"Heartbreaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steep, and emerged at last upon the dizzy and breathless height above. Two men could scarce climb abreast in it; and even this was defended by fortifications, and at the summit, against the sky, tents could be seen. Yet this was the only way to victory: only by this heartbreaking path could England drive France from the western continent, and give a mighty nation to the world. Wolfe saw, and was content; where one man could go, thousands might follow. And he perceived that the very difficulty of the enterprise was the best assurance of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... afternoon when the exhausted men reached the clearing by the beach, but for two of them the return brought so great a happiness that all their suffering and heartbreaking grief ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... say I have," replied Braxton. "And it's always been a treat to see the way he did his work. I saw him at the Polo Grounds when in that last, heartbreaking game he won the championship for the Giants. And I saw him, too, in that last game of the World's Series, when it seemed as though only a miracle could save the day. That triple play was the most wonderful thing I ever beheld. The way he nailed that ball and shot it over ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... no one wanted him, just as no one wanted his translations of the glorious Ab Gwilym. He appeared before the world as a failure, which probably troubled him very little; but there was another aspect of the case that was in his eyes, "the most heartbreaking of everything, the strange, the disadvantageous light in which I am aware that I must frequently have appeared to those whom I ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... withered daisies had been scattered in the thin grass over the poet, and one hardly dared lift one's eyes from them to the heartbreaking epitaph which one could not spell ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... of the country, summing up in two words all the heartbreaking labour that transforms the incult woods, barren of sustenance, to smiling fields, ploughed and sown. Samuel Chapdelaine's eyes flamed with enthusiasm and determination as ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Lady Fermanagh. For Lady Fermanagh was only too anxious to get her orphan niece off her hands, not only because Myra was an expense, but because her madcap exploits occasionally drove her almost to distraction, while her heartbreaking flirtations ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the forest at the time of the breaking out of the fire, over whose fate remained a terrible uncertainty, gathered in silence around lonely hearths. The terrors of the past night were, to such, supplemented by days and even weeks of heartbreaking anxiety and suspense, closed at last by ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... the men supporting him moved—the pick had dislodged a heavy chip of granite; in falling it struck his crouching supporter on the head. The man steadied himself instantly, but the single instant cost the balance of the upmost figure. With a suppressed struggle, heartbreaking half a mile away, the man above strove to right himself. Like light his second hand reached for the pick handle; he could not recover it. The pyramid wavered and Glover, helpless, spread his ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... does. In fact, it's the only thing she does realize very clearly now. She talks of it continually, in her dreamy way—but a way that's quite heartbreaking. I really think that if you were ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... he could for the jolting. They had again struck the level and seven miles, at Park's usual pace, was heartbreaking to a man not accustomed to the saddle. Thurston had written, just before leaving home, a musical bit of verse born of his luring dreams, about "the joy of speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky," and he was gritting his teeth ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... bewildering exhibition of such bucking that the disgruntled cowboys forgot their shame and shouted with joy. Upon his hind legs and then down on his forefeet with a sickening heartbreaking jar the stallion rocked; now he bucked from side to side; now rose and whirled about like a dancer; now toppled to the ground and ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... standpoint of the people, and the hero will not be any red-handed assassin who goes through peaceful country places leaving behind him dead men looking sightlessly up to the sky. The hero will be the man or woman who knows and loves and serves. In the new histories we will be shown the tragedy, the heartbreaking tragedy of war, which like some dreadful curse has followed the human family, beaten down their plans, their hopes, wasted their savings, destroyed their homes, and in every way turned back the clock ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... years of heartbreaking toil at the mines my health utterly broke down. One day I fell fainting under the lash of the brutal overseer, and as I lay on the ground he ran at me and kicked me twice with his heavy iron-shod boots, once on the hip, breaking the ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... that my mother was of the people! I'd have died to have gone smirking through life with a brick for a heart and milk and water in my veins! Of all the stupid pieces of brutality I ever heard of, this is the most callous and the most heartbreaking." ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... consolation after this heartbreaking defection but two interesting things in life—the printing press and the Flobert Rifle. Somehow the week dragged through until Sunday, when Bobby duly scrubbed and dressed, had to go to church with his father ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... Down by the green edge of the Cornish sea they would have it out—"grip hard, become a root ..." become men as trees walking, rooted in a quiet dream. Dream? No, reality. This was the dream, this world of slipping shadows and hurrying gleams of heartbreaking loveliness, through which one roamed, a child chasing butterflies which ever escaped, or which, if captured, crumbled to dust in one's clutching hands. Oh for something strong and firm to hold. Oh Barry, Barry, these few more weeks of dream, of slipping golden shadows and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... morning, and that he was trying to sneak off to Paddy's Market without her. She was awake in an instant, and her face flushed pink with anger as she jumped out of bed, indignant at being deprived of her share of the unpleasant trip to the markets. Three times a week she nerved herself for that heartbreaking journey in the raw morning air, resolved never to let Chook see her flinch from her duty. As she started to dress herself with feverish haste, Chook recovered enough from his astonishment to ask her ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... that, papa has been very hopeful. I don't know exactly what his mind runs on, but I can see that he is making heaps of plans in regard to the future, and oh! You can't think how glad and how thankful I am for the change. The state of dull, heartbreaking, weary depression that he fell into just after getting the news of our failure was beginning to undermine his health. I could see that plainly, and felt quite wretched about him. But now he is comparatively cheerful, and so gentle too. Do you know, I have been thinking a good ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... little mind away in the future, living in the earthly paradise which had been conjured up before him by the warm, inspiring sentences of this miners' leader, and joyful in the contemplation of this paradise of happy humanity, he fell asleep. Could he have foreseen the terrible, heartbreaking ordeals through which Smillie often had to pass, still clinging with tenacity to the gleam that led him on, praying sometimes that strength would be given to keep him from turning back; of the strenuous battle he had, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... waxed sorrowful, and replied, "Noble stranger, it is too much to run a second risk, for this monster lived in a den under yon mountain, with a brother of his, more fierce than himself; therefore, if you go thither and perish in the attempt, it will be the heartbreaking of both me and my lady. Let me persuade you ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... an acknowledgment of defeat, indeed, and that is the sad result of so much living. The world has been too hard, we cry—there is so much heartbreaking, so much misery, so few arrive! We look to another world where all that will be made right, and where ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... the shade they use for painting carts and wheelbarrows. And Mrs. Lynde says it is the most hideous color for a building, especially when combined with a red roof, that she ever saw or imagined. You could simply have knocked me down with a feather when I heard it. It's heartbreaking, after ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... entirely their affair, and one knows. But one can't help thinking. Just fancy Gwen the wife of a blind country Squire. It is heartbreaking to think ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... This heartbreaking result ought not to be charged to the soldiers so much as to the administration. John Armstrong, Secretary of War, allowed the British to land 5,000 men on the Chesapeake and to march fifty miles overland to Washington. Within a distance of ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart
... manner, the gentleness, had a heartbreaking effect. In a moment the woman's eyes were flooded with tears, which coursed down her cheeks. It was the relief that her poor troubled brain and nerves demanded, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... is heartbreaking, and night brings no forgetfulness. Those long voiceless nights of South Africa! Not a bird's call, nor a chirp from the tiny creatures which hide in the grass. A white moon, a wide heaven filled with strange stars, and the tall moon-flowers ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond |
