"Pitiful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Templars. It is here ordained that the Begares, Beguins and Beguines shall be burned. These were a species of heretics 'to whom was imputed all that had formerly been imputed to the primitive Christians.'" So says Voltaire. He does not, like the pitiful blaspheming infidels of to-day, try to heap all this corruption of the dark ages upon primitive Christianity. No! The hull of Voltaire's soul was too great for ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... inexorable Fate which is set against the realisation of the ideal. The passion of Prometheus sums up the perpetual agony of the human race in its perpetual striving to rise beyond its limitations. The tragic irony of the Greeks is but the expression of the tragedy of passion in its pitiful reaction from hope, the intensity of feeling with which men see desire defeated and ideal unattainable. So, too, in the most intense moments the ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... he was disturbed. His philosophy was of the kind that is built up in a country of horses, hard riding, hard work, hard fighting. According to the precepts of that philosophy, Sinclair would have shirked a vital moral duty had he failed to avenge the pitiful death of his brother. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... of Ireland made no answer, for they knew well that at the sound of the sweet pitiful music made by that comely man of the Sidhe, even women in their pains and men that ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... Duke of Milan. Not only did he suborn the Parliament of Milan to that end, but he induced the Emperor to confirm him in the title. To this the Emperor consented, seeking to mask the unscrupulous deed by a pitiful sophism. He expounded that the throne of Milan should originally have been Lodovico's, and never Galeazzo Maria's (Gian Galeazzo's father), because the latter was born before Francesco Sforza had ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... do nothing more, sympathized with his feelings. The poor negro murmured and groaned in a manner that would have enlisted the feelings of a Patagonian; and in this way he continued until about three o'clock in the morning, when his moaning became so loud and pitiful, that the officer of the guard came to the door with an attendant, and unbolting it, entered with a lantern in his hand. He held the light toward his face, and inquired what he was making such a noise about? "Oh! good massa, good massa, do send for docta; ma head got a pile o' cuts on him," said ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... sacred group on earth to him, who, whatever his faults might be, loved them both dearly. He took a candle in his hand and, stepping lightly, went up the stairs to the nursery door. There was no sound of wailing within, no pitiful little cry to tell the tale; all was still and dark. He tried the door softly, but it would not open. Then another terror awoke, and for the moment took his breath from him. What had happened to the child? Sir Tom suffered enough at this moment to have expiated many ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... the most valuable sort of aid, but the treaty declared that no assistance should be given him. It was a gross injustice on the part of our Government, which did no special credit to itself, when, after the deposed ruler had made a pitiful appeal to Congress, that body presented him with a beggarly ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... forms; vast piles of building mouldering to dust; hanging-gardens where the weeds had grown so strong that their stems, like wedges driven home, had split the arch and rent the wall; stone-terraced lanes, with the lizards running into and out of every chink; beggars of all sorts everywhere: pitiful, picturesque, hungry, merry; children beggars and aged beggars. Often at posting-houses and other halting places, these miserable creatures would appear to her the only realities of the day; and many a time, when the money ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... is a pitiful case; and easily mended, since Fay is so eager about it. Hope the lad is all she says, and nothing catching about his illness. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... blown into flame and fury by theological and seignorial bellows! So that there shall be fighting from behind ditches, death-volleys bursting out of thickets and ravines of rivers; huts burning, feet of the pitiful women hurrying to refuge with their children on their back; seedfields fallow, whitened with human bones;—'eighty thousand, of all ages, ranks, sexes, flying at once across the Loire,' with wail borne far on the winds: and, in brief, for years coming, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... not stir. Whiter she could not grow, but a hopeless despair settled over her face, pitiful to witness. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... night through without a minute's unconsciousness. What wonder that his flesh had sunk away from his bones, and that his frame had lost its elasticity! For some hours every day he had lain prostrate on the bed in his cell, in a state of feebleness pitiful to behold, unable to speak or move, and hardly able to breathe. "One morning," he writes, "while gasping for breath, I besought the gaoler to let me have more air, by throwing up the window. 'You are ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... letters which come to me from St. Cloud say that you weep continually. This is not right. It is necessary to control one's self and to be contented. Hortense is entirely wrong. What you write me about her is pitiful. Adieu, my love. Believe in the affection with ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... touched by him, and there was deep joy in the thought. She would be always deprived of him, it was true, but the impossible must remain the impossible, and she would have drawn herself as near to him as could be. For a whole year she fed in fancy upon her pitiful little happiness. Alone, and with her eyes intent upon her work, she lived in another world, and believed herself to be his wife in a humble measure. The hours flowed on slowly like the motion of her needle; her hapless imagination was relieved. And then she at times indulged in a little hope. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... has the mark of use upon it, is a recommendation to the people of sense, and a hat with too much nap, and too high lustre, a derogatory circumstance. The best coats in our streets are worn on the backs of penniless fops, broken down merchants, clerks with pitiful salaries, and men that do not pay up. The heaviest gold chains dangle from the fobs of gamblers and gentlemen of very limited means; costly ornaments on ladies, indicate to the eyes that are well opened, the fact of a silly lover or husband cramped ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... she commanded. "He is reprieved until this hour to-morrow." The guards dragged off Calvaster, babbling his pitiful gratitude. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... shore, jaded from all these natural wonders," Conseil added, "think how we'll look down on those pitiful land masses, those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won't be good ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the slough than go back one hairsbreadth. Till, one sunshiny morning,—no one knew how, and he never knew how himself—the steps were so high and dry, and the scum and slime were so low, that this hare-hearted man made a venture, and so got over. But, then, as an unkind friend of his said, this pitiful pilgrim had a slough of despond in his own mind which he carried always and everywhere about with him, and made him the proverb of despondency that he was and is. Only, that sunshiny morning he got over both the slough inside of him and outside of him, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... just setting quiet." This was a thing Jane always added during all the years in which she told the story. "That was what made me notice. She kept by me and she kept looking at me different from any way I'd seen her look before—not pitiful exactly—but something like it. And once she came up and kissed me and once or twice she just kind of touched my dress or my hand—as I stood by her. SHE knew. No one ...
— In the Closed Room • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... roots he was so anxious to dispose of brought a pound on the market at that time, he would have been insane with anger. So the Harvester's eyes were dancing with fun and a wry grin twisted his lips as he clambered over the banks of the recently dredged river, and looked at its pitiful condition ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... counsels and pitiful irresolution. The commanders of the various contingents were brave men, veterans of the Mediterranean wars. But the coalition lacked one determined leader who could dominate the rest, decide upon a definite plan of action, and put it into energetic execution. Time was wasted ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... flesh-and-blood men and women, not the ghostly outline figures which pass for such, in what is called History. The horn lantern of the biographer, by the aid of which, with painful minuteness, he chronicled, from day to day, his own outgoings and incomings, making visible to us his pitiful wants, labors, trials, and tribulations of the stomach and of the conscience, sheds, at times, a strong clear light upon contemporaneous activities; what seemed before half fabulous, rises up in distinct and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not pitiful. And I thinking the chimney sweeping would be forgot and not reproached to me, if you have handled the fooleries and watches of the world, that you don't know the end ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... stepped out of the throng, and took me under their protection, and wanted to lead me forth out of the press; but the crowd, which had at first been scattered over the sidewalk, now became disorderly, and hustled me. All stared at me and begged; and each face was more pitiful and suffering and humble than the last. I distributed all that I had with me. I had not much money, something like twenty rubles; and in company with the crowd, I entered the Lyapinsky lodging-house. This house is huge. It consists of four ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... however, that none of them slept. He pictured each one, his own father, Kootanie George, Ernestine, Lieutenant Max, lying wide awake, staring up into the stars, each one busy with his own destiny. What pitiful pictures are projected into the calm of the star-set skies from the wretched ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... terror, and she struggled frantically, but she felt its grip of steel about her wrist; and while she sat there with her face hidden, she was learning to gaze into its eyes, and front their fiery terror. When she looked up again her face was very white and pitiful to see, and she rose from her chair and went toward the door so unsteadily that the woman put ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... principal parts in my composition is a kind of pride of stomach; and I scorn to fear the face of any man living: above everything, I abhor as hell, the idea of sneaking in a corner to avoid a dun—possibly some pitiful, sordid wretch, who in my heart I despise and detest. 'Tis this, and this alone, that endears economy to me. In the matter of books, indeed, I am very profuse. My favourite authors are of the sentimental ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... cannon began to boom from the Castle of St. Angelo. Gabriel Zimandy sprang out of bed and dressed himself quickly. His first care was to tap at Madam Dormandy's door and inquire for her health. The patient answered in a pitiful voice that the guns were fairly splitting her poor head, and that she did not expect to live the day through. This reply seemed to be quite to the advocate's liking: of the lady's succumbing to her ailment he had not the slightest ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Mis' Ricker, don't you go givin' in. Your kitchen's a sight with the good things o' your hand—think o' that,' I told her; 'think how you mortgaged your very funeral for to-night, an' brace yourself up,' An' she says, awful pitiful: 'I can't, Calliope,' she says. ''T seems like this slips the pins right out. They ain't nothin' to deboo with now, anyway,' she told me. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... that repelled her, And the cold hand that turned her away, And take, from the lips that denied her, This answerless prayer of to-day! Take Lord, from my mem'ry forever That pitiful sob of despair, And the patter and trip of the little bare feet, And the one piercing ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... She's the most mercenary little jade in Europe. Yet she really affects my peace of mind; she is always running in my head. It's a striking contrast to your noble and virtuous attachment—a vile contrast! It is rather pitiful that it should be the best I am able to do for myself at my present respectable age. I am a nice young man, eh, en somme? You can't warrant my future, as you do ...
— The American • Henry James
... not work enough for me," replied Carrie firmly, and passing over my clever argument with a dignified silence; "it is the drudgery of mere ornamentation that I hate. I will do my best for those dreadful children, Esther. Are they not pitiful little overdressed creatures? And I will try and please their mother though I have not a thought in common with her. And when I have finished my ornamental brick-making—told my tales of the bricks——" here she paused, and looked at me ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... front and down the lawn, in sight of the veranda, where at this hour everybody was there to see them. Lucy meant everybody to see. He had chosen that place, and that hour, also, which wore, appropriately, the innocence of morning. He knew her pitiful belief that he was defying public opinion in being seen with her; but from her ultimate consent, from her continuous trust in him, and from the heartrending way she clung to him, he gathered that she knew him, she knew that defiance, from him, ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... face of her own loved father, the pressure upon her heart seemed almost more than she could bear. The tears stole down her cheeks, and her eyes sought those of her mother with a glance of almost pitiful appeal. ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hours a day in English factories, did it show practical good sense to delay a "short time" bill until hundreds of thousands of starving workmen agreed to starve yet more, if need be, to relieve the overwork of their families, and until the most pitiful procession the sun ever shone upon, that of the factory children, just as they left their work, marched through the streets of Manchester, that burst into sobs and tears at the sight? Yet if, in such instances, where there ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ear be deafened to the little wail that echoes pitiful within the chambers of her heart! When we remember the great passion of motherhood, the intensity of the drama, the prolongation into years of its deep interplots, we cannot marvel longer at the perennial, lasting character of the mother's love. Given, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... misguided soul, yielded again to her distraught imagination, amid the pitiful ejaculations of the entire company, with the exception of one mundane, young man who, suddenly assailed by the wild fancy that he wasn't drinking, crept furtively to the Moorish rook, and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some kind ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing advice and care, but he seemed absorbed in the effort to recall distinctly what had last passed between us. "You were right," he said, with a pitiful smile, "I am a dawdler! I am a failure! I shall do nothing more in this world. You opened my eyes; and, though the truth is bitter, I bear you no grudge. Amen! I have been sitting here for a week, face to face with the truth, with the past, with ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... William Colleton, on the other hand, with means hourly increasing, exhibited a disposition narrowing at times into a selfishness the most pitiful. He did not, it is true, forego or forget any of those habits of freedom and intercourse in his household and with those about him, which form so large a practice among the people of the south. He could give a dinner, and furnish an ostentatious entertainment—lodge ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... you not try to bring that time?" he said with pitiful simplicity. "When you speak I believe all you say; other people ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... from our borders? If it must be so, it will be a mournful spectacle. If it must be so, the country will have reason to tremble, when it remembers that the fate of nations is in the hands of One who is very pitiful, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... already says, "Dear Soul of ours," therein making itself familiar. Then, as is stated, it commands where it ought to rebuke that Soul, in order to induce it to come to her; and therefore it says to her: "See, she is lowly, Pitiful, courteous, though so wise ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... sonnets, in spite of the arguments of good Dr. Whittaker and other apologists for Mary, is to be found in their tone. A forger in those coarse days would have made Mary write in some Semiramis or Roxana vein, utterly alien to the tenderness, the delicacy, the pitiful confusion of mind, the conscious weakness, the imploring and most feminine trust which makes the letters, to those who—as I do—believe in them, more pathetic than any fictitious sorrows which poets could invent. More than one touch, indeed, of utter self-abasement, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... this library here I have seen him open a letter with something that didn't just suit him in it, and he would rip around and carry on like an Indian, saying he wished he had the man that wrote it here, he wouldn't do a thing to him, and so on, till it was just pitiful. I never saw such a change. And here's another thing. For a week before he died Manderson neglected his work, for the first time in my experience. He wouldn't answer a letter or a cable, though things looked like going all to pieces over there. ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... renown which had long been their due. Then the Oak raised his head, rather hoary with age, And shook his broad arms in the air in a rage, And exhorted them all with a feeling of pride, To maintain their ground firmly, whate'er might betide. The Giant Elm follow'd and proudly look'd down On the pitiful plots of their foes with a frown. The Ash, pale with anger, derided "the crew," And the smooth-temper'd Purple Beech look'd rather blue. The Chesnut grew heated, and roasted them well; And bitter the taunts of the Almond-tree fell. The Apple and Pear both maintain'd, in their spleen, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... pirate! GIRLS: (recoiling, hopping) A pirate! Horror! FREDERIC: Ladies, do not shun me! This evening I renounce my vile profession; And, to that end, O pure and peerless maidens! Oh, blushing buds of ever-blooming beauty! I, sore at heart, implore your kind assistance. EDITH: How pitiful his tale! KATE: How rare his beauty GIRLS: How pitiful his tale! How ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Pitiful the cry, pitiful the cry the thrush is making in the Pleasant Ridge; sorrowful is the cry of the blackbird ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... agreed drily, breaking in on her quivering speech and steeling himself against its pitiful appeal. "All that. And then some. And it's generous of you not to blame me for being just the very tiniest least bit riled by it. That helps. I was afraid my peevishness might displease you. My temper isn't what it should be. If it were ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... maybe, throwing in a verse of the Psalms, if he wanted a bit of a change, would have done him far more good than his pretty stories, as he called them. And what's the next thing our young parson does? Why he tries to make us all feel pitiful for the black slaves, and leaves little pictures of negroes about, with the question printed below, 'Am I not a man and a brother?' just as if I was to be hail-fellow-well-met with every negro footman. They do say he takes no sugar in his tea, because he thinks ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... hand again. She found herself weeping, and yet the child did not complain. But it was plainly an effort for her to speak. Like most victims of complete deafness, it would not be long before she would be speechless, too. She "mouthed" her words in a pitiful way. ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... —the pitiful self-consciousness of such torment, unable to believe in the oblivion (familiar as it has been in past good hours) which sweeps through lovers in their bliss. They could not forget me, she thinks, as ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... far-reaching consequences. It is still he who disposes of the nations, since he disposes of their souls, and the Republic acts most inconsiderately, from the standpoint of its own interests, in showing that it no longer even suspects it. And tell the Cardinal too, that it is really pitiful to see in what a wretched way your Republic selects its bishops, as though it intentionally desired to weaken its episcopacy. Leaving out a few fortunate exceptions, your bishops are men of small brains, and as a result ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... now, let hearts united be To laud His praises joyfully, The God-Man born to-day. And let Thy mercy reach us now For pitiful and kind art Thou, ...
— Hymns from the Greek Office Books - Together with Centos and Suggestions • John Brownlie
... sweet wild-flowers; her little eyes had never seen the bright, blue sky, save between dark brick walls. Her little head often pained her. She was foot-weary and heart-sore; and what was worse than all, she had never heard of heaven, "where the weary rest." Wasn't it very pitiful? ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... of compassion soon becomes wearisome, and not the worthiest object in the world can keep one's charity interested through four hundred pages. Antonio, in "The Improvisatore," is a milksop whom the author, with a lavish expenditure of sympathy, parades as a hero. He is positively ludicrous in his pitiful softness, vanity, and humility. That the book nevertheless remains unfailingly popular, and is even yet found in the satchel of every Roman tourist, is chiefly due to the poetic intensity with which the author absorbed and portrayed every Roman sight and sound. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... compare favorably with the whites; they are easily handled, true and obedient; there is less viciousness among them; they are more patient; they have great constancy. The character of the white, as you know, runs to extremes; one has bull-dog courage, another is a pitiful cur; one is excessively vicious, another pure and noble. The phases of the character of the white touches the stars and descends to the lowest depths. The blacks character occupies the inner circle. Their status is mediocrity, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... that our Government, entrusted to the personnel of the Provisional Cabinet, is a pitiful and helpless Government, which only awaits the sweep of the broom of History to give way to a really popular Government. But we are trying to avoid a conflict, even now, to-day. We hope that the All-Russian Congress will take... into its hands that power ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... triumph through the night, and blended with the rustling of the leaves under a summer breeze, and she stretched her white arms to heaven, imploring the kind God with prayers that she dared not speak even to His pitiful ear. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... sell his soul to Templeton Thorpe in exchange for the fifty thousand dollars with which the old man had baited him on three separate occasions, and wishing that Lutie could know. It was something that she would have to approve of in him! It was rather pitiful that he should have found a grain of comfort in the fact that he had refused to kill ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... that she hoped they would starve to death, ignoring their pitiful glances. In the end it was our own tender-hearted Aggie who baked pancakes for them and, loosening their hands while I stood guard, saw that they had not only food but the gentle refreshment of fresh tea. Tish it was, however, who, not to be outdone in magnanimity, permitted them to go, one by one, ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Severn at the ferry of Ash, about ten miles above Bristol, and got to Monmouth to dinner through a rugged, indifferent country. It is a pitiful old town, and hath nothing remarkable in it; and from thence through a fat fertile country I got to the ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... Sheffield line was vehemently opposed by a Liverpool gentleman, on the ground that it would materially injure the prospect from a mansion, which had been the seat of his ancestors for centuries. The tale was well told, and seemed most pitiful; an impression was produced on the committee that the privacy of something like Hatfield, or Knebworth, was about to be infringed on by the "abominable railway." A stiff cross-examination brought out ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... I went through his papers, putting things in order, and from every leaf, every scrap, came corroboration of the new fact. He was one of those pitiful pedagogues of the rural South, shiftless, half-educated, inefficient. He had never been able to earn much, and his family had always gently starved. Then had come the chance—the golden chance—the Philippines and a thousand a year. He had taken the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... ah! yes, he suffered, not with locked teeth and stony stoicism, not with the masterful self-command, the reserve, the conquered bitterness of the still-water sort of nature, that is supposed to run to such depths. He tried to be bright, and his sweet old boyish self. He would laugh sometimes in a pitiful, pathetic fashion. He took to petting dogs, looking into their large, solemn eyes with his wistful, questioning blue ones; he would kiss them, as women sometimes do, and call them "dear old fellow," in tones that had tears; and once in the course of his travels ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... own hands again, to search among the leaves for the illustrations which were interspersed, so that Geordie might be introduced to all the beauties of this wonderful volume. Geordie kept looking at her as she turned the leaves with a somewhat pitiful gaze, and presently he said in a low tone, "Jean, come a little nearer. I want to speak to ye, Jeanie. Do ye ken I'm maybe goin' til the grand school the good Maister keeps waitin' for us in the heavenly land? And I'll be learnin' ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... pitiful Porter, Which often did resort there, Quoth he, I'll shew some Sport here, Amongst the Jovial Crew; The Porter he had very bad luck, Before that it was ten a Clock, The Fool got Drunk, and lost his Frock, For Joan's ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... men, as anger, love, hatred, grief, joy, &c., but it is so much the worse, since the judgment, which is the only directive and guide of them, is troubled. Now they are set on wrong objects, they run at random, and are under no kind of rule, and so they hurry the poor man and put him in a pitiful case. Now indeed so it is with us,—since sin entered, the soul is wholly turned off God, the only true object of delight, in which only there can be solid gloriation. The mind of man is blinded, and his passions are ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... to think for one instant that any trouble which may involve Scott is due to you or yours. And if it were, Duane, it could make no difference to him or to me. Money and what it buys is such a pitiful detail in what goes to make up happiness. Who but ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Bombay in the spring of the year, we went our respective ways, to meet no more for the next three or four months, when my leave and her love took us both to Simla. There we spent the season together; and there my fire of straw burned itself out to a pitiful end with the closing year. I attempt no excuse. I make no apology. Mrs. Wessington had given up much for my sake, and was prepared to give up all. From my own lips, in August, 1882, she learned that I was sick of her presence, tired of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice. Ninety-nine ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... danger to the soldiers, too; and in turn, the soldiers were such a danger to the lambs of his flock. Domestic disasters in his parish came to his ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers. They seemed to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight. The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough. When the babies were born, and came to his notice, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... real. Read the names of those buried a couple of centuries ago—captains, elders, ministers, governors, wives well beloved, children a span long, maidens in the blush of womanhood—half the tender inscriptions are illegible; the stones are broken, sunk, slanting to fall. What a pitiful attempt to keep the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the Northern Territory man who has all-comers on toast, because no one can contradict him or check his figures. When two of them meet, however, they are not fools enough to cut down quotations and spoil the market; they lie in support of each other, and make all other bushmen feel mean and pitiful and inexperienced. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... stage. Oh, it's not at all the same as with Pushkin, Gogol, Moliere, Voltaire, all those great men who really had a new original word to say! It's true, too, that these talented gentlemen of the middling sort in the decline of their venerable years usually write themselves out in the most pitiful way, though they don't observe the fact themselves. It happens not infrequently that a writer who has been for a long time credited with extraordinary profundity and expected to exercise a great and serious influence on the progress of society, betrays in the end such poverty, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... what he—Big Bill Dunlavey—said about my brother?" she questioned, her eyes full and moist. Hollis nodded and she continued rapidly, her voice quavering: "Well, he told the truth." Her voice trailed away into a pitiful wail, and she stepped over and leaned against the boulder, sobbing quietly into her hands. "That's why it hurts ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... declared there was nothing left to eat, for the Boers had stripped the place. This sullen reception was not because we were going to plunder them, for the orders were that everything requisitioned was to be paid for; it was solely from a feeling of pitiful racial hatred. ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... her hands in his, and noticed that there were tears upon her cheeks. He was certainly sorry for her; it was pitiful to think that her new happiness had been wrecked in this way, but he could not overcome the coldness that was about him; and so they parted on the spot where a few months earlier Jim had said good-bye with a heart full ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... had seen the pitiful poltroon that he proved himself you would not say so,' said my uncle coolly. 'You are not yourself at present, but when you return to your right mind you will be ashamed of having made this public exposure of your weakness. And now, lieutenant, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you pitiful 'natomy," cried Mrs Forster, in a rage, turning to the clerk, as she dared not revenge herself upon the curate. "Take that for your He, he, he!" and she swung round the empty pewter pot, which she snatched from the table, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... distress fell. For nearly half a year, their lawn, their verandah, sometimes their rooms, were cumbered with the sick and dying, their ears were filled with the complaints of suffering humanity, their time was too short for the multiplicity of pitiful duties. In Mrs. de Coetlogon, and her helper, Miss Taylor, the merit of this endurance was perhaps to be looked for; in a man of the colonel's temper, himself painfully suffering, it was viewed with more surprise, if with no more admiration. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life on the selfsame stool, busied in colouring Freudenberger's sheets so long as he was alive, and, after his death, in drawing and painting, after his own fancy, bears, cats, and children at play, for the benefit of the widow, with the same pitiful day's wages which he had formerly received from his master. Many artists, after Freudenberger's death, would gladly have taken poor Mind into their service, but, like his beloved cats, he was so attached to the house, to his corner and its appurtenances, that he constantly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... Dr. Wream last night. A pitiful letter, for he's getting near the brink. Dennie—these funds I hold—I have never quite understood, but I had felt sure there was no other claimant. There was a clause in the strangely-worded bequest: 'for V. B. and his heirs. Failing in that, to the nearest related ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... after his wife, who still declined to see him; and came away at first relieved and hopeful because he was told that she seemed to be growing better, and then in despair because, the complication which the doctor had feared having ensued, recovery was impossible. The nurse was pitiful to his distress, but she had little to say that could console him. The poor woman lay quite still, refusing to speak, with her eyes intent, as though she watched for the coming of death. It could now be only the question of a day or two; and when, late one evening, Stroeve came to see ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... but in a crowd of queer people and bundles and voices I saw Sam standing and looking perfectly helpless, while that Commissioner of Agriculture stood over by the window, evidently perfectly furious and growling out expletives to the saddest crowd of pitiful people ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... family. How well that grand-looking open-minded Squire would become a great station, fitted as he was by nature, descent, and tradition, to play the solid part of an English country gentleman of the good old- fashioned kind. It was pitiful to think of a man of his stamp forced by the vile exigencies of a narrow purse to scheme and fight against the advancing tide of destitution. And Ida, too,—Ida, who was equipped with every attribute that can make wealth and power what they should be—a frame ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... scene from his mind. He continued to raise his head and body without a struggle. He looked the captain in the eye, and his mouth was in motion as though he were trying to speak,—to utter some dying accusation. Never did human eye behold a scene so pitiful as this dying man gazing on his destroyer, gasping to implore or to denounce him. In an instant a dimness came over his eyes, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... How prone are the wealthy, by warm, glowing grates, to forget their cheerless habitations, and turn inhumanly from their pitiful tales ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Pitiful creature! For what do you take me? Yet no, my dear Franziska, the advice did not come from your heart. ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... the hot sun and into a secluded archway, he talking straight on with a speed and pitiful grandiloquence totally unlike him. "I've finished all the easy parts—the first ecstasies of pure license— the long down-hill plunge, with all its mad exhilarations—the wild vanity of venturing and defying—that bigness of the soul's experiences which makes even its anguish seem finer than ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... fame from its own intrinsic merits. Any one can steal a squaw, and if he chooses afterward to make an adequate present to her rightful proprietor, the easy husband for the most part rests content; his vengeance falls asleep, and all danger from that quarter is averted. Yet this is esteemed but a pitiful and mean-spirited transaction. The danger is averted, but the glory of the achievement also is lost. Mahto-Tatonka proceeded after a more gallant and dashing fashion. Out of several dozen squaws whom he had stolen, he could boast that he had never paid for one, but snapping his fingers in the face ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... see how the fellow was coming on. The brute ought not to pull through. But it was too late: a new regime had begun; his little period of sway had passed, leaving as a last proof of his art this human jetsam saved for the nonce. And there rose in his heated mind the pitiful face of a resolute woman, questioning him: "You held the keys of life and death. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "Is it not pitiful? I pity only those who pity themselves. Yet he is mine more surely than ever. This is the end of human wisdom. How shall he now escape? What shall draw ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... themselves in the world than for women, and the army or the Church rarely failed to furnish some sort of career for all those who were denied the rights and privileges of the firstborn. The lot of the sister, however, was pitiful in the extreme (unless it happened that the older brother was kind and considerate), for if she were in the way she could be bundled off to a cloister, there to spend her days in solitude, or she could be married against her will, being ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... after coffee in the Oude Weg. I sit on the bench where you sat, and more often than not I see the sight that you saw. I am not a sentimental woman, but, after all, one has a heart, and this is a pitiful affair. Also, I have obtained from a reliable source the information that the new system of manufacture is more deadly than the old, which I have long suspected, and which, I believe, has passed through your mind as well. You and I went into this thing without le bon ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... that God, our heavenly Father, is omniscient. Our griefs are not hidden from him. He knows our hearts, and with all this knowledge he is good—so tender, so pitiful! Oh, to love him as he deserves! Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing his praises! Tell the sick, tell the sorrowing, tell the broken-hearted of this God; tell the wretched, the guilty, the wayward prodigal of this ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... bed, nor a blanket, nor a chair, nor any article or utensil of furniture whatsoever, had been left; all, all, was in the hands of the remorseless pawn-brokers, as the sufferers showed me by their certificates—pawned, too, for such pitiful sums as at once attested the oppressive and disgraceful system of avarice upon which those establishments are conducted. The storm yet howled fearfully without, and the hard particles of indurated snow were sifting through the ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... in his quivering voice. The manly repentance which burdened his soul reached her heart. After all, it was true: he had been only a reckless, thoughtless boy as he planned that raid on her uncle, and he had been so kind and helpful afterward—and so merry! It was pitiful to see how changed he was, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... tried teaching, without satisfaction to herself or perhaps to others. The kind of education she had herself received fitted her admirably to understand and influence children, but not to carry on the routine of a school. Sewing was her resource when nothing else offered, but it is almost pitiful to think of her as confined to such work when great powers were lying dormant in her mind. Still Margaret Fuller said that a year of enforced quiet in the country devoted mainly to sewing was very useful to her, since she reviewed and examined the treasures laid up in her memory; and doubtless ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... put aside the miniature, and is standing again before the toilet-glass. There are tears to be wiped off. A few more footsteps to and fro; and here, at last,—with another pitiful sigh, like a gust of chill, damp wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of which has accidentally been set, ajar—here comes Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky, time-darkened passage; a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, feeling her way towards ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... murdering of childhood; those heavy hands crushing this lovely girl; how abominable that such weakness should have such a weighty cross to bear! Again did Gervaise crouch down, no longer thinking of tucking in the sheet, but overwhelmed by the pitiful sight of this martyrdom; and her trembling lips seemed to be seeking for ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... calleth blessed and worthy of the kingdom of heaven. Again he chargeth us to mourn in the present life, that we may obtain comfort hereafter, and to be meek, and to be ever hungering and thirsting after righteousness: to be merciful, and ready to distribute, pitiful and compassionate, pure in heart, abstaining from all defilement of flesh and spirit, peacemakers with our neighbours and with our own souls, by bringing the worse into subjection to the better, and thus by a just decision making peace in that continual warfare betwixt ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... keep the whip from all of us," answered the Englishman. He bent his back to the shameful work, and felt, in the bitterness of his degradation, something less than human. The thoughts that surged through his brain are too pitiful to be set down here. Chained down in a filthy den, liable to be whipped like a beast of burden, fed upon stuff that was but one remove from offal—how horrible! And he could not forget that about a year before he had ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... color, but in manners and disposition! Some are timid and awkward, and the butt of the whole herd. Some remind you of deer. Some have an expression in the face like certain persons you have known. A petted and well- fed cow has a benevolent and gracious look; an ill-used and poorly fed one, a pitiful and forlorn look. Some cows have a masculine or ox expression; others are extremely feminine. The latter are the ones for milk. Some cows will kick like a horse; some jump fences like deer. Every herd has its ringleader, its unruly spirit,—one that plans all the mischief, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... gods, saw them and had pity upon them and spoke to himself saying, "Ah, immortal steeds, why did I give ye to king Peleus, whose generations die while ye remain young and undying? Was it that ye should know the sorrows that befall mortal men? Pitiful, indeed, is the lot of all men upon the earth. Even Hector now, who boasteth in the armour that the gods once gave, will shortly go down to his death and the City he defendeth will be ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... John were selfish, he was preferable to these drab women, these pitiful females herded together. Women in the mass were very displeasing to look at, and they frightened you. They turned down the corners of their mouths and looked coldly and condemningly at you. It was extraordinary how unanimous the girls ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... of the fleet, scattered in every direction by the storm, did not discover the absence of the Nautilus till mid-forenoon, when bits of wreckage, into which they sailed, soon told the pitiful story. Towards noon two bodies were found, that of the captain and steersman, afloat in the pilot-house, but no more; the fate of Reuben, the boy, and the three other ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... jealously guarded secrets of her existence, except her old love for Leslie Gray. Even in delirium something sealed her lips as to that. But all else came out—her anguish over her unfashionable attire, her pitiful makeshifts and contrivances, her humiliation over wearing unfashionable dresses and paying only five cents where every other Sewing Circle member paid ten. The kindly women who waited on her listened to her with tear-filled eyes, ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... entertain it when it is offered, but to seek it when it is away, and to pursue it when it runs away. (Psal. xxxiv. 14, which Peter urges upon Christians, 1 Pet. iii. 8, 9, 10, 11.) "Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous. Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing, knowing that ye are thereunto called that ye should inherit a blessing. For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... torch threw its blue and hazy light into the cave. In spite of the gloomy poetic effects which Mademoiselle de Verneuil's imagination cast about this vaulted chamber, which was echoing to the sounds of a pitiful prayer, she was obliged to admit that the place was nothing more than an underground kitchen, evidently long abandoned. When the formless mass was distinguishable it proved to be a short and very fat man, whose limbs were ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... winsome lady'. But the look in her eyes—Eric, I felt as if I had murdered something. She bade me good-bye with a pitiful smile and went upstairs. I did not see her again, although I stayed to dinner as her uncle's request. Those old Gordons are a queer pair. I liked them, though. They are strong and staunch—good friends, bitter enemies. They were sorry that I could not ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... end of the weary day she came to your palace gate holding up her pitiful bowl, and you came and took her hand and seated her beside you ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... was formerly from Philadelphia, and an intimate friend of Charles Hunter's father, who was a sea captain, and being shipwrecked during one of his voyages, was conveyed in a pitiful condition to the house of Mr. Horton, and thus commenced an ardent friendship, to ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... one who beholds a vision from another world. And then a great sob burst from him—the pitiful sob of a strong man who is beaten, broken with emotion. The whole being of the man seemed to collapse. He staggered forward, and such a change came over the gaunt, hard face, that Bridget saw it through a rain of tears which ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... so before, but now that you mention it, I do think it emphatically." This is a pitiful effort at a jest, but it passes unpunished. "There comes Johnson to ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Devil owned he had never seen them equalled, except by the inhabitants of an English town called N—-, when dressed in their Sunday's best. "Envy, malice, curiosity, and avarice," said he, "are here and there the sole springs of action; and both places are governed by a pitiful mercantile spirit, which prevents them from being grandly wicked or nobly virtuous. In short, Faustus, there is little to be done in either place by a man of spirit, and we will hurry away from hence as soon as you have brought the mayoress to the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... in his illness, but she never cared for Charlie as he did for her. He worshipped the very ground she walked on. He thought her perfection. Uncle Max, it was pitiful to hear him sometimes. He would tell me how sweet and unselfish she was, and all the time I knew she was but an ordinary, commonplace girl. If he had lived to marry her he would have been disappointed in her. He was so large-hearted, and Lesbia has ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in the city, the Doctor went with me, and before I knew what he was at—he had marched me into a home for babies.... Katie was nearest the door—the first one. Pinned over her crib was her name: "Catherine Staats, aged three months." She held out her little arms ... so friendless—so pitiful—so alone—and I was done for. We brought her back home, the Doctor, a nurse and I. The first time I carried her up those stairs—all my fine bachelor's ideas went out of my head. I knew then that my theories were all humbug. I had missed the child in the house ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... charged them for 50 letters what (even in) greenbacks would amount to less than two thousand dollars, intending to write a good deal for high-priced Eastern papers, and now they want to publish my letters in book form themselves to get back that pitiful sum. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 12th it was -61.6deg. F., with a breeze dead against us. This was undeniably bitter. It was easy to see that the temperature was too much for the dogs; in the morning, especially, they were a pitiful sight. They lay rolled up as tightly as possible, with their noses under their tails, and from time to time one could see a shiver run through their bodies; indeed, some of them were constantly shivering. We had to lift them up and put them into ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... existence. Perhaps her fear was referable, in some sort, to the retrospect she had so lately heard. Be this as it might, she stood, submissively and deferentially, before her child, and inclined her head, as if in a pitiful entreaty to be spared ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Haldgren, he told himself; and there was something that came chokingly into his throat at the thought. That lonely figure—one tiny dot of life on a bleak and lifeless stage! It was pitiful, this undying effort to signal, to let his own world know ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... nicety, George," said the king; "ye are as preceese as a Puritan in form, and a mere Nullifidian in the marrow of the matter. May not a king's word serve ye for advancing your pitiful ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... with thy pitiful dirge, Thou need'st to be mournful and moan! The wrath of thy terrible surge Omnipotence ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... son, Franz, to help her to feed the unfortunate animals on board, who were in a pitiful plight, having been ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... It is pitiful to see in the many smoky cities the little done for this thirst for beauty, inherent in all. Even in the poorest sections where many foreigners dwell one sees a broken pitcher with its stunted geranium, a window box with ferns and vines or a canary in a rude cage. As soon ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... once cruel and merciful, thoughtlessly hard-hearted and tender-hearted, sympathetic, pitiful, and kind in ever changing contrasts. Love of neighbors, human or animal, grows up amid savage traits, coarse and fine. When father made out to get us securely locked up in the back yard to prevent our shore and field wanderings, we had to play away the comparatively ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... against superior numbers behind entrenchments; they endeavoured to turn the Germans out of insignificant villages after allowing them time to fortify the position. They fought in the open against an invisible enemy superior in numbers, superior in artillery, and here and there they gained a pitiful little hard-earned advantage. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... delicate hands. At this sight Coroebus burst forth infuriate, and flung himself on death amid their columns. We all follow him up, and charge with massed arms. Here first from the high temple roof we are overwhelmed with our own people's weapons, and a most pitiful slaughter begins through the fashion of our armour and the mistaken Greek crests; then the Grecians, with angry cries at the maiden's rescue, gather from every side and fall on us; Ajax in all his valour, and the two sons of Atreus, and the whole Dolopian army: as oft when ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... condemned to die. Such was the crowd of besiegers for grace, offices, and simple greeting by the host of the White House that she was kept out in the hall. But one day, the master passing through the corridor "to hold the show," heard a baby's pitiful wail. He halted, listened again to make sure, and on entering his reception-parlor asked his favorite usher if he had not heard ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... come Lear's shrieks of pain and pitiful ravings, and in the heavy intervals the gibberings of the fool. Even when the calmer mood of age came upon Shakespeare and took away the bitterness, he never recanted; Posthumus speaks of life and death in almost the words used by Vincentio, and Prospero has nothing to add save that ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... preached none. He preached only revolt, and in that revolt defiance of all existing laws. He had no religion; Christ to him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same system that still crucified those who fought the established order. In his new world there would be no churches and no laws. He advocated bloodshed, arson, sabotage of all sorts, as a means ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... no longer dependent merely on the incitement of youth, grace, beauty, whether of body or character; it transcends all limitations of sex and age, and finds objects on which it can spend itself in all that God has made, even in that which has violated its own law of life and become mean and pitiful. It becomes a love of fallen humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming the conscious and permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolution of love has been written by the poets. Every ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... work rush to the diggings. Indeed, many men are fools enough to leave their work to go there, but I confess that I don't like the notion. It has always appeared to me such a pitiful thing to see men, who are fit for better things, go grubbing in ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... instantly suppressed. The last speaker, Mr. Reuben Rice, was one of those wandering scribes who travel through the West and write up suffrage from a Pullman-car window, and as he exposed the weaknesses, the failures and the pitiful spectacle that voting women make of themselves, he galvanized the audience into a semblance of ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens |
