"Comfortless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the generality of houses, all of one story, built of adobes (mud-bricks dried in the sun), with flat roofs of sand and lime resting on wooden rafters, and the naked ground for a floor, all dark, dirty, and comfortless. There are even many huts built entirely of the universal aloe. The stems of wild aloes which have been allowed to flower are stuck into the ground, side by side, and pieces of leaves tied on outside them with aloe-fibre. These cut leaves are ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... time), she purrs approval of our punctuality. What she detests are noise, confusion, people who bustle in and out of rooms, and the unpardonable intrusions of the housemaid. On those unhappy days when I am driven from my desk by the iron determination of this maid to "clean up," my cat is as comfortless as I am. Companions in exile, we wander aimlessly to and fro, lamenting our lost hours. I cannot explain to Lux that the fault is none of mine, and I am sure that she holds ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... disposed in streets, but are scattered about without order, and without any neatness, or cleanliness, and the spaces between them are occupied by piles of dirt and pools of muddy water. The valley in which this comfortless village is situated is, however, pretty enough, though not wooded; the hills forming it are of an irregular shape, and covered at top with grass and sweet-scented flowers; the lower parts are cultivated with millet, buckwheat, a kind of French bean, and tobacco, ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... morning after a very comfortless night there was a visible alteration for the worse in many of the people which gave me great apprehensions. An extreme weakness, swelled legs, hollow and ghastly countenances, a more than common inclination to sleep, with an apparent debility of understanding, seemed to me the melancholy ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... saw land. The wind continued hard and cold; by "hard" is meant that no change can be expected till it dies naturally away. Another child is dead of the measles. Mr. Grindrod and I engaged in reading together "The Refugee." No fish to be seen. The day has been very cold and comfortless, very unfavourable for the ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... many respects rough and comfortless, and so intensely conservative were the ruling powers in these respects that complaint or remonstrance scarcely received any attention. On the other hand, the utmost liberality prevailed in most matters. The foundation scholars' dinner, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... domestic felicity. How it is possible for those who have once tasted this, the sweetest of all human delights, how it is possible for any rational mind afterwards to submit to be whirled round in the vortex of dissipation, to tolerate, to endure, the empty, vain, comfortless, nothingness of fashionable amusements, now appears to me to be almost inexplicable. The real felicity imparted and received in a happy domestic circle, in one evening, far, very far surpasses all the pleasures derived from the gaze and throng of crowded routs and fashionable parties ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... story about this hard Scotswoman's unkindness, and felt little disposed to go into the house; yet, for the sake of learning what he had come to learn, he determined to enter. The cottage, for it was little more than a cottage, was clean, but comfortless and bare of any adornment whatever. It might seem as though no woman entered this building, for there were no marks of a woman's handicraft, none of those little suggestions of the ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... men sunk in equal barbarism. When we follow men home, who have been cooperating with other civilized men in continuous labour throughout the livelong day, we should not, without experience, expect to find their homes dreary, comfortless, deformed with filth, such homes as poverty alone could not make. Still less, when we gaze upon some pleasant looking village, fair enough in outward seeming for poets' songs to celebrate, should we expect to find scarcity of fuel, scantiness ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... plastered with clay and banked up with snow, leaving a hole at the top as a chimney for the smoke, the fire being always built upon a broad, flat stone in the centre of the hut. In these rude, and, according to our estimate, comfortless cabins, they hibernate, rather than live the life of civilized human beings, for eight months ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendour and comfort are to be found? If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there never would be a good house or a good government in the world.... There ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... "But that is what you won't see; how should you? You will only see dusty, upstart towns, with horrible corrugated-iron hotels, where you will swelter in heat and flies and eat abominable tinned stuffs. It is a barren, comfortless land at present, with a possibility of being useful some day. They want money, energy, brains to develop it thoroughly; and they won't accept them when they are offered, because a few stiff-necked Englishmen happen to be in power. It is absurd to go there ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... a few minutes later, and were standing in a big and rather comfortless room when Sproatly ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... fumbles about the domains Which this comfortless oven environ! He cannot find out in what track he must crawl, Now back to the tiles, then in search of the wall, [6] And now on the brink ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... would approach the sepulchre of all my friends. Dreary, solitary, comfortless. It was no longer home. Natalie and ma bonne amie have been with me most of the time since my return (about twenty-four hours past). My letters from Washington broke up that cursed plan of J. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... he said, half aloud, between the whiffs of his pipe, "dear Lord! how very good thou art to me! Didst thee not say, 'I'll not leave thee comfortless, I'll come to thee?' I know what that means, bless thy name; and the good Spirit has many a time brought me comfort, and cheered my heart. I know thou didst not leave me alone before. No, no! that was far from thee, Lord. Alone!—why, thou'rt always here; and now there's ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... night he began to feel very cold. Instinctively he tried not to awake, as if even in sleep he knew how comfortless his surroundings were. He thrust his hands up his coat-sleeves and curled himself up on the bed; but at last the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... as speeding on thy way Homeward thou hastest light of heart along, If heavily creep on one little day The medley crew of travellers among, Think on thine absent friend: reflect that here On Life's sad journey comfortless he roves, Remote from every scene his heart holds dear, From him he values, and from her he loves. And when disgusted with the vain and dull Whom chance companions of thy way may doom, Thy mind, of each ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... sojourn and absence, Comfortless, vague, and slight,— Like feathers wafted backwards ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... treasure, Some one to cherish me friendless—some chief Able to guide me with wisdom of counsel, Willing to greet me and comfort my grief. He who hath tried it, and he alone, knoweth How harsh a comrade is comfortless Care Unto the man who hath no dear protector, Gold wrought with fingers nor treasure so fair. Chill is his heart as he roameth in exile— Thinketh of banquets his boyhood saw spread; Friends and companions partook of his pleasures— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... study and of artistic enjoyment. If at any moment, however, the notion of condemning them passes through the mind, — if we have visions of the balustrade against the sky, — we revert to our homely image with kindly loyalty, when we remember the long months of rain and snow, and the comfortless leaks to be avoided. The thought of a glaring, practical unfitness is enough to spoil our pleasure in any form, however beautiful intrinsically, while the sense of practical fitness is enough to reconcile us to the most awkward and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... cells and cottages, thought to be the remains of those sequestered habitations to which hermits were wont to retire for the uses of penance and mortification; and it is remarked that, in the whole earth, a more comfortless and desert place could not have been selected for so pious a purpose. From these hills of desolation, however, there is obtained a magnificent prospect of the Plain of Jericho, the Dead Sea, and of the distant summits of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... veins and nerves. Or it resembles the transformation of a shabby piece of suburban building-ground: it has to be dug up, drained, paved, fenced; and until traffic has poured into it, it remains a comfortless ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... streams attract each slender point to a centre of prophesying thought long before the blood-red aurora stains suddenly the midnight sky and betrays the influence which has been none the less mighty because it has been colorless. Sometimes a people says all that it has in its mind to say, during that comfortless period while the storm is in the air and has not yet precipitated its cutting crystals. The most sensitive minds are goaded to express emphatically their moral feeling and expectation in such a rude climate, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the same room with me. But at these hotels I found myself driven away—propelled as it were by some unknown force—to absent myself from the feminine haunts. Anything was more palatable than them, even "liquoring up" at a nasty bar, or smoking in a comfortless reading-room among a deluge of American newspapers. And I protest also—hoping as I do so that I may say much in this book to prove the truth of such protestation—that this comes from no fault of the American women. They are as lovely as our own women. Taken generally, they are better ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... skirt, sabots on her feet, and a black woollen shawl over her head and shoulders. She seemed quite pleased to see us—was not at all put out at being caught in such very simple attire—begged us to come in and ushered us through a long, narrow hall and several cold, comfortless rooms, the shutters not open and no fire anywhere, into her bedroom. All the furniture—chairs, tables and bed—was covered with linen. She explained that it was her "lessive" (general wash) she had just made, that all the linen was dry, but she had not had time to put it away. ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... his meat was sauced with your upbraidings; unquiet meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown him into this fever. You say his sports were disturbed by your brawls; being debarred from the enjoyment of society and recreation, what could ensue but dull melancholy and comfortless despair? The consequence is then, that your jealous fits have made ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... of the place appeared bare and comfortless. There were no rugs in the hall, no carpet on the stairs, nor a single sign of habitation. Nor was there any servant about. She looked again into the room out of which she had just stepped. They were preparing to lift the body from the gate, which they had laid upon the floor, on to ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that he was neither deficient in zeal nor prudence. The place prepared for his ministry was, indeed, comfortless: the wind overpowered his voice, and his congregation shivered with cold; but to the men it was a new era. Having discoursed on the advantages of knowledge, forty-seven prisoners requested instruction; and, assisted by Mr. Commissary Lempriere, and countenanced ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... met according to the call, July 1, 1643, in the Church of Westminster. Dr. William Twisse, President, preached the opening sermon from Christ's precious promise, "I will not leave you comfortless." These word's were as apples of gold in pictures of silver, in those days of woeful distraction. One week later they met again, when the oath was administered to every member ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... drawing-room. There was nothing in the huge gloomy room but a piano and a long row of old chairs ornamented with bronze, on which no one ever sat. There was a candle alight on the piano. From the drawing-room they went in silence into the dining-room. This room, too, was large and comfortless; in the middle of the room there was a round table with two leaves with six thick legs, and only one candle. A clock in a large mahogany case like an ikon stand pointed to ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... dead you come to me In the moonlight, comfortless; Ah, what would I have given alive To ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... tenderly over the white, wrinkled face, which lay upon the small, scanty pillow. John thought "how small and scanty they were," while he almost shuddered at the sound of his footsteps upon the uncarpeted floor. Everything was dreary and comfortless, and his conscience reproached him that his old father should die so poor, when he counted ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... when he sets out upon this task, he ought to know that, however sweet and ideal human companionship may be as it exists among men, humanity as a whole must fight its battle with nature and with the universe substantially alone, comfortless except for the comforts that it wins precisely as it builds its houses; namely, by using the mechanisms of nature for its own purposes. The world happens, indeed, to give man some power to control natural conditions. But even this power is due to the very fact that man also ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... of life. He endeavoured to bear proudly the evils of his situation, but he had neither the energy nor the courage to surmount them. He withdrew himself from society, and passed the remainder of his days in a solitary, comfortless, log hut on the borders of the wilderness. Here he drooped and died, as too many like him have died, heartbroken and alone. A sad mystery involves the last hours of his life: it is said that he and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... is an orderless village gathered about a green-shored little lake, and includes the office of the agent, the post-office, a warehouse for supplies, a meat-shop, two trading-stores and an untidy and comfortless hotel. Near by is the neat cottage of the agent, a large and comely boarding-school, an industrial school, and the residences of the chief clerk and of the head-farmer, who teaches and aids the Indians in practical farming. Not far away ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... obliged to set forth, at once upon what he felt would be a bootless journey. At his return—which was upon the 22nd of July (N.S.)the shrewd old gentleman had nearly arrived at the opinion that her Majesty might as well break off the negotiations. He had a "comfortless voyage and a ticklish message;" found all along the road signs of an approaching enterprise, difficult to be mistaken; reported 10,000 veteran Spaniards, to which force Stanley's regiment was united; 6000 Italians, 3000 Germans, all with pikes, corselets, and slash swords complete; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wrong one, came into a wild region, where she soon perceived how entirely confused she had become. She no longer knew which way to go, and in despair threw herself into the grass and wept. All her ambition was gone; she let the squirrel run away, and gave herself up to her own comfortless feelings. She thought now of the uneasiness and anxiety of her mother, and wept all the more at the thought of her own folly. But, however, consoling thoughts, before long, chased away these desponding ones. She dried her eyes with ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... stroking the Wolfhound's ears, while he thought, and thought, and found only greater sadness in his thinking. Finn felt plainly that a crisis had arrived, and he tried to show his agreement and understanding, when at long last, the Master rose from his comfortless wooden ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... be Marjory's. If you can forgive the past, Hugh, make this your home. You shall not regret it, I promise you. I do believe I have laid that old ghost of jealousy at last. All I have is to be Marjory's. My old age would be comfortless indeed if I were doomed to spend it here alone. Perhaps that is what I deserve, but do give the old place a ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... this last chapter is a more delightful one than if I were the usual solicitor of fiction, come to inform the poor-but-honest newsboy that he is a royal duke. It is my privilege to comfort many of the comfortless by revealing to them how and why they are—or may be—masters of an art as indispensable as the arts which they now regard so wistfully. I mean the art of master-making—the art of being a ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... lain down on the open staircase, and was slumbering soundly. Having lighted the candle at length and opened his own door, he softly ascended, holding the taper high above his head, and peering cautiously about; curious to see what kind of man had chosen so comfortless a shelter for ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... The gray earth dawning up, cold, comfortless; With its obtrusive I am written large ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... coat. Death! It was a chilly business. He smoked a cigarette in the carriage—one of his rare cigarettes. The night was windy and flew on black wings; the carriage lights had to search out the way. His father! That old, old man! A comfortless ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is married in her travelling dress does not have bridesmaids but attendants, whose dresses should harmonise but not eclipse her own. Due regard should be paid to the time of year in the choice of materials. White gauzy frocks look chill and comfortless in mid-winter, even if the wearers do not shiver perceptibly and are not afflicted with red noses; but soft, thick fabrics like white cloth or velvet trimmed with touches of fur, suggest the warmth that lies beneath the snow. The flowers of the season ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... in a rough-looking little mining settlement in Colorado. In a shanty rougher and more comfortless than the rest were two persons: one, a man of thirty, was deeply engaged in cleaning and oiling a gun which lay in pieces about him on the rough bench where he sat; the other, a youth of sixteen, was trying to make a fire burn in the primitive-looking affair that ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... he was only to exchange one ordeal for another. "It's a ramshackle, comfortless place, Quita," he objected. "Wouldn't it be better to wait till . . till I can have it decently fitted up for you? Or you might like ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Lancaster at half past nine, and reached Liverpool at twelve, over as flat and uninteresting a country as I ever travelled. I have betaken myself to the Rock Ferry Hotel, where I am as comfortable as I could be anywhere but at home; but it is rather comfortless to think of hone as three years off, and three thousand miles away. With what a sense of utter weariness, not fully realized till then, we shall sink down on our own threshold, when we reach it. The moral effect of being without a settled abode ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seized upon Althea, and the mother love which had slept in her bosom was reawakened. Too late, also, the folk of Calydon remembered who it was that had saved them from slavery and death. Down into the comfortless halls of Hades, Althea hastened to seek her son's forgiveness. The loving heart of Cleopatra, surcharged with grief, was broken; and her gentle spirit fled to the world of shades to meet that of her hero-husband. ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... comfortless home, and neglected children, Mrs. Uhler returned in a state of mind so different from anything she had experienced for years, that she half wondered within herself if she were really the same woman. Scales had fallen suddenly ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... seats as before, but was wakened up by the conductor, who took from me a cushion more than was my due; so I had to spend the rest of the night nodding on a box at the end of the car. However, even the longest and most comfortless night will come to an end; and when at last the morning broke, I went out to ascertain whereabouts we were. I found that it had snowed heavily during the night; and we now seemed to be in a much colder and more desolate country. The wind felt dreadfully ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... of the two years and nine months during which Shelley lived with Harriet must seem insane to a rational mind. Life was one comfortless picnic. When Shelley wanted food, he would dart into a shop and buy a loaf or a handful of raisins. Always accompanied by Eliza, they changed their dwelling-place more than twelve times. Edinburgh, York, Keswick, Dublin, Nantgwillt, Lynmouth, Tremadoc, Tanyrallt, Killarney, London (Half ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Their spears they brandished, angry in their hearts, Under the roof of shields; they fain would see Whether those hapless men were yet alive, Who fast in chains within their prison-walls 130 Had dwelt a while in comfortless abode, And which one they might first for their repast Rob of his life after the time ordained. They had set down, those slaughter-greedy foes, In runic characters and numerals The death-day of those men, when they should serve As food unto that famine-stricken ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... being made, the trunks encumbering the passages of the dear old Dean Street lodging, which I shall love as long as I shall remember at all—one day, almost the last of his stay, when the good man (his Excellency we called him now) came home to his dinner—a comfortless meal enough it was in the present condition of the family—he looked round the table at the place where I had used to sit in happy old days, and sighed out: "I wish, Molly, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Europe. But it is already crawling through the mountains: hundreds of Italian laborers are putting down the shining rails in woods and glens where no sounds save the song of birds or the carol of the infrequent passer-by have heretofore been heard. For the present, however, the old-fashioned, comfortless diligence keeps the roads: the beribboned postilion winds his merry horn, and as the afternoon sun is getting low the dusty, antique vehicle rattles up to the court of the inn, the guard gets down, dusts the leather casing of the gun which now-a-days ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... and lacking in the comforts, as well as the luxuries, of civilisation. Dances, theatres, concerts, even shops, are far, very far away. A woman must have mental resources to enable her to face contentedly life in a scantily-furnished, comfortless bungalow, dumped down in a monotonous stretch of unlovely tea-bushes. With little to occupy her she must rely for days at a time on the sole companionship of her man. To a young bride very much in love that may seem no hardship. But when the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... Anaitis was to divert; and there were so many people whom she had personally to visit—so many notable ascetics who were advancing straight toward canonization, and whom her underlings were unable to divert,—that Anaitis was compelled to pass night after night in unwholesomely comfortless surroundings, in monasteries and in the cells ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... with that of the Cubry, we soon reach Moussy, where the vineyards, spite of their long pedigree and southern aspect, also rank as a second cr. Still skirting the vine-clad slopes we come to Vinay, noted for an ancient grotto—the comfortless abode of some rheumatic anchorite—and a pretended miraculous spring to which fever-stricken pilgrims to-day credulously resort. The water may possibly merit its renown, but the wine here produced is very inferior, due no doubt to the class of vines, the meunier being ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... fleshly to the spiritual, and shaping us to meet the purity of God. And such is the tender consideration of this Power for our weakness that while we are learning to give up these baser pleasures He teaches us the higher pleasures of the soul—we are not left comfortless. So in our earlier stages we may have many very wonderful ecstasies which later are altogether dispensed with, and indeed are eventually not desired by the soul, or even the more greedy heart and mind, which ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... the snow lay in little heaps here and there. There was no stove in the building, as every one knows. Some of the women had hot bricks and little foot-stoves, and that was all. Ann did not care for either. She sat up straight in the comfortless, high-backed pew. Her cheeks were as red as her crimson cloak, her black eyes shone like stars. She let Mrs. Polly and Nabby have the hot stones, but her own agile little feet were as warm as toast. Little Hannah French, over across the meeting-house, looked chilled and blue, but somehow Ann ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... however, libel even the Sandy Desert, by producing the impression that it is all barren and comfortless. Though far more difficult to travel over than the Hamadah, it possesses the inestimable advantage of having water every day once at least. A little after noon, indeed, we passed two lakes; one small, and the other of considerable dimensions, containing ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... two o'clock came,—three, four, five o'clock,—and no Vavasor. Hour after hour she listened to the chime of the gaudy timepiece decorating their shabby apartment; and while the night advanced, in all its chilly, lonely, comfortless protraction, shivered as she added new logs to the dying embers, and as she hoped or despaired of his return, alternately replaced the veilleuse by candles, the candles by a veilleuse. She had already assumed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... closed; others still open as in summer. I meet a wood-sawyer, with his horse and saw on his shoulders, returning from work. As night draws on, you begin to see the gleaming of fires on the ceilings in the houses which you pass. The comfortless appearance of houses at bleak and bare spots,—you wonder how there can be any enjoyment in them. I meet a girl in a chintz gown, with a small shawl on her shoulders, white stockings, and summer morocco shoes,—it looks observable. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of an optimist to see a home in that apparently comfortless situation, but men just relieved from the firing line are not over-critical, and the prospect of a night under the stars, but away from the crash of shell and the "phit" of striking bullets, was pleasant enough to ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... estrangements,—sundered the closest links of earthly affection? In Jesus thou hast filial and fraternal love combined; He is the Friend of friends, whose presence and fellowship compensates for all losses, and supplies all blanks; "He setteth the solitary in families." If thou art orphaned, friendless, comfortless here, remember there is in the Elder Brother on the Throne a love deep as the unfathomed ocean, ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... his income should be assigned to the procuring of that higher quality of domestic service, which can alone relieve the mistress of a household from a burthen so heavy to be borne. Unlike so many of those around him, who would spend on a single pretending and comfortless entertainment, in which the ostentatious folly of one contended with the ostentatious folly of another a sum that, properly directed, would introduce order and system into a family for a twelvemonth, by commanding the time and knowledge of those whose study they had been, and who would be ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... this wonderful secret. But the agony of those last few hours, and the gloomy words of the priest who leant over his bedside, had found their way in between the joints of the dying man's armour of secrecy. Word by word, the story had been wrested from him. In the cold and comfortless hour of death, the strong, worldly man felt his physical weakness loosen the iron bands of his will, and he became for a time almost like a child in the hands of the keen, swiftly-questioning priest. He had not found much comfort ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... half who never stood By the grave of one held dear, And out of the deep, dark loneliness Of a heart bereaved and comfortless, From sorrow's crystal plentitude, Feeling his loss severe, Dropped ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... said the Moon, "is an inn, and opposite to it is a great waggon-shed, whose straw roof was just being re-thatched. I looked down between the bare rafters and through the open loft into the comfortless space below. The turkey-cock slept on the beam, and the saddle rested in the empty crib. In the middle of the shed stood a travelling carriage; the proprietor was inside, fast asleep, while the horses were being ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... they could travel comfortably from place to place, and no wheeled carriages. They lived in castles, very strongly built indeed, and very grand and picturesque sometimes in external appearance, but very illy furnished and comfortless within. The artisans were skillful in fabricating splendid caparisons for the horses, and costly suits of glittering armor for the men, and the architects could construct grand cathedrals, and ornament them with sculptures ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... upon our burial sod And know not whence we come or whose we be, Comfortless mourners for the mount of God, The ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... the war—dead sick of it. He is weary of the interminable procession of comfortless nights and days. He is weary of the sight of maimed and bleeding men—of the awful suspense of waiting for death. In the words of his pathetic little song, he does "want to go 'ome." But there is that within ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... a comfortless, tumble-down place. The outlines of the crazy huts and sheds which enclosed it on three sides showed clear in the starlight. A gaunt plough-horse stood motionless in the cold shelter of a skeleton haywagon; in one corner a drinking-trough ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the worst, while the fire grate, empty save for a few dead ashes, seemed but a picture of his own misery, and instead of yielding him even a grain of comfort, its bars, appeared to grin upon him with solid defiance. Everything seemed comfortless in the extreme, and as the melancholy train of thought into which he had fallen was in no wise cheered by this manner of proceeding, he passed into the library, which seemed least cheerless of all, ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... understand my mute inquiries and respond to them." It was this rage for fresh air and fields which made him such a bad stay-at-home bird, whether he was sheltered amid the palatial surroundings of some princely patron, or whether sojourning in the less luxurious and comfortless atmosphere of some one of his frequently changed lodgings. He disliked any control, and truly meant it when, at intervals, growing impatient with the constant requests for his company, he complained outright that he was forced ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... recounted all that Hamilton had done and said. He described the dreary and comfortless room in which Alice was confined, the miserable fare given her, and how she would be exposed to the leers and low remarks of the soldiers. She had already suffered these things, and now that she could no longer have any protection, what was ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... travelling; the rich hire state-cabins on board well-appointed "Infidel" steamers, and the poor content themselves with "Faithful" Sambuks. Indeed, it would seem that all the present measures, quarantines of sixty days (!) and detention at wretched Tor, comfortless enough to make the healthiest lose health, are intended to discourage and deter "palmers" from proceeding by land. If this course be continued, a very few years will see the venerable institution represented by only the Mahmal and its guard. The late Sa'id Pasha ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... mechanician, rising. "Tomorrow will prove whether we have been following a shadow, or whether fortune is at our feet. One o'clock at Victoria." He walked swiftly down the stair and was quickly reabsorbed into the flood of comfortless clammy humanity which ebbed ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rules of the prison required that we should all rise at six, roll up the rugs, lay them at the heads of our beds, and sweep out the room. Weary and sore, I paced the prison while these things were done. Even the morning ablution was comfortless and distressing; a pocket-handkerchief serving but indifferently for ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... comfortless town of Calais was now to be the place of residence, for nearly the rest of his life, to a man accustomed to the highest luxuries of London life, trained to the keenest sensibility of London enjoyment, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... came, and she went out to the field, her story untold, a marked woman. Yet she was not comfortless. The something that Alston had told her the previous day was making her heart sing. This is what he told her: "While yer wus stealin' from me, Lizay, I wus he'pin' yer. I put a ha'f er sack in yer baskit ter-day, an' a ha'f er sack yistiddy—kase I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... There everything was comfortless,—for there had been no notice of their coming. The apartments had been occupied by the servants of the court, who, turning out in a hurry, left everything in confusion. Probably Louis did not mind this,—glad enough to get to bed ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... till he had sight of his poor home; the solitary company of chairs; the sofa looking bony and comfortless as an old female house drudge; the table with his desk on it; and, through folding-doors, his cold and narrow bed; not till then did the fact of his great loss stand before him, and accuse him of living. He seated himself methodically ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... looking out, we saw the Oberwinter postilion coming round the nearest bend in the river. On this hint, we took our leave of the island, not forgetting to apply a little of the universal salve to the bruised spirit of the old woman whose dread of thunder had caused her to pass so comfortless a night. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... southwest, and drove the waves against the shore with great fury; the rain, too, fell in torrents, and not only drenched us to the skin, but loosened the stones on the hillsides, so that they came rolling down upon us. In this comfortless condition we remained all day, wet and cold, and with nothing but dried fish to satisfy our hunger; the canoes at the mercy of the waves at one place, the baggage in another, and the men scattered on floating logs, or sheltering themselves ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... they from fire Had issu'd." He replied: "Eternal fire, That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame Illum'd; as in this nether hell thou seest." We came within the fosses deep, that moat This region comfortless. The walls appear'd As they were fram'd of iron. We had made Wide circuit, ere a place we reach'd, where loud The mariner cried vehement: "Go forth! The' entrance is here!" Upon the gates I spied More than a thousand, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... favour of this young man, whom formerly I so little liked; for I now see so much of him, business and inclination uniting to bring him hither continually, that if he were disagreeable to me, I should spend my time in a most comfortless manner. On the contrary, I both respect and esteem him very highly; for his whole conduct manifests so much goodness of heart and excellence of principle, that he is Un homme comme ill y en a peu; and ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the highest. It is not very long since that a young Russian noble lost in one evening a sum equal to a hundred thousand pounds. The Vienna Club is good in its own stiff German way; but, generally speaking, German Clubs are very ill arranged, dirty, and comfortless. The Italian are better. Turin, Naples, and Florence have reasonably good Clubs. Home has nothing but the thing called the English Club, a poorly-got-up establishment of small ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... he had not received a single letter from his friends, and his longing to get news from them was such as only those boys can understand who have never been away from home until they have suddenly gone upon a long and comfortless journey, and who then begin to realize, as never before, all the loving care of their parents, the kindness of brothers and sisters, and the blessedness of the dear old nest from which they ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of prayer, Homer misses no opportunity of enforcing. Cold and comfortless as the religious creed of the heathens was, they were piously attentive to its dictates, and to a degree that may serve as a reproof to many professed believers of revelation. The allegorical history of prayer, given ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the afternoon wore on, wet, cold, and comfortless—no dinner served on account of the general confusion. The emigration commissioner was taking a final survey of the ship and shaking hands with this, that, and the other of the passengers. Fresh arrivals kept continually creating a little additional excitement—these were ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... not make any reply, but took my Cremona, and sought to lift up all my soul to a level with hers, to that lofty realm where her spirit ever wandered, that so I might not be comfortless. She started at the first tone that I struck forth, and looked at me with her large, earnest eyes. I found my own gaze fixed on hers, rapt and entranced. Now there came at last the inspiration so longed for, so sought for. It came from where ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... lived to the eighteenth year of Henry the Eighth, She had sown her good deeds, her good offices, her alms her charities, in a court. Not one took root; nor did the ungrateful soil repay her a grain of relief in her penury and comfortless old age. ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... and collecting their winter store of roots. In winter they hunt the deer on snow-shoes over the plains, and toward spring cross the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of rafficking for buffalo-robe. The inconveniences of their comfortless life are increased by frequent encounters with their enemies from the west, who drive them over the mountains with the loss of their horses, and sometimes the lives of ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... passing a comfortless night by the remains of my waggon, we started next morning on our long journey towards civilization. Now if I were to set to work to tell you all the troubles and incidents of that dreadful journey I should keep you listening here till ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... and the remainder of the supper, and desired him to stop at once, and keep guard over the house until he should return. Then he ordered the wagoners to harness the horses, and led the travelers out into the gray dawn of a comfortless-looking day. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... deny to do that good which thou oughtest, with what thy God hath given thee; then consider, that though he love thy soul, yet he can chastise; First, Thy inward man with such troubles, that thy life shall be restless and comfortless. Secondly, And can also so blow upon thy outward man, that all thou gettest shall be put in a bag with holes (Psa 89:31-33; Hag 1:6). And set the case he should licence but one thief among thy substance, or one spark of fire among thy barns, how quickly might that be spent ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... mother's part. I blame thee not.... Yet think not I am happy, child; nor flown With pride now, in the deeds my hand hath done.... [Seeing ELECTRA unsympathetic, she checks herself. But thou art all untended, comfortless Of body and wild of raiment; and thy stress Of travail scarce yet ended!... Woe is me! 'Tis all as I have willed it. Bitterly I wrought against him, to the last blind deep Of bitterness.... ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... have a most uncomfortable time of it, with the disturbance of the house. However, I can only leave you to manage these things as you think best—or feel pleasantest to yourself. I am saddened by another kind of disorder, France is in everything so fallen back, so desolate and comfortless, compared to what it was twenty years ago—the people so much rougher, clumsier, more uncivil—everything they do, vulgar and base. Remnants of the old nature come out when they begin to know you. I am drawing at a nice tallow-chandler's door, and to-day, for the first time had to go inside ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Gurney in his youth we get a flattering portrait in one of the charming 'Remains of the Late Mrs. Trench,' edited by her son, Archbishop of Dublin. Writing from Yarmouth in 1799, she says: 'I have been detained here since last Friday, waiting for a fair wind, and my imprisonment would have been comfortless enough had it not have been for the attention of Mr. Hudson Gurney, a young man on whom I had no claims except from a letter of Mr. Sanford's, who, without knowing him, or having any connection with him, recommended me to ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... everything that was in the least personal to him, she examined with lingering absorption. He had been gone from her for so long, she wanted to rediscover him, his position, what he was now. But there was not much in the room to help her. It only made her feel rather sad, it was so hard and comfortless. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... home—ye love not to look there On the grim smile of comfortless despair: 240 Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls, Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls. See all alike of more or less bereft; No misers tremble when there's nothing left. 'Blest paper credit;' [20] who shall dare to sing? It clogs like lead Corruption's ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... barely sunrise when Chrome's battalion struck the hostile camp this hot June day, and two hours later the situation was comfortless enough—for the strikers. Hampered with their wounded and having lost a dozen horses killed, the two troops of the Eleventh on whom had devolved the harsher share of the work had been compelled to halt in the timber and stand off the now exultant Indians. With ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the porters had brought in the trunks, thrown back the fastenings, and retired, "after rackings, and tossings, and tumblings enough to disjoint and unhinge a leviathan, to what a comfortless haven are we arrived at last! O, for a tithe of the luxury I rolled in at Niagara and Saratoga, or even one of the state-rooms of the 'Hendrick Hudson' or 'Belle of the Waters!' They were rooms of state indeed compared with ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... paroxysm of weeping and sank to the ground in an utterly exhausted condition, moaning aloud in the despair of her misery. Her little daughter was screaming in terror at the plight of her mother, and we all set about to comfort them as best we could, but ah! God! how comfortless our words. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... had received her death-blow. She looked ten years older; she was white and haggard and tragic. Her eyes burned with a strange fitful fire that prompted one to conclude her children had better look out for her. When not filled with this unnatural flame they were suffused with comfortless tears; and altogether the afflicted lady was, as he viewed her, very bad, a case for anxiety. It was because he had known she would be very bad that he had, in his kindness, called on her exactly in this manner; but he recognised ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... agreed to separate, and examine the country to the right and left for an hour precisely, meeting at one of the villages in the road, if no advance of the enemy were discernible within that time. We parted, and I commenced as comfortless an expedition as it would be easy to imagine. The Flemish cross-roads, never very passable, were now deep in mire; the rivulets, of which they are generally the conduits, had been swelled by the storm of the night before; and I floundered on for nearly the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... of feverish sleep I was awakened by a strange murmur, which, mixing with my dreams, had given me the comfortless idea of hearing the roar of the multitude at some of the horrid displays of the guillotine; and as I half opened my unwilling eyes, still heavy with sleep, I saw a long procession of figures, in flowing mantles and draperies, moving down the huge hall. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... for their wives; and these introduce into the world families of children, whom they are utterly incompetent to train as rational or domestic beings. The home is no home, but a mere lodging, and often a very comfortless one. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... is entirely lined with cork: the walls, the roofs, the floors, are covered with cork; the tables, seats, chairs, beds, couches, the furniture of the chapel, the crucifixes, and every other implement, are all made of cork. The place was certainly dismal and comfortless to a great degree, but it wanted the gigantic form, the grim features, the terrific aspect which distinguish the temple of Poo-sa, in the rock of Quan-gin-shan." Dismal as this gloomy den appeared to be, where a few miserable beings had ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... one little spot seldom penetra- ted by her mistress' watchful eye: this was her room, uninviting and comfortless; but to her- self a safe retreat. Here she would listen to the pleadings of a Saviour, and try to penetrate the veil of doubt and sin which clouded her soul, and long to cast off the fetters of sin, and rise ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... land Of strangers, stealing thee from death! For then Thou hadst been quiet on that far off day, And had thy portion in our father's tomb Now thou hast perished in the stranger land Far from thy sister, lorn and comfortless And I, O wretchedness! neither have bathed And laid thee forth, nor from the blazing fire Collected the sad burden, as was meet But thou, when foreign hands have tended thee Com'st a small handful in a narrow shell Woe for the constant care I spent on thee Of old all vainly, with sweet toil! For ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... hours, a storm that lays the deep grass flat, beats down branches, and turns every hollow into a lake, was more than they had provided for, I fear. My heart went out to the dozens of bobolink and song-sparrow babies buried under the matted grass, the little tawny thrushes wandering around cold and comfortless on the soaked ground in the woods, the warbler infants,—redstart and chestnut-sided—that I knew were sitting humped up and miserable in some watery place under the berry bushes, the young tanager only just out of the nest, and the two cuckoo ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... bottom on the other side. Once more, after many months of waiting we rejoice in the gleam of its waters. The broad valley, which has so long been paved with white, is bottomed with amethyst now, the fainter reflection of the azure sky above. The trees which have so long stood comfortless again see their doubles in the waters below. The huge gray trunks of the water elms and the silver maples, the red rags of the birches and the delicate tracery of their spray, the ruby gold of the willows, the shining white of the sycamores, the ashen green of the ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... at noon, without finding any part of the lake inclining nearer the fort. They therefore encamped to observe the eclipse, which was to take place on the following morning; but a violent snow storm rendering the observation impossible, they commenced their return, and after a comfortless and laborious march regained their canoe on the 10th, and embarking in it, arrived the same evening at ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... comfortless the room, so was Miss Sophie's lonely life. She rented these four walls from an unkempt little Creole woman, whose progeny seemed like the promised offspring of Abraham,—multitudinous. The flickering life in the pale little body she scarcely kept there by the unceasing toil of ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... building had for some time been shut up, and given over to dust and decay, till the owners of the property decided to let it out for popular concerts, meetings and dances, and so make some little money out of its bare whitewashed walls and comfortless ugliness. The plan had succeeded fairly well, and the place was beginning to be known as a convenient centre where thousands were wont to congregate, to enjoy cheap music and cheap entertainment generally. It was a favourite vantage ground for the disaffected and radical classes of the metropolis ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... foul weeds, I sought blue rivers and green, opulent meads, And leagues of unregarded loneliness Whereon no foot of man had seemed to press, I did not know how great had been my needs, How wise the woodland's gospels and her creeds, How good her faith to one long comfortless. ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... which she was capable was lavished upon her own relatives; she had cared for Sara moderately, but her other pupil, Jill, was a thorn in her side. So I passed over Fraeulein's headache without comment, and took Jill to task somewhat sharply for the comfortless state of the room. A good scolding would rouse her from her dejection; the blinds were up and the curtains undrawn; the remains of a meal, the usual five-o'clock schoolroom tea, were still on the table. Jill's German books were heaped up beside ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... like the period of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... induced so many of the later Romans, on Epicurean as well as Stoical principles, to put an end to their existence. It is not through any unmanly despondency that Ajax is unfaithful to his rude heroism. His delirium is over, as well as his first comfortless feelings upon awaking from it; and it is not till after the complete return of consciousness, and when he has had time to measure the depth of the abyss into which, by a divine destiny, his overweening haughtiness has plunged him, when he contemplates his ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... was kept up, while, on the floor of the schoolroom, all but the two or three older ones, with the completely exhausted teacher, slept in what comfortless attitude they might. ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... high as possible, before you go to bed. Except in very rigid weather, this keeps the handle from freezing. When there is reason to apprehend extreme cold, do not forget to throw a rug or horse-blanket over your pump; a frozen pump is a comfortless preparation for a winter's breakfast. Never allow ashes to be taken up in wood, or put into wood. Always have your tinder-box and lantern ready for use, in case of sudden alarm. Have important ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... Tresco's cave, where he had made his comfortless bed, the dim light of a candle is burning. As its small flame lights up the cold walls, stained black with the smoke of the goldsmith's dead fire, a weeping woman is seen crouching on ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... bosom, until I shall have adored that earthly shrine where my Monimia lies! Yet would I know the circumstances of her fate. Did Heaven ordain no angel to minister to her distress? were her last moments comfortless? ha! was not she abandoned to indigence, to insults; left in the power of that inhuman villain who betrayed us both? Sacred Heaven! why did Providence wink at the triumph of such ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas; but they decided, as they sat huddled together in a corner of the second-class deck of the American liner St. Luke, and watched the dirty water of the Mersey slipping past and the Liverpool landing-stage disappearing into mist, and felt that it was comfortless and cold, and knew they hadn't got a father or a mother, and remembered that they were aliens, and realized that in front of them lay a great deal of gray, uneasy, dreadfully wet sea, endless stretches of it, days ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... light; that whatever their own health, or their own feelings may be, yet still in God they live, and move, and have their being; that to God's Spirit they owe all which raises them above the dumb animals; that nothing can separate them from the love of Him who promised that He would not leave us comfortless, but send to us His Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us to the same place whither He ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... his gospel, we patiently submit, and are joyful upon the occasion; though the flesh may rebel against the spirit, and hearken to the council of the old serpent, yet the truths of the gospel shall prevent such advice from being taken, and Christ shall bruise the serpent's head. We are not comfortless to confinement, for we have faith; we fear not affliction, for we have hope; and we forgive our enemies, for we have charity. Be not under apprehensions for us, we are happy in confinement through the promises of God, glory in our bonds, and exult in being thought ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... and comfortless striving,—years of rigorous self-denial, of reproach and humiliation,—Wesley had steadfastly adhered to his one purpose of seeking God. Now he had found Him; and he found that the grace which he had toiled to win by prayers and fasts, by almsdeeds and self-abnegation, was a gift, "without ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... John Milton. He waits in a kind of vague, unsatisfied fashion, but he feels that machinery is being set in motion. While it is being set in motion, he sits down before the wall on one of the seats or pews where a large audience of other comfortless and lonely-looking people are. He feels the great, heartless building gathering itself together, going after John Milton for him, while he sits and waits. One after the other he hears human beings' names being called out in space, and one by one poor scared-looking people ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... world or in that which is to come. He soon discovered that he meant the miserable De Vallance, whom, as he had served in prosperity, he would not desert in his utmost need, though he alike detested his private and despised his public character. He described him as alone, pennyless, comfortless, without resources in himself, or help from others. His worthy son had not yet discovered the place of his confinement; he knew not what was become of his son, and among all the crimes which tortured his conscience, the supposed death of Eustace was most insupportable. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... farm-yard, she saw through it a further window at the back of the room, and beyond that a tree. Both windows were large and seemed to take up most of the wall on either side of the small room. The effect was peculiarly comfortless, as though no one living in the room could possibly enjoy any shred of privacy. There were no cosy corners in it anywhere, and Miss Henderson's fancy imagined rows of faces ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... building up new institutions. But away from these institutions and out of touch with the life of the towns, we find a class of people whose condition in itself is a Macedonian cry. Their windowless, stoveless, comfortless log cabins; their so-called schools, in which on the roughest benches conceivable, and without a desk, a slate, or a blackboard, with a teacher with unkempt hair, ragged and dirty clothes, possibly bare feet, who perhaps can scarcely read, the children ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 11, November, 1889 • Various
... considered, we would believe in him. Satan knows this, and therefore his great sleight and cunning is to hold our minds fixed on the consideration of our misery and desperate estate. He keeps the awakened conscience still upon that comfortless sight, and he labours to represent God by halves, and that it is a false representation of God. He represents him as clothed with justice and vengeance,—as a consuming fire, in which light a soul can see nothing but desperation written; ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... them can't long stand, Nor they without the King; 'Tis they must advise, and 'tis he must command, For their power from his must spring. 'Tis a comfortless sway When none will obey; If the King han't his right, which way shall we? They may vote and make laws, But no good they will cause Till the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... through Cigarette's tight-pressed, bright-red lips, with an irony sadder than tears. She was sitting on the edge of a grabat, hard as wood, comfortless as a truss of straw, and looking down the long hospital room, with its endless rows of beds and its hot sun shining blindingly on its ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... desert. [60] Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured: the vacant hours of the monk heavily rolled along, without business or pleasure; and, before the close of each day, he had repeatedly accused the tedious progress of the sun. [61] In this comfortless state, superstition still pursued and tormented her wretched votaries. [62] The repose which they had sought in the cloister was disturbed by a tardy repentance, profane doubts, and guilty desires; and, while they considered each ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... whole nights observing the starry heavens. And what is the result of these long investigations? Simply this, that the life of man is nothing; that man himself is nothing; that he will never penetrate the mystery which surrounds the universe. With this comfortless conviction I descend into the grave, and console myself with the hope of speedy annihilation. The lamp goes out; and nothing, nothing can rekindle it. So, Nature, I return to thee, to be united with thee for ever. Never wilt thou ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... himself, "What is the life I am to lead, now that I have this money? Having luncheon at the club, walking in the Park in the afternoon, dining with a friend in the evening, and playing whist or billiards, with the comfortless return to my bachelor's chambers at night? Is that all that my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... it seems has place Not only in our wiser race; Cats also feel, as well as we, That passion's force, and so did she. Her climbing, she began to find, Exposed her too much to the wind, And the old utensil of tin Was cold and comfortless within: She therefore wished, instead of those, Some place of more serene repose, Where neither cold might come, nor air Too rudely wanton in her hair, And sought it in the likeliest mode Within ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... confided to the British cavalry. The Turks, accustomed to this sort of work, were at once at home, with their tents well pitched, and surrounded by such luxuries as they deemed necessary; while the young troops of England and France, few of whom had seen active warfare, were sitting wet and comfortless round ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... morning. The day had been excessively hot for the season of the year; and the night air was refreshing. But after a few snatches of sleep—greatly needed—there appeared manifest symptoms of decay and downfall in the gloomy and comfortless machine in which we took our departure. In other words, towards daylight, and just as we approached L'Aigle, the left braces (which proved to be thoroughly rotted leather) broke in two: and down slid, rather than tumbled, the Falaise Diligence! ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... nearly a side of the Square. The remaining three sides are composed of mansions that have passed away into dowagerism—tall, dark houses, with window-frames of stone, or picked out of a lighter red. Little light seems to be behind those lean, comfortless casements now, and hospitality to have passed away from those doors as much as the laced lacqueys and link-boys of old times, who used to put out their torches in the blank iron extinguishers that still flank the lamps over the steps. Brass plates have penetrated ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Meanwhile in the dark comfortless room, the light from without flickering upon his blanched face, Philip was alone with himself, with memory, and with death. As he lay gasping, a voice seemed to ring through the silent room, repeating ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had seated herself on one end of an extremely comfortless lounge and was making a palpable effort to seem at ease. Brentwick stood at one of the windows, shoulders rounded and head bent, hands clasped behind his back as he peered out into the night. Kirkwood dropped the traveling bag ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... rooms on the first floor, and they were as empty and as cheerless. Presently they came to that which had been Margaret's. In a bowl were dead flowers. Her brushes were still on the toilet table. But it was a gloomy chamber, with its dark oak, and, so comfortless that Susie shuddered. Arthur stood for a time and looked at it, but he said nothing. They found themselves again on the stairs and they went to the second storey. But here they seemed to be at ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... finest in Poitiers, where all the rich and noble travellers were in the habit of alighting, and there was an air of gaiety and prosperity about it very pleasing to our comedians, in contrast with all the comfortless, miserable lodgings they had been obliged to put up with for a long time past. The landlord, whose double, or rather triple chin testified to bountiful fare, and the ruddy tints of his face to the excellence of his wines, seemed to be the ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Martin, laughing; "there are no such things as ghosts; at any rate I'm resolved to face them, for if we don't get some sticks the fire will go out and leave us very comfortless. Come, I'll ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... helplessness upon the best farms and under the most humane masters and overseers, in Maryland and other Northern Slave States, together with the impression that the journey was of great extent, and comfortless even to a slave, all combined to make a voyage down the river or down South an era in the life of the poor slave to which he looked forward with the most intense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... was burning on a dusty and empty dressing-table. Dr. Cashmore moved it to the vicinity of the bed, which was like an oasis of decent arrangement in the desert of comfortless chamber; then he stooped to examine the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... you right away with me, Joan, my little love; but a bachelor's house is a comfortless concern from a woman's point of view. You will hear from me in a day or two. You must call at the post-office in Penzance for letters, because I shall not send ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... her pronunciation. "Well, mamma, you have told me of that at least twenty times." Soon after that, the ladies took them to their own rooms, weary with the travelling of two days and a night, and Mr. Greene went fast asleep in the very comfortless chair in which ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... husband, she said—and remained there. When Nana saw her mother sometimes as she passed the window, seated among a crowd of men, she turned livid with rage, because youth has little patience with the vice of intemperance. It was a dreary life for her—a comfortless home and a drunken father and mother. A saint on earth could not have remained there; that she knew very well, and she said she would make her escape some fine day, and then perhaps her parents would be ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the other half of the paper to try and distract her mind from the noises over the hedge. But every head-line seemed to dart at her sore consciousness as if it were a snake's head with a sting in it. Murder. Unrest. Strikes. Dissatisfactions. Change. The whole outlook was indescribably comfortless and depressing to her. She felt something akin to the vague, apprehensive misery—beyond reason or common sense—which people feel during the rumble ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... sweet and gentle hostess—found their labors disproportioned to their strength, if not to their patience; and, while their husbands and brothers enjoyed the country in hunting or fishing, they found themselves confined to a comfortless and laborious in-door life. But it ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... no answer, for truth to tell my mind yearned and my body hungered for the sweet, cool luxury of lavender sheets; the thought of a draughty barn or comfortless ditch appalled me, but I held my peace, only I scanned the dim road before me with eager eyes for some sign of tavern ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... last night's long hours, Poor Midge, alone and comfortless, wept out Her heart, believing all that you had said. And when I spoke to her, she cried: "Go, go! I am lost where none can help me; all my dreams Shudder and perish, even as he has perished; Yet they shall live again—but he will die!" ... Thus darkness ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... I entered the hall," he writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear lady of Melos, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down, and fell at her feet sobbing piteously, so that even a heart of stone must be softened. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so comfortless, as who should say: 'Seest thou not that I have no arms and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey |
