"Pathos" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jasmin composed at this period of his life was that which he entitled Mous Soubenis, or 'My Recollections.' In none of his poems did he display more of the characteristic qualities of his mind, his candour, his pathos, and his humour, than in these verses. He used the rustic dialect, from which he never afterwards departed. He showed that the Gascon was not yet a dead language; and he lifted it to the level of the most serious themes. His verses have all the greater charm because of their artless gaiety, their ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character and their mutual relation she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline. Although no autograph collector, I asked for theirs, and when the elder gave hers as "sister to Joanna Baillie," it drew a tear from my eye,—a good tear, a genuine pearl,—fit homage to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... soul, but a coy one. The nine hundred and ninety-nine never win it. They play rapid tunes, but the soul of beautiful gayety is not there; slow tunes, very slow ones, wherein the spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent; doleful, not nice and tearful. Then comes the Heaven-born fiddler,* who can make himself cry. with his own fiddle. David had a touch of this witchcraft. Though a sound musician and reasonably master of his instrument, he could not fly in a second up and down it, tickling ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... in all of this; the infinitely little men and women daring to buy and sell "short, snappy stuff" in this somber and terribly beautiful world of Balzac and Wells and Turgenieff. And pathos there was in that wasted year when Walter Babson sought to climb from the gossiping little prairie town to the grandeur of great capitals by learning to be an efficient manufacturer of "good, lively rural poems." He neglected ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... it. If a tumbler of the precious metal could be called a magnificent goblet—it was scarcely bigger—it deserved the title. The poor operator was declaiming as I entered, in unmistakable Scotch, the history of 'Little Breeches,' and giving it with due pathos. I am bound to say that a sort of balcony which hung out at the end was well filled by the unwashed takers, or at least donees, of sixpenny tickets. There was a purpose in this, as will be seen. After being taken through 'The Raven,' and 'The Dying ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... sympathies on the occasion says: "The lines composed by Mrs. Schoolcraft struck me with such peculiar force, as well in regard to the pathos of style, as the singular felicity of expression, that I have taken the liberty to submit them for perusal to one or two mutual friends. The G—— has advised ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... question, yet growing decidedly moved by the playful pathos of her attitude when, by chance, searching his pocket for his handkerchief, something crackled, and he felt there an unopened letter, which had arrived at the moment he was leaving his house, and he had slipped ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the presence of the chief, he narrated his dismal tale with a simplicity and pathos which would have instantly drawn the retributive sword of Wallace, had he had no kinsman to avenge, no friend to release from the Southron dungeons. But as the case stood, his bleeding grandfather lay before his eyes; and the ax hung over the heads ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... was touched in spirit by even a deeper and a stranger pathos than any of these men: 'In the early spring, when he beheld the meadows and hills covered with flowers, and saw the trees and plants of all kinds bearing promise of fruit, his heart became exceeding sorrowful; and when in autumn he looked on fields ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love; the friendship that gives freely without return, and the love that seeks first the happiness of the object. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... a quick glance at him. There was something about the man, perhaps in the tired droop of his shoulders, perhaps something in the wistful way he had of looking far out to sea, as if seeking the solution of his problem there; perhaps it was only the pathos in his low, Southern voice. Be that as it may, Lucile's heart went out to him ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... as interesting a sofa companion as you could have found; a very lovely book—wit and pathos almost equally good, pathos quite the best though, to my mind. We are reading aloud another charming book of Lowell's, "Democracy," and other essays in the same volume; and I flutter about from book to book by myself, and have still two books of "Paradise Lost" to read, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... charm remains: they are as free and gracious and serious and playful and informal as before. Stevenson's traits of character are all here: his largeness of heart, his delicacy, his sympathy, his fun, his pathos, his boylike frolicsomeness, his fine courage, his love of the sea (for he was by nature a sailor), his passion for action and adventure despite his ill-health, his great patience with others and fine adaptability to their ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... melancholy spectacle of its skeleton. He was obliged to give up the hopes of shining at the masquerade, but he resolved to be at Lady Singleton's that he might meet Lady Delacour and Miss Portman. The moment that the tragic and comic muse appeared, he invoked them with much humour and mock pathos, declaring that he knew not which of them could best sing his adventure. After a recital of his misfortune had entertained the company, and after the muses had performed their parts to the satisfaction of the audience and their own, the conversation ceased to be supported in masquerade ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... two factors: lust in men and a dependent condition among women, which makes them surrender themselves as victims to this lust. This is the accepted, sentimental, and picturesque description: a sort of compound of sinfulness and pathos, making a draught, if the truth is faced, not always altogether unpleasing to women, a fact which surely accounts for the excitement and veiled pleasurable curiosity with which the subject usually is approached. For the lust, men are held responsible, ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... approachest us once more, And how it fares with us, to ask art fain, Since thou hast kindly welcom'd me of yore, Thou see'st me also now among thy train. Excuse me, fine harangues I cannot make, Though all the circle look on me with scorn; My pathos soon thy laughter would awake, Hadst thou the laughing mood not long forsworn. Of suns and worlds I nothing have to say, I see alone mankind's self-torturing pains. The little world-god still the self-same stamp retains, And is as wondrous now ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... experience of the theatre, so natural in a child of sixteen, suggested several scenes of pure comedy. Then, as the drama developed, the author had heightened the intensity of the role by several scenes of real pathos, relying completely on Esperance to interpret them for him. Quite overcome by the death of the heroine she was to impersonate, she thanked the author, with tears streaming down her cheeks, her hands icy, her heart beating so furiously that the linen of her ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... us both to tears. Her action had the intolerable pathos of a child's weakness united with a kind of delirium. To watch her feeble hands exhibiting a head-dress which I feared she would never again wear—displaying it with a pitiful smile of pride and joy—was ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the emotions are touched by the oratorio. Words and music quiver with fear, utter sorrow, plead with pathos, or exult in the joy of triumph. A symphony so paints a pastoral scene that the shepherds of Bethlehem are seen watching their flocks. One air, "He was despised," suggests that its birth was amid tears. It was; for Handel sobbed aloud while composing it. It is the threnody ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... food for his irony in the contemplation of that small, insignificant figure so ignorant of life and so defiant of it. He would have found perhaps something pathetic also. Maggie thought neither of irony nor of pathos, but turned homewards with her mouth set, her eyes ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... not offensive to those who heard it. On the other hand, apart from the language, the general tone of "The Nights" is exceptionally high and pure. The devotional fervour, as Captain Burton justly claims, often rises to the boiling-point of fanaticism and the pathos is sweet and deep, genuine and tender, simple and true. Its life—strong, splendid, and multitudinous—is everywhere flavoured with that unaffected pessimism and constitutional melancholy which strike deepest root under ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... force of his words, straight through the bush and into her arms. "I shall do one thing in this life—one thing certain—that is, love you, and long for you, and KEEP WANTING YOU till I die." His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... have felt? She raised herself upon her bony hands, and blindly gazed around her, swaying her head slowly from side to side as a tortoise does. She could not see, for her whitish eyes were covered with a horny film. Oh, the horrible pathos of the sight! ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... is in a log cabin amid fields of cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the United States which cannot be treated in the dialect either adequately or artistically. Take, ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... the treasury," said Otto; and he sketched to her briefly, wittily, with here and there a touch of pathos, the story of his visit to the farm, of his promise to buy it, and of the refusal with which his demand for money had been met that morning at the council; concluding with a few practical words as to the treasury windows, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rather in the sense that the absence of invitation implies an arrogant reserve. To some extent this is the case. The old-fashioned Jew is inclined to think himself superior to other men. Such a thought has its pathos. ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... and whispering, "Poor dear!—poor child!" and even the voice of Lyster was not quite steady as he read. Those straggling, weak pencil marks had a pathos of their own to him. The letter, crossed and recrossed by the lines, was on two pages, evidently torn from the back ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... short essays it is only possible to take a few, but care has been taken to attempt to show the enormous versatility of Chesterton's mind. It has been said quite wrongly that Chesterton cannot describe pathos. This is certainly untrue. He can so admirably describe humour that he cannot help knowing the pathetic, which is often so akin to humour. I am not sure that this ability to describe the melancholy is not to be seen in one ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... poet,—that is to say, he had imagination, sentiment, passion, an intense love of beauty, a powerful impulse towards things ideal. The sad tone of his speculations about the universe and human destiny gave an impression of mournfulness to his lines, but this rather deepened the pathos of his work. In the same breath he sang of love and the grave, and the love was the more eager for its brevity. He had the poetic temperament—sensitive, ardent, aspiring. He possessed the poetic aspect—the broad white brow, the large blue eyes. Some compared him to Byron, but the resemblance ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Tale of Two Cities" was from very different causes. It was not through a failure of tenderness, a lack of an understanding of the real pathos of life, or through the want of a spirituality without which no great work can be effective. It was because Dickens relied very largely on Carlyle for the foundation of his study of the historical atmosphere of that novel—the best, from the point of view of style, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... to be the father of a family numbering at least a 'baker's dozzen.' I believe I had a vague notion that by means of superabundance of paternity I could atone to myself for my lack of other family ties. I was always so beastly alone. Yet no one—Miles Madigan least of all—saw the pathos of my lot. 'He's young and unencumbered,' he said of me toward the last when he was reminded of how little he had left for me. 'He'll get along. Besides, there's that wildcat mine out in the States; I'm ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... and pathos," justly observes the review before mentioned, "this poem rises to the end. There are few things in poetry more simply grand than the death of Roland. He moves feebly back to the adjoining limit-line ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... there was a touch of pathos in this show of the deeper things in Tip's nature that had been kindled to eruption by my spouting. He would not come in to dinner that day, probably from an unfounded fear that we would make fun of his flight—a thing we should have ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... wonderful, but have simply caught the popular fancy, because of some artist's illustration, or some personal application to the writer's own history, as in the case of his Ugly Duckling. How many—or rather, how few!—can readily recall the pathos and wit of his Portuguese Duck or the deep philosophy of his Girl Who ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... he, "put themselves each in the other's place; each think what it would want;" and in fact each, in a Christian manner, try to do as it would be done by! How touching in the mouth of a Kaunitz, with something of pathos, of plaintiveness, almost of unction in it! "There is no other method of agreeing," urges he: "War is a terrible method, disliked by both of us. Austria wishes this of Bavaria; but his Prussian Majesty's turn will come, perhaps now is (let him say and determine); ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... seems to be proud of it, in shutting off all her life-currents, pure, and fresh, and sparkling, as they were, and we must suppose that she than sank slowly and uncomplainingly away. What a deep pathos there is in "then ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... among such a people as the English, is a deficiency of sympathy with masses of men. It would be easy enough to find places where he talks of the dumb millions in terms of fine and sincere humanity, and his feeling for the common pathos of the human lot, as he encounters it in individual lives, is as earnest and as simple, as it is invariably lovely and touching in its expression. But detached passages cannot counterbalance the effect of a whole compact body ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... serenade the various ladies of the port. First to the Consulate, where we drew up in line on the lawn, the time being 2 a.m., and rendered "God Save the Queen" with great execution and considerable pathos, notwithstanding pronounced differences in American, Italian, Scotch, Russian and English accentuation. Subsequently visits were made to all the other houses, with the exception of one, where we rather feared to intrude, as the good lady, while very affable as a rule, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... The fortunes of the heroine, an Indian Naucht girl, are told with a vigor, pathos, and a wealth of poetic sympathy that makes the book admirable from ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... wealth and position? If she did this, what did it matter if she gave money away? This would indeed be keeping to the letter of her father's will, and abjuring its meaning. She could not resist the pathos, the dignity, the sweetness of the Contessa's appeal, which was not for herself but for Bice, for the girl who was so good to baby, and whom that little oracle had bound her to with links of gratitude ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... infinitely sad, subdued minor plaints recurring persistently again and again like sighs of parting, but could not be restrained, like voices of regret for the things that were never to be again. Or it was a pathos, a joy in all things good, a vast tenderness, so sweet, so divinely pure that it could not be framed in words, so great and so deep that it found its only expression in tears. There came over him a vague sense of those things ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... devotion to God, mingled with the most fervent love of country. Those men were all of humble circumstances in life, and, with the exception of O'Brien, had but slight literary advantages; yet the simple pathos, beauty, and eloquence of their dying messages moved every heart. Poor Larkin was, of all three, the least endowed with education, yet his letter has been aptly described as "a perfect poem in prose." here append those ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... and in these chiefly in the abstract grace of the bounding lines. Let us take some of these drawings, and pause over them awhile; and, first, one of those at Florence—the heads of a woman and a little child, set side by side, but each in its own separate frame. First of all, there is much pathos in the reappearance, in the fuller curves of the face of the child, of the sharper, more chastened lines of the worn and older face, which leaves no doubt that the heads are those of a little child and its mother. A feeling for maternity is indeed always characteristic of Leonardo; and ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... a certain pathos running through her cheerfulness which made Agatha's heart burst. She had lain awake half the night thinking of Anne Valery, and had guessed, or put together many things, which made her come with uncontrollable emotion into the presence of her whose fate had been ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... grief. She viewed him as a victim in the cause of freedom, and cultivated his memory with veneration, regarding him as a martyr, falling, as did his friend Warren, in the defence of the liberties of his country. These circumstances gave a pathos and vehemence to her grief, which, after the first violence of passion had subsided, sought consolation in earnest and solicitous fulfilment of duty to the representative of his memory and of their mutual affections. Love and reverence for the memory of his father was early impressed on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Francis came in with complaints of his highness. While the father with great pathos set forth the reason of the archduke's absence from the family circle, the culprit stood by, apparently indifferent to all that was being said. But, to any one observing him closely, his tremulous mouth, and the short, convulsive sighs, which he vainly strove ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... in so agreeable a manner (and then her voice is all harmony when she touches a subject she is pleased with) that I could have listened to her for half a day together. But yet I am afraid, if she falls, as they call it, she will lose a good deal of that pathos, of that noble self-confidence, which gives a good person, as I now see, a visible superiority over ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Greene, whose life he wrote (and I read) in three volumes: He worshipped Longfellow, and their friendship continued while they lived, but towards the last of his visits at Craigie House it had a pathos for the witness which I should grieve to wrong. Greene was then a quivering paralytic, and he clung tremulously to Longfellow's arm in going out to dinner, where even the modern Italian poets were silent upon his lips. When we rose from table, Longfellow lifted him out of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... how the talk ceased at that, and the faces began to lengthen. I have no idea whether musically this air is to be considered good or bad; but it belongs to that class of art which may be best described as a brutal assault upon the feelings. Pathos must be relieved by dignity of treatment. If you wallow naked in the pathetic, like the author of "Home, sweet home," you make your hearers weep in an unmanly fashion; and even while yet they are moved, they despise themselves and hate the ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say?" cried Neil. Then the pathos of it struck him and he was silent a moment. The cripple's love and longing for sport in which he could never hope to join seemed terribly sad and gave him a choking sensation ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... His poems have made him well known, both in this country and in England. Besides the poems recited before various literary associations, he has published two volumes of fugitive pieces. The first appeared in 1843, while he was still a clerk, and the second in 1858. His poems abound in humor, pathos, and a delicate, beautiful fancy. One of his friends ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... secret, spreading the report in Moulines of his faithlessness to his love. After a tragedy has released Jacques from his unnatural bondage, he learns of his loved one's death and loses his mental balance through grief. Such an addition to the brief pathos of Maria's story, as narrated by Sterne, such a forced explanation of the circumstances, is peculiarly commonplace and inartistic. Sterne instinctively closed the episode with sufficient allowance for the exercise of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... ignorance and insensibility of the persons with whom he lived, that, though while he was writing under a mask he had not wanted resolution to follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos (as is evinced by the exquisite ballad of Sir Cauline and by many other pieces), yet when he appeared in his own person and character as a poetical writer, he adopted, as in the tale of the Hermit of Warkworth, a diction scarcely in any one of its features distinguishable ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... that day in the Chamber of Deputies was not one to be forgotten. The aspect and the accents of the Republican leader were at times absolutely pathetic with the pathos of unaffected terror. It was difficult to believe, whilst listening to him, that he could really have 'five millions of professed atheists' at his back, encouraging him to extirpate Christianity, root and branch, out of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... expression of constant grief and anxiety. He was a man that seldom spoke of his own troubles to any one; but it was plain to be seen that his erring boy was never absent from his thoughts, and there was a feeling and pathos in his voice when he addressed his congregation, especially the younger portion of it, which had never been noticed before. It was his custom upon the first Sabbath evening in each month to deliver an address to the youth of his flock, and it was noticed that his appeals had never been so earnest ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... lover. He wearies of money-making, and retires to lead a country life, where he may be of some good to his neighbours, and turn to some worthy use the time that may be still allowed him. The story is told with real pathos and impressive force. But the picture is spoiled by the tasteless interpolation of a song which the unhappy girl sings to her lover, at the very moment apparently when she has resolved that she can never ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... Claud; whom, in her disregard to all considerations of lineage, when relieved by such excellence of beauty and character, she would a thousand times rather have seen united to the Indian girl than to the one he appeared to have chosen. She was, therefore, besides being touched by the broken pathos of the letter, gratified by its reception; for it seemed to come as a sort of confirmation of her grateful presentiment, that her son, at least, was to be happily disenthralled. Nor was she, at this time, without the evidence which led her to hope that her ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... came to me. The simplest, most dramatic idea. Quaint, whimsical, with just that suggestion of pathos blended with it which makes the fortunes of a play. The central idea, to be brief, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mrs Fyne had told me before of the view she had years ago of de Barral clinging to the child at the side of his wife's grave and later on of these two walking hand in hand the observed of all eyes by the sea. Pictures from Dickens—pregnant with pathos. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of petty circumstances which covered them. His stories all contain at least a minor chord of sentiment, but are usually free from the sentimentality which mars some of Harte's sketches. He is not ashamed to employ pathos, but his tragic situations are rarely overstrained and maudlin. He has all the tenderness of Dickens; his Christmas Eve at Topmast Tickle may well be compared with A Christmas Carol. Norman Duncan never married, but few Canadian or American authors have understood women ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... ever true to Nature, and of a rare versatility of talent. We have known several persons who fancied, partly perhaps on account of his name, that he only acted comic parts: they should see him obtain a succes de larmes, throw a whole theatre into tears, by his exquisite feeling and pathos in serious ones. No actor more thoroughly makes his audience forget that he is one. His identification with his part is complete. The two lines of characters he usually takes are old men and lads, even very young boys. And in both he perfectly succeeds. We are doubtful in which to prefer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... pen-name of "P. Boyzy." The perusal of them in their present form will serve to confirm the opinion of those who read them as they then appeared, that they possess in marked degree the unusual quality of a winning humor coupled with the pathos that is often humor's most exquisite accompaniment; and that they combine a shrewd if homely wit with a profound knowledge of the workings of ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... and had no opportunity of correcting the composition as a whole,—she was apt to give undue prominence to minor details, and throw her high lights on to obscure corners, instead of concentrating them on the central point. These artistic rules kept her humour and pathos,—like light and shade,—duly balanced, and made the lights she "left out" some of the most ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... cameo-like (or like perhaps to the head on a postage stamp) against the dark oak walls of her music-room, and entranced herself and her listeners, if there were people to dinner, with the exquisite pathos of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Devotedly as she worshipped the Master, whose picture hung above her Steinway Grand, she could never bring herself to believe that the two succeeding ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. And her voice—I never heard such ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Dale," said Kells, cheerfully, yet not without pathos. "Alder Creek to-morrow!... Then ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... The pathos of her situation, the slim, helpless, wonderful youth of the girl, touched the not very accessible ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... rough-witted, above fear or gain; But nothing further had the gift to espy. Sudden you reappear. With wonder I Hear my old friend (turn'd Shakspeare) read a scene Only to his inferior in the clean Passes of pathos: with such fence-like art— Ere we can see the steel, 'tis in our heart. Almost without the aid language affords, Your piece seems wrought. That huffing medium, words, (Which in the modern Tamburlaines quite sway Our shamed souls from their bias) in your play We scarce attend to. Hastier ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... executed with perfect finish passages of surpassing brilliancy growing out of the national airs of many countries—airs which floated out from the entanglements of the more rapid portions with an earnest pathos that held every hearer as with a ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... account oppressed anybody. Some little depredation on their British neighbors, out of dogged faithfulness to their king and church,—that's the worst charge you can make. Look at their history! all poetry and pathos! Look at their character! brave, peaceable, loyal, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to have lived where I was put. But—have you ever seen a straw, caught on a snag, try to stop a river? To your sentimentalist that straw looks heroic; to anybody that knows the difference between bathos and pathos it simply looks silly. The river of life is bigger than that of any nation. We can't stop it, but we can swell it by going with it. Did you ever see a mule drink ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... Covent Garden and took their acting copies. These volumes, then, that catch my firelight hold the very plays that the crowds of 1774 looked upon. Herein is the Romeo, word for word, that Lydia Languish sniffled over. Herein is Shylock, not yet with pathos on him, but a buffoon still, to draw ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... been refuted. In and for themselves they are no memorable objects, but existences as contemptible as they are despised. Criticism has already settled all accounts with this subject. It no longer figures as an end in itself, but only as a means. Its essential pathos is indignation, its essential ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... by a gesture not without pathos, and, passing out, stumbled blindly down the narrow stairs. Basterga attended him with respect to the outer door, and there they parted in silence. The magistrate, his shoulders bowed, walked slowly to the left, where, turning into the town through the inner gate, the Porte Tertasse, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... exhaustion, that was strangely pathetic. Erica scarcely seemed to realize that he was her father. It was more as if she were gazing at some scene on the stage, or on a wonderfully graphic and heart-stirring picture. The pathos and sadness of it took hold of her; she burst into a passion of tears, turned her face from the light, and cried as if no power on earth could ever stop her, her long-drawn sobs allowed to go unchecked since the noise of the train made them inaudible. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... and relation of humanity. What could Homer, Socrates, or St. Paul say that cannot be said here? The audience is of all classes, and its character will be determined always by the name of the lecturer. Why may you not give the reins to your wit, your pathos, your philosophy, and become that good despot which the virtuous ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... beauty, and an added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... and monstrous, and inhuman! Among the angels in heaven there is sorrow and anger this night." His voice had in it all the pathos of tears, but tears mingled with ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... determination and self-confidence of quite a young author, a story that has gladdened and softened the hearts of thousands,—a story that has drawn welcome smiles and purifying tears from all who can appreciate its deftly-mingled humour and pathos,—a story that has been a boon to humanity—might have been sacrificed to the shallow ruling of a prudish 'young-lady' proof-reader, and ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... rough preface, he launched into a criticism of the novelist, which for intelligent sympathy and hearty appreciation I had rarely heard equaled. Not only did he dwell upon the exuberance of his humor, but upon the power of his pathos and the all-pervading element of his poetry. I looked at the man in astonishment. I had considered myself a rather diligent student of the great master of fiction, but the stranger's felicity of quotation and illustration staggered me. It is true, that ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... strayed out of the album in which it was first written, except for the benefit of the stationer, printer, and the newspapers. Nearly all the poetry of this description is too bizarre, and wants the pathos and deep feeling which uniformly characterize true poetry, and have a lasting impression on the reader: whereas, all the "initial" celebrity, the honied sweetness, lasts but for a few months, and then drops ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... portions of the writings of our great novelist by cynical depreciators, who have not the heart to recognise—as did Lord Jeffrey, for instance, one of the keenest and shrewdest critics of his age—the exquisite pathos of a death-scene like that of little Nell or of little Paul Dombey, in the utterance by himself of those familiar passages nothing but the manliest emotion was visible and audible from first to last. Insomuch was this ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... ungrateful—I who have been an idle man—if I underrated the novel. It is hardly possible to imagine a form of composition more fit to display the varied powers of an author; for wit and pathos, the tragic and the comic, descriptions, reflections, dialogue, narrative, each takes its turn; but I cannot consent that it carry off all our regard from its elder sister, the drama. In the novel every thing passes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... time to gather round The old piano grand, Its dulcet harmonies unstirred Since Lucy sang so like a bird, And played with graceful hand; Like Lucy's voice in pathos sweet Repeating softly "Shall we meet?" Is only in the heavenly ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... told by one of O'Connell's biographers that he never prepared his addresses to judges or juries—he trusted to the inspiration of the moment. He had at command humour and pathos, invective and argument; he was quick-witted and astonishingly ready in repartee, and he brought all these into play, as he found them serviceable in influencing the bench or ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... inflict an injury with my pen and Indian ink as it is to do good. Let us suppose, for instance, that a great painter has just finished a very sentimental work—a picture so brimful of beauty and pathos that it appeals to everybody, myself included. As I stand before it, and admire, it is impossible perhaps for me to restrain a sympathetic tear from making its appearance in, at all events, one of my eyes. But how about the other? Ah! with regard to that other eye, I must ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... said Jackeymo, speaking in his native tongue, and expressing himself with a certain simple pathos, "I am but a poor man; my name is Giacomo. You have heard of me;—servant to the Signior whom you saw to-day—only a servant; but he honors me with his confidence. We have known danger together; and of all his friends ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... its pathos too. At some of its simple cadences, the tears came quietly into Kenyon's eyes. They welled up slowly from his heart, which was thrilling with an emotion more delightful than he had often felt before, but which he forbore to analyze, lest, if he ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... This feeling grew in force, until by nightfall Rena had become very unhappy, and went to bed with the most dismal forebodings. In this state of mind, it is not surprising that she now dreamed that her mother was lying at the point of death, and that she cried out with heart-rending pathos:— ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... are wholly original and sufficiently varied in character and sentiment to enable the reader to make up a well-rounded program in which high comedy mingles with farce and pathos in a manner suitable for all occasions. Nineteen monologues and nine short poems which are especially adapted to that particular form of entertainment called the pianologue, ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... thought, beyond instinct which is the father of thought. Motherliness, pity, self-sacrifice—these are the charges of her primal cell, and not even the discovery that men are comedians, liars, and egotists will wean her from this. As she looked at the pathos of his face she repudiated the hideousness of his body. The beast which is in all men is glossed by women; it is his childishness, the destructive energy inseparable from youth and high spirits, and it is always forgiven by women, often forgotten, sometimes, and not rarely, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... Daphnis and Bion, Tityrus and Amyntas for characters, Sicilian valleys for scenery, while Pan, Pales, and the Fauns represent the supernatural. The shepherds defend their flocks from wolves and lions. But this factitious bucolicism is pervaded by a pathos, which, like volcanic heat, has fused into a new compound the dilapidated debris of the Theocritean world. And in the Latin elegy there is more tenderness than in the English. Charles Diodati was much nearer ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Mrs. Glamorys daintily devouring the solitary ice, and felt a certain pathos about the parti-coloured oblong, a something of the haunting sadness of 'The Last Rose of Summer'. It would make a graceful, serio-comic triolet, he was thinking. But at the last spoonful, his beautiful companion dislocated his ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... old loyal Bodyguards are indeed dissolved, in name as well as in fact; and gone mostly towards Coblentz. But now also those Sansculottic violent Gardes Francaises, or Centre Grenadiers, shall have their mittimus: they do ere long, in the Journals, not without a hoarse pathos, publish their Farewell; 'wishing all Aristocrats the graves in Paris which to us are denied.' (Hist. Parl. xiii. 73.) They depart, these first Soldiers of the Revolution; they hover very dimly in the distance ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... his hand to Remenham, with a kind of pathos of appeal that the other, though I think he did not altogether like it, could hardly refuse to entertain. It was theatrical, it was un-English, but somehow, it was successful. And the whole episode, the closing words and the incomparable gesture, left me with a sense as though a curtain had been ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... trials which hedge woman's path, and with unerring skill defined her peculiar sphere, her true position. The reasoning was singularly forcible, the imagery glowing and gorgeous, and occasional passages of exquisite pathos drew tears from her fascinated audience; while more than once a beautiful burst of enthusiasm was received with flattering applause. Instead of flushing, her face grew paler, and the large eyes were full of lambent light, which seemed to flash out from ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... soul That the great master hand which sweeps over the whole Of this deep harp of life, if at moments it stretch To shrill tension some one wailing nerve, means to fetch Its response the truest, most stringent, and smart, Its pathos the purest, from out the wrung heart, Whose faculties, flaccid it may be, if less Sharply strung, sharply smitten, had fail'd to express Just the one note the great final harmony needs. And what best proves there's life ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... more full of pathos? Those few words say all that can be said or sought: the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest, and this they implore! There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... or hymns that Catharine sang; though she knew nothing of their meaning, she would catch the tunes and sing the song with Catharine, touching the hearts of her delighted auditors by the melody and pathos of ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... why you tell those stories when I'm around," the "Deacon" would exclaim, not without pathos. "You know I ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... working in one of the short and simple annals of the poor. The best of Dickens without his too profuse pathos."—Reedy's Mirror. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine |
