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Pitifully   /pˈɪtɪfəli/  /pˈɪtɪfli/   Listen
Pitifully

adverb
1.
To a pitiful degree.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pitifully" Quotes from Famous Books



... passing clear through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. But her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look at her. He strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. She waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... many communities in the United States where the average family income is pitifully low. It is in those communities that we find the poorest educational facilities and the worst conditions of health. Why? It is not because they are satisfied to live as they do. It is because those communities have the lowest per capita wealth and income; therefore, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... friend!' Mr. Bosengate started the car with unnecessary clamour. But as if brought back to life by the commercial traveller's remark, the prisoner's figure seemed to speed along too, turning up at Mr. Bosengate his pitifully unhappy eyes. Want of his wife!—queer excuse that for trying to put it out of his power ever to see her again! Why! Half a loaf, even a slice, was better than no bread. Not many of that neurotic type in the Army—thank Heaven! The lugubrious figure vanished, and Mr. Bosengate pictured instead ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Jim Rowlett, over there in his house, was failing fast, men said. He prattled childishly, and his talon-like hands were pitifully palsied. He would scarcely see another spring, and in the fight that was coming his wise old tongue would no longer be available for counsel. So toward the younger and more robust influence of Parish Thornton his adherents turned in ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... paused here, and Evadne looked up at the cathedral again, feeling for her pitifully. This new view of her mother was another terrible disillusion, and the more the poor lady exposed herself, the greater Evadne felt was the claim she had upon ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... pitifully through the silence of the flat. So appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise, wherever she was, would have heard it. Edward was dazed by the shock, his lower lip quivered and fell. He walked over to Hannah's chair and put ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... freeze to death and lie embedded in the ice like corpses she had read of, kept perfectly preserved until the melting of a glacier. Harry probably thought she had left with the others—he had gone by now; no one would know until next day. She reached pitifully for the wall. Forty inches thick, they had said—forty ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... consciousness, and was murmuring pitifully: "A casa, a casa!" Her husband helped her aboard the gondola, where Pauline took compassionate possession of her, ministering to her in gentle, discerning wise. May, usually so fertile in resource, found nothing to offer but her vinaigrette, which the patient ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... ways of a coquette, so that he sadly assures us his mistress "is sweet to win, but bitter to keep." [Footnote: C. G. Roberts, Ballade of the Poet's Thought.] The times when she solaces him may be pitifully infrequent. Rossetti, musing over Coleridge, says that his inspired ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... a little wounded bird he trailed through the darkness, Laid him on a door-step, and then—O, like a breath Pitifully blowing out his life's little rushlight, Came a gush of blackness, a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... We squander without enjoyment, because our fathers squandered. We eat of the best, not from delicacy, but from brazen habit. We do not keenly enjoy or eagerly desire the presence of a luxury; we are unaccustomed to its absence. And not only do we squander money from habit, but still more pitifully waste it in ostentation. I can think of no more melancholy disgrace for a creature who professes either reason or pleasure for his guide, than to spend the smallest fraction of his income upon that ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "No, no," said Lettice, pitifully, "I will ask you no questions, Milly. You shall tell me all about it or nothing, just as you like. We must not keep the baby out in the night air any longer. Come round to the door, and Mrs. Chigwin ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... some rare Falernian. You would be sure, from, just that little thing, that no sparkle of warmth or pleasure in the world slipped by her which she did not catch and enjoy and be thankful for to the uttermost. You would think, perhaps, pitifully, that not much pleasure or warmth would ever go down so low, within her reach. Now that she stood on the ground, she scarcely came up to the level of the wheel; some deformity of her legs made her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... protesting his innocence, bewailed his wife and children, and tried pitifully to avert his fate. The genius, with his raised scimitar, waited till he had finished, but was not in the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... moved forward into the moonlight; his two friends waved an airy adieu; and Brandes went slowly back to the dark verandah where sat a young girl, pitifully immature in mind and body—and two old people little less innocent for all their experience in the ranks of Christ, for all the wounds that scarred them both in the over-sea service which had broken ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... fate. And in her own chamber, where so short a time before the little princess had known the joy of something inexpressible—something most exquisite—intangible—unknown—she sat, like a flower broken by the ruthless storm, sobbing pitifully, dry-eyed, with sobs that strained her soul, for the shameful, hideous fate that the gods ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... spirits, it would be hard to find. But sometimes these pets do not have a very easy time of it. Only a few days ago we saw a little boy out on the sidewalk with his kitten. He was enjoying himself, but the kitten wasn't, for he would pick it up and throw it across the yard, till poor pussy mewed pitifully. Now, if our boys and girls are going to have pets, they ought to learn to treat them very kindly, just as they would wish ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914 • Various

... man of good intelligence and discretion could have got the same results as Goodrich's. He was simply a lackey, strutting and cutting a figure in his master's clothes and under his master's name. He was pitifully vain of his reputation as a Machiavelli and a go-between. Vanity is sometimes a source of great strength; but vanity of that sort, and about a position in which secrecy is the prime ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... so Billy can't be with him, and I just know he's kilt, Miss Marilyn. I just know he's kilt. I dreamt of a shroud night before last and I can't help thinkin' he's kilt!" and the tears poured down the tired little face pitifully. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... he to marry her, his advancement in the Church would be almost impossible; for, while the very minor clergy sometimes married in spite of the papal bulls, matrimony was becoming a fatal bar to ecclesiastical promotion. And so Heloise pleaded pitifully, both with her uncle and with Abelard, that there should be no marriage. She would rather bear all manner of disgrace than stand in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... in her lap, her mouth and eyes drawn down, solemnly awaiting the opening of the coffin. Near the door stood a mulatto woman, evidently a servant in the house, with a timid bearing and an emaciated face pitifully sad and gentle. She was weeping silently, the corner of her calico apron lifted to her eyes, occasionally suppressing a long, quivering sob. Steavens walked ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... twigs where she had left him. He had never before been asked to carry double and he did not like it. But the girl pleaded so pitifully and so gently into his silky black ear that he finally ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... a white coverlet, and in the deep sleep of childhood, the infant heiress of Raynham! If either of the women had only known at whom she was looking, as they scrutinized the child's fair face and talked of her beauty and her innocence in tearful whispers, looking away from the sleeping form, pitifully, at a little heap of black clothes on a chair by ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... sheer weakness has gone steadily downward, but he has never before done a deed approaching this in horror or in the power of sudden self-revelation. He sees himself now as he never saw himself before and begins to take stock of his moral assets. They are pitifully meager, though his opportunities for character building have been good. He has even had emotional revivals, which did not, however, issue in good deeds. But with it all, Markheim illustrates the nobility of human nature rather than its essential depravity. I do not doubt ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... proved her wrong—that is so far as the upside-down of it was concerned. He did this by staying awake the whole of the following night and noting that the city stayed right-side up throughout the long hours. Cis, poor girl, had been pitifully misinformed. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... too, shall begin to rant in a moment. Meanwhile, as I understand it, you decline to perform the ceremony. I have had to warn you before this, Simon, that you mustn't take too much gin when I am apt to need you. You are very pitifully drunk, man. So you defy me and my evil courses! You defy me!" Rokesle laughed, genially, for the notion amused him. "Wine is a mocker, Simon. But come, despatch, Parson Tosspot, and let's have no more ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... been badly treated. There is no one who would not admit that. I have been deceived—a man less kind than I might say robbed. No matter. I forget it all. I forget my disappointment, I forget that this young lady whom you offer me for a wife has a dot so pitifully small that it counts for nothing. I take her. I accept her. Jeanne," he added, moving towards her, "you hear? It is because I love you so ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sunny cheerfulness was sadly shaken when the actual moment of parting with the exquisite, rose-hatted, gray-frocked Julie came; her face worked pitifully in its effort to smile; her tall figure, awkward in an ill-made unbecoming new silk, seemed to droop tenderly over the little clinging wife. Margaret, stirred by the sight of tears on her mother's face, stood with an arm about her, when the bride ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... To herself it appeared as though she spoke from a great distance, and was compelled to use exertion to make herself heard. She was conscious of two distinct personalities—one prostrate in the dust, humiliated, rent and bleeding, and another which held a screen pitifully before the broken thing, and shielded it from observation. When Norma bid her good-night she responded quietly, and rising accompanied her guest to her room to see that every arrangement was ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... just wrath, he made for the nearest paillasse, turned it topsy-turvy, slit it neatly and suddenly from stem to stem with a jack-knife, banged the hay about, and then went with careful haste through the pitifully minute baggage of the paillasse's owner. Silence fell. No one, least of all the owner, said anything. From this bed The Clever Man turned to the next, treated it in the same fashion, searched it thoroughly, and made for the third. His motions were those of a perfectly oiled ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... mother was sitting still in her rocking-chair, with her head leaning back and her eyes shut. "She seems all beat out," she said, pitifully; "she don't tell ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... see her better now, for the candle was flaring bravely. She was little and old. Her thin, white hair straggled pitifully about her small, wrinkled face, her eyes looked as if they had been burned almost out by suffering. He saw she was drawn and quivering with pain, even now as she tried to speak cheerfully. A something ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... in many visible forms; it is prominent in painting and music, almost monopolizes fiction, and has pitifully degraded dancing. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... weakest snapped. A week went by, and Charlie did not come. Emily haunted the porch in an ironic appearance of freedom. Mrs. Drainger, in some subtle way, knew that she had won, that the girl was eternally hers. Emily's face was pitifully white: she was suffering. Was it love? Or was it her passionate hatred of the prison that held her, the guardian that kept ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... gazed at her, and his tone was so fierce, although he was only very much amazed, that Jewel's smile faded. The corners of her lips drew down pitifully, and suddenly she slipped from her chair, and running to him threw her arms around his neck and buried her averted face, revealing two forlorn little flaxen ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... and observing his simple and plain way of living, his wife employed in kneading bread with her own hands, himself drawing water to wash his feet, they pressed him to accept it, with some indignation, being ashamed, as they said, that Alexander's friend should live so poorly and pitifully. So Phocion pointing out to them a poor old fellow, in a dirty worn-out coat, passing by, asked them if they thought him in worse condition than this man. They bade him not mention such a comparison. "Yet," said Phocion, "he with less ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... To and fro he walked, while the flakes fell faster; and the wind, which at first had but moaned, pitifully howled. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the outset, nothing was more unlikely than that these two should advance by smooth paths to a clear and utter understanding. His one glimpse of her face dethroned his cold logic and moved him very deeply; she was so white, so pitifully sad-looking. She, too, had suffered; God knew that she had battled through hours of anguish. He wanted her in his arms; he wanted to batter at the world with his fists to save her from its flings of grief ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... himself a mighty muscled animal, but his six feet of height and his great rolling sinews seemed pitifully inadequate to the ordeal which ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... out through the low window into the gray sky with its drift of snow across the panes. He heard faintly the tumult outside. Disaster, ruin, despair entered his heart. The young conscripts were disheartened by defeat, the steady old veterans were pitifully few in number, thousands of them were in foreign prisons, many more thousands of them were dead. Disease was rife among the youthful recruits, unused to such hard campaigning, as he had summoned to the colors. Without food and without arms, they were beginning to desert their Eagles. The ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... 1890, the Sioux Indians again broke loose from their reservations at Pine Ridge and all of the available men of the pitifully small, but gallant, United States army were hurriedly rushed northwards to give them a smash that would be lasting and convincing. There was the 7th Cavalry, Custer's old command, the 6th and 9th Cavalry, the 10th, 2nd, and 17th Infantry, the late lamented and gallant Capron's ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... Judith!" said Miss Crawford pitifully. She trembled as she clung to the girl's shoulder. "I'm not so young as I used to be, you know. I don't feel as if I could stand it. Oh, if only ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... revulsion of feeling she turned to see what had become of the poor mother and her boys. They were not far behind, huddling in the shadow. The black woman strode quickly up to them. They shrank pitifully at her approach, and she felt the shame of it. They were ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown

... poor little mite, he breathes better now, don't he?" They stood around the bed, looking down at the child, whose regular breathing showed that he had stopped fighting for his breath and the battle was won. Soon his eyes, which had been staring so pitifully closed, and with a ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... and gazed at me pitifully. She was not frightened, but appalled, rather, at the human animality ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... and looking somewhat pitifully at me. "And he says that it shall be at once. But I fear how he may ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... upon his boy's face, still alight with content at having reached the mountain, upon his white, blue-veined body, so pitifully frail, and marveled that a frame so weak, so tender, so peaceful, had been only now ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... has come in vogue. Gradually the right of the workingman to have the price of his labor fixed as is the price of other commodities, by the law of supply and demand, came to be recognized, although the progress was pitifully slow. The old ideas of the relation between "master" and "servant" were very tenacious of life, and the substitution of the terms "workman" and "employer" is a change which has taken place in England during the ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... Why should I be?" Juliet spoke very gently, very pitifully. "I have a feeling that Robin and I are going ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... was what she meant, then," thought Mr Benson. "He has begun his share of the sorrows too," he continued, pitifully. "No! I will not waken him back to consciousness." So he returned alone into the study. Ruth sat where he had placed her, her head bent back, and her eyes shut. But when he came in ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... now and then noticeably manifested itself in the courtroom. Still, when the evidence for the State was all in, the life of Happy Fear seemed to rest in a balance precarious indeed, and the little man, swallowing pitifully, looked at his attorney with the eyes of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... we saw that beautiful, delicate-looking creature stepping down the boards between the two rows of shearers, most of them stripped to their jerseys and working like steam-engines, looking curiously and pitifully at the tired men and the patient sheep, with her great, soft, dark eyes and fair white face like a lily, we began to think we'd heard of angels from heaven, but never ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... quite know how to begin to cheer the lad up. Her tender heart was stirred to unusual sympathy, as she gazed into the pitifully drawn little face, with its big doll-blue eyes. She must surely say something to make David happier—and the minutes were going fast. After all, it was David that was first to ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd

... continue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing pile would never be systematically arranged. The people now understood for the first time that the long-felt power of greater individualities and wills was larger than the pitifully small will of an individual man;[1] they now saw that everything truly great in the kingdom of the will could not have its deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral individual will; and, finally, they now discovered the powerful instincts of the masses, and diagnosed ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche

... itself with joy to see me, and stood by me lowing so pitifully, as much as to say, 'Oh, I'm so glad I've found you! I know I'm safe now, and you won't let these awful ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... was it a murderess standing there, with that sweet look of compassion on her beautiful face? Could this woman, who looked pitifully on me, a grown man, drown a little child in the deep sea? Were those lips, littering kindly words of welcome, the same that had cried in mad despair, "Oh, Heaven! if I dare—if I dare?" I could have killed myself for the base suspicion. Yet it ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... Beautiful Princess, and it was surely the saddest story he had ever heard. He could not bear to think of that lovely and delicate lady all alone in the great, black forest waiting until the giant came back from killing her seven brothers. He would return with their seven heads swinging pitifully from his girdle, and, when he reached the castle gates, he would gnash his teeth through the keyhole with a noise like the grinding together of great rocks, and would poke his head through the fanlight of the door, and ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... first feeling, before he could think or reflect, was the rush of a poignant and searching tenderness. This intimate, human sound, heard amid the desolation about them, woke pity. It was so incongruous, so pitifully incongruous—and so vain! Tears—in this vast and cruel wilderness: of what avail? He thought of a little child crying in mid-Atlantic.... Then, of course, with fuller realization, and the memory of what had gone before, came the descent ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... turned back the advancing Saint-Leger? whose prompt decision saved the Continental position at Bemis Heights? whose military genius truly gained the day? A vacant niche—empty as England's rewards, void as his own life—speaks more eloquently than words, more strongly than condemnation, more pitifully than tears, of a mighty career blighted by treason and hurled into the bottomless pit of despair. This is America's way of honoring ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... "It is true—pitifully true, my lord," returned Hymbercourt. "This young knight was at the moat bridge near Castleman's House under the Wall talking with a burgher maid, Fraeulein Castleman. Count Calli stole upon them without warning and insulted the maiden. My young friend ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... him rather pitifully, her eyes meeting his own, her chin invitingly raised with its delectable dimple. Now, Mark wished devoutly that the idea of that dimple as a sort of point d'appui had never entered his thoughts, but there was the ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb

... unmindful of the care and skill which the hospital staff lavished on him, though no more faithfully on him than on many an unknown or unresponsive patient. But he was in a pitifully questioning mood. The doctors had told him he could not expect to preach again. When the district superintendent had come to visit him, he carried away with him Walter Drury's request for retirement at the coming session ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... first in its clothes, then in a shawl, and then in the apron as tight as possible, so that it couldn't slip out on the way, and fall on the ground. When little Sami was freed from the smothering wrappings and could move his arms and legs he fought with all his limbs in the air and screamed so pitifully that his grandmother thought it seemed exactly as if he already knew what a great misfortune had ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri

... his breast and his eyes. How strangely the red had left his face—and also the distortion! The devil that had showed in Bain was gone. He was sober and conscious. He tried to speak, but failed. His eyes expressed something pitifully ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... was expressed in the camp of Borealis, which appeared like a herd of small, brown houses, pitifully insignificant in all that immensity, and gathered together as if for company, trustfully nestling in the hand of the earth-mother, known to be so gentle with her children. On the hill-sides, smaller mining ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... is a gleam of man's potentiality, that makes him truly sublime. There are many Scripture statements that make man pitifully little; but this is because of his present sinful condition. Bye and bye he will rise into his true condition, and then "The holy spirit of man" will be not only a possibility, but an experience. It is gratifying to notice that such a man as Dr. Dawson ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... counterparts of those which he had worn on a brighter and happier day. How like they were! how changed was he! In some moods he would have smiled at this bit of girlish folly as he fastened the little thing over his heart; now, something sounded in his throat that was pitifully like a sob. Don't smile at him! he was so young; so impassioned, yet gentle; and then he loved so utterly with the whole ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds Strength to the Conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider there are Creatures capable of Thought, who, in spite of every Argument, can form to themselves a sullen Satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted Ambition of that Man who can hope for Annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole Fabrick shall one Day crumble into Dust, and mix with the Mass of inanimate Beings, that it equally deserves our Admiration and Pity. The Mystery of such Mens Unbelief ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... and importance to the master. The woman had a snuffed- out air, as of one whose life had died out of her years ago. She blinked at us meekly as she dropped a timid courtesy; at a low word of command she turned a pitifully patient back on us all. There were years of obedience to orders written on its submissive curves; and she bent it once more over her kettles; both she and the kettles were on the bare floor. It was the poorest of all the Villerville ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... by the by, was three degrees more offensive and more suffocating than our own berth below. Another, in my condition, perhaps, would have submitted to his fate, and died in a pet; but I could not brook the thought of perishing so pitifully, after I had weathered so many gales of hard fortune: I therefore, without minding Oakum's injunction, prevailed upon the soldiers (whose good-will I had acquired) to admit my hammock among them; and actually congratulated myself upon my comfortable situation; which Crampley no sooner understood, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... his point; and the relief of that thought melted him. He believed, that is, that I should presently make an excuse to get hold of my servant and send him off to delay the King's coming. Then, I suppose, he saw the one flaw in his design; and he strove, very pitifully, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... that it ceased to pass as currency. "Not worth a continental" has passed into our native idiom. Without power to levy taxes, Congress could only make requisitions upon the States. The returns were pitifully inadequate to the needs of government. All told, less than a million and a half of dollars came into the treasury between 1781 and 1784, although Morris, as Superintendent of Finance, had earnestly besought the governors of the States for two ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... her fashionably appointed voice, while her fingers plucked rather pitifully at sea-green brocade, "your father, my dear boy, has—is not at Newmarket; he's on his way to South America. He—he's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... everywhere wreck—shells—old friends in the cabinets at home—as earnests to ourselves that all was not a dream: delicate prickly Pinnae; 'Noah's-arks' in abundance; great Strombi, their lips and outer shell broken away, disclosing the rosy cameo within, and looking on the rough beach pitifully tender and flesh-like; lumps and fragments of coral innumerable, reminding us by their worn and rounded shapes of those which abound in so many secondary strata; and then hastened on board the boat; for the sun had already fallen, the purple night set in, and from the woods on shore a chorus ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... I like you, and I can't help having hope of you." He smiled charmingly, his keen, inconstant eyes dimming. "Perhaps I hope because you're young and extremely lovely and I am pitifully susceptible. You see, you'd better go. Every man's a Ransdell at heart where pretty women ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... with her hands; and such a trembling seized her that they fell pitifully away again and showed her features, each distorted. "You mustn't, Charley! Mustn't do that again, not—not for ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... terrible hoofs, almost crushing the victim's maimed haunches. The bear bawled again, but maintained his clutch of desperation, and finally drew himself up to a safe height, where he crouched on a branch, whimpering pitifully, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... oath, upon our mighty Lord, that they all were (should be) dead, who this errand bare; with horses drawn in pieces, death they should suffer. There leapt towards them the Britons exceeding wrath; tore them by the hair, and laid them to the ground. There were (would have been) the Romanish men pitifully treated, if Arthur had not leapt to them, as if it were a lion; and said these words—wisest of all Britons!—"Leave ye, leave quickly these knights alive! They shall not in my court suffer any harm; ...
— Brut • Layamon

... pair to reach their goal, or at least near enough to it for them to see that the unfortunate deer was not yet quite dead, for its hind legs, which were not involved in the coils of the python, were kicking out feebly, while its eyes gazed up at them pitifully with an expression that might easily have been interpreted into a prayer for deliverance from its sufferings. As for the python, it was already relaxing its awful grip upon the body of its victim, and had thrown off one coil as the two friends came into ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... man lifted his head and looked in Bertrand's face, pitifully seeking there for help. "You are a good man, Mr. Ballard. I need your ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... Miss Dix said pitifully in after life. Certainly with this exacting grandmother, there can be no childhood as it is understood to-day; but if Dorothea submits to the rigorous discipline enforced upon her, she will make a woman of iron fibre who will flinch from no hardship and will leave ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... by stamping, but it clung to his velveteens. His numbed fingers could scarcely hold the cage, which was also full of snow. By the light coming from a fanlight over the door in the porch he looked at his squirrel. The little thing was trembling pitifully in its icy bed, and he took it out and breathed on it to warm it, and then put it in his bosom. The sound of a child's voice laughing and singing came to him from within the house, muffled by the walls and the door. Across the white vapour cast outward ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... often complain; he had never spoken to her in this way before. Her face was scarlet, and she knew that she wanted to cry. "I know, dear," she added more composedly; "I am afraid I do think too much about Jim; I am afraid"—and Rachael smiled a little pitifully—"that I would never want anyone but you and the boy if I had my own way! Sometimes I wish that we could just slip away from everybody and everything, and never see ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... perhaps in part forgotten, the wretched woman to whom your love was once so dear, and to whom the memory of your love will ever be a consolation and a happiness. If I dared to pray to you to think pitifully of that most unhappy man whose secret is now known to you, I would do so; but I cannot hope for so much mercy from men: I can only hope it from God, who in His supreme wisdom alone can fathom the mysteries of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... taunt Catholicism for excluding knowledge of astronomical truths from European Catholic universities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while real knowledge of geological and biological and anthropological truth is denied or pitifully diluted in so many American Protestant colleges and universities ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... you carry and the angle at which you cock your hat, people have gone in fear of you, have believed in you, have imagined you to be as terrible and as formidable as you insolently make yourself appear. But at the first touch of true spirit you crumple up, you tremble, you whine pitifully, and the great sword remains in your scabbard. You remind me of the Privileged Orders when confronted by ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... poor old, twitching, grey face, at his hands that worked pitifully. I saw my grandmother lift her streaming eyes to Heaven as though to ask for help. They had been very tender to me, and they were old. God knows no woman ever shrank more from a lover than I from Richard Dawson. But, perhaps, if I sacrificed myself, ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... lip trembled. Presently she burst out, as though she had resolved to throw feline argument and sophistic persuasion to the winds, "I am just tired of this house, Fred, and I should like to move to-morrow. It is pitifully small and disgustingly dirty with dirt that I can't get rid of, and everything about it is old as the hills. It has never been the same place since that fall of soot. If I am obliged to live in it I shall have to, but I am sure that ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... and we poor passengers inside know neither whither we are being borne nor how long shall be our journey. Now and again the horses are pulled up, the door is opened, that grim guard Fate calls out a name, and one of us climbs pitifully forth, to pass with faltering steps into a sable hostelry. We that are left behind peer after him curiously.... Then the door is slammed, with a lurch the coach is off again on its eternal wayfaring, and we poor passengers inside sit ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... of fear had died out of the mahout's countenance as he turned his face to the two Englishmen, and he nodded and smiled rather pitifully, as he seemed to be feeling now that his life was ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... William Landor's: a weather-stained cap which had been a present likewise: a handful of fossils he had gathered in one of his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small, and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At last, though, it was done, and he straightened. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... who had been separated from her husband in a rush of the smoke and did not know whether he was living. The women attended to her all night and in the morning the soldiers passed her through the lines in her search. A few Chinese made their way into the crowd. They were trembling, pitifully scared and willing to stop wherever the soldiers placed them. This is only a glimpse of the horrible night in ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... 'count?" he asked pitifully. "Why, I made shore they was silver. Well"—he looked aimlessly about—"I better go find Johnnie," and he started down ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... The big Turk screamed pitifully at first, and then actually fainted away from fright. Rob was much frightened, on his part, for he knew if his hands slipped from their hold he would fall to his death. Indeed, one hand was slipping already, so he made a frantic clutch and caught firmly hold of ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum

... impersonal when she gave Lance a list of the pitifully small errands she and her mother would be grateful if he would perform for them. Her lips did not quiver, her hands did not tremble when she took her father's old red morocco wallet from the bureau drawer ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... through "storms of shot and shell" almost scathless, while others are falling like autumn leaves around them. Something similar happened on the present occasion. While Larry and several of the other men were left behind, pitifully and tenderly picking the sand out of their eyes, the bold Muggins—covered with sand from head to foot, but still not mortally wounded—advanced singlehanded against the foe—rushed at the turtle; tripped over it; rose again; quailed ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... kindly flowers bloom and scent the air. But they are not strong enough to emancipate themselves. The daughter tries to poison herself because her foster brother, the engine-driver Nil, has jilted her. But when the poison begins to work she cries out pitifully for help. The son is a student, and has been expelled from the university. He hangs about at home, and cannot find energy to plot out a new career for himself. The weariness of a whole generation is expressed in his faint-hearted, listless words, as also in the blustering ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald

... mentions a circumstance which indicates a deep sense of feeling. As he passed over a field of battle in Italy, with some of his generals, he saw a houseless dog lying on the body of his slain master. The creature came towards them, then returned to the dead body, moaned over it pitifully, and seemed to ask their assistance. "Whether it were the feeling of the moment," continued Napoleon, "the scene, the hour, or the circumstance itself, I was never so deeply affected by any thing which I have seen upon a field of battle. That ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... creation. As the Tyro had never before set eyes upon him, this was surprising. The solution of the mystery came from the crowd, close-pressed about the Tyro. It took the form of an unmistakable sniffle, and it somehow contrived to be indubitably and rather pitifully feminine. The Tyro turned. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... seemed to her, her thought had always dwelt on the superficialities rather than the realities of life. Her income was pitifully small according to her standards, yet she had never had to consider the question of food and shelter. She had known social success, love of beauty and of art, gayety and luxury; she had had petty discouragements ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... Calvary that the faithful royalists travelled through so many years, each station of which was marked by disillusions and failures. Since the war on the nobles had begun in 1789, all their efforts at resistance, disdainful at first, stubborn later on, blundering always, had been pitifully abortive. Their rebuffs could no longer be counted, and there was some justification in that for the scornful hatred on the part of the new order towards a caste which for so many centuries had believed themselves to be possessed of all the talents. Many ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... off as fast as they could go, and the abbe found himself left alone with the dog, which was painfully trying to rise. Before she could stand up, he knocked her back again, and began to hit her with all his strength. The animal moaned pitifully as she writhed under these blows from which there was no escape (for she was chained up) and at last the priest's umbrella broke. Then, unable to beat the dog any longer, he jumped on her, and stamped and crushed her ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... small bodies crying for rice that could only be bought with the sacrifice of one. That night, as they started down the canal, they saw on the tow-path a peasant women, her dress open far below her throat, her hair loose and flying, her eyes swollen and dry from over-weeping, moaning pitifully, stumbling on in the darkness, searching for the boat that had been anchored at the water-gate; but it was gone. Poor little Ho-tai! She said, "It was my mother!" and as she told me, he face was wet with bitter rain. I soothed her and told ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... clouds of dust, these solid companies of blue uniforms, crowned with dirty-white helmets, started filing past me in an endless stream. The officers were riding up and down the line, calling on the men to exert themselves, and to hurry, hurry, hurry. But the rank and file were pitifully exhausted, and their white, drawn faces spoke only of the fever-haunted swamps of Tonkin, whence they had been summoned to participate in this frantic march on the capital. They had always been behind, I heard, and had only been hurried up by constant forced marching, which left ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... made answer, desiring to be discreet. 'Is that any answer to my question?' she said, knitting her brows. 'Senora,' said I, trembling greatly, 'I cannot tell a lie, even though you may betray me. I am a Lutheran.'—'I betray thee!' she said pitifully. 'Poor child! whoso doth that, it will not be I. I am under the same ban.'—'Senora!' I cried, much astonied, 'you are a Lutheran? here, in the Queen's Palace.'—'Doth that amaze thee?' she answered with another smile. 'Then a second ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... ma bairns, what have you made me do?" cried the old nurse pitifully. "The fairy gift is broken, and maybe the Gold of Fairnilee, that my eyes have looked on, ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... before had been in danger from this very crew, was smitten with a sudden compunction. Except for Muckle John, they were so pitifully feeble, a pack of humble, elderly folk, worn out with fasting and marching and ill weather. I had been sickened by their crazy devotions, but I was more sickened by this man's barbarity. It was the woman, too, who had given me food ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... who was to drink to something else in the room and then the deadly knock-out drops would be administered and they would rob the man. One night the dose was too strong and the victim died. The one who caused his death came before the city authorities recently to give himself up and pitifully ask that he might be quickly sent to death to pay the penalty of his crime for, said he, "From that moment my mind has never been at rest. I wandered about town for two or three days trying to get rid of the sight of that fellow's face; ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... retired with some dismay, but waited on her again next day, when he found her more calm. She begged he would excuse the outburst of feeling he had witnessed, but added very pitifully that when she thought of her misfortunes "she sometimes gave vent to that passion which was ready to break her heart." The advice, or, as he terms it, "the evidence of his devotion," which the chancellor gave was worthy of a courtier and a philosopher. He told the young ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy



Words linked to "Pitifully" :   pitiful



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