"Discontent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his genius, and it no longer surprised her into overlooking his frailty. His fame no longer flattered her. His gentleness was gone, and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its place, but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That was what she called it ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... twenty-five miles, and to remove obstructions to navigation which had been planted there. [Footnote: Id., pp. 456, 459.] One brigade of Morgan's division was in condition to move, and it was ordered from Portland to Gallipolis. The rest were to follow at the earliest possible moment. The discontent of the East Tennessee regiments had not been lessened by the knowledge they had that powerful political influences were at work to second their desire to be moved back into the neighborhood of their home. On the 10th of October a protest against their being sent into West Virginia was made ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... clouds, and sometimes continues long enough to almost deceive the expectant buds of the fruit trees, and to tempt the robin from the secluded evergreen copses, may be nothing; but it takes the tone out of the mind, and engenders discontent, making one long for the tropics; it feeds the weakened imagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we know it we become demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden change to sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from the plunge. It is the insidious temptation ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... arms was too great to leave them a probable prospect of victory. A battle, however, was not to be avoided. The opinion of the public and of Congress demanded it. The loss of Philadelphia, without an attempt to preserve it, would have excited discontent throughout the country, which might be productive of serious mischief, and action, though attended with defeat, provided the loss be not too great, must improve an army in which not only the military talents, but even the courage of officers, some of them of high ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... rising and producing the fee. But he paused before going and said meditatively, "I should really like to be able to follow your advice, you know." His brow clouded in discontent; the one serious handicap he recognised was this arbitrary unfortunate doom of a body unequal to the necessary strain of an active life. "Anyhow I'm good for a ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... past achievements, the continued progress of the Mutual Assistance Program requires a persistent discontent with present performance. We have been reorganizing this program to make it a more effective, efficient instrument—and that process will ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... to laugh at himself. His fury was foolish, a mere generalization of discontent from very little data. Still, it was a relief to be out in the purring night sounds. He had passed from the affluent stone piles on the boulevard to the cheap flat buildings of a cross street. His way lay through a territory of startling contrasts ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... civilization, partly in the increasing poverty of the city, doomed four hundred years ago to commercial decay, and chiefly (the Venetians would be apt to tell you wholly) in the implacable anger, the inconsolable discontent, with which the people regard their ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... weakness. One of the few of the "Scotch prejudices!" that remained with her after all these years, was the prejudice in favour of her own two feet, as a means of locomotion, when the distance was not too great; and rather to the discontent of Mr Snow, she had insisted on walking up to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... but which in reality is every shade from black to white, is slowly developing a consciousness of its own racial solidarity. It is finding its own distinctive voice, and through its own books and papers and magazines, and through its own social organizations, is at once giving utterance to its discontent and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... temptation, strengthened by distress, Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime, And yet—Oh more than all!—untired by Time; Which nor defeated hope, nor baffled wile, Could render sullen were She near to smile, Nor rage could fire, nor sickness fret to vent On her one murmur of his discontent; 300 Which still would meet with joy, with calmness part, Lest that his look of grief should reach her heart; Which nought removed, nor menaced to remove— If there be Love in mortals—this was Love! He was a villain—aye, reproaches shower On him—but not the Passion, nor its power, Which only ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... before the cafes were filled. Nearly everyone spoke of the great war and of the peril which menaced Lutha. Upon many a lip was open disgust at the supine attitude of Leopold of Lutha in the face of an Austrian invasion of his country. Discontent was open. It was ripening to something worse for Leopold than ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the wife is this, (Which shee in minde ought very carefull beare) To entertaine in house such friends of his, As she doth know haue husbands welcome there: Not her acquaintance without his consent, For that way Iealousie breeds discontent. ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... Convention are not unlearned in the history of the Praetorian Bands and the omnipotence of armies; and an offensive war is undertaken to give occupation to the soldiers, whose inactivity might produce reflection, or whose discontent might prove fatal to the new order of things.—Attempts are made to divert the public mind from the real misery experienced at home, by relations of useless conquests abroad; the substantial losses, which are the price of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... may receive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation of smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are business men who all day long are mild, and courteous, and genial, and good-natured in commercial life, damming back their irritability, and their petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam breaks, and scolding pours forth ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... vague and varied discontent probably did lead to the revelation of many incidental wrongs and to much humane hard work in certain holes and corners. It also gave birth to a great deal of quite futile and frantic speculation, which seemed destined to take away babies from women, or to give votes to tom-cats. But it had ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... progress. As tree after tree came whistling down, he cast his eyes upward at the vacancies they left in the heavens, with a melancholy gaze, and finally turned away, muttering to himself with a bitter smile, like one who disdained giving a more audible utterance to his discontent. Pressing through the group of active and busy children, who had already lighted a cheerful fire, the attention of the old man became next fixed on the movements of the leader of the emigrants and of his ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... happiness—or a fortunate environment for individuals—it is demanded of the grand aim of the world's existence that it should foster, nay, involve the execution and ratification of good, moral, righteous purposes. What makes men morally discontented (a discontent, by the way, on which they somewhat pride themselves), is that they do not find the present adapted to the realization of aims which they hold to be right and just—more especially, in modern times, ideals of political constitutions; they contrast unfavorably ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... baby-feet were first Planted where the daisies burst, And the greenest grasses grew In the fields we wandered through, On, with childish discontent, Ever on and on we went, Hoping still to pass, some day, ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... hear a spark, yet think no danger nigh; From the dear man unwilling she must sever, Yet takes one kiss before she parts for ever: Thus from the world fair Zephalinda flew, Saw others happy, and with sighs withdrew; Not that their pleasures caused her discontent, She sigh'd not that they staid, but that ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... I am of your Opinion Mr. Spruce; for setting aside her present Melancholly and Discontent, I think she is beyond Comparison with ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... Kennedy; and, if we were to sanction King James's forming an intimacy with you, can I understand that we could rely upon your not using your influence to add to his impatience for action, and discontent with ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... judicial and legal rule in the Transvaal; and there are European lawyers of the opinion that the Uitlanders must be the most contemptible and lowest set of adventurers for not being satisfied with it! Dr. Kuyper declares that "the factitious discontent existed only among the English"; and adds with contempt, "Let us look into the Edgar, Lombaard, and Amphitheatre cases—mere ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... Some discontent prevails in the town owing to the high price of provisions, which is, no doubt, severely felt. The established price of grain is at the rate of eight seers the rupee, a rate established by the king, but on ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... belonging to the village, and they are all there. We are peaceable people, who till the soil and fish the lake, and take no part in the doings of the great towns. We are subjects of King Agrippa, and have no cause for discontent with him." ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... that in England itself there was strong ground for discontent with the prevailing social order and the relations between the peasantry and the landed classes: but in Germany matters were very much worse. In England there had always been a tendency for the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... melancholy manner at seeing this great political question resolved by the discontent of such humble interest. He for a moment ran over in his mind the glorious existence of the surintendant, the crumbling of his fortunes, and the melancholy death that awaited him; and to conclude, "Did M. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... referred to the discontent which had shown itself in the army during our stay in Cairo. How rapidly events have travelled since then! The rise of a popular leader, Arabi, who possessed the confidence, or at least, who was accepted by the people as their only ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... except what was afforded by a few short truces; for after those men had returned to the camp whom necessity had forced to quit it, the whole body which was crowded within the circuit of the encampment, being full of fierce discontent, excitement, and a most ferocious spirit, and now reduced to the greatest extremities, were eager for bloodshed: nor did their chiefs, who were present with them, resist their desire; and as the resolution to give battle was taken when the sun was ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... desire which the French people have received from nature to govern themselves as they please. Is it the destruction of revolutionary principles? If your Majesty will take account of the effects of war you will see that it tends to revolutionize Europe, by increasing everywhere the public debt and the discontent of the people. In compelling the French people to make war, you compel them only to think of war, only to live in war; and the French legions are numerous and brave. If your Majesty wishes for peace it is done; let us give repose and tranquillity to the present ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... good deal of my father in the face, but it is my father transformed and glorified; his hesitating discontent drowned in a kind of triumph. From my first day in that house, I continually turned to this handsome kinsman of mine, wondering in what terms he had lived and had his hope; what he had found there to look like that, to bound at ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Constitution of 1787, which superseded the Confederation, contained all the defects of the latter which it was specially designed to remedy,—that the league of the preceding period was prolonged in the succeeding organization, only to be the fatal object of future discontent and ambition. Certainly this doctrine is the basis of the rebellion, and without it no successful movement could have been made to secure cooperation from any of the States. Nevertheless, it cannot be considered one of the impelling causes ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mutterings of discontent continued, and to appease the people, the House of Burgesses passed a law providing that, instead of tobacco being a legal tender, all debts could be paid in money; figuring tobacco at the rate of two cents a pound. As tobacco was worth about three times this amount, it will be seen at once ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the room was sandpapering a golf shaft before the fire, and a deep expression of discontent was on his face. But his countenance lighted up at sight of his visitor, and he leaped to his feet and drew a second armchair before ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... as a veteran may; But more preferred the fury of the strife,[kr] And present death, to hourly suffering life: 950 And Famine wrings, and Fever sweeps away His numbers melting fast from their array; Intemperate triumph fades to discontent, And Lara's soul alone seems still unbent; But few remain to aid his voice and hand, And thousands dwindled to a scanty band: Desperate, though few, the last and best remained To mourn the discipline they late ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... movement was to find fresh impetus in 1877, a year of exceptional unrest and discontent throughout the Union. The agricultural depression was even greater than in preceding years, while the great railroad strikes were evidence of the distress of the workingmen. This situation was reflected in politics ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... must have been more or less than human, if he did not utter "curses, not loud, but deep," against the framers of such inhuman decrees. If Englishmen studied the history of Ireland carefully, and the character of the Celtic race, they would be less surprised at Irish discontent and disloyalty. An English writer on Irish history admits, that while "there is no room to doubt the wisdom of the policy which sought to prevent the English baron from sinking into the unenviable state of the persecuted Irish ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Casaubon's generosity towards him, and also that she had been interested in his own hesitation about his career. She was alive to anything that gave her an opportunity for active sympathy, and at this moment it seemed as if the visit had come to shake her out of her self-absorbed discontent—to remind her of her husband's goodness, and make her feel that she had now the right to be his helpmate in all kind deeds. She waited a minute or two, but when she passed into the next room there were ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... shown that the age of machinery has been in a certain sense one of triumph, of the triumphant conquest of nature, but in another sense one of perplexing failure. The new forces controlled by mankind have been powerless as yet to remove want and destitution, hard work and social discontent. In the midst of accumulated wealth social justice seems ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... that king granted large tracts of land belonging to the colony to his favorites, and subsequently, in 1734, a ferment in Georgia, even under the mild proprietary rule of the philanthropist Oglethorpe, were all really outbursts of popular discontent largely against the oppressive form in which land was held and against discriminative taxation, although each uprising had its local issues ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... pause and a whisper from the crowd in front, with some expressions of discontent. By a single sweep all the small dealers had been put out of it. It was only a long purse which could buy on such a scale as that. The ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... compose edicts which were sent out to the Peking Gazette, the oldest and poorest newspaper in the world, to be carved on blocks, and printed, and then sent by courier to every official in the empire. Ruling over a conquered race, she must always be watching out for signs of discontent and rebellion; being herself the daughter of a poor man, and beginning as only the concubine of an emperor, and he but a weak character, she must be alert for dissatisfaction on the part of the princes who might have some title to the throne. She must watch ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... was a laster in Lloyd's. Late in the autumn, when Ellen had been in the factory a little over a year, there began to be a subtle condition of discontent and insubordination. Men gathered in muttering groups, of which Nahum Beals seemed always to be the nucleus. His high, rampant voice, restrained by no fear of consequences, always served as the key-note to the chorus of rebellion. Ellen paid little attention to it. She was ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the young man's mind with his work that he was blind to the discontent arising in the State. To the young, governments and institutions are imperishable. Piero by his selfish whims had been digging the grave of the Medici. From sovereignty they were flung into exile. The palace was sacked, the beautiful gardens destroyed, and Michelangelo, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... in the world, and did not very much care where he lived, so long as he had plenty to drink, and a little money in his pockets. But these commodities were not as plentiful as he wanted them to be. Therefore he passed a good deal of his time in a state of chronic brooding and discontent. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... itself opens five distinctly fresh fields of fiction: First the position of the young woman who is called upon to give up her "career"—her humanness—for marriage, and who objects to it; second, the middle-aged woman who at last discovers that her discontent is social starvation—that it is not more love that she wants, but more business in life: Third the interrelation of women with women—a thing we could never write about before because we never had it before: except in harems and convents: Fourth the inter-action ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... New World themselves, were the greatest oppressors of the natives in extortion, confiscation, forced labour, and the like, and it was the "interference" of the Imperial authorities, viceroy or Archbishop, against the oppression of the encomiendas, which, even in early days, often gave rise to discontent. The sovereigns of Spain enacted laws for the protection of the natives, in many cases, and strove to better their position. Indeed, it may be said that, to the present day, the regulation of affairs between colonists and natives—whether in America, Asia, or Africa—requires ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... eighteenth centuries was often compulsory. At any rate, after the middle of the eighteenth century it was large and became continuous—a true drift. Catholics and Presbyterians alike brought hostility to the English government with them, and their voices fed the storm of discontent. The Irish schoolmasters, of whom there were hundreds, were especially efficient in this. They came in every ship to the colonies. They had no love for England, for they had experienced in Ireland the tyranny of English ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... yeares since, shee beeinge in her owne house in Marsden, in a greate passion of anger and discontent, and withall pressed with some want, there appeared unto her a spirit or devill in ye proportion or similitude of a man, apparrelled in a suite of blacke, tyed about with silk points, who offered yt if shee would give him her soule hee would supply all her wants, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... gesture. "I might, no doubt, have suppressed all this and made some conventional answer, but, you see, one has to be honest with you. Can you persuade yourself that I don't know what you have to bear at the ranch, and how your father's moody discontent must burden you? Isn't it clear that if he takes an interest in this project and forgets to worry about his little troubles, it will make life easier ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... waxed restive at many of the Lieder which they were obliged to learn, but when Fraeulein turned up one morning with a volume of songs of her own composition, their discontent verged towards mutiny. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the Revolution passed away; a new generation sprang up, impatient that an institution to which they clung should be condemned as inhuman, unwise, and unjust. In the throes of discontent at the self-reproach of their fathers, and blinded by the lustre of wealth to be acquired by the culture of a new staple, they devised the theory that slavery, which they would not abolish, was not evil, but good. They turned on ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... his person and government by favors. He completely succeeded; some of the tribes of that nation continued during his life to rank among the bravest soldiers of his army and formed a powerful check upon the discontent and turbulence of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... to call out my ill-humor or discontent,—which you know was always ready enough to come on slight call,—and I have everything to call out love and gratitude. I am very happy,—happy in the highest blessing life can give us, the perfect love and sympathy of a nature that stimulates my own to healthful activity. My life has deepened ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... had ended in a fashion extremely distasteful to him, yet he entered Olga's presence cheerily, with no sign of discontent. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... the days dragged on, and he dragged on through them; hot fits of conceit alternating in him with cold fits of despondency and mawkishness and discontent with everything and everybody, which were all the more intolerable from their entire strangeness. Instead of seeing the bright side of all things, he seemed to be looking at creation through yellow spectacles, and saw faults and blemishes in all his acquaintance, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... grew older—he was now about sixteen—a change came slowly over his mind; he began to have moods of a silent discontent, a longing for something far away, a desire of he knew not what. His old dreams began to fade, though they visited him from time to time; but he began to care less for the silent beautiful life of the earth, and to take more thought of men. He had ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... night, and Ali Hafed went to bed, but not to sleep. All night long he tossed restlessly from side to side, thinking, planning, scheming how he could secure some diamonds. The demon of discontent had entered his soul, and the blessings and advantages which he possessed in such abundance seemed as by some malicious magic to have utterly vanished. Although his wife and children loved him as before; although his farm, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... November, 1579, the Government turned their eyes on Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, a man of high character, and a soldier of distinction. He, or they, seem to have hesitated; or rather, the hesitation was on both sides. He was not satisfied with many things in the policy of the Queen in England: his discontent had led him, strong Protestant as he was, to coquet with Norfolk and the partisans of Mary Queen of Scots, when England was threatened with a French marriage ten years before. His name stands among the forty ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... word," said Mr. Britton, with a smile. "Work! Just as soon as you are able, find some work to do. Did we but know it, work is the surest antidote for the poisonous discontent and ennui of this world, the swiftest panacea for its pains and miseries; different forms to suit different cases, but every form brings healing and blessing, even down to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... congregation' (v. 1), 'all the children of Israel,' the whole congregation' (v. 2), 'all the assembly of the congregation' (which implies a solemn formal convocation), 'all the company' (v, 7), 'all the congregation,' 'all the children of Israel' (v. 10). It was no sectional discontent, but full-blown and universal rebellion. The narrative draws a distinction between the language addressed to Moses, and the whisperings to one another. Publicly, the unanimous voice suggested the return to Egypt as an alternative for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... As kings are crowned, as bards in their estate Are rapture-fraught, re-risen above the dust. Then were I torture-proof, and on the crust Of one kind word, though as a pittance thrown, I'd live for weeks! My tears I would disown And pray, contented with my discontent, As hermits pray when ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... "Discontent indeed prevails everywhere, and unless reforms take place, I know not what will be the result," he said, with a deep sigh. "Even in this place the people are in an unsatisfactory ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... The election of John Wilkes for Middlesex, in 1768, was taken as a triumph of the people. The King and his ministers then brought the House of Commons into conflict with the freeholders of Westminster. Discontent became active and general. "Junius" began, in his letters, to attack boldly the King's friends, and into the midst of the discontent was thrown a message from the Crown asking for half a million, to make good a shortcoming in the Civil List. Men asked in vain what had been done ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the reality of these visions, there can be little doubt that they show deep depression in the mind of James to whom they came. He woke out of his sleep in great excitement and terror, and told his attendants what he had dreamed, who were very "discontent of his visioun, thinking that they would hear hastily tidings of ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... great mobs and riots of history, what class is it which forms the brawn and muscle and sinew of the disturbance? The workmen and workwomen in whom discontent has bred the disease of riot, the abnormality, the abortion known as Anarchy, Socialism. The hem of the uprising is composed of idlers and loungers, indeed, but it is the labourer's head upon which the red cap of protest is seen above the vortex ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... the discontent among the Spanish soldiers in regard to their pay has induced their officers to give them permission to plunder where they can. The few unfortunates who have any property left are now at the mercy of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 37, July 22, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... offensive feeling that can be shown by one being towards another than distrust. It irritates our sensibility; it arrays in opposition all the resentment of our nature. It is the parent of gloom, dissatisfaction, pessimism, and rebellion. It writes discontent on the brow, and bitterness on the heart. It is the fruitful parent of all ill in human nature. But faith pleases God. It draws the human and Divine into loving association. It leads the human to look to the Divine for counsel, to lean upon Him for help, to refer all things ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... she took a spite against poor Oldfield; but to Mr. Angelo she suppressed the real reason, and entered into that ardent gentleman's grounds of discontent, though these alone would not have entirely dissolved her respect for ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... chase it all over the world in a steam yacht without catching up with it. A woman can find fun from the basement to the nursery of her own house, but give her a license to gad the streets and a bunch of matinee tickets and shell find discontent. There's always an idle woman or an idle man in every divorce case. When the man earns the bread in the sweat of his brow, it's right that the woman should ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that could scarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face of which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of human type there present, was the various expression of every form of human sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks of aged ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... by our approval, and by the shower of coins with which our host rewarded his performance, but when he had disposed of them in his own mysterious fashion, some source of discontent seemed yet to remain. He looked sadly at Dennis and said, "Ah-Fo like to do so, allee same as you." And then began gravely to shuffle his feet about, in vain efforts, as became evident, to dance an Irish jig. We tried to stifle our laughter, ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the great religions of the world would in each case afford an interesting study of the difficulties of change and of the modes of surmounting these difficulties. There must always have concurred at least two things,—general uneasiness or discontent from some cause or other; and the moral or intellectual ascendency of some one man, whose views, although original, were yet of a kind to be finally accepted by the people. These conditions are equally shown ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... on his eyebrows in heavy discontent. "It's mighty rough, jest ez a feller reckons he's got quit of her and her jackass bo', to hev her prancin' back inter school agin, and rigged out like ez if she'd been to a ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... wish, and yet his face was a yard long and as yellow as a lawyer's parchment; and having longed to quit home any time these three years past, he found himself envying Athelstane, because, forsooth, he was going to Rotherwood: which symptoms of discontent being observed by the witless Wamba, caused that absurd madman to bring his rebeck over his shoulder from ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... point of the war. For more than a month after the battle of Chancellorsville the two opposing armies in the East had lain inactive. The Conscription Law, with which we must deal later, had recently been passed, and various elements of discontent and disloyalty in the North showed a great deal of activity. It seems that Jefferson Davis at first saw no political advantage in the military risk of invading the North. Lee thought otherwise, and was eager to follow ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... bargained with the spirit which haunted him to leave him, on condition of his imparting to others his own idiosyncrasies. From this moment the chemist carried with him the infection of sullenness, selfishness, discontent and ingratitude. On Christmas Day the infection ceased. Redlaw lost his morbid feelings, and all who suffered by his infection, being healed, were restored to love, mirth, benevolence and gratitude.—C. Dickens, The Haunted ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... imagine the head of a party to be their master. His true interest is most commonly thwarted by the imaginary interests even of his subalterns, and the worst of it is that his own honour sometimes, and generally prudence, joins with them against himself. The passions and discontent which reigned then among the friends of the Prince de Conde ran so high that they were obliged to abandon him and form a third party, under the authority of the Prince de Conti, in case the Prince accomplished his reconciliation ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... SCENE TURNS UPON A SUDDEN, and they being now habitated to such meditations and solitary places, can endure no company, can think of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of nothing else: continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... very indulgent to him, on account of his weakness, but for rules broken through, for quarrels with the other boys, or disrespect to the teachers. He did not seem happy; there was generally a cloud on his brow, and a weariness and discontent in his manner. Arthur sometimes wondered why. Might it be on account of his delicacy and his cough, that very often he was obliged to stay at home, when the others joined in some country expedition, and that ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code
... thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... to this mundane theology, was obedience, and this doctrine was closely interwoven with the caste system of German society. The virtue of obedience required the German to renounce discontent with his station, and to accept not only the material status into which he was born, with science aforethought, but the intellectual limits and horizons of that status. The old Christian doctrine ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... noble passion, because it rested upon noble powers. He was a man cast in a heroic mould. His thoughts, his wishes, his passions, his aspirations, were all on a grander scale than those of other men. Unexercised capacity is always a source of rusting discontent. The height to which men may rise is in proportion to the upward force of their genius, and they will never be calm till they have attained their predestined elevation. Lord Bacon says, "as in nature things move violently to their place and calmly in their ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... conquer it. Let us then hear no more of this detestable proposition, the manumission of Christian slaves, the adoption of which would, by depreciating our lands, and houses, and thereby depriving so many good citizens of their properties, create universal discontent, and provoke insurrections, to the endangering of government and producing general confusion. I have therefore no doubt, but this wise council will prefer the comfort and happiness of a whole nation of true believers to the whim of a few ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... I think, in a dangerous state of social disturbance. The discontent of the labouring mass of the community is deep and increasing. It may be that we are in the opening phase of a real ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... except with antipathy to the world in general, which is now such a common feeling? Inexperienced vanity does not suspect that it indicates only lack of reason and sense, but regards it as a high-minded discontent with the universal ugliness of the world and of life, of which it really has not yet the slightest presentiment. It could not be otherwise; for industry and utility are the death-angels which, with fiery swords, prevent the return of man into Paradise. Only when composed and at ease in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... surmisable that Maillebois's Middle-Rhine Army will not go a good road. Maillebois has been busy in those countries, working extensive discontent; bullying mankind "to join the Frankfurt Union," to join France at any rate, which nobody would consent to; and exacting merciless contributions, which everybody had to consent to and pay.—And now, on D'Ahremberg's mere advance, with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... caused the removal of this publishing business from the village arose out of the discontent of some workmen whose services were dispensed with when new power presses were substituted for hand-work in printing. The entire manufactory was burned at night by incendiaries in ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... a vision of the true meaning of life a vision which stirs the energies of our being, what is called 'a sense of sin' inevitably follows. It is the discontent, the regret, in the light of a higher knowledge, for the: lost opportunities, for a past life which has been uncontrolled by any unifying purpose, misspent in futile undertakings, wasted, perhaps, in follies and selfish caprices which have not only harmed ourselves but others. Although we struggle, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... forbidden longer to employ his skill and experience for the benefit of the Dutch. Again entering the English service and sent once more to discover the northwest passage, he sailed into the waters of the bay which still bears his name, where cold and hunger transformed the silent discontent of his crew into open mutiny, and they left the fearless navigator to perish amid the icebergs ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... both the curse and blessing of our American life that we are never quite content. We all expect to go somewhere before we die, and have a better time when we get there than we can have at home. The bane of our life is discontent. We say we will work so long, and then we will enjoy ourselves. But we find it just as Thackeray has expressed it. "When I was a boy," he said, "I wanted some taffy—it was a shilling—I hadn't one. When I was a man, I had a shilling, but I ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... fall into place together. She became more and more alive, not so much to a system of ideas as to a big diffused impulse toward change, to a great discontent with and criticism of life as it is lived, to a clamorous confusion of ideas for reconstruction—reconstruction of the methods of business, of economic development, of the rules of property, of the status of children, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... face looked strangely swarthy against the rock behind him. His expression was one of open discontent. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... away at last with a quick gesture indicating his discontent, and stood hesitating for a few minutes, when he again started and looked wildly toward the fireplace, for he was convinced that he heard ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... profession knew everything they pretended to know This was my ambition, but the ability to size up symptoms under given conditions and tell their true worth forever eluded me and kept me in a state of unrest and discontent that was next to ruining my life. If light had not come when it did I should have abandoned the profession, but it came accidentally; it could not come otherwise for I did not know how to look for it. In the course of time I stored in my memory many cases that from accident ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... selected from the scene-plot of "Sun, Sand and Solitude," a scene-plot diagram from which we reproduce on a succeeding page. The theme of this story is the discontent of a young wife, caused by seeing, month in and month out, the sun-baked stretches of the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... girlhood, yet with the shadow of an uncongenial experience brooding over it, and perhaps of inherited weakness and early death. And the wonder of it all was that the girl had no sign about herself of longing or discontent; she was not of a nature to anticipate or dream, and the spectator's interest was intensified at seeing in her and before her what she herself did not perceive. That art can give such power of suggestion to its creations is a marvel ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... an arms-bearing population in the colony and on the other hand to prevent the settlers from contracting debts by mortgage, that the prohibitions of rum and slaves were essential safeguards of sobriety and industry, and that discontent under the benevolent care of the trustees evidenced a perversity on the part of the complainants which would disqualify them for self-government. Affairs thus reached an impasse. Contributions stopped; Parliament gave merely enough ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... he still said; 'I do not know whether Mervyn will come home, and there must not be too many empty chairs. Good-bye!' and he walked off with long strides, but with stooping shoulders, and an air of dejection almost amounting to discontent. ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had not yet dawned upon them. They were occupied with unpleasant details in the first experimental stages. At first the discomforts seemed to rise and obliterate even the great object for which they had come, and discontent sat upon their faces. ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... the article produced for the money is far and away superior to anything turned out by any workhouse. The rescued children are eagerly sought after in the Colonies; and I am not aware of any case in which one of the young emigrants has expressed discontent. How much better it is to see these poor waifs changed into useful, profitable colonists than to have them sullenly, uselessly starving in the dens of London and Liverpool and Manchester! The work of rescuing and training the lost ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... occasions, one on a question of discipline and one with regard to a French Class that he caused to be held during School hours in his own house, by a man of his own choice. On both occasions the immediate cause of disagreement was but the final spark of a smouldering and mutual discontent, and it is impossible to ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... perused the letters of Richard Waverley, of Sir Everard, and of Aunt Rachel; but the inferences he drew from them were different from what Waverley expected. They held the language of discontent with government, threw out no obscure hints of revenge, and that of poor Aunt Rachel, which plainly asserted the justice of the Stuart cause, was held to contain the open avowal of what the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... now perfectly well. He had simply clung to her because she was the only living being who knew and understood, because they had mingled their thoughts and trodden the path of misery together. Removed now from that blaze of passion, smouldering perhaps in him through previous years of discontent, but which leaped into actual and effective life for the first time in those few moments, he realised a certain justice in her point of view, a certain hard logic in the way she had spoken of life and their relations. There had been so little real affection between them. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... equally ill-disguised discontent, but an evident desire to placate the woman before him. "It's all right, you know. I've had my say. It'll come right, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... persuading them, they would be actuated by greater zeal, than by commanding their obedience. It was, moreover, by their sentiments that he was enabled to judge of those of the rest of his army; in short, like all other men, the silent discontent of his household disturbed him. Surrounded by disapproving countenances, and opinions contrary to his own, he felt himself uncomfortable. And, besides, to obtain their assent to his plan, was in some degree to make them ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... better dress myself all over again," she says, glancing with much discontent at the charming vision the glass ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Arthur is grieved in his heart when he heareth that the angels' voices are stilled. The King is so heavy, that no desire hath he neither to eat nor to drink. And while he sitteth thus, stooping his head toward the ground, full of vexation and discontent, he heareth in the chapel the voice of a Lady that spake so sweet and clear, that no man in this earthly world, were his grief and heaviness never so sore, but and he had heard the sweet voice of her pleading would again have been in joy. She saith to the devils: "Begone from hence, for no right ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... School, music had to be left in the background. His family and companions only considered it as a pastime at best, and without serious significance; he therefore kept his aspirations to himself. The old boyish discontent and irritability, which were the result of his former nervous condition, had now given place to his natural frankness of character and charm of manner, which attracted all who came ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... ambition, defile the Lord's sanctuary." At such extraordinary times, princes, by their coactive temporal power, ought to procure and cause a reformation of abuses, and the avoiding of misorders in the church, though with the discontent of the clergy, for which end and purpose they may not only enjoin and command the profession of that faith, and the practice of that religion which God's word appointeth, but also prescribe such an order and policy in the circumstances of divine worship as they in their judgment of Christian ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... threefold: first, the danger from mutiny; second, the evils arising from the mixture of the two races, which had augmented their vices, without a corresponding improvement in their good qualities; third, and perhaps most important of all, the discontent very properly felt by the French Zouaves, who were compelled to work at the trenches, to dig, to plant, etc., while the Mussulmans utterly refused to take part in this, to their mind, degrading toil. The Gordian knot was cut, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the Pope when he says that the result of efforts which have been made to throw aside Christianity and live without it can be seen in the present condition of society— discontent, disorder, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... worth and dignity as members of the human race. Yet this common soul of mankind we know largely and even chiefly as something divided against itself. Not only do human ideals contradict each other; but the ideal in any and all of its forms is contradicted by the actual. So it is the discontent of the human world-soul that is mainly borne in upon him who shares in it most fully. A possibility of completed good may glimmer at the far end of the quest; but the quest itself is experienced as a bitter ...
— Progress and History • Various
... overt, that can defeat a foe. Who is to be reckoned a foe and who a friend, doth not depend on one's figure or dimensions. He that paineth another is, O king, to be regarded a foe by him that is pained. Discontent is the root of prosperity. Therefore, O king, I desire to be discontented. He that striveth after the acquisition of prosperity is, O king, a truly politic person. Nobody should be attached to wealth and affluence, for the wealth that hath been earned and hoarded may be plundered. The usages of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... that afflict the female mind are indocility, discontent, slander, jealousy and silliness. These five maladies infest seven or eight out of every ten women, and it is from these that arises the inferiority of ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... and closer observation than he seemed to court; for his progress up Abersush Street, toward the Home in the gloom of the winter evening, was not visibly faster than what might have been expected of a scarecrow blessed with youth, health, and discontent. The man was indisputably ill-clad, yet not without a certain fitness and good taste, withal; for he was obviously an applicant for admittance to the Home, where poverty was a qualification. In the army of indigence the uniform is rags; they serve ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... deputations of citizens deluded by Saunders' letters, and listening to the very pathetic speeches of Monsieur. The day was now far gone; the Congress began to feel its appetite; the forlorns withdrew in discontent; the presence of many other deputations surrounding the doors was announced; and the Congress drank all round, and adjourned to meet on the following morning for the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... corporal's brother-in-arms was wheeling round with a plain young person, apparently in domestic service, whose face was overspread by a large red smile of satiated ambition. James and Bella flitted by, dancing vigorously, and Bella's discontent seemed to have vanished for the time. There were jigging couples and prancing couples; couples that bounced round like imprisoned bees, and couples that glided past in calm and conscious superiority. He alone stood apart, excluded from the happy throng, and he began to have a pathetic ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... any too well. Without a word he began rearranging the table, moving it slightly so that while there was no great difference in its position he had yet made a show of satisfying Marilyn. In effect he pleased neither. The two pretty faces closest to the camera were a study in discontent. ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... country. He won all hearts by his address, his gentleness, and his affability. But want of circumspection in his gallantries, the objects of which were not always of a rank equal to his own, caused jealousies and discontent among the nobles. His enemies, profiting by a sortie which he made for the purpose of getting a convoy into Naples, delivered up the city to the Spaniards. His repeated efforts to re-enter the place proved futile. After having defended ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... they whisper together, as if fraught with some secret purposes; and I am also told that they frequently hold nightly meetings to deliberate on what may be done. Between the M'Clutchys and M'Slimes, I must say they have ample cause for discontent." ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... thrown constantly with Adolf Scherer; I had earned his gratitude, I had become necessary to him. But after the great coup whereby he had fulfilled Mr. Watling's prophecy and become the chief factor in our business world he began to show signs of discontent, of an irritability that seemed foreign to his character, and that puzzled me. One day, however, I stumbled upon the cause of this fermentation, to wonder that I had not discovered it before. In many ways Adolf Scherer was a child. We were sitting ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Bill went in and spoke to his wife, then descended to the stable. A gentle tap at the door of the old interpreter, and Lucy entered in her pretty night dress, and, half asleep, half awake, but without a shadow of discontent in her look, proceeded to assist him in drawing on his stockings, &c. Sampson's toilet was soon completed, and Silvertail being announced as "all ready," he, without communicating a word of his purpose, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson |
