"Disillusioned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her good luck and cantered off, a disillusioned man. But as I turned my heard for one more glimpse of my one and only shepherdess, I saw the dog looking up with the utmost faith and affection into her poor, kindly, weazened old face. I could not wish her other than she was. I could well ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... illusory and transient glory. We know the falsity of attitudinising, and we have probed the emptiness of certain dreams. The fire has licked up the scenery, has reduced the tinsel to ashes. We are now face to face with ourselves, perhaps more fully awakened, certainly more sincere and more disillusioned, for we have secret wounds to heal and great sufferings to lull in the shade! The passing of the days is like wormwood in the mouth.... How painful will be the transition, and how numerous will be the waifs! Already a fresh anguish oppresses our minds; it is this that will afflict ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... belief in the Almighty's personal interest," he answered, with a touch of irony: "whatever happens, one is not easily disillusioned." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the public is disillusioned and that the management is bankrupt. Another strikingly-contrasted experience of the present generation is this, that, without any decorations whatever, enormous audiences have been assembled together, in the old world and in the new, upon ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... determined to do at the outset. The boy girds up his loins and he goes whither he will. He must taste of every experience for himself. He will meet joy and sorrow with the same frolicking, welcoming spirit. He has never been saddened by experience nor disillusioned by disappointment and failure. He will try all the knowledge of good and evil if it costs ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... because they must work together to make a serene home for Richard, and she desired to do so for her son's sake, because she herself was possessed by the far fiercer monogamous passion of achieved and final love, which is disillusioned concerning mystical draughts, but knows that to take the bread of the beloved and cast it to the dogs is sin. She had acquired that knowledge, which is the only valuable kind of chastity worth having, that night when she had been forced to commit that profanation. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... married and crowned, and live happy ever after in the good old Maerchenland way. Well, he wouldn't have to look on and see them doing it, which was some consolation. He went back to the antechamber and regarded the sleeping forms of his family with disillusioned eyes. "We look like Royalties—I don't think!" he said to himself. "No wonder they've booted us out. Why, a bally ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at any rate. One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates called "Smoke," was telling stories, liberally intersprinkled with oaths and obscenities; and every minute or so the group of hunters gave ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... day, he married Margaret Jones. As soon as he had married her He was disillusioned. ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... infant prodigy of the season whose talents had taken London by storm, another time it was a Nihilist, yet another a wild-looking Czech poet. One loud rat-tat made me feel certain that Kosinski had arrived, but I was again disillusioned, as an aesthetic, fascinating little lady made her entry, dragging triumphantly in tow a reluctant, unengaging and green-haired husband. Nekrovitch gave me a significant glance. "So sorry to be so late," the little lady began in a high-pitched voice, "but I ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... got free from the cathedral, she had even destroyed the passion he had. She was glad. He was bitterly angry. Strive as he would, he could not keep the cathedral wonderful to him. He was disillusioned. That which had been his absolute, containing all heaven and earth, was become to him as to her, a shapely heap of dead ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... government fell on all those within reach who upheld the Puritan cause, among whom was John Winthrop, a country squire, forty-one years of age, who was deprived of his office as attorney in the Court of Wards. Disillusioned as to life in England because of financial losses and family bereavements, and now barred from his customary employment by act of the Government, he turned his thoughts toward America. Acting with the approval of the Earl of Warwick and in conjunction with a group of ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... me. I'll go to Aricia myself; I'll expostulate with Almo; I'll appeal to his manhood, to his pride, to his patriotism. Ten to one he's disillusioned by this time, sick of his job and ready to listen to reason. He'll promise to obey ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... little the late interview had thrown him out of gear. But it had done so. In spite of the fact that Lady Ancester was well over five-and-forty, and that he himself was four or five years older, and that she had all but hinted that the sight of him would have disillusioned her if the Earl had not—for that was what he read between her lines—she had left something indefinable behind, which he was pleased to condemn as sentimental nonsense. No doubt it was, but it ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... wondered by whose law it had been decreed that no human being could have a destiny unconditioned by some one else, and though she also saw that this law was the glory as well as the tragedy of life, she rebelled against it now, lest the radiant being whom she loved should be dishonoured or disillusioned. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... dignity, she proved herself receptive of many influences with which the time was fraught. She cast off beliefs—or what she had held as such—and adopted others; she exchanged old prejudices for new forms of zeal; above all, she chose to be in touch with youth and aspiration rather than with disillusioned or retrospective age. Only when failing health shadowed the way before her did she begin to lose that confident carriage of the mind which, together with her profound materialism, had made worry and regret and apprehension things ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... reigning favorite was established at the Tampa Bay Hotel as a brigadier, and people began to get themselves a little settled into the idea that they knew who was in command, they were suddenly disillusioned by the appointment of another and senior brigadier to the command. They settled down to get acquainted with the new authority, and were just beginning to find out who was who, when the telegraph flashed the news that the deposed ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... creative genius and the energies of the speculative intellect were all alike excluded. There is, unquestionably, much truth in this judgement. The world of the Empire was indeed, as Mommsen has called it, an old world. Behind it lay the dreams and experiments, the self-convicted follies and disillusioned wisdom of many centuries. Before it lay no untravelled region such as revealed itself to our forefathers at the Renaissance or to our fathers fifty years ago. No new continent then rose up beyond the western seas. No forgotten literature suddenly ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... but very misty Holy Alliance was one of the few fruits of Alexander's visions. His mind is described as passing through a regular series of stages with each influence under which he acted. He ended his life, tired out, disillusioned, "deceived in everything, weighed down with regret;" obliged to crush the very hopes of his people he had encouraged, dying in 1825 at Taganrog, leaving his new Polish Kingdom to be wiped out ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... substitute. Baldly stated, the thesis sounds cynical and a little cruel; actually, however, you will here find Mr. BENSON in a kindlier mood than he sometimes consents to indulge. He displays, indeed, more than a little fondness for his disillusioned hero; the fine spirit with which Mr. Teddy faces at last the inevitable is a sure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... without. He wondered, if he told her the truth, would she understand and help him to peace. But he knew that such knowledge would set her in a new attitude toward him, an attitude of secret judgment, of distracted pity, of an agonized partisanship built on loyalty and the despairing passion of the disillusioned. He could never tell her, for he could never support the loss of her devoted belief, which was now the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... school, believe in the deductions from them, and take their consistency, false as it is, for a guarantee of truth. Then with some of you, hope travels through, and you die before you have seen the truth and detected your deceivers, while the rest, disillusioned too late, will not turn back for shame: what, confess at their years that they have been abused with toys all this time? so they hold on desperately, putting the best face upon it and making all the converts they can, to have the consolation of good company in their deception; they ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... chickens and the dreadful cycle is thus made complete. It is all unbelievably complex. Most philosophers must have been raised on chicken farms. One hopes for so much from a chicken and is so dreadfully disillusioned. Small chickens, just setting out on the journey of life, look so bright and alert and they are in fact so dreadfully stupid. They are so much like people they mix one up in one's judgments of life. If disease does not ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... music of the dawn From me had long since surged away; And in the disillusioned day Of chill mid-life I ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... months I have lived upon deceptions; I have been disillusioned; I have inspired the most varied and excessive griefs; I have studied the most picturesque consolations; I have seen myself lamented at the Odeon, by one lover in a box with painted women, ... and at Havre by another in a tavern with a slave.... I might now see myself lamented at Paris by a third ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... a moment when a genii should have pressed into his hand the book for disillusioned young men. But the book has not ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... naturally supposed to be the chosen leader for the next campaign. The ten thousand troops gave confidence to the loyalists and promised success for the coming campaign. The clergy were getting their disillusioned parishioners back to the fold beneath the Union Jack; while Jean Ba'tis'e himself was fain to admit that his own ways of life and the money he got for his goods were very much safer with les Angla's than with the revolutionists, whom ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... their hand. The sense of this beating and thrilling pulse of life circulating through these sombre and splendid buildings is what gives the place its inner glow; this life full of hope, of sensation, of emotion, not yet shadowed or disillusioned or weary, seems to be as the fire on the altar, throwing up its sharp darting tongues of flame, its clouds of fragrant smoke, giving warmth and significance and a fiery ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was merely a gawky, loud-mouthed and uncouth importation from a Middle Western farm, broken to ride after a fashion, to rope and brand when necessary and to wield pliers in mending barbed wire, the sort of product, in fact, that had disillusioned De Launay. It was his clothes that the ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... He felt disillusioned and robbed. He sat beside his hard couch, waiting without expectancy for the gray dawn of another empty day, and hardly lifting his head at the ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the shops, and I stood beside the hawkers, and I listened to the sellers and gossiped with those who bought; but the noise, and the heat, and the dust that rose so thickly, were more than I had bargained for, and I felt lonely and disillusioned: so I very lamely turned my back on it all, and went away feeling that I ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... section for many years. He is particularly unapproachable on the subject of the Canaan Tigmores because he spent a great part of his youth prospecting through these hills, hoping and being disappointed. At last he turned his back upon Canaan, bitterly disillusioned, and he has been a wanderer upon the face of the earth ever since, sometimes hunting gold in the Rockies, sometimes after silver in Mexico. Half the time even Madeira does ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... now an illustration of the devious ways by which one who feels, rather than reasons, may be led in the pursuit of beauty. Though often disillusioned, she was still waiting for that halcyon day when she would be led forth among dreams become real. Ames had pointed out a farther step, but on and on beyond that, if accomplished, would lie others for her. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... proud of it and, without knowing it, was happy in that consciousness. Up to that time he had loved only himself, and could not help loving himself, for he expected nothing but good of himself and had not yet had time to be disillusioned. On leaving Moscow he was in that happy state of mind in which a young man, conscious of past mistakes, suddenly says to himself, 'That was not the real thing.' All that had gone before was accidental and unimportant. ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... adulation, admiration, emulation, and envy of his contemporaries went, he had nothing to complain of. He was lionized, quoted, courted, flattered, reviewed, viewed through rose-colored spectacles; and disillusioned, discontented, cynical, selfish, and, of course, most horribly bored. He was gun-shy of women; he suspected them of wanting to marry him. He was wary of men; he suspected them of wanting to exploit him. He loathed children, who were generally obstreperous ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... was not in the room, but I know. I know Peter Ivanovitch sufficiently well. He is a great man. Great men are horrible. Well, that's it. Have nothing to do with her. That's the best you can do, unless you want her to become like me—disillusioned! Disillusioned!" ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... procession, Hermia in the lead, the donkey following, and Philidor, now thoroughly disillusioned, bringing up the rear. He was thinking deeply, his gaze on the graceful lines of her intolerant back, aware that she had paid him in full for his temerity, and wondering in an aimless way how soon she would be taking the train for Paris. He had done what he could to atone but some ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... generation which will soon have passed, leaving only a procession of ghosts on a vanishing road. She had no doubts about her place and prerogative in the world, no qualms about her rights to use them as she pleased. Coryston also has no doubts—or few. As to individuals he is perpetually disillusioned; as to causes he is as obstinate as his mother. And independently of the Glenwilliam affair, that is why, I think, in the end she preferred Coryston to Arthur, who will 'muddle through,' not knowing whither, like the majority ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... religion disillusions man, so that he thinks, acts, shapes his reality like the disillusioned man come to his senses, so that he revolves around himself, and thus around his real sun. Religion is but the illusory sun which revolves around man, so long as he does not revolve ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... disillusioned him. It wrought in him disappointment with the human race, especially as represented by the Stock Exchange, without diminishing his confidence in his own judgment. Through all his wild efforts not to sink he was upborne by the knowledge that ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... Mormon, disillusioned hero of three matrimonial adventures, woman-soft where Sandy was woman-shy, he was high-stomached, too stout for saddle-ease to himself or mount, sun-rouged where his partners were burned brown. His pate was bald save for a tonsure-fringe ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... long ago by my father's good offices been transferred to town. He looks a little older, a little fallen away. He has long given up declaring his love, has left off talking nonsense, dislikes his official work, is ill in some way and disillusioned; he has given up trying to get anything out of life, and takes no interest in living. Now he has sat down by the hearth and looks ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of his own kidney he has hired to assist him," put in Vassilan, who held fast to that theory, in part, even after he had been painfully disillusioned as to other parts of it. "Come quickly now, you, and tell our chauffeur ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... "Saul" he reproduces the scene recorded in the sixteenth chapter of the first Book of Samuel, where the king is "troubled by an evil spirit" and the young David comes to play the harp before him. Saul is represented as the disillusioned, the despairing man who has lost all interest in life, and David as the embodiment of youthful enthusiasm. The poem is a remarkable portrayal of the ancient scene and characters; but it is something greater than that; it is a splendid song ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... he had experienced in himself, in a shattered romance, in a disillusioned youth, when he was young like the lad somewhere in France. Lady Mary would see only broken conventions; but he saw immortal things, infinitely beyond conventions, awfully broken. He did not move. He remained like ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... house! the way I'm received! the casual impudence of that woman Guinness, our old nurse! really Hesione might at least have been here: some preparation might have been made for me. You must excuse my going on in this way; but I am really very much hurt and annoyed and disillusioned: and if I had realized it was to be like this, I wouldn't have come. I have a great mind to go away without another word [she is on the point ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... took charge of settling Rafael in Valencia when he began his university studies. The dream of old don Jaime, disillusioned in the son, would be fulfilled ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... your points, that he is not amused. I hoped that when David was able to talk—and not merely to stare at me for five minutes and then say "hat"—his spoken verdict, however damning, would be less expressive than his verdict without words, but I was disillusioned. I remember once in those later years, when he could keep up such spirited conversations with himself that he had little need for any of us, promising him to do something exceedingly funny with a box and two marbles, and after he had watched for a long time ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... paper," returned Kathleen unconcernedly. "She is very pretty, isn't she? But prettiness alone doesn't count for much on a newspaper. Can she make good? That is the question. She imagines that journalism is her vocation, but I am afraid she is going to be sadly disillusioned. She seems to be a clever ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... much like going out for a night on the town. Instead, both agents climbed wearily into bed thinking morose and disillusioned thoughts. ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Indians who exist to this day on Long Island (rather mixed up with negroes) and admiring the gorgeous golden dunes, and gorgeouser goldener gorse when suddenly bump! bump! The moderately bad road became immoderately awful. At this spot some disillusioned motorist had revengefully printed on a proud sign-post the classic words: "Damn Bad Road." We were forced to believe him. And at that instant, as if to emphasize the description, millions of mosquitoes the size of humming-birds attacked us. How the Indians stood them, goodness knows, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... strength. Although Paquita Valdes presented him with a marvelous concentration of perfections which he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost nil with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment of love. Like old men and people disillusioned, he had no longer anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which, once satisfied, left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young people love is the finest of the emotions, it makes the life of the soul blossom, it nourishes by its solar power the finest inspirations ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... that very hour—while at last Myra slept, and the doctor watched, and mused, and wondered—in that very hour, under an Eastern sky, a strong man, sick of life, worn and disillusioned, fighting a deadly fever, in the sultry atmosphere of a soldier's tent, cried out in bitterness of soul: "O God, let me die!" Then added the "never-the-less" which always qualifies a brave soul's prayer for immunity from pain: ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... be supposed that any scruple on the ground of conventionality, obligation, what not, entered into his misgivings. For Laurence Stanninghame had been clean disillusioned all along the line. He hadn't the shred of an illusion left. He had started life with a fair stock-in-trade of good intentions and straight ideas, and, indeed, had acted up to them honestly, and in good faith. But now?—"I've had a h——l of a ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... world of make-believe she is far wiser than these grown-ups who insist with obstinate complacency on "seeing things as they are." They take pride in being disillusioned. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... brought joy and sorrow, good and ill. Polunin was already disillusioned when he met Alena, and was living alone with his books. He met her in the spring, and quickly and simply became intimate with her, begetting a child, for he found that the instinct of fatherhood had replaced that of passion ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... unknown to us, two Chinamen; the first half-a-dozen rounds were so true that the unseen watchers had no suspicion they were in dangerous quarters, or that it was possible that even the Duke's marksmen were fallible; the seventh round disillusioned them, for, from a slight fault in the elevation, the shot over-reached the target and pitched so close to the Chinamen that stones and rubbish came rattling down from everywhere about their ears; fear lent them wings, and they scampered off like the wind. They may be running ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... gentle and simple was doubtless less absolute than the disillusioned Jarrett represents it to have been. Even in the South there were many gradations of wealth, and it was no uncommon thing for a man to rise, as Jarrett did himself, from mean birth to a considerable eminence. Yet in none of the colonies ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... pleasure to penetrate an unknown land, ride through great forests and see the new view open at the top of the pass. When the Belgrade police visaed my passport for the last time they bade me a friendly farewell. But I was severely disillusioned as to Great Serbia. Instead of brethren pining to be united, I had found a mass of dark intrigue—darker than I then knew—envy, hatred and all uncharitableness. No love was lost between Serb and Montenegrin. Alexander was to divorce his wife or go. "Something" would happen soon. And I knew ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... to suppose, Agamemnon summons the army—to lead them into battle? Nothing of the sort; he calls them to assembly." [Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 46.] But we ought not to have been led to suppose that the waking Agamemnon was so elated as the sleeping Agamemnon. He was "disillusioned" on waking; his conduct proves it; he did not know what to think about the Dream; he did not know how the host would take the Dream; he doubted whether they would fight at his command, so he ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... ourselves, which makes for righteousness, that we were to be saved. We had only to push out upon tides which asked of us neither rudder nor oar, to be brought to our appointed havens. How greatly we have been disillusioned in all this and how bitterly we have been taught that life is not so much a drifting with the tide as making brave headway against it, we all know well enough to-day. Somewhere back of a vast deal in these modern religious cults and movements, is the smug optimism, now taking one form and now ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... had them, too," added Mrs. Ambler. "She used to say that to love hard went with them. 'The Lightfoot eyes are never disillusioned,' she once told me. I wonder if she ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... way—an elderly Don of settled habits, who had even mistaken a pompous condescension to the young men of his College for a natural and sympathetic relation—that was what he was. The melancholy truth stared him in the face. He was sharply disillusioned. He had lingered on, clinging pathetically to youth, and with a serene complacency he had overlooked the flight of time. He was a dull, middle-aged man, fond of sentimental relations and trivial confidences, who had done nothing, effected nothing; had even egregiously failed in the one thing ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was extremely difficult even to get into touch with them. In addition there was a lack of good-will on the part of the old Russian Government. Thus very often these prisoners, who regarded Russia as Bohemia's elder brother and liberator, were sadly disillusioned when they were left under the supervision of some German officers, and thousands of them died from starvation. Nevertheless they never despaired. Eager to fight for the Allies, many of them entered the Yugoslav Division which fought so gallantly in the Dobrudja. ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... 1613, of one of the greatest families of France. His life is divided into two periods—one of passionate activity, when with romantic ardour he threw himself into the struggles of the Fronde, only to be foiled and disillusioned; and the other of bitter reflection, consoled by certain social successes, loyal friendships, and an unique literary distinction. His Maximes are the brief confession of his experience of life, an utterance ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... resort a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blase woman by this glimpse ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... sentiment. The note of passion—in the European sense of that word—jars and shatters it. The imported "problem-play," written for an adult public in Paris or London, introduces social facts and intellectual elements almost wholly alien to the experience of American matinee audiences. Disillusioned historians of our literature have instanced this unsophistication as a proof of our national inexperience; yet it is often a sort of radiant and triumphant unsophistication which does not lose its innocence in ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... other sort of living. There are enough sentimentality and emotion in her character to make it impossible for her to accept this manner of existence as ELFIE does. Hers is not a nature of careless candour, but of dreamy ideals and better living, warped, handicapped, disillusioned, and destroyed by a weakness that finds its principal force in vanity. WILL resumes his newspaper in a more attentive way. The girl looks at him and expresses in pantomime, by the slightest gesture or shrug of the shoulders, ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... provocative of listlessness and enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in The Sketch-Book, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of Literature'; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in that famous chapter ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... was all about. We had both fired simultaneously and neither had heard the other's shot. By mistake Hotenfa had discharged a load of buckshot and it was my bullet which had killed the goral but his joy was so great that I would not for anything have disillusioned him. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... large drilling ground for troops and also an extensive drug garden. The present owner of the castle proposed to build here a library and a museum for the town. I was glad of the opportunity to ascend one of the high pagoda-like towers so familiar in Japanese paintings. I was disillusioned. Instead of finding myself in beautiful rooms for the enjoyment of marvellous views and sea breezes I had to clamber over the roughest cob-webbed timbers. One storey was connected with another by a stair of rude planking. Such pagodas were built ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the Sistine Madonna? Come Varvara Petrovna, I spent two hours sitting before that picture and came away utterly disillusioned. I could make nothing of it and was in complete amazement. Karmazinov, too, says it's hard to understand it. They all see nothing in it now, Russians and English alike. All its fame is just the talk of the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... consideration is void in law," he reminded her. "Dad just figured he could bank on your love for me. He did you the honor to think it was so strong and wonderful that death would be a delirious delight to you in preference to spoiling my career by marrying me—well—Elizabeth disillusioned him!" ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... like a garden, And the lights are flickering and low; And a Romeo with fat legs, Is telling a Juliet with dyed hair and tired, disillusioned eyes, That love—real love—is the only thing ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... back-room; and as Wunpost drank and shuddered the waspish Phillip F. Lapham set about his complete undoing. First he went to Dusty Rhodes, who still claimed a full half, and browbeat him until he fell back to a third; and then, when Dusty priced his third at one million, he turned to the disillusioned Billy. Her ideas were more moderate, as far as values were concerned, but her loyalty to Wunpost was still unshaken and she refused to even consider a sale. Back and forth went the lawyer like a shuttle in its socket, from Dusty Rhodes ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... are rather more serious though; we are disillusioned women at the age when they were still ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... Balin is "disillusioned," his faith in the Ideal is shaken if not shattered. He rides at adventure. Arriving at the half-ruined castle of Pellam, that dubious devotee, he hears Garlon insult Guinevere, but restrains himself. Next day, again insulted for bearing "the crown ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Compromise" or presented "the Request" were disloyal to their sovereign or converts to the reformed faith. Among those who denounced the methods of the Inquisition and of the Blood Placards were a large number, who without ceasing to be Catholics, had been disillusioned by the abuses which had crept into the Roman Church, desired their removal only to a less degree than the Protestants themselves, and had no sympathy with the terrible and remorseless persecution on Spanish lines, which sought to crush out all liberty of thought ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... to her, and meant that she would cast him off forever. A wild hope that this might be so displaced his first despair. If that were all,—a mere ideal fancy which really did her credit,—perhaps she would return disillusioned, convinced of her mistake, and eager to bury its ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... was terribly disillusioned, and bitterly now did she regret the hasty act that had landed her in her present predicament. She must have been mad, she thought gloomily, to have planned and carried out such a brazen piece of imposition; and how could she ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... cumulative effects of many petty vexations, but not with thought: he is still fresh, and he has by no means full expectations of pleasure and novelty. Cuthbertson has the lines of sedentary London brain work, with its chronic fatigue and longing for rest and recreative emotion, and its disillusioned indifference to adventure and enjoyment, except ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... myself that her attitude to life, which had appeared to me so romantic and natural when I was eighteen, now appeared irremediably pathetic, visionary, out of touch with reality. Perhaps, however, it was I who had become disillusioned and matter-of-fact. I saw with a kind of pitying wonder that her youthful romance still supplied to her, as it had done since she was nineteen, a certain atmosphere of pensive, prayerful resignation, a background for ethereal day-dreams. Her peaceful ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... March, 1915, bad weather on the waters surrounding the British Isles hampered the operations of German submarines to an extent which led the British public to believe that the submarine warfare on merchantmen had been abandoned, but they were disillusioned when on the 9th of March, 1915, three British ships were sunk by the underwater craft. The steamship Tangistan was torpedoed off Scarborough, the Blackwood off Hastings and the Princess Victoria near Liverpool. Part of this was believed to be ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... in conference, Metternich found an opportunity for cementing his influence over Alexander which had been wanting amid the turmoil and feminine intrigues of Vienna and Aix. Here, in confidence begotten of friendly chats over afternoon tea, the disillusioned autocrat confessed his mistake. "You have nothing to regret,'' he said sadly to the exultant chancellor, "but I have!''12 The issue was momentous. In January Alexander had still upheld the ideal of a free confederation of the European states, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were you disillusioned?" she asked him. "Two days ago you called me 'Princess'—in the garden here. How ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... ecstasies over Raphael's Madonna, or is eager for the emancipation of women, I assure you there is no affectation about it. But the trouble is that when we have been married or been intimate with a woman for some two or three years, we begin to feel deceived and disillusioned: we pair off with others, and again—disappointment, again—repulsion, and in the long run we become convinced that women are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair, undeveloped, cruel—in fact, far from being superior, are immeasurably inferior ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of the elegant and disillusioned young men overshot their mark. Mere health reasserted itself; an inherent repressed vitality sought new channels. Arthur Symons deserted his hectic Muse, Richard Le Gallienne abandoned his preciosity, and the group began to disintegrate. The aesthetic ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... Rembrandt had been disillusioned by his stay in the fashionable art-world of Amsterdam. Some of his idols had crumbled, and there came into his spirit a goodly dash of pessimism. His father was disappointed and suggested that he get a place as illustrator at the bookmakers, before ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... sighing hopelessly over the attractions of the dignified Marquise, gave her the romantic name of Arthenice, and forthwith the other members of the coterie took some nom de parnasse, by which they were familiarly known. They read the "Astree" of d'Urfe, that platonic dream of a disillusioned lover; discussed the romances of Calprenede and the sentimental Bergeries of Racan. Such Arcadian pictures seemed to have a singular fascination for these courtly dames and plumed cavaliers. They tried to reproduce them. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... did not want to stop playing, because if it had come to earnest, deep realities, as she was afraid it must come now, there would be no place for Nick Hilliard in her future—the future of Paolo di Sereno's disillusioned wife. "Still, here under these trees, I could tell him everything better than I could tell it anywhere else, and make him understand, and even forgive," she thought. "Without fear, I could let him know that I care ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the voice of History. I am only describing what I saw. He entered, the heap on the sofa revived slightly, and the Hawley Boy and I came away together. He is disillusioned, but I felt it my duty to lecture him severely for going there. And ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... impatient contempt; nevertheless his genius and his in part splendid achievement are substantial facts. He stands as the extreme but significant exponent of violent Romantic individualism in a period when Romantic aspiration was largely disappointed and disillusioned, but was indignantly gathering its strength for ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Louis, a military education. He was devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with friendliness and allowed her extravagance to ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... on courting bent, but this folly was soon over with him. Valetka's most noticeable peculiarity was his impenetrable indifference to everything in the world.... If it were not a dog I was speaking of, I should have called him 'disillusioned.' He usually sat with his cropped tail curled up under him, scowling and twitching at times, and he never smiled. (It is well known that dogs can smile, and smile very sweetly.) He was exceedingly ugly; and the idle house-serfs never lost an opportunity ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... belief that Monk Lawrence was vitally threatened, and that Gertrude, in spite of audacious denials, was still madly bent upon the plot. And to tell him would mean instant action on his part: arrest—prison—perhaps death—for this woman she had adored, whom she still loved with a sore, disillusioned tenderness. She could not tell him!—and therefore she could not engage herself to him. Had ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... make young, idealistic physicians become rather disillusioned about treating degenerative conditions because the end result of all their efforts is, in the end, death anyway. The best they can do is to alleviate suffering and to a degree, prolong life. The worst they can do is to ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... their circumstances, they broke down the German plan for capturing trenches without an infantry attack. They caught the patrols and annihilated them, and then swept back the disillusioned and reluctant main bodies of German troops. First, the bombing parties were felled, then the sappers as they came forward to repair the line for their infantry, and at last the infantry itself in wave after wave of field-gray. The small French garrison ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... simultaneously; and Ferdinand acknowledged that this was correct and that the Magyars had their foibles, but that they were on the point of sending him recruits. "We hoped," said the Croats, "that in a new world of liberty the Magyars would recognize the other races as their equals. We have been disillusioned, as you will be. And in July when Ferdinand announced, on the advice of Radetzky, that he would continue the operations in the Italian provinces until the bitter end, it became necessary for him to have these recruits. "We are prepared," said Kossuth, "to send a Hungarian ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... myself belonged to that happy age (i.e., below 15) I had no dearer wish than to possess a friend of similar tastes. I have sought, hoped, waited, grieved, and been at last disillusioned, overcome by desire and despair, and have not found that friend. Even later the hope often reappeared, but always in vain, and I cannot boast of that sure recognition which one reads of in the autobiographies of Urnings. I do not know personally a single fellow-sufferer. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... repeatedly told him the rest and quiet were doing him a world of good. Then—and the desire confused Sandy—he wished Treadwell would cut his visit short. The confession in the study had not drawn Treadwell nearer; it had driven him farther away. It was as if, by keener insight, Sandy had been cruelly disillusioned; had discovered that he, not Lans, was bound to bear a new burden of responsibility. Having confided in his friend, Treadwell, apparently, was eased and comforted; while Sandy was constantly thinking of a certain, vague, little suffering ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... thinking of the hundredth time you've been disillusioned.' Vida threw down her table napkin, and stood up. 'I was thinking of people ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... Scheffer and Mueller with the worst Christs that the worst painters could paint before the end of the fifteenth century, and you must feel that until we have a great religious movement we cannot hope for a great artistic one. The disillusioned Raphael could paint a mother and child, but not a queen of Heaven as much less skilful men had done in the days of his great-grandfather; yet he could reach forward to the twentieth century and paint a Transfiguration ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... scrubbed the three layers of decoration from her face, trudged up the stairs to the attic, took off the rose-sprigged gown and folded it away—a disconsolate, disillusioned ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... great conflict with England began, Virginians of Irish blood were among the first and the most eager to answer the call. Those historians who claim that the South was exclusively an "Anglo-Saxon" heritage would be completely disillusioned were they to examine the lists of Colonial and Revolutionary troops of Celtic name who held the Indians and the British at bay, and who helped in those "troublous times" to lay the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... her when she dies.[5] She will be sorely puzzled, for this little Sister, amiable as she is, has certainly never done anything worth speaking about." The Infirmarian, who had also overheard the remark, turned to Therese and said: "If you relied upon the opinion of creatures you would indeed be disillusioned today." "The opinion of creatures!" she replied; "happily God has given me the grace to be absolutely indifferent to that. Let me tell you something which showed me, once and for all, how much it is worth. A few days after my ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... comment regarding Dawn's probable inability to rise to the demands of smart society. Only inexperience had caused her to make any. Ernest fluttered in the smart set; he and I were familiar with it; Miss Grosvenor was not, therefore we were disillusioned and she ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... been more than a little apprehensive of meeting Mama again, but Winifred's report seemed to reassure me that she would be confined, if not to bed, at least to her own apartments. I was sadly disillusioned to find her ensconced in a comfortable armchair beside a brightly burning fire, the general with a book held open by his thumb. He greeted me with his usual affection. "Albert, I'm sorry I wasnt able ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... my first modern battlefield and am quite disillusioned about the splendour of war. The splendour is all in the souls of the men who creep through the squalor like vermin—it's in nothing external. There was a chap here the other day who deserved the V.C. four times over by running back through the Hun shell fire to bring news that the infantry ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... be studious, consecutive, loyal; you may move in any direction but you must carry the whole past with you. I will not say this suggests a sound system of ethics, because it would be extracted from dogmas which are physical and incidentally incredible; nor would it represent a mature and disillusioned morality, because it would look to the future and not to the eternal; nevertheless it would be deeply ethical, expressing the feelings that have always ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... a peak, especially to Canada, where one of the settlements came to be called New Iceland—the title given to the last story in this book. Many of these emigrants suffered great hardships, and, as the story tells, several of them became disillusioned with the land of promise. Their descendants, however, have on the whole done ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... cousin knows a man attached as liaison officer to the staff of General Joffre, who has given out confidentially that such and such a thing is going to happen I am all ears. I feel that I am sucked into the great whirlpool of Vast Events. I don't care a bit about being disillusioned afterwards. The experience has done me good, made a man of me and sent me back to Wellingsford as an oracle. And if you bring me a man who declares that he does not like being an oracle, I will say to his face that he ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... marrying the unknown Buonaparte. It was a beautiful dream! There are nine inns in a single day's journey between Milan and Mantua, and I wrote a letter to my wife from each of them. Nine letters in a day—but one becomes disillusioned, monsieur. One learns to ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Hall on M Street diagonally opposite the square to the west. By the end of Stevenson's second year, he had, by his characteristic methods, alienated so many of those on whom he had relied mainly for support that Bishop Payne, now disillusioned, was as bitter against Stevenson as he was blindly his champion the year before.[13] Stevenson was removed, but there were those who still believed in his leadership. He refused to accept the appointment given him and organized the Central Methodist Church with dissentients ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... much value a thing has if one has put some effort into it. We were still as disillusioned with the country as we had been the first day, we felt as out of place on a homestead as a coyote sauntering up Fifth Avenue, we felt the tar-paper shack to be the most unhomelike contraption we had ever seen; but from the moment we began to make improvements, transforming ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... angry and disillusioned, but he knew that belligerence would gain him nothing. "In other words," he said, genially, "there's something the matter with everything but the Orpheum, and everybody but me. I congratulate myself. Well, when I do get the job finished, and what does it cost—not to a minute and a ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... all. No fear, no remorse, none of that Shakespearean horror after the murder, which, today, sceptic though I am and blase and utterly, utterly disillusioned, sets me shuddering whenever I am ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Countess Rossi, the famous Sontag, by whom, to my genuine astonishment, I was most heartily greeted, and I thereby obtained the right of afterwards approaching her in Berlin with a certain degree of familiarity. The curious way in which I was disillusioned about this lady on that occasion will be related in due course. I would only mention here that, through my earlier experiences of the world, I had become fairly impervious to deception, and my ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... for no other object than to seek confirmation, that is, reinforcement or guidance, at all events, companionship. That Frederick von Kammacher's new intellectual companion was Max Stirner, was the result of a profound disillusionment. He had been disillusioned in his deep-seated altruism, which until ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Te Kooti's feelings, it is not wonderful that he quickly won over the 300 disillusioned Hauhaus who were imprisoned with him on the island; nor that, when the two years were over without any word of release, they should have become restless and discontented. The wonder is that when at last they overpowered their guards and took possession ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... in this case it does not accelerate but retard the action of the drama; it is, indeed, altogether foreign to the drama, an excrescence upon it and not an improvement but a blemish. Moreover, the reflective, disillusioned, slightly pessimistic tone of the narrative is alien and strange to the optimistic temper of the play; finally, this garb of patient sadness does not suit Claudio, who should be all love and eagerness, and diminishes instead of increasing ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... was the most beautiful palace in the world, the largest of all palaces, comprising no fewer than eleven thousand apartments and containing the most admirable masterpieces of human genius! But Pierre, disillusioned as he was, had eyes only for the lofty facade on the right, overlooking the piazza, for he knew that the second-floor windows there were those of the Pope's private apartments. And he contemplated those windows for a long ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... play of IBSEN's on the stage, but I have read several of them—indeed, as I believe, all that have hitherto been translated and published in this country. I was prepared to be charmed, expecting much. I was soon disillusioned, and great was my disappointment. Then I re-read them, to judge of them not merely as dramas for the closet, but as dramas for the stage, written to be acted, not to be read; or, at all events, as far as the general public were concerned, to be acted first, and to be read afterwards. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... the musical malady of the century. He is its chief spokesman. After the vague, mad, noble dreams of Byron, Shelley and Napoleon, the awakening found those disillusioned souls, Wagner, Nietzsche and Chopin. Wagner sought in the epical rehabilitation of a vanished Valhalla a surcease from the world- pain. He consciously selected his anodyne and in "Die Meistersinger" touched a consoling earth. Chopin and Nietzsche, temperamentally finer and more sensitive ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... literary men who gathered round him, with Turgenev at their head. In Tolstoy's eyes they were false, paltry, and immoral, and he was at no pains to disguise his opinions. Dissension, leading to violent scenes, soon broke out between Turgenev and Tolstoy; and the latter, completely disillusioned both in regard to his great contemporary and to the literary world of St. Petersburg, shook off the dust of the capital, and, after resigning his commission in the army, went abroad on a tour through ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... back. But his manner was so gentle and generous that I plunged in boldly. I told him everything; of my life with my grandfather, of my disgrace at the Academy, of my desire, in spite of my first failure, to still make myself a soldier. And then I told him of how I had been disappointed and disillusioned, and how it had hurt me to find that this fight seemed so sordid and the motives of all engaged only mercenary and selfish. But once did he interrupt me, and then by an exclamation which I mistook for an exclamation of disbelief, and which I challenged quickly. "But ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... "You aren't a bit disillusioned, are you?" she said. "You simply shut your eyes and go it blind. A woman likes that in a man. It's what love ought to be. It's silly of me to throw ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... ride, for the besotted young millionaire slept, and Jim dared not trust himself to speak. Lorelei closed her eyes, nauseated, disillusioned, miserable, seeing more clearly than ever the depths into which she had unwittingly sunk, and the infamy into which Jim had descended. Nor was the change, she reflected, confined to them alone. Upon the other members of the family the city had stamped its mark just ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... work progressed, Stefan's remained at a standstill. Disillusioned with his marriage and with his whole way of life he fretted himself from his old sure confidence to a mood of despair. Their friends bored him, his studio like his house became a cage. New York appeared in ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... that I experienced, in scientific work as in life generally, merely gave it an even sharper edge. Everywhere I saw an abyss widening between human knowing and human action. How often was I not bitterly disillusioned by the behaviour of men for whose ability to think through the most complicated scientific questions I had ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... period is full of similar self-revelations of disillusioned intellectuals. However, this repentant mood did not always lead to positive results. Some of these intellectuals, having become part and parcel of Russian cultural life, were no longer able to find ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... see me! We'll descend from the dream ... to the business; and have everything clear to our own satisfaction before we let in all the others. I always vowed I wouldn't accept a proposal after supper! If you're ... intoxicated, you might wake sober—disillusioned!" ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... entered the room, which was narrow and low-pitched and half filled with a great pair of scales. It was like a waiting room in a suburban station, and Nana was again hugely disillusioned, for she had been picturing to herself something on a very vast scale, a monumental machine, in fact, for weighing horses. Dear me, they only weighed the jockeys! Then it wasn't worth while making such a fuss with their weighing! In the scale ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... ago, being survived by a son and grandson. The son died a short time later. Amos Brown the third, had no kin. But he was a self-sufficient youngster who managed pretty well. He entered the flying service in the World War and returned a bitter, disillusioned man. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... Disillusioned with the flabby friendship of British liberals, Plaatje was increasingly drawn to the pan-Africanism of W. E. B. Du Bois, president of the NAACP in the United States. In 1921 Plaatje sailed for the United States ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... cover, or books which gave Shakespeare's newest sonnets as dictated psychically to Miss Sutton of South Dakota? he sniffed. As a matter of fact, his own taste ran to these latter, but as an employee at the Moonlight Quill he assumed for the working day the attitude of a disillusioned connoisseur. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
