"Deplorably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head with a sudden laugh. 'And the joy of not having any more visits to make! I wonder if you've ever thought of that? Just at first, I mean; for society's getting so deplorably lax that, little by little, it will edge up to us—you'll see! I don't want to idealize the situation, dearest, and I won't conceal from you that in time we shall be called on. But, oh, the fun we shall have had in the interval! And then, ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... to me to be a desideratum in modern married life. It is appalling to those who have not yet adventured into the holy state, to see how soon the flame of romantic love burns out, or rather is quenched in matrimony; and how deplorably the passionate, poetic lover declines into the phlegmatic, prosaic husband. I am inclined to attribute this very much to the defect just mentioned in the plays and novels, which form so important a ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... he didn't know what to call Tessibel. She was no longer a child, no longer a little girl, although she looked deplorably young and sick as she ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... is a deplorably one-sided action, but it is the highest and noblest of the faculties of affection. Anything beyond it is ideal, made up of two positives, and a thousand years ahead of us. Is it any wonder that when ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... strangers, for the purpose of bringing on an assignation, which Doctor Solander, and another gentleman of Mr. Cook's ship, met with when here, was never seen by any of us in a single instance. We were so deplorably unfortunate as to walk every evening before their windows and balconies, without being honoured with a single bouquet, though nymphs and flowers were in equal ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... disposition, I am already in the most deplorably false position that a reasonable mind and romantic ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... an assurance a taute epreuve; but you are deplorably superficial. There is a whole group of plays and a whole category of acting to which your generalizations quite fail to ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... the curiosity, Madam, to wish to know how I live: for no doubt you have heard all my sad, sad story!—Know, then, that I am as happy, as a poor creature can be, who has once so deplorably, so inexcusably fallen. I have a worthy gentleman for my husband, who married me as a widow, whose only child by my former was the care of her papa's friends, particularly of good Lacy Davers and her brother. Poor unhappy I! to be under such a sad necessity ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... night she had made me see myself as I really was—a man, not of an irreproachable rectitude, an immaculate purity (had I ever, had anybody ever really supposed that I was such a man?) but quite deplorably human, and blind—yes, my dear Viola, blind as any bat—and vulnerable, so vulnerable that I think you might have spared me, you might have had ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... the chair aside. The children still slept on. He further investigated the resources of Scipio's menage. He found a wash-bowl and soap and a towel, three things he rarely sought for any purposes of his own. Then, after looking into the cupboard, he shook his head. It was deplorably bare of all but uncleanliness. And it was the former that caused his headshake, not the latter. With some pride he re-stocked the shelves with the liberal purchases he had made at Bill's expense. He had provided everything that a man's mind could conceive as being necessary ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplorably. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their good graces, and gone farther to establish intimacy, than many a more accomplished person, with an unexceptionable coat and accurate whisker might have effected in a fortnight. What were his gifts in this way, I am, alas, most deplorably ignorant of; it was not, heaven knows, that he possessed any conversational talent—of successful flattery he knew as much as a negro does of the national debt—and yet the "bon-hommie" of his character seemed to tell at once; and I never knew him fail in any one instance to establish an ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... worldliness out in phylacteries. She pointed out how I was living in an unworthy society of player-folks, and the like people, who she could not say were absolutely without religion (Heaven forbid!), but who were deplorably worldly. She would not say an artful woman had inveigled me for her daughter, having in vain tried to captivate my younger brother. She was far from saying any harm of the young woman I had selected; ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exceptional and only occasional dealings with the orchestra here, can only draw your attention to the fact of how deplorably such occurrences run counter to a nice feeling of decorum, and still more ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... it also, my dear, that I am not disturbed at such an unearthly hour again as I was this morning. Tesla, the great electrician, has put himself on record as intimating that the want of sleep is a potent factor in the deplorably heavy death rate of the present day. He thinks sleep and longevity are synonymous, therefore it becomes us to bend every effort ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... aside, dishonorable would it be in the South were she willing to abandon to shame the memory of brave men who with signal personal disinterestedness warred in her behalf, though from motives, as we believe, so deplorably astray. ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... her to undergo the exertion and fatigue of attending the Van Osburgh wedding, but so great was her interest in the event that, having heard two versions of it, she now prepared to extract a third from her niece. Lily, however, had been deplorably careless in noting the particulars of the entertainment. She had failed to observe the colour of Mrs. Van Osburgh's gown, and could not even say whether the old Van Osburgh Sevres had been used at the bride's table: Mrs. Peniston, in short, found that she was of more ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... mind. Then Dr Mant unfolded a scheme of Ambulance Classes. He was one of those careless, indolent men who can spurt invaluably on any business which is not for their private advantage. (Everybody liked him; but he was known to neglect his own business deplorably.) He could motor over to Polpier and lecture every Saturday evening, starting forthwith. Mrs Steele undertook to write to the Local Education Authority for permission ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Brave and Honest, to the Obedience of the ill-gotten Power, and worse-acted Greatness of the Rabble; so that whil'st they most unjustly cry'd down the oppression of one of the best of Monarchs, and all Kingly Government: all England found itself deplorably inslav'd by the Arbitrary Tyranny of many Pageant Kings. Oh that we shou'd so far forget with what greatness of mind You then shar'd the common Fate, as now and again to force Your Royal Person to new Perils, and new Exiles; but such ingratitude we are punisht with, and You still suffer ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... their work, as they were to leave it. By plunging them into exhausting depths of drunkenness and dissipation, this effect is almost certain to follow. I have known slaveholders resort to cunning tricks, with a view of getting their slaves deplorably drunk. A usual plan is, to make bets on a slave, that he can drink more whisky than any other; and so to induce a rivalry among them, for the mastery in this degradation. The scenes, brought about in this ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... attraction, the political situation of the country closed to an Irish gentleman nearly every avenue of honourable ambition, and owing to a long series of very evident causes, the sentiment of public duty was deplorably low. The economical condition was not checked by any considerable movement in the opposite direction, for after the suppression of the Irish manufactures but few Englishmen, except those who obtained Irish ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... literary renown, &c. are the objects upon which men place their affections; but, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth is an imperious duty; and, of course, if a man fails in this duty, his good name as a member of society soon becomes most deplorably out at elbows. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... family library, and the family Romneys and Hoppners, to Christie's. Not one of them was a director of any company, and the name of Malory had not yet been distinguished by decorating the annals of the Courts of Bankruptcy or of Divorce. In short, a family more deplorably not 'up to date,' and more 'out of the swim' could scarcely be ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... become—as I doubt not it will become at an early day, far more productive, far more effective, than it is now, we shall hear nothing like a complaint that there are no more wants to be satisfied, but the contrary. And yet, we know the fact is deplorably true, that the time is scarcely yet remote when the laboring class, distinctively so called, set its face resolutely against new inventions—set to work deliberately to destroy labor-saving machinery, and so to act ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Courts of Slaveholding States. Many other instances have occured: and many instances of persons who were entitled to their freedom after serving a limited time, being sold into irredeemable Slavery in other states are deplorably numerous; the covert manner of doing which is generally such as to elude detection. It is suggested whether Legislative enactments requiring that persons so situated, should be required to be registered ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Jamaica. I had not long joined, and was about as raw a young gentleman as you could see; the only very clear ideas in my head being that we were monstrous fine fellows in the 50th, and that the planters' daughters were deplorably in love with us. Not that I was much wrong on either side. For brandy-and-water, sangaree, Manilla cigars, and the ladies of color, I'd have backed the corps against the service. Proof was, of eighteen only two ever left the island; for what with the seductions of the coffee plantations, the sugar ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... awake—millions of them. They are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait! I'll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait for me! Help! H-e-elp!" An interminable and sustained howl completed my discomfiture. I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward, as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado, stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... most of the Chartist leaders are, moreover, already Communists. And as Communism stands above the strife between bourgeoisie and proletariat, it will be easier for the better elements of the bourgeoisie (which are, however, deplorably few, and can look for recruits only among the rising generation) to unite with it than ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Spanish ships were destroyed, the two torpedo boats being sunk and the Maria Teresa, Almirante Oquendo, Vizcaya, and Cristobal Colon driven ashore. The Spanish admiral and over 1,300 men were taken prisoners. While the enemy's loss of life was deplorably large, some 600 perishing, on our side but one man was killed, on the Brooklyn, and one man seriously wounded. Although our ships were repeatedly struck, not one was seriously injured. Where all so conspicuously distinguished themselves, from the commanders to the gunners and the unnamed ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... fatigued, and as if it didn't matter in the least if it was never ready at all. She was being talked to by a round-faced, fluffy-haired lady in a green dress and pince-nez, who took an interest in the development of her deplorably uncultured young mind—a Miss Barnett, who was painting pictures to illustrate a book to be called "Venice, Her Spirit." The great hope for young Rhoda, both Miss Barnett and Mr. Vyvian felt, was to widen the gulf between her and her unspeakable mother. They, who quarrelled ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... now pushed on their war preparations: Austria with less ardour than the others, as she still failed to more than faintly realise her danger. The Italian army, which the opening of the year found in a deplorably unserviceable condition, was rapidly placed on a war-footing, and, considering the shortness of the time allowed for the work, and the secrecy with which, at the outset, it had to be conducted, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Latin is to some extent her habitat—but then Mam'selle Josephine belongs to a genus of which you, cher Monsieur Arbuthnot, are deplorably ignorant—the genus grisette. The grisette from a certain point of view is the chef-d'oeuvre of Parisian industry; the bouquet of Parisian civilization. She is indigenous to the mansarde and the pave—bears no transplantation—flourishes in ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... they see impudence in that. But I daresay the offence is in the things that I take, as I say, for granted; for if one tries to be pleased one passes perhaps inevitably for being pleased above all with one's self. That's really not my case—I find my capacity for pleasure deplorably below the mark I've set. This is why, as I've told you, I cultivate it, I try to bring it up. And I'm actuated by positive benevolence; I've that impudent pretension. That's what I mean by being the same to every one, by having only one manner. If one's conscious ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... have already seen it many times. Photographs, engravings, models, medals, have placed it definitely in your eye, so that from the sentiment with which you regard it curiosity and surprise are almost completely, and perhaps deplorably absent. Admiration remains however—admiration of a familiar and even slightly patronizing kind. The Maison Carre does not overwhelm you; you can conceive it. It is not one of the great sensations of antique art; but it is perfectly felicitous, and, in spite ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those specimens, so that they didn't fall, but hung upon her face and nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by neatly winding up ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... having departed for Cielo a few months past, as she told me. The widow having a small farm to hoe and dig, and about twelve miles to walk daily, I had but limited opportunities to study her character; but I believe, if I had, I should not have discovered much, since she had very little: she was deplorably ignorant, and excessively superstitious—but good natured and hopeful—looking out for husband No. 2. She it was that informed me that Padre Cipriano had set the faces of the maidens against me, and for this ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... property in slaves as settled by God himself, I know not. Paul, in drawing the character of those who oppose slavery, in his letter to Timothy, says, (vi: 4,) they are "proud, knowing nothing;" he means, that they were puffed with a conceit of their superior sanctity, while they were deplorably ignorant of the will of Christ on this subject. Is it not great pride that leads a man to think he is better than the Saviour? Jesus held fellowship with, and enjoined subjection to governments, which sanctioned slavery in its worst form—but abolitionists refuse ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... was omnipotent and omniscient Mind. As omni is from the Latin word meaning all, this medicine is all-power; and omniscience means as well, all-science. The sick are more deplorably situated [25] than the sinful, if the sick cannot trust God for help and the sinful can. If God created drugs good, they cannot be harmful; if He could create them otherwise, then they are bad and unfit for man; and if He created drugs for healing the sick, why did not Jesus ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... that you are a fraud. But, remember, silence is golden. If you feel any inclination of getting fussy, remember that I am a lawyer, and that I can prove I took your claim in good faith. Also, the Southerners are notoriously hot-tempered, deplorably addicted to firearms, and I don't think you would look a pretty sight if you happened to ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... Pseudo-Dionysius, the East had little more to contribute to Christian thought. John of Damascus, in the eighth century, half mystic and half scholastic, need not detain us. The Eastern Churches rapidly sank into a deplorably barbarous condition, from which they have never emerged. We may therefore turn away from the Greek-speaking countries, and trace the course of Mysticism in the Latin and ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... couple took the affections of Tyre by storm. The Methodist Church there had at no time held its head very high among the denominations, and for some years back had been in a deplorably sinking state, owing first to the secession of the Free Methodists and then to the incumbency of a pastor who scandalized the community by marrying a black man to a white woman. But the Wares changed all this. Within a month the report of Theron's charm and force in the pulpit was crowding ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... on his feet was but a frail creature. He was still deplorably giddy, and his legs showed an unpleasing tendency to crumple. "I'm fair done," he moaned. "You see, I've been tied up all day to a tree and had two sore bashes on my head. Get you on that bicycle and hurry on, and I'll hirple after you the best I can. I'll direct you the road, and ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... day, as Raffaelle was standing and looking thus at his favorite window in the potter's house, his friend, the handsome, black-browed Luca, who was also standing there, did sigh so deeply and so deplorably that the child was startled from ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... excitement of my prison-life, my spirit drooped deplorably for a season, and all occupation became distasteful to me. My diary even was abandoned, the writing of which had so well assisted to fill my time, and, although destroyed daily, to impress upon my memory a faithful and sequent record of the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... again shined his table, stood upon it, lit his candle, and resumed his tunnelling, working hard until after midnight. His progress was deplorably slow, and the spraying of the rock proved about as tiring a task as ever he had undertaken. His second basin-full of solution was made a little stronger, but without perceptible improvement, in its effect. On ceasing operations for the night he found himself in a situation common to few prisoners, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... of Rosalie's progress through senior Latin might be marked by blistered pages. She was a pretty, cuddling, helpless little thing, deplorably babyish for a senior; but irresistibly appealing. Everyone teased her, and protected her, and loved her. She was irrevocably predestined to bowl over the first man who came along, with her ultra feminine irresponsibility. Rosalie very often dreamed—when she ought to have been ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... beckoned greeting of Elizabeth is the chief thing I had in my eye, and that reminiscence I selected in order to accompany suitably this action of Elizabeth. The relations of music and action must therefore be deplorably perverted where, as in this instance, the principal thing—i.e., the dramatic motive—is left out, while the lesser thing—i.e., the accompaniment of that motive—alone remains. Of the performance of "Lohengrin" one fact ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... complaints that he could gain no information of what was passing in his neighbourhood. It is meant therefore that there was no regular organised resistance; no resistance such as might be made the subject of an official report. Now we all know that the Spaniards have every where suffered deplorably from a want of cavalry; and, in the absence of that, hear from a military man (Major-Gen. Brodrick) why there was no resistance: '—At that time I was not aware how remarkably the plains of Leon and Castille ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and not a new poem) in curious long laisses, rather than stanzas, of eights and sevens rhymed on one continuous pair of single and double rhymes, cit unde: ant ende, &c. The Buechlein proper is all couplets, and ends less deplorably ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... furnishes the student of fulfilled prophecy, and, with the prophecies yet unfulfilled as their guide, to plunge into a troubled sea of speculation regarding the history of the future. And I have found that in every instance they were deplorably at fault regarding even the events that were nearest at hand at the time. History is thus the surest interpreter of the revealed prophecies which referred to events posterior to the times of the prophet. In what shall we find the surest interpretation of the revealed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Ardan, trying to laugh; "bloated and unwieldy, they express in a neat handy way exactly what you mean. Of course, I know all about the high—high—those high curves, and those low curves. No matter. Explain them to me all the same. Consider me most deplorably ignorant on the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... because of his writing against the grand heresiarch of the age, he nevertheless became the chief instrument of the Reformation, the man and the sovereign without whose aid the reform movement of the sixteenth century would have failed as deplorably as the reform movements of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries had failed. A legitimate king, though the heir of a successful usurpation, and holding the royal prerogative as high as any man who ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... since the days of the Great Skirmish," responded his dragoman. "They do not now so readily sell it, except for a wedding ring; and many marry for love. Women, indeed, are often deplorably lacking in commercial spirit; and though they now mix in commerce, have not yet been able to adapt themselves. Some men even go so far as to think that their participation in active life is not good for trade and ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... that the aristocratic profession has as few geniuses as any other profession; so that if you want a peerage of more than, say, half a dozen members, you must fill it up with many common persons, and even with some deplorably mean ones. For "service is no inheritance" either in the kitchen or the House of Lords; and the case presented by Mr. Barrie in his play of The Admirable Crichton, where the butler is the man of quality, and his master, the Earl, the man ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... criticism in which it is difficult to say whether the critic most exposes the stupidity of the book, or his own absurd ignorance of astronomy. I forget the title of the work; but the means of the voyage are more deplorably ill conceived than are even the ganzas of our friend the Signor Gonzales. The adventurer, in digging the earth, happens to discover a peculiar metal for which the moon has a strong attraction, and straightway constructs of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... changes in the fundamental Island habits she concentrated her unfailing energies on the reformation of the marriage laws, which at that time were in a deplorably decadent condition, and encouraged with all her might the trade of "fuahs" and "aeious" (nose rings and hair tidies) with the "Bauoacha" Islands a few miles off. Until the ripe age of eighty-seven she ruled her subjects trustingly ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... was the expedition to replace Shah Sooja on the throne of Afghanistan, which was so auspiciously commenced and so deplorably terminated. Sir John Hobhouse was greatly elated at the enterprise and very confident of the result. He said to me soon afterwards that we must encounter the policy of Russia, and that the theatre of the struggle was Central Asia. I replied that ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Dunster's hands were clasped forcibly under her chin, but she, dear soul, was looking sorrowfully at Willie. The model nephew! In this strange state! So very much flushed! The careful disposition of the thin hairs across Willie's bald spot was deplorably disarranged, and the spot itself was red ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... had caused me to dance for their diversion. The method employed was that of cruelly chipping at my toes with naked cutlasses, shouting at the same time "Square-toes"; and though they did me no bodily mischief, I was none the less deplorably affected, and was indeed for several days confined to my bed: a scandal on the state of Scotland on which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... girls of Nancy's age liked pretty things to wear. Nancy was no exception, but she had no pretty things; her clothes had, in fact, become deplorably shabby, though by dexterous "undoing" and "doing-up" she did manage to make the very most of her dark blue serge costume. The dress and rather coquettish little jacket were of the same material; and she had a felt hat of the same colour, which ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... of such a work. So, of course, ever since, I have been exclaiming and exclaiming as to the wonderful improvement and increasing beauty and glory of it, just to justify myself, and to make him sorry for not having persevered! The truth is, however, that but for obstinacy I should give up too. Deplorably dull the story is, and there is a crowd of people each more indifferent than each, to you; the pith of the plot being (very characteristically) that the hero has somebody exactly like him. To the reader, it's all one in every sense—who's who, and what's what. Robert is a warm admirer ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... up. Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner. She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He had come to dread more than anything those attentive, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Cock-eye Flinks chanced to be at Selwoode were a task of magnitude. That gentleman travelled very quietly; and for the most part, he journeyed incognito under a variety of aliases suggested partly by a fertile imagination and in part by prudential motives. For his notions of proprietary rights were deplorably vague, and his acquaintance with the police, in consequence, extensive. And finally, that he was now at Selwoode was not in the least his fault, but all the doing of an N. & O. brakesman, who had in uncultured argument, reinforced by a coupling-pin, persuaded Mr. Flinks to disembark from ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... gravel me to death. I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue. I have been at "Duncan Gray," to dress it in English, but all I can do is deplorably stupid. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... mixing up localities, Harry. I may be a Goth or a Philistine, but perhaps you are not aware that these peoples or tribes had no connection with each other. Your education in matters unconnected with the Royal Navy seems to have been even more deplorably neglected than my own." ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... of its hero. The underplot, whether aesthetically or historically considered, is not more singular and sensational than extravagant and unpleasant to natural taste as well as to social instinct: the other agents in the main plot are little more than sketches—sometimes deplorably out of drawing: Anne is never really alive till on her death-bed, and her paramour is never alive—in his temptation, his transgression, or his impenitence—at all. The whole play, as far as we remember or care ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Misery that surrounds us, but the enormous exactions of these 'Unjust Stewards.' Landed Monopoly is indeed equally contrary to the benign Spirit of Christianity, and destructive of The Independence and Morality of all Mankind. 'The Profit of the Earth is for all;' Yet how deplorably destitute are the great Mass of the People? Nor is it possible for their situations to be radically amended, but by the establishment of a system, Founded on the immutable basis of Nature and Justice. Experience ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... powers of the voice—the common instrument that God has given us for the interchange of thought, sentiment, and feeling, and which, though so common, is the most perfect of all instruments for the transmission of sound. Yet how deplorably is it neglected! how shamefully is it misused! It can be fully developed and made what it is capable of being only through the influence of the ear. If this organ be neglected, the voice must needs be imperfect. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the cities of New York and Brooklyn were deplorably bad during the first few years I went there to preach. There was an onslaught of bad literature and stage immorality. For instance, there was a lady who came forth as an authoress under the assumed name of George Sand. She smoked cigars. She dressed like a man. She wrote in style ardent and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... master-people, were the troopers, splendid Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans and Punjabis, men of honour, courage, physique, tradition. Grand fighters, loyal as steel while properly understood and properly treated—in other words, while properly officered. (Men, albeit, with deplorably little understanding of, or regard for, Pagett, M.P., and his kind, who yearn to ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... suburbs of this village, as good fortune would have it, an empty baggage-wagon bound for the metropolis turned into the main road from a side one. Immediately Israel limps most deplorably, and begs the driver to give a poor cripple a lift. So up he climbs; but after a time, finding the gait of the elephantine draught-horses intolerably slow, Israel craves permission to dismount, when, throwing away his crutch, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... numerous difficulties in being obliged to import his goods from foreign countries, for the duty he has to pay on them is exceedingly high, therefore making it impossible for him to compete with his Christian neighbour. These disadvantages have reduced the commerce of the Israelites to a deplorably low ebb, and are banishing prosperity from amongst them. And it is a fact that in one of the principal cities where formerly there were thirty Hebrew Moscow merchants, there are at present only two, and these can only preserve their commercial ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... have a friend in deplorably low spirits, and you are afraid he will make away with himself—accordingly you rob him of his knife or other such instrument: to which side ought we to ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... communication will have upon you. It will take you by surprise, as it has done me. That Henry should give us subjects of regret and annoyance would be no strange occurrence; but that he (the goodness of whose understanding, at least, has never been called in question)—that he should have acted in so deplorably foolish a manner, is more than one would be prepared for; the natural refinement of his character alone might have preserved him from a connection which is really disgraceful. It is better to tell you the fact at once, for you certainly could never have imagined or foreseen such ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... fellow, with an instinctive interest in women, and a natural aptitude for making friends with them. He was inclined, always, to try and set them in the right way; to help them to some of the mental training which men got in a hundred ways, and women, as it seemed to him, were often so deplorably without. But this schoolmaster function only attracted him when there was opposition. He had been quite sincere in denouncing humility in women. It never ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... build palaces for them, and hire servants to feed and tend them, while the bright, ambitious children of the poor among you, struggle and suffer for mental advancement. How deplorably short-sighted are the wise ones of your world. Truly it were better in your country to be born an idiot than a poor genius." She sighed and ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... again stared with what seemed to Fritzing so deplorably foolish a stare. "I never heard of such a thing," ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... hitherto had his goods too cheaply, and from that time forward ten guineas would be his charge. Dryden is to be accounted the most famous and successful of prologue writers, but it must be said that his productions of this class are deplorably disfigured by the profligacy of his time, and that all their brilliancy of wit does not compensate for their uncleanness. Dryden's prologues are also remarkable, for their frequent recognition of the critics as a class apart from the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning. Is it Bodger's fault that this inestimable gift is deplorably abused by less than one per cent of the poor? [He turns again to the table; signs the cheque; and ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... that it was both Church and State in one. Morality was undistinguished from religion and politics from morals; and in religion, morality, and politics there was only one legislator and one authority. The State, while it did deplorably little for education, for practical science, for the indigent and helpless, or for the spiritual needs of man, nevertheless claimed the use of all his faculties and the determination of all his duties. Individuals and families, associations ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... too serious all at once," said Mrs. Graves. "If we exhaust ourselves about education, we shall have nothing to fall back upon—we shall be afraid to condescend. I am deplorably ill-educated myself. I have no standard whatever. I have to consult dear Jane, have I not? Jane is my intellectual touchstone, and ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of Style is generally unsuspected by philosophers and men of science, who are quite aware of its advantage in all departments of BELLES LETTRES; and if you allude in their presence to the deplorably defective presentation of the ideas in some work distinguished for its learning, its profundity or its novelty, it is probable that you will be despised as a frivolous setter up of manner over matter, a light-minded DILLETANTE, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... looks denote her desires! how deplorably she appears! The paint on her sides, burnt up by the scorching sun, is puffed out and cracked. See the weeds she trails along with her, and what an unsightly bunch of those horrid barnacles has formed about her stern-piece; and every time she rises on a sea, she ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... virtues. Oho! Here comes a journalist," said Giardini, as a man came in dressed in the absurd way which used to be attributed to a poet in a garret; his coat was threadbare, his boots split, his hat shiny, and his overcoat deplorably ancient. "Excellenza, that poor man is full of talent, and incorruptibly honest. He was born into the wrong times, for he tells the truth to everybody; no one can endure him. He writes theatrical articles for two small ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... deplorably diluted by humaneness as it used to be, yet a sentimental segment of the population may still be relieved to learn that he did none of these things. For active brutality is not popular with Forsytes; they are too circumspect, and, on the whole, too softhearted. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... important thing. Men do not think, and the waste is enormous. When the rain falls it runs into the gully, from the gully to the creek, from the creek to the river, from the river into the sea; and then in the dry season water is deplorably scarce. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... reality the stipendary of the Democrats, traversed that region on the stump, denounced the Republicans as "Abolitionists," "disunionists," and "incendiaries," and was everywhere unchallenged in his course. Similar tactics, though not so deplorably despicable, prevailed in several of the other States, giving unmistakable evidence of the need of a still further and more thorough enlightenment of the people as to the spirit and aims of slavery. In the light of these facts, I was not at all cast down by the defeat ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... for Greece, not however until he had written his extraordinary Epistles to the Corinthians, who had sadly departed from his teachings both in morals and doctrine, either through ignorance, or in consequence of the depravity which they had but imperfectly conquered. The infant churches were deplorably split into factions, "the result of the visits from various teachers who succeeded Paul, and who built on his foundations very dubious materials by way of superstructure,"—even Apollos himself, an Alexandrian Jew baptized by the Apostle John, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... you are deplorably right on one thing at least. I don't know whether I was fit to make such a decision when I made it, but I'm not fit now. As far as you personally are concerned...." He trails off looking tireder than ever, then picks up again suddenly. "You are again quite right, I am every bit as ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... her heart and a keen sense of the injustice done her, Tabitha had rushed heedlessly up the hill and down through the pathless tangle of wet greasewood and sagebrush, splashing through mud and water with reckless abandon, and arriving home in a deplorably bespattered state, with feet wet and dress dripping. Aunt Maria saw her coming and met her at the door with an exclamation of horror: "Tabitha Catt! What do you think you are about? The very idea of running through ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Hook wrote many of these letters when excited by wine. Some are laughable enough, but the majority are so deplorably stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the temporary interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the reader. It is scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world puns, and the trite stories of Hook 'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had better ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... worn and scratched, the cushions had been re-covered with cheap American cloth, the waterproof apron was threadbare, and one of the splash-boards was split. The harness also was of the most ancient description, and the rough pony badly needed clipping, so that the whole turn-out was deplorably ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... suggested by the contrast. This settlement is on the mainland, and consists apparently merely of this house, (to which the overseer retires when the poisonous malaria of the rice plantations compels him to withdraw from it,) and a few deplorably miserable hovels, which appeared to me to be chiefly occupied by the most decrepid and infirm samples of humanity it was ever my ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... in point of fact, who have attained that 'spiritual' religion for which you and our spiritualists contend; and those few chiefly, as Mr. Newman admits, amongst Jews and Christians, though they too have had their most grievous errors, which have deplorably obscured it?" ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... forging would be highly amusing if the subject were only a private individual and his motive a desire for useful information, but on the representative of a great Empire they shed a light in which the dignity of his country was necessarily affected and his own authority deplorably diminished. For moral authority at that conjuncture was the sheet anchor of the principal delegates. Although without a program, Mr. Lloyd George would appear to have had an instinctive feeling, if not ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of government the waste of public money is a crime against the citizen, and the contempt of our people for economy and frugality in their personal affairs deplorably saps the strength and sturdiness of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... suppose you are right; but I have been more deeply impressed with the fact that they are dreadfully dirty, and desperately quarrelsome, and deplorably mischievous." ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... is my duty to warn you of your danger. Don't have too much to say to this fine gentleman. Nothing is so becoming to a young woman as modesty." (It was truly wonderful how Mrs. Bailey had come to learn in her old age, that of which she had seemed deplorably ignorant in her youth, and valued modesty the more as she had less occasion to call it into requisition.) "Men of his wealth and social position never want any good of poor girls like you; that is why I wish to warn you, for I think you are a good, deserving sort of a person, that means ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... are limits; and when it does not know, your Sub-Consciousness will rarely confess it. It makes a brazen guess, keeping the logical form of the answer, because your Sub-Consciousness knows that, but blundering deplorably in the matter. Sometimes it will not speak at all, but when it does it is cocksure to the last degree. Its humour is the humour of the stock joke, the Old Humour—as when it will not tell a woman's age. Its sulkiness and eccentricity and occasional indecency are just what one would ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... co-existence, on both sides, of intrinsic worth, of those responsive virtues which elicit esteem and dominate sympathy. The great reason of the failure of a broad, glowing friendship between parents and children a failure o deplorably common in our homes is the lack, in heir characters, of that wealth, nobleness, sweetness, patience, aspiration, which would irresistibly draw them to each other in mutual honor, love, and joy. The only remedy for this unhappy failure is the cure of its unhappier cause. Whatever makes characters ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... night. Early in the month the disheartening news came of the loss of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, the retreat of Bourlamaque, the fall of Niagara, and the expected advance of Amherst on Montreal. It was then that Levis was despatched to the scene of danger; and Quebec was deplorably weakened by his absence. About this time the Lower Town was again set on fire by the English batteries, and a hundred and sixty-seven houses were burned in a night. In the front of the Upper Town nearly every building was ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... condition on October 24th, having been driven past the Channel in a storm. The Admiralty ordered Kent to take her round to Plymouth. He carried out the order, but not without great difficulty. "A more deplorably crazy vessel than the Investigator is perhaps not to be seen," Kent informed the Admiralty on reaching Falmouth. She was sold and broken up in 1810. But those rotten planks had played a part in history, and if only a few splinters ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... the Council the same day, his extreme displeasure at the sympathy of a few persons with the triumph of the Swiss Diet, because it was a Protestant triumph, and, above all, his speech to the Consistory, so deplorably weak in thought and absolute in manner, show a man less strong against domestic than foreign foes, instigated by a generous, humane heart to advance, but fettered by the prejudices of education, and terribly afraid ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... stunted in its stature, with a low forehead, ears wide apart, eyes red as fire, and glowing with a fierce sullen passion, hurled himself out into the open, and finding the chain fast in the wall, howled furiously. Evidently this was a bear of the most deplorably low moral character! Moreover, he had been roused to madness by the noise of the preceding combats, and his master had good reason for not trusting himself much ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... pucker to her brow, a pleading look in her eyes as she suffered herself to be led to a chair near the end of the table. It had not struck her as odd that the others were deplorably devoid of the fervor that should have manifested itself, in words, at least. There was an air of restraint almost oppressive, but she failed to see it, and it was not long until it was so cleverly succeeded by a genial warmth of manner that she never knew the severity of the strain ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... delightfully walking down it. Broadway was the feature and the artery, the joy and the adventure of one's childhood, and it stretched, and prodigiously, from Union Square to Barnum's great American Museum by the City Hall—or only went further on the Saturday mornings (absurdly and deplorably frequent alas) when we were swept off by a loving aunt, our mother's only sister, then much domesticated with us and to whom the ruthless care had assigned itself from the first, to Wall Street and the torture chamber of Dr. Parkhurst, our tremendously respectable dentist, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... bewilderment. I crossed the narrow strip and got to the sea beach—I took my way toward Malamocco. But presently I flung myself down again on the warm sand, in the breeze, on the coarse dry grass. It took it out of me to think I had been so much at fault, that I had unwittingly but nonetheless deplorably trifled. But I had not given her cause—distinctly I had not. I had said to Mrs. Prest that I would make love to her; but it had been a joke without consequences and I had never said it to Tita Bordereau. I had been as kind as possible, because I really ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the length of a regular tragedy and would be an impossibility on the stage. Schiller began to see that his impatience of stage restrictions and his subjective interest in certain situations had done him an evil turn. He had been deplorably long-winded. And just then came out a caustic review which showed him that he had committed other sins than those of prolixity.[67] Nevertheless he did not now have recourse to that drastic surgery whereby, in the edition of 1801, he reduced the unwieldy play to more manageable ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... laugh scornfully when danger was mentioned to them, and I have seen a few of them fortunate enough to grow up to manhood with a fairly unspotted character; a few, but not many—the greater part have gone wrong, and some deplorably wrong. There is hardly one of us can keep that dog fastened up and chained down always, unless we rely upon a stronger power than our own. It gets loose at times with the best of us—it runs wild and plays dreadful havoc with those who are not the best; there ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... deplorably neglected in these personal matters, he was really making progress with his art. Under Frankh's tuition he attained to some proficiency on the violin and the harpsichord, and his voice was so improved that, as an early biographer puts it, he was able to "sing at the parish ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions. I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better - I daresay it is deplorably for the worse. I have no choice in the business, and can no more resist this tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and decay. If I am spared (as the phrase runs) I ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to say that the handling of a small part of this crowd by the railway people, and of the whole of it by the local management, was deplorably bad. The trains were inadequate and irregular; the great mistake was made of opening only three of the many entrances to the theatre; and the artistic error was committed (against the protest of M. Mounet-Sully, who ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... and Latin quantities are a luxury of English growth—a mere social test—a little pitfall of our own invention, like the letter h, for the tripping up of unwary pretenders; or else, French education being so deplorably cheap in those days, the school-masters there could not afford to take such fanciful superfluities into consideration; it was not to be done at ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... gritty, and her blue eyes had red rims to them from the fatigue of the journey, or some other cause. But they were honest and clear, and not unpretty eyes, looking out from a forest of dusty yellowish fringe, deplorably out of curl. Yet a fringe that had associations for Lynette, reaching a long way from Harley Street, and back to the old days at Gueldersdorp ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... land of the great rivers. Here they found a people not unpractised in several primitive arts, and possessed of some important fundamental inventions—writing, irrigation by means of canals—but deplorably deficient in spiritual development, and positively barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the land of Shumir and Accad, and taught the people with whom they afterwards, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin |
