"Melancholy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it be stirred ever so little, and from it go forth deep vibrations which render the sound of the infinite. Augustin, before his conversion, had the apprehensions of our Romantics, the causeless melancholy and sadness, the immense yearnings for "anywhere but here," which overwhelmed our fathers. He is really very ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... time Muggleton "fell into a melancholy." He had arrived at the prophetic age—he had completed his fortieth year. "Then did two motives arise in me and speak in me as two lively voices, as if two spirits had been speaking in me, one answering the other as if they were not my own ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... you see before you one vast forest, uninterrupted except by the cultivated openings which have been made by the axe on the summits of some of the loftiest hills, and which tend considerably to diminish those melancholy sensations its gloomy monotony would otherwise inspire. The innumerable undulations in this vast expanse of forest, forcibly remind you of the ocean when convulsed by tempests; save that the billows of the one slumber in a fixed ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... tell, our weather is suddenly become so wet, the roads so heavy with incessant rain, that king William's departure from his own foggy country, or his welcome to our gloomy one, where this month is melancholy even, to a proverb, could not have been clouded with a thicker atmosphere surely, than was mine to Milan upon the fourth day of dismal ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... life and that of his followers, as dearly as possible, or of cutting his way through the enemy to make good a retreat into North Carolina. Happily for his country, Doyle evaded him, and thus prevented the dangerous attempt. The general now received the melancholy account of the extent of his loss in ammunition and other stores on Snow's island, which under present circumstances appeared irretrievable. However he was but little disposed to brood over misfortunes, and if he had, his enemies were not inclined to ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... admirer of Dick Garstin. She thought him a great painter, but apart from his gift his mind interested her intensely. He had a sort of melancholy understanding of human nature and of life, a strangely sure instinct in probing to the bottom of psychological mysteries, a cruelly sure hand in tearing away the veils which the victims hoped would shroud their ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... his harp,—three times Arose the well-known martial chimes, And thrice their high heroic pride In melancholy murmurs died. 'Vainly thou bidst, O noble maid,' Clasping his withered hands, he said, 'Vainly thou bidst me wake the strain, Though all unwont to bid in vain. Alas! than mine a mightier hand Has tuned my harp, my strings has spanned! I touch the chords of joy, but low And mournful ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... there may be a successor, without being the heir, of the king. And this is so extremely reasonable, that without such a power, lodged somewhere, our polity would be very defective. For, let us barely suppose so melancholy a case, as that the heir apparent should be a lunatic, an ideot, or otherwise incapable of reigning: how miserable would the condition of the nation be, if he were also incapable of being set aside!—It is therefore necessary ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... bravely; nevertheless, her young cheek blanched, and she shivered slightly as she glanced round the place—poor enough, perhaps, but which at least afforded her a peaceful and comfortable home. These signs were not unnoticed by the dying man, and a faint, slow, melancholy smile gathered about ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... ensued, but the majority complied with the demand. Some members in the upper house complained that the message was not sent to both houses of parliament, and this suggestion gave rise to another debate, in which lord Bathurst and others made some melancholy reflections upon the state of insignificance to which the peers of England were reduced. Such remarks, however, were very little minded by the ministry, who had obtained a complete victory over all opposition. The supplies, ordinary and extraordinary, being granted, with every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... but I am sure it is a noble one," he said. "You see before you one who in his time has been a squire of dames, by Jove! I can't remember 'em. They must number thousands and only one of them was worth two sous. Yes," he shook his head in melancholy, "only one of 'em. By Jove! The rest were"—he ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... gayety, however, there lay a deep-seated Celtic melancholy, and beside his energy was an infinite patience at the service of an exacting artistic conscience. The endless painstaking of his work and the time he took over it were almost proverbial. He was twelve years engaged upon the "Shaw Memorial" and eleven ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... remains a region unsmiling and melancholy. A monochrome of sand, darkened everywhere by long blotches of sickly undergrowth or the dull reach of the pines; here and there are cork-trees and alders. The sheen of some slow lagoon is caught in the distance. There is a charm in the very charmlessness of the scene, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... to every species of enjoyment as melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... be adequately described in the short space available in such a book as this. His externals are well appreciated, his tall figure, his powerful ugliness, his awkward strength, his racy humour, his fits of temperamental melancholy; well appreciated also his firmness, wisdom and patriotism. But if we wish to grasp the peculiar quality which makes him almost unique among great men of action, we shall perhaps find the key in the fact that his favourite private recreation ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... need, George, for you to continue," and then, fixing his glittering eye on Philip: "it is very melancholy for me, having only one son, to know him to be such a brute, such a bearer of false witness, such an impostor as you are. Do you know that I have just seen Mr. Bellamy, the head clerk at the bank, and inquired if he knew anything ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the plague in his house that sells a drop of claret to kill the poison of it! As many wounds may'st thou have as Caesar had in the senate-house, and get no white wine to wash them with; and to conclude, pine away in melancholy and sorrow, before thou hast the fourth part of a dram of my juice to cheer ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and John wandered for hours upon the beach, gazing at the gray melancholy sea, and trying to understand how far he had been to blame. Perhaps it is in the want of pity that the real infernal of Satan consists; for whenever he sees us overwhelmed with sorrow, then he casts into our throbbing heart his ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... hours the stranger remained alone on the shore, evidently under the influence of recollections which recalled all his past life—a melancholy life doubtless—and the colonists, without losing sight of him, did not attempt to disturb his solitude. However, after two hours, appearing to have formed a resolution, he came to find Cyrus Harding. His eyes were red with the tears he had shed, but he wept no longer. His countenance expressed deep ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... may you have a son endowed with such qualities that you can resign your sceptre to him with as much satisfaction as I give up mine to you!" Charles retired into a monastery, where he died after more than two years passed in deep melancholy, and in practices of devotion inconsistent with sound health, when only between fifty-eight and fifty-nine years of age. His activity and talents had been the theme of universal admiration, the ardor of his ambitious policy had been extreme, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... and in doing so, you are aware that I cannot hope to entertain you with a merely humourous or facetious story. Harlequin without his mask is known to present a very sober countenance, and was himself, the story goes, the melancholy patient whom the Doctor advised to go and see Harlequin—a man full of cares and perplexities like the rest of us, whose Self must always be serious to him, under whatever mask or disguise or uniform ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... back in his chair, his handsome face blank and expressionless, the while he stared steadily at his wife, and Bridgie stared back, her distress palpably mingled with complacence. Speak she would not, until Dick had given expression to his surprise. She sat still, therefore, shaking her head in a melancholy mandarin fashion, which had the undesired effect of restoring ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... the negative information expected and desired, though the professional melancholy of his countenance might have been the precursor of the worst possible news. The hospitals on his rapid round had included Charing Cross, St. Thomas's, St. George's, and the Royal Free; but he had telephoned ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... they should undergo, while mourning for their kindred, the deepest privation in a property sense. Everything the loss of which would make them poor was sacrificed on the graves of their relatives or distinguished warriors, and as melancholy because of removal from their old homes caused frequent deaths, there was no lack of occasion for the sacrifices. The widows and orphans of the dead warriors were of course the chief mourners, and exhibited their grief in ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... life? It is evident that for the New Republican to admit that the thing is indeed a dilemma, that there is nothing for it but to make the best of whichever bad thing we have at hand, that we cannot have all we desire but only a greater or a lesser moiety, is a most melancholy and hampering admission. And, certainly, no New Republican will agree without a certain mental struggle, without a thorough and earnest inquiry into the possibility of a ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... dead in Sydney. I was told that he shot himself in a fit of melancholy. He was lying on board the Mahina—and the Mahina is here at anchor in this lagoon. I am the ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... every object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is more generally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than any constitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence of gloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitual melancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generally early acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. Childhood is too buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth—when its passions are developing, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... dirty old edition of Madame's letters, worked himself up to the notion that he had witnessed the scenes which he described. We were induced, in the course of our walk, to inquire somewhat into his own history, which appeared rather a melancholy one, though common enough in the times through which he had lived. About a week after the pillage and destruction of Chateau Grignan, he was denounced as a royalist, and immured in the prison of Orange, in company with several gentlemen of the ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... dangerous to wish for death, because this desire, generally speaking, is only to be met with in those who have arrived at a very high pitch of perfection, which we dare not think we have reached, or else in persons of a morose and melancholy temperament, and but seldom in those of ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... flower-adorned grave after another, walked hastily on until he reached the highest point, from whence he looked down earnestly, as if his eyes sought to single out some particular object among the wilderness of roofs. At first his countenance was sad, but at last the melancholy look changed to an expression of cheerful surprise, for his eye had found what it was seeking among those once familiar objects. He knew the old house, for memory keeps the record of early days most faithfully, although its appearance ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... the fragrant liquid to froth; pausing only to scold when her servant stained one of the dainty saucers or cups. Poor Rosa did not sing, although the spring attuned her broken spirit to a gentler melancholy than when the winds howled and the fog was cold in her marrow. She had been sentenced by the last Governor, the wise Borica, to eight years of domestic servitude in the house of Don Jose Arguello ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... imperfections of our moral nature; the fact being that the good man was simply worn out by the effort to complete his mysterious picture. He was seated languidly in a large oaken chair of vast dimensions covered with black leather; and without changing his melancholy attitude he cast on Porbus the distant glance of a man ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... sir," said Bruno, with a melancholy smile. "You don't unnerstand. They're going t' shoot you. See? Ole John—'member ole ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Hjalte said to Bjorn, "Why art thou so melancholy, man? Art thou sick, or art thou angry at any one?" Bjorn tells Hjalte his conversation with the king, and says it is a ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... large hall was new and strange to me. Two long rows of prostrate forms—more than forty, in all—and every face and head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a gruesome spectacle. I watched there six days and nights, and a very melancholy experience it was. There was one daily incident which was peculiarly depressing: this was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart. It was done in order that the MORALE of the other patients might not be injuriously affected by seeing one of their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have been the greatest uplift I ever had. When a body is not even remotely expecting such things, how the surprise takes the breath away! We had been interpreting your stillness to melancholy and depression, caused by that book. This is honest. Why, everything looks brighter now. A check for untold cash could not have made our hearts sing as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... young ladies would unquestionably have called "horribly ugly," but whom no reflective physiognomist could have observed without interest, entered the room. This person was tall, extremely thin, and somewhat inclining to the left side; the complexion was dark, and the somewhat noble features wore a melancholy expression, which but seldom gave place to a smile of unusual beauty. The forehead elevated itself, with its deep lines, above the large brown extraordinary eyes, and above this a wood of black-brown hair erected itself, under whose thick stiff ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with one hand and grasping his Calvinistical creed with the other, Sawney ran away to the flinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing melancholy of the tallest thistles." But from the graver historian, developing the historic significance of their determined resistance to the insolent claims of ecclesiastical authority, their desperate hardihood elicits a more fitting tribute. "Hunted down," he says, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... later we were left alone. But your father was in you. Do I not know well enough where you got that settled melancholy of yours, that despondency, that somber grief—call it what you like—that marked him all his life, and even in his death? That came from him, your father. I thank God I did not give you that, knowing what life must hold for you in suffering! He suffered, yes, but not as you will. And you must—you ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... indeed incomprehensible. Perhaps no two individuals were ever more unlike in mind and disposition than my brother and myself: as light is opposed to darkness, so was that happy, brilliant, cheerful child to the sad and melancholy being who sprang from the same stock as himself, and was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... festival Turn from their office to black funeral; Our instruments to melancholy bells; Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast; And all things change them ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... how many clever processes of manipulation he had learnt from you and your father, in his treatment of Oropastes' wounded brother; he reached Babylon at last safe and sound, and there, as we could not get sight of you, owing to the melancholy poisoning of your country-woman, I succeeded in obtaining him a lodging in the royal palace itself. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Marin was followed by a more substantial success. Early in September Abercromby's melancholy camp was cheered with the tidings that the important French post of Fort Frontenac, which controlled Lake Ontario, which had baffled Shirley in his attempt against Niagara, and given Montcalm the means ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... indeed, whilst he spoke all the purple and gold In the west had turn'd ashen, save one fading strip Of light that yet gleam'd from the dark nether lip Of a long reef of cloud; and o'er sullen ravines And ridges the raw damps were hanging white screens Of melancholy mist. "Nunc dimittis?" she said. "O God of the living! whilst yet 'mid the dead And the dying we stand here alive, and thy days Returning, admit space for prayer and for praise, In both these confirm us! ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... way of one not wont to be thwarted, and he had lost her—lost her, whatever might happen. He would get nothing after all by his revenge. Nothing but ashes in the mouth. And so I saw in softer moments something inexpressibly melancholy in that solitary giant-figure ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... the officers of the police force would look to that, and was assured also that Mounser Green and the other gentlemen in the room would certainly attend the lecture. "I don't suppose I shall be gone by that time," said Mounser Green in a melancholy tone of voice. ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... at least that branch of it to which he belonged, had been reduced by the ruin that resulted from the civil wars, and the confiscations peculiar to the times. His father had made a good deal of money abroad in business, but feeling that melancholy longing for his native soil, for the dark mountains and the green fields of his beloved country, he returned to it, and having taken a large farm of about a thousand acres, under a peculiar tenure, which we shall mention ere we close, he devoted ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... here," said he, seeing that the Baron shed a spirit of animation on the little family gathering. "And yet Hortense is not married," he added, noticing a trace of melancholy on his sister-in-law's countenance. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Wingfield, a "worthy and religious gentleman." He was honorably buried, "having all the ordnance in the fort shot off with many volleys of small shot." If the Indians had known that those volleys signified the mortality of their comrades, the colony would no doubt have been cut off entirely. It is a melancholy picture, this disheartened and half-famished band of men quarreling among themselves; the occupation of the half-dozen able men was nursing the sick and digging graves. We anticipate here by saying, on the authority of a contemporary manuscript in the State Paper office, that when Captain ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... little hours could span The gloom that bound me stark and grim (No melancholy pierced me through Before the 7.32 Had ravished Barbara from view), And yet I brooked it like a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... it, and in front, across the road, there was an old table and an older seat among the trees, down by the swift-flowing river. A charming place for moralising indeed! None of us, however, were much in the style of the "melancholy Jacques," or, with our eyes on some vigorous fisherman higher up the river, we ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... and middle classes of society," says a celebrated writer, "it is a melancholy and distressing sight to observe, not unfrequently, a man of a noble and ingenuous disposition, once feelingly alive to a sense of honour and integrity, gradually sinking under the pressure of his circumstances, making his excuses at first with a blush of conscious shame, afraid to see the faces ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... revolution which occurs at puberty may go beyond its physiological limits in some instances, and become pathological. The vague feelings, blind longings, and obscure impulses which then arise in the mind, attest the awakening of an impulse which knows not its aim; a kind of vague and yearning melancholy is engendered, which leads to an abandonment to poetry of a gloomy, Byronic kind, or to indulgence in indefinite religious feelings and aspirations. There is a want of some object to fill the void in the feelings, to satisfy the undefined yearning—a ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... very long in coming, yet when it did, what with the restless movements of the horses and the melancholy murmur of the stream, it well-nigh took us by surprise. It was Boisrueil who touched my sleeve and made me aware of a low trampling on the road outside, a sound that had scarcely become clearly audible before ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... was sure of it, he crept over to Glenarvan and John Mangles, and startling them from their melancholy thoughts, led them to ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Such is the melancholy result of this illegal and ill-fated expedition. Thus thoughtless young men have been induced by false and fraudulent representations to violate the law of their country through rash and unfounded expectations of assisting ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... a deception, as her mother said. She was a little, round, soft thing, whom you would have expected to flash over with sunshine. She was not a melancholy girl—as you may have been able to judge—and it was not her blame that anything in her position had developed her into a thoughtful, earnest character. But then she was always fancied younger than she really was; people supposed her as easy as her mother, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... months ago I was returning to my Hotel in a melancholy humour, having past the evening at the Play-House. The Night was dark, and I was unaccompanied. Plunged in reflections which were far from being agreeable, I perceived not that three Men had followed me from the Theatre; till, on turning into an unfrequented ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... luminousness. It grew upwards and began to take form. Swathes of white muslin shaped themselves in the darkness, and there appeared a white face, in among the topmost folds of the muslin, with a Roman nose and a melancholy expression. He was not gay like Pocky, but he was intensely impressive, and spoke some lines in Italian, when asked to repeat a piece of Dante. Mrs Quantock knew they were Italian, because she recognised "notte" and "uno" and "caro," ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... lost his only and dearly loved daughter, and the blow to his sensitive temperament, already hardly tried by political anxiety, was severe. We still have the private letters which he wrote to Atticus after her death from his solitude at Astura on the edge of the melancholy Pomptine marshes;[824] and here, if our minds are sufficiently divested of modern ideas and trained to look on death with Roman eyes, we may be startled to find him thinking of her as still in some sense surviving, and ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Wallabout, and anchored in the bay, were seen several vessels, decayed, unseaworthy, and repulsive. They were the prison-ships of New York. Here from the year 1776 a large number of American prisoners were confined until the close of the war, and the tragic tales of their sufferings and fate lend a melancholy interest to ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... delicate, as unperceived, yet as effective, as a rich fabric on which a design is woven. It seemed to him as he listened to the talk—the brisk, shrewd remarks of Mr. Garlick; the courteous and rather melancholy answers of his host; as he watched the second priest's eyes looking gently and pleasantly about him; as he ate the plain, good food and drank the country drink, that, in spite of all, his lot was cast in very sweet places. There was not a hint here of disturbance, or of men's passions, or of ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... anybody loved her as Miss Inches did, she thought, or discovered such fine things in her character. Ten long years and a half had she lived with Papa and the children, and not one of them had found out that her eyes were full of soul, and an expression "of mingled mirth and melancholy unusual in a childish face, and more like that of Goethe's Mignon than any thing else in the world of fiction!" Johnnie had never heard of "Mignon," but it was delightful to be told that she resembled her, and she made Miss Inches a ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life. This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with society gossip, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... and blushes, Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth, He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy, Jealous glancing around, An oaf, an ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... autograph written on her hollow cheeks, where the skin clung to the bones as if resisting the chill grasp of death. As she slowly rocked herself, striving to hush the cry of the child, her dry, husky cough formed a melancholy chorus, which seemed to annoy a man who sat before the small table covered with materials for copying music. His cadaverous, sallow complexion, and keen, restless eyes, bespoke Italian origin; and, although engaged in filling some blank ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... presents the usual desolate, disorderly appearance, of such places in this country; the ruined walls to the city; the sandy barren soil, and the odious looking low hills between it and the Sofaid-Koh, present as sad and melancholy a picture as could well be met with. The same desolate, disorderly, dirty appearance is to be met with in most Asiatic capitals, particularly those that have been subjected to independent misrule: while the more distant surrounding ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... The king received him with much graciousness and ordered him to be carried honourably to Witham, and the wretched remnant in the mud flat received him as an angel of God. Well they might do so, for they seemed to have passed a melancholy winter in twig huts, now called "weeps," in a little paled enclosure, not only without the requisites of their order, but with barely bread to their teeth. There was no monastery, not even a plan of one. William FitzJohn and his clayey serfs scowled upon the shivering interlopers, uncertain ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... are the "Hymn to Death," "The Old Man's Funeral," "A Forest Hymn," "The Lapse of Time," "An Evening Reverie," "The Old Man's Counsel," and "The Past." This last is one of the noblest of his productions, full of solemn beauty and melancholy music, and we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting a few ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... cultivate a taste for the beautiful. We are necessarily compelled to contemplate much moral impurity and degradation. We are so often doomed to disappointment. We are apt to become either callous or melancholy, or, if preserved from these, the constant strain on the sensibilities is likely to injure the bodily health. On this account it seems necessary to cultivate that faculty for the gratification of which God has made such universal provision. See the green earth and blue sky, the lofty mountain and ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... and holy! Meet him in that place; Change his cheerless melancholy Into joy and grace; If thou hast forgiven, vex not; If thou lovest, go, Watching ever by the river, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... a melancholy shake of her head. "No; how should they? It is not very likely that any new residents would come here! The place may suit poor people like me, but would not take the fancy of persons having plenty of money to spend, who can select a house where they like. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... melancholy reflection, that among our American women who have been educated to better things, there should be found any who are willing to follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the ringleted, glove-handed exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can understand how such men as the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... thence the joy of which it had become barren. My flagging spirits asked for something to speak to the affections; and not finding it, I drooped. Thus, notwithstanding the thoughtless delight that waited on its commencement, the impression I have of my life at Vienna is melancholy. Goethe has said, that in youth we cannot be happy unless we love. I did not love; but I was devoured by a restless wish to be something to others. I became the victim of ingratitude and cold coquetry—then I desponded, and imagined that ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... contrasted with his gay attire. He leant against the open window, carelessly holding in his hand a bouquet of faded jasmine, whilst he gazed with melancholy eyes upon the festive scene before him, and only by a shake of the head and a sad smile replied to the light badinage of the dancers as they passed the window. But now and then his eyes lighted up, and he sighed deeply ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... laying siege to the citadel cautiously, as was his way. Bluff Jack Lorrimer's courage was paralyzed by his love, and he drank deep to dispel his melancholy. Harry Bent—who was already under the spell of Netty Swinton, Dick's sister's—was indifferent, and Carnaby had been rejected three times, despite ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... the army that had been summoned appears at the Electran gate. Agave turns to them, and (in blank verse) calls all Thebans to behold the quarry she has taken without the useless weapons of the hunter; it shall be nailed up a trophy before her father's house. Shortly after enters on the right a melancholy procession of Cadmus and his servants bearing the fragments of Pentheus' body, with difficulty discovered and pieced together. In extended parallel dialogue between Cadmus and Evadne the phrensy gradually passes away from her and she recognizes the deed she has ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... and if any other happened to enter the cottage, their harsh manners and rude gait only enhanced to me the superior accomplishments of my friends. The old man, I could perceive, often endeavoured to encourage his children, as sometimes I found that he called them, to cast off their melancholy. He would talk in a cheerful accent, with an expression of goodness that bestowed pleasure even upon me. Agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled with tears, which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived; but I generally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... suggesting an immeasurable reserve power, it had all its old throbbing magnetism; but a new quality had been added to it. It had always had moments of passionate appeal; now it had gained a sadness, a depth of melancholy which in the past it had been powerless to express. A year before, Thayer could strike the tragic ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... carriage is exactly that of the King; her body is built to perfection, and were it not for her colour, the black of which diminishes day by day, she would be one of the loveliest persons in France; she is sad and melancholy by temperament, but as I have succeeded in attracting her confidence, and diverting her as much as one can do in a purgatory like this, we dance sometimes in secret, and then you would think you saw Mademoiselle de Nantes ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Anglesey, as if he thought much of my taking the ayre as I have done; but I care not a turd; but whatever the matter is, I think he hath some ill-will to me, or at least an opinion that I am more the servant of the Board than I am. At noon home to dinner, where my wife still in a melancholy, fusty humour, and crying, and do not tell me plainly what it is; but I by little words find that she hath heard of my going to plays, and carrying people abroad every day, in her absence; and that I cannot help but the storm ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... glories our greatest poets were not ashamed to sing, with the Tudor masterfulness in her, and not a little of the Tudor grossness and passion, and remember the blots that stained her glories. Think of her sister, the morbidly melancholy tool of priests, who goes down the ages branded with an epithet only too sadly earned. Think of another woman that ruled over England in name, the weak instrument of base intrigues. And then turn to this life which we are looking upon to-day. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... spirit he would prove it by singing. He immediately chanted forth his death-song, and then his war-song, and all the songs he knew, "but in a very mournful strain," says Champlain, who was not then aware that all savage music has a melancholy character. The tortures which succeeded, accompanied by all the horrors which we shall mention hereafter, terrified the French, who made every effort to put a stop to them, but in vain. The following night, one ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... A melancholy prelude I would sing To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom. Find me the harbor of the roaming storm, Or end of souls whose doom is life itself! So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream And utter not. So sends the tide its roll,— Unending chord of horror ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... left her neither strength nor power to exert herself or to interest herself in what was passing. Her sisters meant kindly in claiming no help about the household work from her, but they made a mistake in so doing. Active work, that would have really tired her, and left her no time for melancholy musings, would have been far better for her. As it was, she could apply herself to no employment, not even her favourite reading. Her time, when not immediately under her aunt's eye, was passed in listless wanderings to and fro, or in sitting with folded hands, thinking ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... primitive times to turn utterance into a fine art as now to make aesthetic paces out of mourning or child-birth. Primitive music is indeed a wail and a parturition; magical and suggestive as it may be, for long ages it never bethinks itself to be beautiful. It is content to furnish a contagious melancholy employment to souls without a language and with little interest in the real world. Barbaric musicians, singing and playing together more or less at random, are too much carried away by their performance ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... at him anxiously, and was so shocked that he forgot the strange blithe little farm entirely. For Lionel was as wan and wasted as though he had been through a fever, and his rosy face was white, and his merry eyes were melancholy. And suddenly, as Hobb clasped him, he flung his arms round his big brother's neck and buried his face in his ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... the margins were covered with his notes, which sometimes contradicted my theories and formulations. But the captain remained content with this method of refining my work, and he rarely discussed it with me. Sometimes I heard melancholy sounds reverberating from the organ, which he played very expressively, but only at night in the midst of the most secretive darkness, while the Nautilus slumbered in the wilderness ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... year?' exclaimed Violet. 'O dear! and there have I been telling him all about—about this spring. I would not have done it, if I had known. I thought he looked melancholy sometimes. Oh! I ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... judgment serves practically as a sufficient criterion of truth, at least in relation to such extreme one-sidedness of view as approaches the abnormal, that is to say, one of the two poles of irrational exaltation, or "joy-madness," and abject melancholy, which, appear among the phenomena ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... my 'prentice hand in this work on Geri, the beautiful German sheep-dog, who had come into my possession in 1914. This dog—owing to excess of breeding, and also, perhaps, to the impressions imbibed in his youth was unusually shy and melancholy—he lacked all natural energy to "cut a figure" in any way; he had learnt to say "yes" and "no," and I feel sure that he understood me very well, but his nervousness and his constant fear held him back from rapping out anything beyond his yes ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... held on. Her rudder was broken, her wheel carried away; within she was flooded with water from the peccant hawse-pipes; she had just made the signal "fires extinguished," and lay helpless, awaiting the inevitable end. Between this melancholy hulk and the external reef Kane must find a path. Steering within fifty yards of the reef (for which she was actually headed) and her foreyard passing on the other hand over the Trenton's quarter as she rolled, the Calliope sheered between the rival dangers, came to the wind triumphantly, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the presence of this reawakening of the fields and woods. She gave way to a sweet melancholy and spent hours languidly dreaming. All the tender incidents of her first hours of love came back to her, not that any renewal of affection for her husband stirred her heart; that had been completely destroyed; but the soft breeze which fanned her cheek and the ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... magistrate admonished a man and woman placed in the dock before him for this heinous offence of dancing in the street, which gave so much pleasure to my Catalan youths and maidens all last night: "This is not a country in which people can afford to be jovial. You must cultivate a spirit of melancholy if you want to be safe. Go away and be as sad ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... alone marched with an air of gaiety. As to the other individuals of the troop, if their clothes showed marked differences, their faces at least and their attitudes wore a uniform expression of ill-fortune. Citizens and peasantry, their faces all bore the imprint of deepest melancholy; their silence had something sullen in it; they all seemed crushed under the yoke of a single thought, terrible no doubt but carefully concealed, for their faces were impenetrable, the slowness of their gait alone betraying their inward communings. From time to time a few of them, noticeable for ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... one," his supervisor, Forester, said, sitting on the side of Eddie's desk. Normally exuberant, he was left melancholy and distracted by the ...
— New Apples in the Garden • Kris Ottman Neville
... first two days of Harry King's absence Madam Manovska relapsed into a more profound melancholy, and the care of her mother took up Amalia's time and thoughts so completely as to give her little for indulging her own anxiety for Harry's safety. Strangely, she felt no fear for themselves, although they were thus alone on the mountain top. She had a sense ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... is pathological. Men overmuch in studies and universities get ill in their livers and sluggish in their circulations; they suffer from shyness, from a persuasion of excessive and neglected merit, old maid's melancholy, and a detestation of all the levities of life. And their suffering finds its vent in ferocious thoughts. A vigorous daily bath, a complete stoppage of wine, beer, spirits, and tobacco, and two hours of hockey in the afternoon would probably ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Judas. The appearance of La Casa on the scene is interesting. He was the celebrated author of the Capitolo del Forno, the author of many sublime and melancholy sonnets, who was now at Venice prosecuting a charge of heresy against Pier Paolo Vergerio, and paying his addresses to a noble lady of the Quirini family. It seems that on the territory of San Marco he made common cause with the exiles ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... when he says: "It is a melancholy reflection, when one is going through the lists of aeroplane fatalities, to think how many might have been avoided. Really the crux of the situation in this connection, as it appears to me, is this: the first men who flew, having had all the drudgery and danger ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton |
