"Distraught" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she was left alone with the exhausted, almost senseless mother, that the tide of grief took its full course. Lucy wept like one distraught. Through the deep, black future which lay before her, she could see no gleam of hope or sunlight. She unjustly upbraided herself for having, however innocently, given Luke cause of suspicion. The weight of blame which she took to herself was ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... distraught from gazing over-much At thy great beauty; and I fear'd to touch The dainty hand which Envy's self hath praised. I fear'd to greet thee; and my soul was dazed And self-convicted in its new design; For I was mad to hope to call thee mine, ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... afraid of my old lips? How I have pitied you these months!" She tells him that she has not been unhappy. But perhaps, he says, she is of those who are unhappy without knowing it. Golaud enters, ferocious and distraught. He has blood on his forehead. It is nothing, he says—he has passed through a thicket of thorns. Melisande would wipe his brow. He repulses her fiercely. "I will not have you touch me, do you understand?" he cries. "I came to get my sword." "It is here, on the prie-Dieu," says ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... of utter self-abasement, she had to leave Charmian to the belief that she was distraught and captious, solely for the reason they shared the secret of, and Charmian respected this with a devotion so obvious as to be almost spectacular. Cornelia found herself turning into a romantic heroine, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... and that, and is half distraught; but he has stated with as much positive assurance as such a man can assume, that the match must be regarded as broken off unless you will at once ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... mind is in their trammels, and lights not By trimming fear-bred tales; nor does the will To find in nature things which less may chill An ardour that desires, unknowing what. Till we conceive her living we go distraught, At best but circle-windsails of a mill. Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life Creatively has given us blood and breath For endless war and never wound unhealed, The gloomy Wherefore of our battle-field Solves in the Spirit, wrought of her through strife To read her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "The Soul, distraught by the joy of union, heart-broken at having still to live, only aspires now to escape for ever from the Gehenna of the flesh; thus it beseeches the Bridegroom with the uplifted arms of its towers, to take pity on it, to come to ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... times his fingers with a twitching movement curled into clenched fists, at times his open palms sought his temples in a queer wriggling way and pressed upon them. Doubt, anger, fear, a rage unhallowed—in cycles—buffeted him until his brain reeled, and he was as a man distraught. ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... distraught, ate hardly anything, and her faculties were subjected to a strain so extraordinary that I thought she would not escape a serious, perhaps a fatal illness. Sleep had long since deserted her, and whenever I ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... That strumpet of th' ignoble nose, To leman, rakehell Formian chose. An ye would guard her (kinsmen folk) 5 Your friends and leaches d'ye convoke: The girl's not sound-sens'd; ask ye naught Of her complaint: she's love-distraught. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... paused to answer. Foes distraught Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, Philosophies that sages long had taught, And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, And "Hell!" and "Shell!" were ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... I saw my Judas needle shake his head And flout the Pole that, east, he Lord confessed! God! if this West should own some other Pole, And with his tangled ways perplex my soul Until the maze grow mortal, and I die Where distraught Nature clean hath gone astray, On earth some other wit than Time's at play, Some other God ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Mildred's sweet lips were upon his own, and she was in his arms. She lay there still, quite still, but even as she lay there rose, as it were, in the midst of the glamour and confusion of his mind, that made him see all things distraught, and seemed to blot out every principle of right and honour, another and far different scene. For, as in a vision, he saw a dim English landscape and a grey ruin, and himself within its shadows with a nobler woman in his arms, "Dethrone me," said a remembered ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... that fear is not a special passion. For Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 33) that "the man who is not distraught by fear, is neither harassed by desire, nor wounded by sickness"—i.e. sorrow—"nor tossed about in transports of empty joys." Wherefore it seems that, if fear be set aside, all the other passions are removed. Therefore fear is not a special ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... her cheeks were on fire. Then the prince came in—oh! your excellency will see that God protects the poor. My darling mother, like a frightened dove, sheltered herself in the bosom of the princess, who pushed her away, laughing. The poor distraught girl, trembling, weeping, knelt down in the midst of that infamous room. It was St. Anne's Day; all at once the house shook, the walls cracked, cries of distress rang out in the streets. My mother was saved. It was the earthquake that destroyed half Naples. You know all about it, my lord, since ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Friend,—This comes from one nearly distraught with grief of mind and sickness of body. My boy, my boy! They have stolen him from me. Can you find him for me? He is in the hands of Jesuits—it may be at Douay—I dare say no more. I cannot say more. Good Ned, Heaven bless him, will find you out, and give you this. Pray to God for me. He alone ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... say," declared Katherine, "is: Blessings brighten as diplomas come on apace. Between trying not to miss any fun and doing my best to distinguish myself in the scholarly pursuits that my soul loves, I am well nigh distraught. Don't mind my Shakespearean English, please. I'm on the senior play committee, and I recite Shakespeare in ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... hillock she had seen the last sail of his argosy fading over the sea-line. Vainly she had waved her arms, and vainly her cries had echoed through all the island. She had run distraught through the valleys, the goats scampering before her to their own rocks. She had strayed, wildly weeping, along the shore, and the very sky had seemed to mock her. At length, spent with sorrow and wan with her tears, she had lain upon the sand. Above her the cliff sloped ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... trembled. But seizing an iron bar he began like one distraught to loosen the paving stones. A wooden disc sprang up and soon there appeared throughout the length of the passage several of the large covers employed for stopping up the trenches ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... blue brocade, and she became as she were the full moon when it shineth forth. So they displayed her in this, for the first dress, before King Shah Zaman, who rejoiced in her and well-nigh swooned away for love-longing and amorous desire; yea, he was distraught with passion for her, whenas he saw her, because she was as saith of her one of her describers ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... waited on her at the usual hour of my morning visit, and found her not a little distraught. "The scenes have begun," she said; "you know I told you I shouldn't get through without them! You made me nervous last night—I haven't the least idea what you meant; but you made me horribly nervous. She came in to see me an hour ago, and I had the ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... out certain facts, and trying to square this horrible statement with things he had seen and heard to-night. All of a sudden he uttered a great cry, and bolted out into the darkness unheeded by Gale and Burrell, who stood dazed and distraught with a fear greater than that which was growing in Stark at sight ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... fit for the kitchen steps after milking time—he used a step-ladder to bring up the milk to the back porch. Such intensity of attention to detail could not long fail to make this degenerating neurotic take note of her own body, which gradually became more and more sensitive, till she was fairly distraught between her fear of draughts and her mania for ventilation. It was windows up and windows down, opening the dampers and closing the dampers, something for her shoulders and more fresh air. Church, lecture-halls and theaters gradually ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Virginian cigarettes smouldering between his aristocratic lips and the very latest and most elegant of Bond Street Khaki Neckwear distinguishing him from the mixed crowd about him. Every one else is distraught; even matured Generals, used to the simple and irresponsible task of commanding troops in action, are a little unnerved by the difficulties and intricacies of embarking oneself militarily. He on whom all the responsibility rests remains aloof. A smile, half cynical, plays ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... had overtaken him, anxiety for the lad had been Faxon's only thought. But as each labouring step carried them nearer to the spot he had been fleeing, the reasons for his flight grew more ominous and more insistent. No, he was not ill, he was not distraught and deluded—he was the instrument singled out to warn and save; and here he was, irresistibly driven, dragging the victim ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... driving in the Peking streets; never would I have believed that small-footed women, of whom there are a goodly number even in the large-footed Manchu city, could get so nimbly over the ground. Everybody was panic-stricken and distraught, and we could do nothing but look on. They went on running, running, running. Then the waves of men, women and animals disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and the roads became once again silent and deserted. Far away the din of the Boxers could still be heard, and flames shooting up ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... surroundings—which moves us; but whereas in the Spanish romance the simplicity is that of the incompris, in the English novel it is that of the man with whom the incompris consorts. If there is pathos as well as humour, and deepening the humour, in the figure of the distraught knight-errant talking so hopelessly over the head of his attached squire's morality, so too there is pathos, giving depth to the humour of the eccentric philosopher, shooting so hopelessly wide of the intellectual appreciation of the most affectionate of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... thronged with courtiers and lacqueys. He walked through them with his head high, the cut on his lip like the mark of a hot iron in the dead whiteness of his face. At the head of the great staircase Maria Clementina waited. She sprang forward, distraught and trembling, her face as blanched ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... my steps I would retrace. These walls, this melancholy room, O'erpower me with a sense of gloom; The space is narrow, nothing green, No friendly tree is to be seen And in these halls, with benches filled, distraught, Sight, hearing fail me, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the coach through the darkness, the insane waits for horses, the many necessary but time-consuming details told upon my distraught mind to such an extent that when I descended at the door of the inn I felt an old and broken man. The memory of another ride which I had taken was heavy upon me, my teeth chattered, the horror showing in my face so plainly that Dame Dickenson read my thought on the ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... he returned, with the distraught air of a man who was casting about for the Philosopher's stone, at least. "Pretty much so. There's rather a run on Noah's Arks at present. I could have wished to improve on the Family, but I don't see ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... her deductive logic she had it. The look of absolute horror which suddenly leaped into Eve's drawn face was overwhelming. Annie's arm tightened round her shoulders, for she thought the distraught woman was about ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... drank the blood of a conquered world. Julius Caesar marched his invincible armies, like juggernauts, over the necks of fallen nations. Napoleon Bonaparte rose with the morning of the nineteenth century, and stood, like some frightful comet, on its troubled horizon. Distraught with the dream of conquest and empire, he hovered like a god on the verge of battle. Kings and emperors stood aghast. The sun of Austerlitz was the rising sun of his glory and power, but it went down, veiled in the dark clouds of Waterloo, and Napoleon the Great, uncrowned, unthroned, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... reached Trevlyn's ear, but he gave them at first little heed. He should never marry, he said; it was sinful to wed without love. But as he saw Alexandrine's pale face and strangely distraught manner day by day, he came to feel as if he had in some way wronged her though how he ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... telegraphed his arrival to Lydia's uncle as he went up to the consulate with his ship's papers. The next morning the young men sent their baggage to a hotel, but they came back for a last dinner on the Aroostook. They all pretended to be very gay, but everybody was perturbed and distraught. Staniford and Dunham had paid their way handsomely with the sailors, and they had returned with remembrances in florid scarfs and jewelry for Thomas and the captain and the officers. Dunham had thought they ought to get something to give Lydia as ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... while thus amid the desert dark We passed on with steps and pace unmeet, A rumbling roar, confused with howl and bark Of dogs, shook all the ground beneath our feet, And struck the din within our ears so deep, As half distraught unto the ground I fell; Besought return, and not to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... motorman. He saluted her with a frown upon his face, but evidently with familiarity. The change in the girl's demeanor was instantaneous. Evidently she did not wish to offend the newcomer, nor did she wish to break with the motorman. All were ill at ease, distraught, vexed, worried. She tried to bring the newcomer into the conversation, which he refused. The motorman eyed him with hostility now and again, as he dared to neglect his duty, but smiled uneasily in the face of the girl when she addressed him with ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... front of him—at the battery. He now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other. He could distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the faces of these two men, who evidently did not realize ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... distraught clerk answered. "But it is all very unfortunate. To think of their putting it over on me—me, who have been here twenty years and never lost ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... vexed her!" I exclaimed over and over again, like one distraught. My noble, my beautiful Louise, if anything could increase the fervor of my devotion or confirm my belief in your delicate moral intuitions, it would be the new light which your words have thrown upon my own feelings. Much in them, of which my mind was formerly but dimly conscious, you have now ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... pot-house brawler—" and Cedric glared fiercely upon her and bent forward, his hand falling upon his sword-hilt; then he grew red at his hot action, and looked about to see if 'twas noticed. "Get thee gone, thou saucy, lisping minx." The poor thing was well-nigh distraught with fear of this man whose anger came like a thunderbolt, and she fell heavy upon the lackey who conducted her forth. She slipped through the corridors like a fast fleeting shadow, and Janet followed her close and saw her enter a certain chamber apart ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... request, my lord," replied the monk, "it is that our poor distraught brother, William Haydocke, be spared the quartering block. He meant ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... parent's words Are truth, and if the Queen should find I live She would abuse me as before. Give me One maid-companion here to be with me," She asked. "My child, trust not," he said, "in slaves, Nor servants, for they only follow pay." Then Bidasari silence kept, and they, The father all distraught and mother fond, Wept bitterly at thought of leaving her. Fair Bidasari bade them eat, before They started. But because of heavy hearts They but a morsel tasted. At the dawn Young Bidasari swooned again. ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... Mountains gives way to an enchanted hail in which are seen the most famous courtesans of ancient history—Phryne, Lais, Aspasia, Cleopatra, and Helen of Troy. The apparition of Marguerite appears to Faust, a red line encircling her neck, like the mark of a headsman's axe. We reach the end. The distraught maiden has slain her child, and now lies in prison upon her pallet of straw, awaiting death. Faust enters and tries to persuade her to fly with him. Her poor mind is all awry and occupies itself only with the scenes of her first meeting and the love-making in the garden. She turns ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... in the arms of Morpheus a sensation as of fevered nightmare or threatened madness. But the sturdy soon attuned themselves to the terrific reality, though for some days, while the midnight cannonading continued, many of the more nervous were well-nigh distraught. The bombardment was accounted for in different ways. Some said it was to celebrate a victory over the advance-guard of Hildyard's brigade, others declared that the firing had been attracted by some companies of the Liverpool Regiment who had gone to cut firewood, and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... impossible for me to write. I am distraught, my mind is gone. Write to the grand duchess that I no ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... example, she gives her voice the hue and colour of a jeune fille in Pelleas et Melisande, for although Melisande had been the bride of Barbe-Bleue before Golaud discovered her in the forest she had never learned to be anything else than innocent and distraught, unhappy and mysterious. Her treatment of certain important phrases in this work is so electrifying in its effect that the heart of every auditor is pierced. Remember, for example, her question to Pelleas at the end of the first act, "Pourquoi partez-vous?" to ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... low, quick, nervous utterance that is often associated with intense repressed feeling; and his words were accompanied by his best possible counterfeit of the burning, piercing, distraught gaze of passion. Though he acted a part, it was not with the cold-blooded art of a mimic who simulates by rule; it was with the animation due to imagining himself actually swayed by the feeling he would feign. While he knew his emotion to be fictitious, he felt it ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... pretty, the scenery was very fine, and the costumes were dazzling enough—from a distance; but when you've said that you've said everything. The situations were impossible and absurd. The speeches were bombast. The sentiment was silly and untrue. And Sardanapalus himself was none so distraught by his unpleasant dream and all his other troubles but that he was looking forward to his glass of whiskey-and-water between the acts. No, he didn't impose on me one bit. I didn't believe in Sardanapalus for a moment, even before I had the privilege of seeing and hearing him as Mr Buskin ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... who had ever known it could live without this place. Miss Mary would find them. She would make everything right. The mere thought of Mistress Mary brought a strange peace into poor Lisa's over-wrought, distraught mind. ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... love, its might They own and feel in distance, So I, within this dungeon's night, Cling ever to existence. And when my heart is nigh distraught, If I but say—FORGET-ME-NOT, Hope burns again ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... know her," the baronet said, with emphasis, "so many years ago that I had almost forgotten she ever existed. She was always more or less mad, I fancy, and it seems hereditary. Her daughter—if daughter she be—seems as distraught ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... practice to jump into the saddle and bustle out of the place, as though seconds were important to him. He would look at his watch with accuracy, and measure his pace from spot to spot, as though minutes were too valuable to be lost. But now he wandered away like one distraught, and the stable boy knew that something was wrong. 'I thout he was a thinken of the white cow as choked 'erself with the tunnup that was skipped in the chopping,' said the boy, as he spoke of his master afterwards ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... ran back out of the rain. Like a bird he flew up to Chelkash, dropped down beside him, and began to turn him over on the ground. His hand dipped into a warm, red stickiness. He shuddered and staggered back with a face pale and distraught. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Jahveh Sabaoth was to be a crown of glory to those of His children who remained faithful to Him; but Judah, far from submitting itself to His laws, betrayed Him even as Israel had done. Its prophets and priests were likewise distraught with drunkenness; they staggered under the effects of their potations, and turned to scorn the true prophet sent to proclaim to them the will of Jehovah. "Whom," they stammered between their hiccups—"whom will He teach knowledge? ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the effects of it in his life, and almost in his own soul. He is a victim to the eternal struggle between good and evil without the strength and the unquenchable hope of Christianity. The Misanthrope is a shriek of despair uttered by virtue, excited and almost distraught at the defeat she forebodes. The Tartuffe was a new effort in the same direction, and bolder in that it attacked religious hypocrisy, and seemed to aim its blows even at religion itself. Moliere was a ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... twofold bat Goes flapping round the rainy eaves above, Where one broad opening letteth in the moon, He starteth, thinking of that grey-haired man, His sire: then oftentimes the white-armed child Of thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comes And droops above him with her short sweet sighs For Love distraught—for dear Love's faded sake That weeps and sings and weeps itself to death Because of casual eyes, and lips of frost, And careless mutterings, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... my aching heart return a thousand-fold into your own. Farewell. Ragobah may return at any moment. Let us not needlessly imperil your safety. Once more good-bye. The dew-drop now may freely fall into the shining sea." Poor distraught child! She had tried to adopt her lover's religion without abandoning her own. I bent over and kissed her. It was my first and last kiss and she gave it with a sweet sadness, the memory of which, through all these years, has dwelt in the better part ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... shall hang on you as heavy as your chains of gold, to drag you down to him in whose name you have thought to cast out devils. Do not think that these things are harmless vanities. Nothing can fill the human heart and be harmless. If your thoughts be not of God, they will keep your minds distraught from His grace as effectually as the blackest broodings of crime. 'Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number, saith the Lord God.' Yes, your minds are too puny to entertain the full ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... saying Merapi grew even sadder and more distraught than she was before, and from her the trouble crept to Seti. He too became sad and ill at ease, though when I asked him why he vowed he did not know, but supposed it was because some new ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... she had left the room. In her place, the Baroness was standing upon the threshold, dressed in a wonderful blue wrapper, and with a cigarette between her teeth. She burst into a little peal of laughter as she looked into his distraught face. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... distraught brain there leaped some wild idea of conspiracy, of intrigue to supplant him by the means of some pretender fashioned ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I, as Dom. Consul afterwards told the pastor of Benz, clenched my fists and answered, "What, thou arch-rogue, didst thou not crawl about the room in the shape of a reptile?" whereupon he would hearken to me no longer, thinking me distraught, nor would he make the constable take an oath, but left me standing in the midst of the room, and got into his ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... said softly, "if your Ned were alive, and you were in trouble, you would like him to hurry home to you, whatever it might cost! And if She were alive, and poor and distraught, you would rather he worked for her, than left her that he might fill the greatest post on earth. Judge us by that thought when you feel inclined to be hard! I know you don't like kissing people, so I am going to kiss you instead. There! ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... some suspicion of his wife, and knocked at the door. Now the singer had entered and the druggist's wife said to him, "Up with thee and enter this chest." Accordingly he entered it and she shut it down on him and opened to her husband, who came in all distraught, and searched the house but found none and overlooked the chest. Hereat he said in his mind "The house[FN322] is one which favoureth my house and the woman is one who favoureth my wife," and returned to his shop; whereupon the singer came ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... wife," said the distraught man, looking listlessly beyond her. "I am here to see Oliver—he is ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... town, and the great shame I had wrought for him among the folk round the card-table at the Luttrell Arms, was not to be, even there, attributed to King Charles the Second, nor even to his counsellors, but to my own speed of travelling, which had beat post-horses. For being much distraught in mind, and desperate in body, I had made all the way from London to Dunster in six days, and no more. It may be one hundred and seventy miles, I cannot tell to a furlong or two, especially as I lost my way more than a dozen times; ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... public portion of his suite, and Mr. Staines listened. He listened at varying distances from the door, and in his last position it would have required the most delicate of scientific instruments to measure the distance between his ear and the keyhole. He heard nothing save the wail of a Bones distraught, and the firm "No's" of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... lance. The woman was talking and laughing to it, her clothes were torn, and her hair fell in wild disorder over her shoulders. It needed but a glance to tell Malcolm that the poor creature was mad, distraught by the horrors of the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... being enacted. Impatiently at the cave mouth French and Kalman waited the coming of those they were to meet. At length, in the gathering gloom, Rosenblatt appeared, coming up the ravine. He was pale and distraught. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... freedom of style, and singular limitation of note. He sang "Come haste to the Wedding, Ye Lasses and Maidens," of which he knew a single line, and that incorrectly, as being peculiarly apt and appropriate. Yet away from the house and his daughter's presence, he was silent and distraught. His absence of mind was particularly noted by his workmen at the Empire Quartz Mill. "Ef the old man don't look out and wake up," said his foreman, "he'll hev them feet of his yet under the stamps. When he ain't givin' his mind to 'em, they ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... obstacle now gone for ever thrust it back to its source, bubbling in impotent fury, divided for all time from its goal and its gladness. But, in another direction, at right angles almost to the distraught, unhappy, useless stream, a force superior to the force of instinct had traced a long, greenish canal, calm, peaceful, deliberate; that flowed steadily across the country, across the crumbling stones, across the obedient forest, on its clear and unerring, unhurrying way from its distant ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the nightingale; "There alone is peace," sung the lilies; "There alone is peace," sung the chiming waters. She drew nearer to them. Heaven only knows what ideas were in that overbalanced brain and distraught mind. Looking in the clear waters she saw the golden stars shining; perhaps she thought she was reaching to them. A little low cry fell on the night air. A cry that startled the ring-doves, but ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... "I will not vouch her guiltless in my thought, In fear to warrant what is false; but I Boldly maintain, in such an act is nought For which the damsel should deserve to die; And ween unjust, or else of wit distraught, Who statutes framed of such severity; Which, as iniquitous, should be effaced, And with a new and better ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... love and the dread of the penalty incurred by the sacrilege of the theft of the parts of one who might any day be King-God, Bakuma stared distraught. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... she knew, And they told him of her loss. 'For she is mild and sweet of will, She loved him, and his words are peace, And he shall heal her ill.' But her watch she did not cease. He bless'd her where she sat distraught, And show'd her holy cross,— The cross she kiss'd from year to year— But she neither saw nor heard; And said he in her deaf ear All he had been wont to teach, All she had been fond to hear, Missall'd prayer, and solemn speech, But she answer'd not a word. Only when he turn'd to speak with ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... battened hatch I leaned and caught Sounds from the noisome hold, — Cursing and sighing of souls distraught And cries too sad to be told. Then I strove to go down and see; But they said, "Thou art not of us!" I turned to those on the deck with me And cried, "Give help!" But they said, "Let be: Our ship sails ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... his books and papers, and the poor author on his return went mad, beating his head against the door of his palace, and raving blasphemous words. In vain his friends tried to comfort him, and the poor man wandered away into the woods, his mind utterly distraught by the enormity ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Chubb's "Fly-by-day," as Dr. Travis called the one automobile that Miller's Notch boasted, chugged busily over the mountain roads. John Westley started out very early to find his friends at Cobble; then he had to drive back to Wayside to appease a distraught manager and half a dozen angry guides and also to pack his belongings; for the Allans would not let him stay anywhere else but with them at Cobble. Then, after he had been comfortably established in the freshly painted and papered guest-room of the old ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... beautiful sight for one who is able to observe and to meditate. Let us overcome our disgust; let us turn over the unclean refuse with our foot. What a swarming there is beneath it, what a tumult of busy workers! The Silphae, with wing-cases wide and dark, as though in mourning, fly distraught, hiding in the cracks in the soil; the Saprini, of polished ebony which mirrors the sunlight, jog hastily off, deserting their workshop; the Dermestes, of whom one wears a fawn-coloured tippet, spotted with white, seek to fly ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... until she recovered herself. He was troubled by no qualms of gentlemanly etiquette at watching the distress of the distraught girl sobbing wildly at the little table between them. There is a wide difference between pampered beauty in distress and a female prisoner in self-abasement. So he waited composedly enough until she lifted her head and regarded him with dark wistful eyes through ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... then shoots suddenly aloft, clearing the encircling tops of the bending, twisting and tormented trees, straight into the heart of the gale, where for one breathless moment it whirls madly about like a thing distraught, then in slow but triumphant obedience to the master hand that guides it, steadies and mounts majestically upward till it is lost to their view in the depths ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... by some fatal impulse and leaned near a bleak abutment that overlooked the river—gazing, gazing, gazing in a blank stare at the driving channel below. The thought, the lurking purpose was shadowed dimly on his distraught mind. The cold, rolling river once passed, the seething cakes of ice once passed, and it would soon be over, soon be over. Life had been a worthless gift to him. His youth had been falsely colored by the visions of childhood; his ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... long time. As to most of these he was ignorant who they were, but he saw two or three that he knew, and tried to approach them and talk with them, but they would not listen to him, and did not seem to be in their right minds, but out of their senses and distraught, avoiding every sight and touch, and at first turned round and round alone, but afterwards meeting many other souls whirling round and in the same condition as themselves, they moved about promiscuously with no particular object in view, and uttered inarticulate sounds, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... praise or calumny— Think ye their moldering ashes hear or care? Nay, praise and fame are by the living sought; But he is wise who scorns their flattery, And who escapes the tongue of calumny May count himself an angel or a naught: Lo over Byron's grave a maggot writhes distraught. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... touch she rose and stood looking round the dingy room like one distraught, and, sighing, crossed ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... of the soothsayers, they offered many expiatory sacrifices and voted that a larger statue of Jupiter should be set up, looking toward the east and the Forum, in order that the conspiracies by which they were distraught ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... little exclamation of annoyance the distraught guardian drew his watch from under his pillow and held it to the tiny shaft of light. "Half-past-one!" Well, he did not need to cross that bridge until he came to it! He dug his tired head into his pillow and went to sleep to dream of Madame Forsyth and Robin ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... ejaculations were too dreadful for a Christian reader's ears. Dumfounded for an instant, he gathered his wits to fire another pistol at the pirogue. The ball flew wild, as was to be expected of a marksman in a state of mind so distraught. He had overlooked those two poor seamen of his who had been impressed to bury the treasure, after which they were presumably to be pistoled or knocked on the head. Dead men told no tales. Doomed wretches, they were quick to snatch from this confusion ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... were weary ones indeed for her father. Sometimes he wandered about the store quite distraught. 'Rill was worried about him. He missed the solace of his violin and refused to purchase a cheap instrument to take the place of the one he ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though half distraught. "You do not understand—yet you are a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... brightly brimming pebbly bays; Those are our children's songs that come With bells and bleatings of the sheep; And there, in yonder English home, We thrive on mortal food and sleep!' She laugh'd. How proud she always was To feel how proud he was of her! But he had grown distraught, because The Muse's mood began ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... finished, had suddenly repented of his whim and refused to spend another farthing. The thousands upon thousands of mighty trees were bounded by long, irregular walls of hard earth, at the top of which were stuck distraught thorn bushes. These walls gave the rough, penurious aspect which was in such sharp contrast to the exotic mystery they guarded. Yet in the fierce blaze of the sun their meanness was not disagreeable. Domini even liked it. It seemed to her as if the desert had thrown up waves ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... she exclaimed tumultuously. "You have not one atom of Christian faith between you! To imagine that you can strike a bargain with the good God by letting a sick theory of expiation of a dying, fever-distraught creature besmirch his repute as a man and a gentleman, make his whole life seem like a whited sepulchre, and bring his name into odium,—as kind a man as ever lived,—and you know it!—as honest, and generous, and whole-souled, to be held up to scorn and humiliation because of a boyish prank forty ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... measure question my good estate is my not having experienced conversion in those particular steps wherein the people of New England, and anciently the dissenters of old England, used to experience it." Poor Jonathan! How many have been so distraught! But the supreme folly of any man's spiritual life is to try thus to run himself into the mold of any other man's experience. There is no regular routine in spiritual transformation. Some men come in on a high tide of feeling, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... past the gorse bushes shrinking from their presence, she stepped into the heather as into a quickening bath that almost hurt. Her fingers moved over the clasped fingers of the child, she heard the anxious voice of the baby, as it tried to make her talk, distraught. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... your wife forever!" she shrieked. "I will never be your wife again—never, not for one hour! Let me go! Take your hands off me!" For Basil had knelt down by the distraught woman, and clasping her in his arms said, even on her lips, "You ARE my dear wife! You are my very own dear wife! Tell me what to do. Anything that is right, reasonable I will do. We ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... when she waked from her swoon aboard ship and found I had sailed without you, she was like one distraught and was for having me 'bout ship that she might stay to comfort you in your solitude. And so I did, Martin, but we were beset by storm and tempest and blown far out of our course and further beset by pirates and the like evils, and in the end came hardly to England ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... true desire, Or faithful vow of endless love, Thy heart inflamed may kindly move With equal fire; O then my joys, So long distraught, shall rest, Reposed soft in thy chaste ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... is reeling. I do not know what I am saying," she cried, distraught. "I do not know whether I am saying what is true or only what I imagine to be true. I know nothing but this. I was mesmerised. I have been so for two years. But for that I would have been happy in your love—for I was a woman before this hideous influence ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... struggled involuntarily to the surface. Each failure thus to escape fetched wild laughter from the men. But why did they laugh? The thing was sublime, horrible, but it was not humorous. I leave it to you. What is there laughable in the sight of a pain-distraught fish rolling helplessly on the surface of the sea and exposing to the sun all its ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... proves himself to be distraught, the proper friendly thing to do is to think for him, became ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she answered, while she got on her things for the walk with unusual gayety; and, with the consciousness of unknown guilt depressing him, he followed the ladies upon their errand, subdued, distraught, but gradually forgetting his sin, as he forgot everything but his history. His wife hated to see him so miserable, and whispered at the shop-door where they parted, "Don't be troubled, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... Susan Burnet's sister Alice was now distinguished as the chief of the malcontents. The new trouble seemed to Lady Harman to be traceable in one direction to that ardent Unionist, Miss Babs Wheeler, under the spell of whose round-faced, blue-eyed, distraught personality Alice had altogether fallen. Miss Babs Wheeler was fighting for the Union; she herself lived at Highbury with her mother, and Alice was her chosen instrument in the hostels. The Union had always been a little against the lady-like instincts of ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... thou quake, and change thy colour, Murther thy breath in middle of a word, And then againe begin, and stop againe, As if thou were distraught, and mad with terror? Buck. Tut, I can counterfeit the deepe Tragedian, Speake, and looke backe, and prie on euery side, Tremble and start at wagging of a Straw: Intending deepe suspition, gastly Lookes Are at my seruice, like enforced Smiles; And both are readie in their Offices, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the distraught girl. "Yet stay, one moment more. Let she, who has received so much from her benefactor, at least know ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... half distraught At his tricks as the days went by; "The most mischievous child in the world!" She said, with a shrug and ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... good deed in secret, and yet so near heaven. The man received it as his due, like a toll-keeper; and soon after departed, leaving the traveller alone. And the traveller went his way down the mountain, as one distraught. He stopped only to pluck one bright blue flower, which bloomed all alone in the vast desert, and looked up at him, as if to say; "O take me with you! leave me not ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Exel!" broke in Dr. Cumberly—"Leroux is perfectly well aware that you intended nothing unkindly. But the poor chap, quite naturally, is distraught at the moment. You MUST understand ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... bird (O King of men!) The Princess answered: "Go, dear swan, and tell This same to Nala;" and the egg-born said, "I go"—and flew; and told the Prince of all. But Damayanti, having heard the bird, Lived fancy-free no more; by Nala's side Her soul dwelt, while she sat at home distraught, Mournful and wan, sighing the hours away, With eyes upcast, and passion-laden looks; So that, eftsoons, her limbs failed, and her mind— With love o'erweighted—found no rest in sleep, No grace in company, no joy at feasts. Nor night nor day brought peace; always she heaved Sigh upon ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... my heavie spright, 575 At sight of these sad spectacles forepast, That all my senses were bereaved quight, And I in minde remained sore agast, Distraught twixt feare and pitie; when at last I heard a voyce which loudly to me called, 580 That with the suddein shrill I ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... dragon fought with him; but his pride had softened him, so he drew off. Then other red dragons came upon him in his wounds and beat him sore, which seeing, the white dragon dashed upon them all—and I awoke. Merlin, tell me what this may mean, for my mind is sore distraught with ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... of the hall. There he stopped, indeed, for down it came the Queen, her hair streaming, all her robes disordered, and her face stained with tears. She was alone save for Kurri the Sidonian, who followed her, and she walked wildly as one distraught who knows not where she goes nor ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... seemed to the casual glance, just as he had left it,—but in her fingers she held what appeared to be a letter, and as he watched, unobserved, she crumpled it and tossed it into the flames that cast bright flecks of color on her cheeks. Her face looked somewhat miserable and distraught—but that hardly comported with what should be expected had she learned the truth—unless possibly it was the exhaustion of wretchedness following the violence of a swiftly sweeping and cyclonic storm. On ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck |
