffled screams and yells issued with the smoke. Muckluck turned sharply to the Colonel, who was following, and said something that sent him headlong after the Boy. He seized the doughty champion by ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... said to be but few copies of the first edition of the black letter tract on Wishart's trial, published in London, with Lindsay's "Tragedy of the Cardinal," by Day and Seres. I regard it as the earliest printed work of John Knox. {20} The author, when he describes Lauder, Wishart's official accuser, as "a fed sow . . . his face running down with sweat, and ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... has lately taken political turn. It seems ours is the aristocratic theatre. The democrats at the New Theatre are commanded by the Moral Lecture manager. Mr. Powell informs his fellow-citizens, that on Monday evening will be performed the tragedy of the Battle of Bunker's Hill.—The English in this town affect to laugh at the eagerness with which the Bostonians swallow certain passages of this play. I laugh too, but justice obliges me to confess, ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... purpose. The "Sons" of Chicago expressed their extreme regret at the very open and defiant manner of their brethren in the southern part of the State, and believed that it would be prejudicial to the prosperity of the Order. Our readers have not forgotten the Coles county tragedy, the murderers and their victims. There is not a particle of doubt that those murders were premeditated, and first the subject of discussion in the temples of the Sons of Liberty. The assault was made without provocation, and the thirst for the blood of Union men was the motive for the ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... this time was also peering into the box, groaned aloud, and then all three forgot their surroundings in the tragedy they were beholding. ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... he murmured, "who is ambitious to write a tragedy—and vice versa. The only sane man is he who is conscious of ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... feel glad, but she had little hope of any benefit to her brother from this close of a sordid tragedy. She answered his letter, and begged that, as soon as he felt able to do so, he would come and see her. A month's silence on Horace's part had led her to conclude that he would not come, when, without warning, he presented himself at her door. It was morning, and he stayed till nightfall, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... we could perform. We did not mind trifles however—. One of our most admired Performances was MACBETH, in which we were truly great. The Manager always played BANQUO himself, his Wife my LADY MACBETH. I did the THREE WITCHES and Philander acted ALL THE REST. To say the truth this tragedy was not only the Best, but the only Play that we ever performed; and after having acted it all over England, and Wales, we came to Scotland to exhibit it over the remainder of Great Britain. We happened to be quartered in that very Town, where you came and met your Grandfather—. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... scene denotes to the most careless eye that devotion to the immediate which De Tocqueville maintains to be a democratic characteristic. The huge piles of old bricks which block the way—with their array of placards heralding every grade of popular amusement, from a tragedy of Shakespeare to a negro melody, and from a menagerie to a clairvoyant exhibition, and vaunting every kind of experimental charlatanism, from quack medicine to flash literature—are mounds of less mystery, but more human meaning, than those which puzzle archaeologists on the Mississippi ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... momentary, Mr. Neeland. Please believe it. Please try to understand, too, that this is no battle with masks and plastrons and nicely padded buttons. No; it is no comedy, but a grave and serious affair that must inevitably end in tragedy—for somebody." ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... of a ladder standing there. Mary could see now how the long sickness of the hope deferred had touched the poor creature's brain, gentle and loving at first. She pushed the wet yellow sun-bonnet back from the gray hair; she thought she had never seen such unutterable pathos or tragedy as in this little cramped figure, and this old face, turned forever watching ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... at an end. Poor Captain Griffith's murderess was his adored sweetheart! She had killed him in her sleep, and knew it not. In the blindness of slumber she had repeated the enormous tragedy, as sinless nevertheless as the angel who looked down and beheld ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... breathe the diminishing atmosphere. These, of course, were the last descendants of the fittest to breathe it; this was their temple, I suppose, and here they came to die—I wonder how many thousand years ago—perishing of heat, and cold, and hunger, and thirst; the last tragedy of a race, which, after all, must have ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... make a few observations, I consented. So with the exception of the wounded men, who I thought should avoid the exertion, we scrambled down the debris of the tumbled wall and across the open space beyond, reaching the scene of the tragedy without ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... later it seemed that the last act of the tragedy had begun. Then, hoarse as the raven that croaked Duncan's coming, Mr. Blee returned to Monks Barton from an early visit to the village. Phoebe was staying with her father for a fortnight, and it was she who met the old man as ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... beheld was more like some dreadful scene of ancient tragedy than the spectacle of an accident or a crime ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... blow had just been struck that announced the rising of the curtain on the most frightful tragedy the universe has ever known. This announcement was contained in the brief, plain words of the ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... States did not support this great ideal with cordiality, but I was not able to speak when I tried fully to express my thoughts. I tell you, frankly, I choked up; I could not do it. The thing reaches the depth of tragedy. There is a sense in which I can see that the hope entertained by the people of the world with regard to us is a tragical hope—tragical in this sense, that it is so great, so far-reaching, it runs out to such depths that we cannot in the nature ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... pig than in this country. Indeed, the squalor and poverty, and cold, skinny wretchedness one sees in Ireland, and (what freezes our sympathies) the groveling, swiny shiftlessness that pervades these hovels, no traveler can be prepared for. It is the bare prose of misery, the unheroic of tragedy. There is not one ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Representatives now assembled in Washington, humbly confessing their dependence upon Almighty God who rules all that is done for human good, make haste, at this informal meeting, to express the emotions with which they have been filled by the appalling tragedy which has deprived the Nation of its head and covered the land with mourning; and in further declaration of their ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... blindness and positiveness of men, knowing the said treatise to appertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.) We are assured, in Mist of June 8, 'That his own plays and farces would better have adorned the Dunciad than those of Mr Theobald, for he had neither genius for tragedy nor comedy;' which, whether true or not, is not easy to judge, inasmuch as he hath attempted neither—unless we will take it for granted, with Mr Cibber, that his being once very angry at hearing a friend's play abused was an infallible proof the play was his own, the said Mr Cibber ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not lie in too many but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; it is just because ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... fortunate. Murtha had had no family. There had been plenty of scandal about him, but as far as I knew there was no one except his old cronies in the organization to be shocked by his loss, no living tragedy left ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Consort of George I. (i. 386),—where also some of her concluding Letters ("edited" as if by the Nightmares) can be read, but next to no sense made of them.] Burnt out in this manner, she collapses into ashes and long rest; closing so her nameless tragedy of thirty years' continuance:—what a Bluebeard-chamber in the mind of Sophie! Nay there rise quarrels about the Heritage of the Deceased, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... creation. He was exactly the kind of actor, moreover, to impress him. He was great, grand, passionate, overwhelming with a like emotion the apprentice and the critic. Everybody after listening to a play or reading a book uses it when he comes to himself again to fill his own pitcher, and the Cyprus tragedy lent itself to Zachariah as an illustration of his own Clerkenwell sorrows and as a gospel for them, although his were so different from those of the Moor. Why did he so easily suspect Desdemona? Is it not improbable ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... Peerage, so that those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy, with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable reading. If my book gives to any reader a fraction of the pleasure I have derived from ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... this strange tragedy were that, three days before, Mr. Evelyn, being then in perfect health, had been dissecting a limb in a high state of putrescence. During the operation, the instrument had slipped, and made what he considered only as a scratch of the skin; and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... light of my day's fair morning, Ere ever a storm cloud darkened the west, Ere even a shadow of night gave warning When life seemed only a pleasure quest, Why then all humour and comedy scorning— I liked high tragedy best. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... then changed her ground, and inveighed against French tragedy, and the unnatural tones and attitudes of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... too.—If only it had not happened in the street! Before the eyes of so many men! If I at least had not seen it! If only I might give a romantic version of the catastrophe. But such a prosaic ending! A bridegroom arrested for the forgery of documents at the church door!—His tragedy is surely over!" ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Was it not possible, he asked himself, and answered that it was more than possible, it was the truth. He chose to believe in her, and turned his anger against McVay, who could drag her through such a mire. He felt the tragedy of a high-minded woman tricked out in stolen finery, and remembered with a pang that he himself was hurrying on ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... realized in his savage heart that the change of scene would not lessen the grief of the stricken family. It was his one satisfaction to brood over the bereaved father and mother, delighting in his part of the tragedy and enjoying every evidence of it. Never for a moment did he think gently of the children, but only of the woman sacrificed. On this night she stood so close that, with a groan, he put out his hand. His flesh tingled; for he felt that ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... military service,—'Oct. 3rd. To Chichester, and hence the next day to see the siege of Portsmouth; for now was that bloody difference betweene the King and Parliament broken out, which ended in the fatal tragedy so many years after. It was on the day of its being render'd to Sir William Waller, which gave me an opportunity of taking my leave of Colonel Goring the Governor, now embarqueing for France. This day was fought that signal Battaile at Edgehill. Thence I went to Southampton ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... not, it appears, in any supreme way, given to their statues character, beauty, or divine strength. Can they give divine sadness? Shall we find in their artwork any of that pensiveness and yearning for the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy? I suppose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in afterlife is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the same. The good which a calm, kind, and cheerful old man can do is incalculable. And whilst he does good to others, he enjoys himself. He looks not unnaturally to that which should accompany old age—honor, love, obedience, troops of friends; and he plays his part in the comedy or tragedy of life with as much gusto as any one else. Old Montague, or Capulet, and old Polonius, that wise maxim-man, enjoy themselves quite as well as the moody Hamlet, the perturbed Laertes, or even gallant Mercutio or love-sick Romeo. Friar Lawrence, who is a good old man, is perhaps the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... place, encouraged their admiration by conversations, for which it was subsequently asserted, she prepared herself beforehand. Finding herself listened to with rapture, she soon began to listen to herself, enjoyed haranguing her audience, and at last regarded her friends as the chorus in a tragedy, there only to give her her cues. In fact, she had a very fine collection of phrases and ideas, derived either from books or by assimilating the opinions of her companions, and thus became a sort of mechanical instrument, going off on a round of phrases as soon as ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... I confess, would not in all parts hold good: The Tyrant of Rome, to do him justice, had learning, courage, and great abilities. It behoves us however to awake and advert to the danger we are in. The Tragedy of American Freedom, it is to be feared is nearly compleated: A Tyranny seems to be at the very door. It is to little purpose then to go about cooly to rehearse the gradual steps that have been taken, the means that ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... safe now. But what does it all mean? Is there a wayside tragedy here that calls for ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... practice of the profession was still less so. Accordingly, at this period he occupied himself with literary work, principally writing for Reviews. It was at this time that his translation of "Faust" appeared. It is entitled, "Faust: a Tragedy, by J. W. Goethe. Translated into English Verse, with Notes, and Preliminary Remarks, by John S. Blackie, Fellow of the Society for Archaeological Correspondence, Rome." Mr Blackie had taken upon him a very ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and ascended the stairs. Less time than he expected passed away before Mrs. Gormerick made her appearance, her gray hair streaming under her nightcap, her form indued in a loose wrapper,—her very face a tragedy. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Fourth succeeded Richard the Third, the greatest master in mischief of all that fore-went him: who although, for the necessity of his tragedy, he had more parts to play, and more to perform in his own person, than all the rest; yet he so well fitted every affection that played with him, as if each of them had but acted his own interest. For he wrought so cunningly upon the affections of Hastings and Buckingham, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... has just closed. Both from the industrial and the artistic standpoint this Exposition has been in a high degree creditable and useful, not merely to Buffalo but to the United States. The terrible tragedy of the President's assassination interfered materially with its being a financial success. The Exposition was peculiarly in harmony with the trend of our public policy, because it represented an effort to bring into closer touch all the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, and give them an increasing ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... don't know why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances leading ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exercise of poetic genius; and, in dwelling on it as he does, he probably felt sure of carrying with him the fullest sympathies of Augustus. For among his varied literary essays, the Emperor, like most dilettanti, had tried his hand upon a tragedy. Failing, however, to satisfy himself, he had the rarer wisdom to suppress it. The story of his play was that of Ajax, and when asked one day how it was getting on, he replied that his hero "had finished his career upon a sponge!" —"Ajacem suum ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... lawyer who is acting in the matter, Mr Toogood, who is also my uncle, he would tell you the same." Sir Raffle had already heard something of the story of Mr Crawley, and was now willing to accept the sad tragedy of that case as an excuse for his private secretary's somewhat insubordinate conduct. "Under the circumstances, Eames, I suppose you must go; but I think you should have told me all ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the countless great ones of the world who had lived and died in Venice, and loved it well; of Byron, who slept in Marino Faliero's dreadful cell before he wrote his tragedy; of Browning, whose funeral had passed in solemn state of gondolas down the Grand Canal; of Wagner, who found inspiration in this sea and sky, and died looking upon them from his window in the Palazzo Vendramin. But through our talk I could hear Aunt Kathryn ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... they wrenched out his teeth and finger-joints, they dragged him about at the end of a rope hitched to a team of stout horses, they sprinkled him from head to foot with acids and seething oil, but Damiens never uttered a sound till his dying groan announced the conclusion of the tragedy." ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... was ready, the same weakness that she had encouraged in him was helping take him away from her. And the pitiful tragedy of it was that Peter was helping too, and then challenging her to accept still graver dangers through him. It was a pitiful tangle, and yet one that she ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the inevitable tragedy, the idea of which I shrank from afterward more than at the time. We each threw a lasso over the neck of the doomed wolf, and strained our horses in opposite directions until the blood burst from her mouth, ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... thought that his unhappy words expressed a moment of eternal human pain, and that tragedy had illustrated many similar griefs, she felt all the sadness and irony of the situation, which a curl of her lips betrayed. He thought ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Ingleby, and her voice held a deeper, older, tone—a note bordering on tragedy. "Ah! I left town, Sir Deryck, because other people were teaching me love-lessons, and I did not want to learn them apart from Michael. I stayed with Jane Dalmain and her blind husband, before they went back to Gleneesh. You remember? They were in town for ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... two big revolvers now, which argument had no whit of power to modify his mood; but another factor had. The Widow who had entered in search of Jim and knew the tragedy that hung by a hair, sped to his side: "Now, Bill, don't ye do it! I forbid ye ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... picture. She is one of the Bible women, as Gadatas and Gobryas are brothers of Barzillai; she is sister of Ruth or Susanna or Judith or Bathsheba. Perhaps she is nobler than any of them. She is also the sister of the Greek tragedy women, Antigone, Alcestis; especially Euripidean is she: no doubt she is sister to the great women ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... of Germanicus, and already a just providence has delivered to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world.' My accent was doubtless impressive and full of emotion, for I was impressed and moved myself. Madame de Stael seized me quickly by the arm, saying, 'I am sure that you would act tragedy admirably; stop with us and take a part in Andromaque.' That was her hobby ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... of all her hopes for her brother distressed Arenta. Her own marriage had been a most unfortunate one, but its misfortunes had the importance of national tragedy. She had even plucked honour to herself from the bloody tumbril and guillotine. But Rem's matrimonial failure had not one redeeming quality; it was altogether a shameful and well-deserved retribution. And she had boasted to her friends not a little of the great marriage her brother was ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... women, as merry as girls, and quite at their ease. Of the other five three were sisters—that is, we conclude, half-sisters; children of different mothers in the same harem. It is evident, at a glance, what a tragedy lies under this; what the horrors of jealousy must be among sisters thus connected for life; three of them between two husbands in the same house! And we were told that the jealousy had begun, young as they were, and the third having ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... often hear, Ought to have a wholesome moral; And this truth is just as clear In the land of palm and coral; For this tragedy in tones Louder than a megaphone's Warns us that two things are risky, If you dwell in torrid zones— Change of climate, love ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... opposed. (Applause.) Beyond all differences of race or creed, we are one country, mourning together and facing danger together. Deep in the American character, there is honor, and it is stronger than cynicism. And many have discovered again that even in tragedy—especially in tragedy—God ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George W. Bush • George W. Bush
... of a rich man. In a recent letter, Linda, there was a reference to a woman who wore "a diadem of crystallized light." It was a beautiful thing and I could not help taking it personally. It was his way of telling me that he knew me, and knew my tragedy; and, as I said before, I am beginning to feel that I have him rather definitely located; and I can understand the fine strain in him that prompted his anonymity, and his reasons for it. Of course I am not sufficiently confident yet to say anything definite, but my heart is beginning ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... tragedy of Henry Hudson, another Arctic explorer appears upon the scene. William Baffin was already an experienced seaman in the prime of life; he had made four voyages to the icy north, when he was called on by the new Company of Merchants of London—"discoverers of the North-West Passage"—formed ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the tragedy of the century was nothing but an incident, had not the slightest suspicion of Stover's absolute, overwhelming despair. Yet Butsey, too, had suffered, and profited ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... see the tragedy of the time, as a few saw it, in comparing the first Locksley Hall of Alfred Tennyson, written in 1827, with its abiding faith in the "increasing purpose of the ages" and its roseate prophecies of the golden age, when ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... Shakespeare by Plato amounts to this, that he makes Socrates compel his friends to admit, 'that it belongs to the same man, how to compose comedy and tragedy, and that he who is by skill a composer of tragedies is also a composer of comedies.' (Sympos fin.) * * * But it is mere confusion to speak of this as anticipation. Plato does not say that there would be any greater ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... heliotrope watered not long since. A bat went by. A bird uttered its last 'cheep.' And right above the oak tree the first star shone. Faust in the opera had bartered his soul for some fresh years of youth. Morbid notion! No such bargain was possible, that was real tragedy! No making oneself new again for love or life or anything. Nothing left to do but enjoy beauty from afar off while you could, and leave it something in your Will. But how much? And, as if he could not make that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... circle is chiefly occupied by the officers from Camp Douglas and the Gentile Merchants. The upper circles are filled by the private soldiers and Mormon boys. I feel bound to say that a Mormon audience is quite as appreciative as any other kind of an audience. They prefer comedy to tragedy. Sentimental plays, for obvious reasons, are unpopular with them. It will be remembered that when C. Melnotte, in the Lady of Lyons, comes home from the wars, he folds Pauline to his heaving heart and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... brain like parts of a nightmare. He saw Morrison arrested, he saw the whole story of the missing pocket-book in the papers, he imagined his bank manager reading it and thinking of that parcel of mysterious bank-notes deposited in his keeping on the morning after the tragedy... Laverick was a strong man, and his moment of weakness, poignant though it had been, passed. This was no new thing with which he was confronted. All the time he had known that the probabilities were in favor of ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... grace and loveliness to charm all eyes and enliven all fancies, suffered her to be shut up to water with her tears her dull embroidery during all the full rose-blossom of her life, and you will hardly get beyond this story for a tragedy, not noble, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the German was dragged from the deck, and the moment the reptile was clear of the boat, it dived beneath the surface of the water with its terrified prey. I think we were all more or less shaken by the frightfulness of the tragedy—until Olson remarked that the balance of power now rested where it belonged. Following the death of Benson we had been nine and nine—nine Germans and nine "Allies," as we called ourselves, now there were but eight Germans. We never counted the girl on either ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gravity of elocution being requisite in tragedy, that quality is assigned to the former, and the latter is called DOCTUS, because he was a complete master of his art; so truly learned in the principles of his profession, that he possessed, in a wonderful degree, the secret charm ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... called Pausanias, The first act, and probably all that was ever written by Mr. West. [In the preceding month West had forwarded to Gray the sketch of this tragedy, which he appears to have criticised with much freedom; but Mr. Mason did not find among Gray's papers either the sketch itself, or the free ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... will wait, on and on, counting only your own pleasure in the matter, until you are willing to appoint the time, if only you will say that you forgive me for the apparently despicable part I have played in the tragedy of ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... a very real tragedy. The third Lord Dacre, one of the young noblemen who took part in the welcoming of Ann of Cleves when she landed in England preparatory to her becoming the wife of Henry VIII., was so foolish one night in 1541 as to accompany ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... talked at all it was about her sister and of wanting to go to a convent. When asked to do anything she said she would if it were God's will. She did not menstruate after her sister's death. When practically recovered, the patient attributed her breakdown to this tragedy. She added to the description above given that, soon after losing her sister, she had a fright at home. "It was the house in which my father died and one day when I was in bed I thought somebody came in." But she denied a vision ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... tragedy and of romances is in a moral union of two superior persons, whose confidence in each other for long years, out of sight, and in sight, and against all appearances, is at last justified by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... wild creatures come the nearest to showing what we call sense or reason. The boys tell me that a rabbit that has been driven from her hole a couple of times by a ferret will not again run into it when pursued. The tragedy of a rabbit pursued by a mink or a weasel may often be read upon our winter snows. The rabbit does not take to her hole; it would be fatal. And yet, though capable of far greater speed, so far as I have observed, she does not escape the mink; he very soon pulls her down. It ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... said the baroness. "Look—look at it!" She took him by the arm, and turned him towards a mirror, half hidden in hot-house flowers. "Look!" she cried again. "Mon Dieu! it is a tragedy, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... know I? There was a time when the reputation of Judas might have been thought past mending, but a German has whitewashed him as thoroughly as Malone did Shakespeare's bust, and an English poet made him the hero of a tragedy, as the one among the disciples who believed too much. Call no one happy till he is dead? Rather call no one safe, whether in good repute or evil, after he has been dead long enough to have his effigy done in historical wax-work. Only get the real clothes, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... plays of the lighter kind, with a few poems and miscellanies, it is reasonably enough supposed that he lived by his pen. The only product of this period which has kept (or indeed which ever received) competent applause is Tom Thumb, or the Tragedy of Tragedies, a following of course of the Rehearsal, but full of humour and spirit. The most successful of his other dramatic works were the Mock Doctor and the Miser, adaptations of Moliere's famous pieces. His undoubted connection ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... however small the homestead, linen and window curtains are generally to be found. So many comforts, coupled with the bare simplicity of the boards, the long benches for seats, and hard wooden chairs, did not lead us to expect the comic tragedy ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... life has been many times enacted amid the scenes of this village, and here is the prologue and epilogue of many a romance and tragedy. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... thank him. Nothing but noise and folly Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason And silence make me stark mad. Sit down; Discourse to me some dismal tragedy. ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... spoken of in Rev. ii., 20, is called Jezebel. She was a devout adherent and worshiper of Baal and influenced Ahab to follow strange gods. He reigned twenty-two years without one worthy action to gild his memory. Jezebel's death, like her life, was a tragedy of evil. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... speaking to Mr Fonblanque[51] of my unwillingness to trouble your Lordship, when Prime Minister, with a request to lay my tragedy of the Legend of Florence[52] before Her Majesty; and he said that he was sure your good-nature would not have been displeased with it. This is the reason why I now venture to ask whether a similar kindness might be shown the accompanying ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... ambitions toward which it is directed. The spectacle of a great nation at one, inspired by a single ideal and pouring its life, its wealth, its energy, with a single impulse in the name of the Fatherland can only be called sublime. The tragedy lies in the fact that this stupendous effort is not worthy of the cause; that for false hopes, false ambitions and mistaken sense of right and justice Germany has wasted her life ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... style of writing.* Nevertheless, authority counted for less at this time in Paris than it did in Italy, and the tragedy enacted in Rome when Galileo was forced to deny his inmost convictions at the bidding of a brutal Inquisition could not have been staged in France. Moreover, in the little company of scientists of which Desargues was a member ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... brakes had let go, she could not endure the bleak platform, and even less could she endure sitting in the chair car, eyed by the smug tourists—people as empty of her romance as they were incapable of her sharp tragedy. She balanced forward to the vestibule. She stood in that cold, swaying, darkling place that was filled with the smell of rubber and metal and grease and the thunderous clash of steel on steel; she tried to look out into the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... his word, and is followed by the Nobles in a stirring chorus ("Lo! the Wrath of the King is as a Messenger of Death"). The scene now changes to the dungeon, where the Prophet sings his farewell song ("A Man can receive nothing"), accompanied by orchestra and organ. The final tragedy is told by the Narrator, and the work closes with two reflective numbers,—the beautiful unaccompanied quartet, "Blessed are they which are persecuted," and the chorus, "What went ye out into the Wilderness for to see?" The ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... steward came flying over the water with meritorious speed. With him he was bringing the papers that might settle the Cypriani's mission, but Varney, for the moment, hardly gave him a thought. His own affairs were blotted from his mind just then by the tragedy of the little waif before him, luckless victim of another's sin, small flotsam which barely weathered the winters when odd-jobbing was scarce, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... The quick and unexpected tragedy (for the sow) etches the old-time tailor at his work: one gets, as it were, a crow's-eye view of him. Such, I imagine, was his universal aspect, cross-legged on a bench in his little stall or beside his open window, more ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... fresh-drafted half-grafted codes which do not include juries, to a system that does not contemplate a free Press, to a suspicious absolutism from which there is no appeal. Truly, it might be interesting, but as surely it would begin in farce and end in tragedy, that would leave the politest people on earth in no case to play at civilised government for a long time to come. In his concession, where he is an apologetic and much sat-upon importation, the foreign resident does no harm. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... torn with regrets, took his hands from his face and gazed steadily at the tragedy nearing ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... when Tragedy still winged an upward flight, When actors wore tin helmets and cambric robes at night! O happy days, when sounded in the public's rapturous ears The creak of pasteboard armor and the clash of wooden spears! ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... the part of buffoons, and to please the Queen, personated old Broussel's nurse (for he was eighty years of age), stirring up the people to sedition, though both of them knew well enough that their farce might perhaps soon end in a real tragedy. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... from the valley of the Wabash. It is a well known fact recorded in the histories of Indiana that the long journey from the beautiful Wabash Valley was a horrible experience for the fleeing Indians, but I have the tradition as relating to my own family, and from this enforced flight ensued the tragedy of my birth." ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Reeves, gruffly, but not unkindly. "Stay if you want to, Ariadne, but behave like a sensible woman, not a silly schoolgirl. This is an awful tragedy, of some sort." ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... Copperfield' with avidity, but are careful to avoid the catastrophe of Dora and even the demise of her four-footed favourite. The book that suits them best is 'Martin Chuzzlewit.' Its genial comedy, quite different from the violent delights of 'Pickwick,' is well adapted to their grasp; while its tragedy, the murder of Montague Tigg—the finest description of the breaking of the sixth commandment in the language—leaves nothing to be desired in the way of excitement. But here we stray beyond our bounds, for 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is not a 'sick book;' or rather, it is one of the very ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... she, and more morose and stern the Black Earl, and of their tragedy there seemed no end. But when a year had nigh passed, one rosy morning a servant-lass met Black Roderick as he came from his chamber, her eyes heavy ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... musingly; "that sin brought sickness and death. Then, as you say, if God is supreme, why doesn't He abolish the sin, or at least show humanity how to conquer it in a practical way, to overcome or lessen the results of sin? But no! The same tragedy is repeated with every generation, and seems likely to go ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... church of Payerne by these same vassals, and with him the brothers-in-law of Guillaume de Gruyere, Pierre and Philippe de Glane. Guillaume de Glane, son and nephew of the murdered protectors of their young suzerain, profoundly moved by the tragedy which had befallen his house, determined to renounce the world and commanding that not one stone should remain of his great castle of Glane dedicated these same stones to the enlargement of the monastery of Hauterive, where, taking the garb ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... through mortal terror for more than half the morning. They were so troubled in mind that they missed high Mass, and only went to the military service. In three days the year 1819 would come to an end. In three days a terrible drama would begin, a bourgeois tragedy, without poison, or dagger, or the spilling of blood; but—as regards the actors in it—more cruel than all the fabled horrors in the family ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... that aroused old hunting memories in Wolf. At any rate, Dede and Daylight became aware of excitement in the paddock, and saw harmlessly reenacted a grim old tragedy of the Younger World. Curiously eager, velvet-footed and silent as a ghost, sliding and gliding and crouching, the dog that was mere domesticated wolf stalked the enticing bit of young life that Mab had brought so recently into the world. And the mare, her own ancient instincts aroused and quivering, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... through which mountain torrents pour their blue-gray waters from glaciers that lie glistening between the white peaks far away. Here are the great ranges on which feed herds of cattle and horses. Here are the homes of the ranchmen, in whose wild, free, lonely existence there mingles much of the tragedy and comedy, the humor and pathos, that go to make up the romance of life. Among them are to be found the most enterprising, the most daring, of the peoples of the old lands. The broken, the outcast, the disappointed, these too have found their ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... Natives seemed to have an aptitude for remembering catastrophes which, in the lives of their fathers and their fathers' fathers, followed such coincidences. Whilst the executions were taking place, on the morning of our birthday, an ugly ocean tragedy was taking place away out on the Atlantic. The 'Vulturno' was ablaze with a number of passengers on board. Innocent white men and women were being roasted alive, because the sea was too rough to permit their transfer from the burning ship to the rescuing liners; ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... absorbed in a lunette, could hear the lecture again interrupted, the anxious, aggressive voice of the old man, the curt, injured replies of his opponent. The son, who took every little contretemps as if it were a tragedy, was listening also. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... home of the French Opera whose position is indicated by an inscription at the corner of the Rues de Valois and St. Honore. It was at the Theatre des Varietes, when the staid old Comedie Francaise was rent by rival factions that Chenier's patriotic tragedy, Charles IX., was performed on 4th November 1789, and the pit acclaimed Talma with frantic applause as he created the role of Charles IX., and the days of St. Bartholomew were acted on the stage. The bishops tried to stop the performances, and priests ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... The tragedy of her parents' lives could be enacted without imbittering and darkening her young days, she was out of it all, and I rejoiced to know it. For I was absolutely relentless; had my little Stella lived, not ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of congratulation from your Oregon friends for your escape in the recent tragedy will not be considered an intrusion. Of course we have all been deeply interested in its history, and proud that you were found as you were, without the defenses of ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... of the old log before him was full of poignant tragedy to Code, the tragedy of his own life, for it was the unwritten pages from then on that should have told the story of a fiendishly planned revenge upon him who was totally innocent of any wrong-doing. The easy, weak, indulgence of the father ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... long and comprehensive addresses The General told how he found the work of his life. He was never so impressive as at this stage. And the tale in its intensity was ever new. His language was nervous, intense, almost Biblical, his figure suggestive of a patriarch's in a tragedy. 'Sixty years ago—sixty years ago—sixty years ago,' each time with a different and a grimmer intonation—'the Spirit of the Living God met me.... I was going down the steep incline when the great God stopped me, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of the word propaganda. For propaganda, for the defence or attack of the Communist position, is needed a knowledge of economics, both from the capitalist and socialist standpoints, to which I cannot pretend. Very many times during the revolution it has seemed to me a tragedy that no Englishman properly equipped in this way was in Russia studying the gigantic experiment which, as a country, we are allowing to pass abused but not examined. I did my best. I got, I think I may say, as near as any foreigner who was not a Communist could get to what ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... Rose) that the finest cacao in the world is produced: the criollo, the bean with the golden-brown break. The tree which produces this is as delicate as the cacao is fine, and there is some danger that this superb cacao may die out—a tragedy which every connoisseur would wish ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... made a little gesture of acknowledgment. "Le Capitaine Bertin! Then Madame will compose herself to hear little that is agreeable, for it is a tale of tragedy." His eyes wandered for a moment; he seemed to be renewing and testing again the flavor of memories. Under his trim moustache the mouth set and grew harder. Then, without further preamble, he began ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... entered Guerda with fixed bayonets.' On approaching Alpedrinha, they found the rebels posted in a kind of redoubt—'it was forced, the town of Alpedrinha taken, and delivered to the flames:' the whole of this tragedy is thus summed up—'In the engagements fought in these different marches, we lost twenty men killed, and 30 or 40 wounded. The insurgents have left at least 13000 dead in the field, the melancholy consequence ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in victory, isolated and scattered, have the beginnings of a revelation. There come moments in the tragedy of these events when men are not only sincere, but truth-telling, moments when you see that they and the truth are ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the matter had been brought to his memory he had always been conscious of the first gladness he had felt when he knew she had escaped. It could not seem to him anything but a happy escape, little as he knew about any of the people who played the principal parts in the little tragedy he had witnessed. ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... the Nasik tragedy have occurred since Tilak's conviction to show how dangerous was the spirit which his doctrines had aroused. One of the, gravest, symptomatically, was the happily unsuccessful attempt to throw a bomb at the Viceroy and Lady ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... exclaimed the lieutenant; "pardon me, but has anything happened? That young man now and then gives me a sense of tragedy. What HAS ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... ask, Miss Dinah dear!" Tragedy made itself heard in Biddy's rejoinder. "Sure it's them letters of Miss Isabel's that's disappeared entirely, and left no trace. And what'll I do at all when she comes to ask for them? It's not meself that'll ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... at the concluding sentence she stamped her little foot, and flinging a short waddy she held, with remarkable dexterity and no mean force, into the midst of the sable mass, she turned round to depart with the dignity of a tragedy queen, when Dunmore jumped up, caught her, and holding her wrist, walked off a little way ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... and baby incident, the day had been a satisfactory one for this cave family. Of course, had the woman failed to reach just when she did the hollow in which her babe was left there would have come a tragedy in the extinction of a young and promising cave child, and the two would have been mourning, as even wild beasts mourn for their lost young. But there was little reversion to past possibilities in the minds of the cave people. The couple ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... perpendicular position to give extra stability to the wall. The ancient rampart is in places completely overgrown with juniper. Within the wall is nothing but level field. No trace remains of any buildings that stood there in the far-off days when the spot was the scene of all passions and vanities, the tragedy and comedy of human life, even as we know it now. The peasant as he ploughs or digs turns up from time to time a bit of worked metal, such as a coin, or a ring, but the hands which held them may or may not be ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... their concealment, seized the two still quivering bodies, and dragged them into the forest. They were afterward found scalped, and with their hands and feet cut off. Such were the opening acts of the tragedy ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... paramour's horse, disguised as a page. Lord Shrewsbury was killed,[6] and the scandalous intimacy went on as before. No one but the queen, no one but the Duchess of Buckingham, appeared shocked at this tragedy, and no one minded their remarks, or joined in their indignation: all moral sense was suspended, or wholly stifled; and Villiers gloried in his depravity, more witty, more amusing, more fashionable than ever; and yet he seems, by the best-known and most extolled of his poems, to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... more defait, more perdus de ses membres, than I ever yet saw any poor wretch, is gone to-night to the play-house, to see the Tragedy of Narbonne. The gout may put what shackles it pleases on some people; on les rompt, et la vanite l'emporte. He seems as able to act a part in the drama as to assist ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... longer took Aunt Bessie Smail seriously enough to struggle for independence. She saw that Aunt Bessie did not mean to intrude; that she wanted to do things for all the Kennicotts. Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected with laughter. She divined that when Aunt Bessie came in with a jar ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the Pelasgi or "Mycenaean" Greeks, "Minoans," as we now call them, the Keftiu of the Egyptians. These are the ancient Greeks of the Heroic Age, to which the legends of the Hellenes refer; in their day were fought the wars of Troy and of the Seven against Thebes, in their day the tragedy of the Atridse was played out to its end, in their day the wise Minos ruled Knossos and the AEgean. And of all the events which are at the back of these legends we know nothing. The hieroglyphed tablets of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... of March, 1861, the inauguration of Lincoln took place, and well do I remember the ceremony. The day was warm and beautiful, and nature smiled in mockery of the bloody tragedy which was so soon to follow. I mingled with the crowd at the eastern portico of the Capitol, and was so fortunate as to hear and see all that took place,—the high officials who surrounded the President, his own sad and pensive face, his awkward but not undignified ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... a few political prisoners, who were no doubt culpable according to the laws, but had not forfeited life; because, forsooth, the security of the prisons was not to be trusted, and there was no sufficient police. It was the humorous trait seldom wanting to a historical tragedy, that this act of the most brutal tyranny had to be carried out by the most unstable and timid of all Roman statesmen, and that the "first democratic consul" was selected to destroy the palladium of the ancient freedom of the Roman commonwealth, the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... confounded will seems to offer no soft spot on which one could commence an attack. But we won't give up. We seem to have sucked the will dry. Let us now have a few facts respecting the parties concerned in it; and, as Jeffrey is the central figure, let us begin with him and the tragedy at New Inn that formed the starting-point of ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Pertinax in consideration of his brave exploits obtained the consulship, there were nevertheless some who showed displeasure at the fact that he was of obscure family, and quoted the line from tragedy: ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... would seem that the atmosphere of Van Berg's studio that summer morning was not at all conducive to tragedy of any kind, nor were there in his face or manner any indications of comedy, which to poor Ida would have been far worse; for an air of careless "bonhomie" on his part when she was so desperately in earnest would have made his smiles ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... engendered the spirit of Circe, or gave to a Helen the lust of tragedy? What lit the walls of Troy? Or prepared the woes of an Andromache? By what demon counsel was the fate of Hamlet prepared? And why did the weird sisters plan ruin ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... natural. Let a real tragedy be acted, and let men believe that a real scene is before them, and the theatre would be deserted. No audience in this country could bear the presentation of a natural and real tragedy. Men go to the theatre to be amused. The scenery, the music, the attitudes, the gesticulations, all unite to fix attention and amuse; but the eloquence, so called, of the theatre, is all factitious, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... want you to know the truth. We rode straight back to the—to where we lived—and, of course, found the old man gone away from the place. We tracked him right enough, but came up when it was all over. Daly and Moran were the chief actors in that tragedy.' ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... upon one or other of these eminent rivals a sentence of exile for ten years. The one who remained became, of course, more powerful, yet less in a situation to be driven into anti-constitutional courses than he was before. Tragedy and comedy were now beginning to be grafted on the lyric and choric song. First, one actor was provided to relieve the chorus; next, two actors were introduced to sustain fictitious characters and carry on a dialogue in such manner that the songs of the chorus and the interlocution of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... to my better judgment; and the compositions of my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth years—(for example, the shorter blank verse poems, the lines, which now form the middle and conclusion of the poem entitled the Destiny of Nations, and the tragedy of Remorse)—are not more below my present ideal in respect of the general tissue of the style than those of the latest date. Their faults were at least a remnant of the former leaven, and among the many who ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... think right, and it never hurt a man yet to make a clean breast of his feelings, even if we do not quite agree we understand each other the better for it. I have my way of thinking, you have yours; thus we each know what the other means; but after the tragedy comes the satyr play, and we may as well finish this agitating evening with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you forget that he is an elephant. So with De Quincey. Levity is an element farthest removed from his humor; in fact, whenever he allows himself to indulge in humor at all, you may be sure that murder is going on somewhere in the vicinity, a tragedy of pretty frequent occurrence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... at this table has," said Faubourg. "Mrs. Baldwin has written 'Matilda,' Mr. Giles has written a tragedy called 'Queen Swaflod,' I wrote a play in my youth, my 'Le Menetrier de Parme'; I'm sure Corporal has written a play. Count Sciarra must have written several; have you ever written a play?" he said, turning to his ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... revulsions of feeling, terror, hope, surprise. Such are the fruits of criminal trials. The head of the prisoner becomes a shuttlecock between the advocate and magistrate. The varied chances of such a scene offer great and real interest, effacing all the fictions of tragedy. There, far more than on the stage, women take delight in the dark dramas, and are the first to resent the terrible effect ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. Had the prestige[541] which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. The rude warm blood of the living England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and gave body which he wanted to his airy and majestic fancy. The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... inequality, supremacy of the Catholics in the Church, and supremacy of the Church over the State. The fruits of the forty years' war would have become dust and ashes. It would be mere weak sentimentalism to doubt—after the bloody history which had just closed and the awful tragedy, then reopening—that every spark of religious liberty would have soon been trodden out in the Netherlands. The general onslaught of the League with Ferdinand, Maximilian of Bavaria, and Philip of Spain at its head against the distracted, irresolute, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... long-cued Chinaman from Vancouver, started up the Frazer River in the old days when the Telegraph Trail and the headwaters of the Peace were the Meccas of half the gold-hunting population of British Columbia, he did not foresee tragedy ahead of him. He was a clever man, was Shan Tung, a cha-sukeed, a very devil in the collecting of gold, and far-seeing. But he could not look forty years into the future, and when Shan Tung set off into the north, that winter, he was in reality touching fire to the end of a fuse that was to burn ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... had just retired, but Ellen Tree was making a success, and Macready was already distinguished in his profession. Still the excellence and prestige of the stage had declined incontestably since the days of Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble. Edmund Kean, though he did much for tragedy, had a short time to do it in, and was not equal in his passion of genius to the sustained majesty of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... raise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee to the invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, in mid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score of volumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that of Coleridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man since Shakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged." The generosity of his friends gave the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... unclaimed, masterless puppy, and flings it, all soft and yielding, into the horrid mess of the cart, and passes on. And only that which is immortal and divine of the puppy remains behind, floating perhaps like an invisible vapour over the scene of the tragedy. ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... passio,' in which not only the lovers, the stadholder and his family, but also the high and mighty States-General, were obliged to enact their parts. The chronicles are filled with the incidents, which, however, never turned to tragedy, nor even to romance, but ended, without a catastrophe, in a rather insipid marriage. The Princess Emilia remained true both to her religion and her husband during a somewhat obscure wedded life, and after her death Don Emmanuel found means to reconcile himself with the King of Spain and to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... seemed shrunken—not in weight, but in its spring, as if all her alertness (she was under fifty) had oozed out. It was only when she had completed her labors and taken a chair beside him, her soft, nursing hand covering his own, that his mind reverted to the tragedy which had brought him to her side. Even then, although she sat with her face turned toward his, her eyes reading his own, some moments passed before either of them spoke. At last, in a wondering, dazed way, she exclaimed: "Have you, in all your life, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... family, and especially his favorite Pierre, a liberal education. The boy was accordingly sent to school, under a teacher who at that time was making his mark in the world,—Roscellin, the reputed father of Nominalism. As the whole import and tragedy of his life may be traced back to this man's teaching, and the relation which it bore to the thought of the time, we must pause ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the mighty river gleamed, unheeding the tragedy that had been enacted on its shores, unmindful of the threads of destiny even now being spun by ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... sight, as also were her tracks in the direction of the forest, and these I followed for some distance without much difficulty, coming out at length into an open glade, through which a tiny streamlet made its way. And here, among an outcrop of immense granite rocks, I came upon the signs of a tragedy. The long grass was disturbed and beaten down, as though a desperate struggle had taken place; the ground was smeared and splashed with blood; and in the midst of it lay one of Ama's spears, and the broken shaft of the other. And, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood |
