"Pitiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... measured by the extent to which they or he obey this will of God; that the destinies of a people or of an individual are controlled by this will of God, which rewards or punishes according to the degree of obedience manifested.—In place of all that pitiable lie reality has this to say: the priest, a parasitical variety of man who can exist only at the cost of every sound view of life, takes the name of God in vain: he calls that state of human society in which he himself ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... on the face of the earth, taking from them all that they cared for, so did that same God, who knows perfectly well how and where to strike, deprive the apologist of that wretched crew of all that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of which paralysed him in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others, loathsome to himself,—so much so, that he once said, "Where is the beggar who would change places with me, notwithstanding all my fame?" Ah! God knows perfectly well how to strike. He permitted him to retain all his literary fame to the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... away her grief. And yet would it? Was it not probable that a girl like her would feel even greater grief at the knowledge that her father was a hunted criminal instead of merely dead? She presented a most pitiable figure standing there, absolutely alone in the world. She had gone through experiences that day which would have made the average woman collapse, and to cap it all she had received the final blow in the news of ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... a pitiable spectacle. He finished his glass, and caught Hanger by the collar of his coat—staring into his face to get at ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... little beasts would fall to the ground from sheer exhaustion, never to rise again. We lost many during the long and trying journey to the Arctic, and I shall always recall their deaths with a keen pang of remorse. For their gentle, docile nature made it the more pitiable to see them perish, as we looked helplessly on, unable to alleviate their agony, yet conscious that it was for our sake ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... must say a few words about the strangest, the most interesting, the most pitiable human being that I have ever come across. I speak of him now—at this particular point in these memoirs—for the reason that hitherto I had paid him no attention whatever, and began to do so now only because everything connected ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... continue to be possible; that if one were not put into the world to get what one wanted at least it should be possible to grit the teeth on the fact. It was childish enough to cry for the moon—it was pitiable to hanker after its reflection in a cesspool. Chastity to Ishmael, by the nature of his training and his circumstances, was a vital thing; the ever-present miseries of home resulting from his father's offence, the determination ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... of the two children was pitiable. The heat, the sudden chill from the ice cream and the terrible homeward rush sent them both so nearly into a collapse that the doctor, Mrs. Schuler and Miss Merriam worked over them all night, resting only when Dr. Hancock, who had heard the story from ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... came out in throngs to meet us; but in place of showing us any of the pleasant duties of hospitality, they loaded us with injuries, and made us suffer very inhuman treatment. Two of my comrades were brought into a very pitiable situation. The women particularly, much more fierce than the men, took delight in tormenting us. Our masters could not make any great resistance; they appeared; on the contrary, much better pleased that they ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... humble position as keeper of the herbarium, with its pitiable compensation, Lamarck, now an eminent botanist, with a European reputation, was by no means appreciated or secure in his position. He was subjected to many worries, and, already married and with several children, suffered from a grinding poverty. His friend and supporter, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... papers a statement of the work of Moody and Sankey in Edinburgh, which statement closed with the luscious remark that "Probably the Lord is blessing their work." I never saw a word put in more awkward and forced and pitiable predicament than that word probably. While heaven and earth and hell have recognized the stupendous work now going on in Scotland under God and through the instrumentality of these American evangelists, a correspondent thinks that probably ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... them. {81} For assuredly I would never have given any one anything whatever to stand by my side here and cry aloud how cruelly they have suffered. The truth and the deeds that have been done cry aloud of themselves. And as for the Phocian people,[n] they are in so evil and pitiable a plight, that there is no question for them of appearing as accusers at the examination of every individual ambassador in Athens. They are in slavery, in mortal fear of the Thebans and of Philip's ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... Hour after hour, she would lie awake, and listen to the ticking of the clock. Susy thought it a pitiable case, when she, heard the clock strike once; but little Prudy heard it strike again and again. How strangely it pounded out the strokes in the night! What a dreary sound it was, pealing through the ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... was a pitiable thing about Grizel—it was something he had discovered weeks ago and marvelled over—that nothing distressed her so much as the implication that she could love him less. She knew she could not; but that he should think it possible was the strangest ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... have to bear. The death of sons and wives, of kinsmen and friends, and the pain of dependence on others, are some of the greatest of evils. (These may all be noticed in a deathless life). There is no more pitiable sight in the world, as I conceive, than that of men destitute of wealth being insulted by others. The acquisition of family dignity by those that have it not, the loss of family dignity by those that have it, unions and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... investors in foreign securities, were powerless. The National Convention, fighting a world in arms and with an armed revolt on its own soil, showed titanic power, but in its struggle to circumvent one simple law of nature its weakness was pitiable. The louis d'or stood in the market as a monitor, noting each day, with unerring fidelity, the decline in value of the assignat; a monitor not to be bribed, not to be scared. As well might the National Convention try to bribe or ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... There is no more pitiable object than a man suffering under mental and moral defeat. He has lost faith in himself. He has tried, he has failed; and he usually throws his defeat in the face of Providence, accusing the Almighty of desertion. Windybank ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... and poignantly expressed a mood which is common to all men who have any feeling for the past. It is a pathetic, almost a tragic mood, a longing more pitiable than that of any fanatic for any paradise, any lover for any woman, because it is quite impossible that it should ever be satisfied. To see, to feel, to move among the foundations of our generation—it is so natural a desire, and it is ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... of mingled hope and fear. He gabbled half incoherently his allegiance to his captor, his love for him, his willingness to do this, that, anything—only, not the Deep Place—prease! He was a pitiable object, could Martin have found pity for him in his heart. He was no longer the suave, dapper Japanese gentleman. His boasted gentility was gone with his courage; and superstitious terror had quite overcome ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... coming toward her. "Oh, it can't be a dream. You are there, aren't you?" She was a pitiable object as she stood there, powerless to retreat, shaking like a leaf. He took her by the shoulder. "Yes—it is you. Good Lord, what does it mean? What has happened? How did you come here? ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... laughed. "Yes; I suppose I'm a pitiable looking object, but I'm used to it. I don't mind much now as long as I can have a place to sleep and enough to eat. If you can put me in the way of some work, Charlie, I'd be much obliged. You see, that's what I want—work. I don't want to run ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... animates, nurses, consolidates, fortifies and clothes it, suggests the proper gestures and attitudes, infuses his own health and strength into this weakling, gives it blood and, so to speak, makes it live. The playwright contributes the soul, it is true; but, the soul being intangible, it is only a pitiable gift so far as ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... their good or ill, others must have a place and a part. 'And thy coming in'—into that uninvaded sanctum of thought. Did we say uninvaded? Not so. In that inner room of life there sits Regret with her pale face, and Shame with dust on her forehead, and Memory with tears in her eyes. It is a pitiable thing at times, is this our coming in. More than one man has consumed his life in a flame of activity because he could not abide the coming in. 'The Lord shall keep ... thy coming in.' That means help for every lonely, impotent, inward hour ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... happened that Colonel Mannering arrived at the village of Kippletringan a day or two before the time at which the sale of Ellangowan was to take place. He was much distressed at hearing the pitiable account that was given to him of his old friend, Godfrey Bertram; and the idea at once occurred to him that he would buy the property himself, and by doing ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... an art, that shall be new because his forest is untracked and his town just built. But what the newness is to be he cannot tell. Certain words were dreadful once in the mouth of desperate old age. Dreadful and pitiable as the threat of an impotent king, what shall we name them when they are the promise of an impotent people? 'I will do such things: what they are ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... voice, raises her own to accuse her of all this woe overtaking them: "You—you incited the men against him—woe that you should ever have entered this house!" "Hush! pitiable girl!" Bruennhilde checks her, without anger. "You never were his wedded wife; as his paramour you ensnared his affections. The mate of his manhood am I, to whom he vowed eternal vows, before ever he saw you!" Gutrune upon this, apprehending all, curses Hagen who had given her ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... them equal to that of our whole English Bible. It is especially the improvement of the condition of women, and particularly of child-widows, to which she has devoted her attention. The condition of the child-widow in India is most pitiable. She is held responsible for the death of her husband, no matter how young she may be. She is subjected to indignities. Her hair is entirely shaven from her head. Her jewels are taken from her. Her bright clothing is taken away, and she is clad in the coarsest garments. ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... and there was quite a row about it, because when the child was found again it was dead. And then you should have seen in the trains what a heap of poor little things there was, all crying with hunger. It became pitiable in winter time, when there was snow and frost, for they were all shivering and blue with cold in their scanty, ragged swaddling-clothes. One or another often died on the way, and then it was removed at the next station and buried in the nearest cemetery. And you can ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... population. If allowance be made for their natural increase from 1880 to 1890 the white race would show a decennial increase appreciably below that of the blacks. If the Negro, then, is threatened with extinction, the white race is in a still more pitiable plight. ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... and the merry, merry jangling of the bells, and you will find how slender are the muscles that the armour lays bare, how shrivelled the breast that the ermine strips, how dragged and weary is that pitiable, naked figure which a few moments before was dancing fantastically, grimacing with ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... It is pitiable to see the waste of high aspiration and eager effort in so many quarters today. But that waste is sure to attend every scheme which does not start from the recognition of Christ's work as the basis of the world's transformation, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the fathers and other Christians, who had come from Canvoja, and who were in a sad and unfortunate captivity; they were allowed no churches or provisions, but must seek their food as alms from the heathen, so that the affliction and misfortune which they undergo is a most pitiable thing. When we were all joined together and saw what we must suffer, we decided to seek some remedy. We considered the state of that kingdom, and that the king had expended his substance and had few Sianese troops, on account of the many who had died in the war with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... infant, but a great ugly frog. She was so much disgusted with it that she took up a heavy stick, and was going to kill the nasty creature; but it looked at her with such wonderfully sad and speaking eyes that she could not strike it. Again she searched about. The frog gave a faint, pitiable cry. She started up, and sprang from the bed to the window; she opened the shutters, and at the same moment the sun streamed in, and cast its bright beams upon the bed and upon the large frog; and all at once it seemed as if the broad mouth of the noxious animal drew itself in, and became small ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... refuge in the monasteries, they were slaughtered by thousands together; others, tempted back to their homes by the promulgation of an amnesty, perished family by family. The lot of those who were spared was almost more pitiable than of those who died. The slave-markets of Egypt and Tunis were glutted with Chian captives. The gentleness, the culture, the moral worth of the Chian community made its fate the more tragical. No district in Europe had exhibited a civilisation more free from ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... a pitiable spectacle enough, these laden creatures, mute looking as dumb beasts; but there was nothing especially to shock the eye of the European, for it is the long-prepared treason against this people, devised and carried out by nature, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... united to a termagant. No one has any compassion for her. Sir Thomas is the victim; Mistress Alice the shrill virago. In those days, when every historic reprobate finds an apologist, is there no one to say a word in behalf of the Widow Middleton, whose lot in life and death seems to this writer very pitiable? She was quick in temper, slow in brain, domineering, awkward. To rouse sympathy for such a woman is no easy task; but if wretchedness is a title to compassion, Mistress Alice has a right to charity and gentle usage. It was not her fault that she could not sympathize with her grand husband, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... position under the mistake that the enemy was in it. Two casualties, which I believe proved fatal, resulted. Many men vomited. I was prostrated for two hours. The effect on the morale of some of my men was as pitiable as it was ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... the Government.*—"There is," says an English writer of the last generation, "no living functionary who occupies a more pitiable position than a French President. The old kings of France reigned and governed. The Constitutional King, according to M. Thiers, reigns, but does not govern. The President of the United States governs, but he does not reign. It has been reserved for the President of the French Republic neither ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... cholera epidemic of 1892, he took up his residence under some shady chenar-trees of great age, a recognised resting-place for dervishes, close to the summer-quarters of the English Legation at Gulhek, in the vicinity of Tehran. One day he sat outside the gate and poured forth a pitiable tale of the death of his wife from cholera during the night, and begged for money to pay for her burial. Having made his collection, he disappeared at nightfall, leaving his dead partner under the chenar-trees, and it was then discovered that he had possessed ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his theory by a huge ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Mr. Aram glanced round at her surreptitiously; and Lucius turned his face upon his mother's, almost with an air of triumph. But she bore it all without flinching;—bore it all without flinching, though the state of her mind at that moment must have been pitiable. And Mrs. Orme, who held her hand all the while, knew that it was so. The hand which rested in hers was twitched as it were convulsively, but the culprit gave no outward sign ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... mocking of an old woman at her scouring-work, for something to stand in the place of a game, Trottle, though not a family man, nevertheless felt the sight before him to be, in its way, one of the saddest and the most pitiable that he ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... to fail. His pitiable existence had been sweetened by his brother's inventive tenderness and his own contented spirit, which, his antecedents considered, was truly remarkable, As for Gerard, the day never passed that he did not devote ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... hearing the roll of a distant carriage, I tried to busy myself around, and look as domesticated as possible under the circumstances. I thought I should give up and lose all at the sight of the pretty, innocent, trustful child for whom he had planned this hideous deception. But I was as pitiable a victim myself as she, and the thought of my impending ruin drove every feeling of humanity out of my heart. We began the mock ceremony, slowly and solemnly. We had just reached the most critical part when a great flash of lightning leaped in at the broken window, stunning ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Tuan Bangau's fate was a happy one. When the former disappeared from the sight of men, he was the victim of nameless tortures. As he told the tale of what he had suffered on the night that followed his arrest; of the ghastly tortures and mutilations which had wrecked his manhood, and left him the pitiable ruin he then was, the White Man writhed in sympathy, and was filled with a ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... poverty and actual want. If she went away, supposing even that she found an equally well-paid post, she would require every farthing of the money to support herself, there would be nothing left to send home. It was a pitiable position; here was she, who had just refused a man worth thousands a year, quite unable to get out of the way of his importunity for the want of seventy-five pounds, paid quarterly. Well, the only thing to do was to face it out and take her chance. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... apparently lifeless, his head tucked under his body, clothes over his head, exposing the larger part of his anatomy—a pitiable lump, lying in the sandy path twenty feet from the well. The handle of the windlass had caught him across the shoulders, sending him flying through the air. For days thereafter "Al-f-u-r-d" was swathed in bandages and bathed with liniments; for a time, at least, the family was free from the cares ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... pitiable state Mr. Bultitude was in, and he had to give them a fair account of his escape and subsequent adventures, at which even their sympathy could not restrain delighted shouts of laughter—though Paul himself saw little enough in it all to laugh at; they asked his name, which he thought more ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and experienced statesman and politician, who with his far-seeing glances can discern much more clearly than I with my unpracticed eyes the relations of things. Who knows but that, after all, the peace of Prague has been a real blessing to our land. When I behold its present pitiable and languishing condition as a neutral, how can I avoid reflecting with horror upon what might have been the state of things had we joined any decided war party. Had we sided with the Swedes, the enmity of the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... the earth; the gravely wounded were cared for hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to the neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as I have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The companionship of so many seemed to make ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... have known it, of course. How that fellow toiled and moiled and gloated over his wretched diamonds! How little he seemed to think of the stain of blood on his hands, and how much of the mere chance of making filthy lucre! Pah! Pah! it was pitiable. The man's whole mind was distorted by a hideous fungoid growth—the love of gain, which is the root of all evil. For a few miserable stones, he would plunder his own brother, lying helpless and ill in that African hut, and make off with the booty himself, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... attached to a doctrine identically the same. In either case no improvement is possible, and the authority of human ideals is denied. To escape, to stanch natural wounds, to redeem society and the private soul, are then mistaken and pitiable ambitions, adding to their vanity a certain touch of impiety. One who really believes that the world's work is all providentially directed and that whatever happens, no matter how calamitous or shocking, happens by divine right, has a quietistic excuse for license; to check energy by reason, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... places." He crawled down to the shore of the pond, found an Indian canoe, and crept into it. The wind blew it out into the lake, and he was wafted to the southern shore. The sun went down, and the Indians stole away. Pitiable the condition of the settlers. Lovewell was dead, and also their beloved chaplain, Jonathan Frye, who with his dying breath prayed aloud for victory; Jacob Farrar was dying; Lieutenant Rollins and Robert Usher could not last long; eleven others were badly wounded. There were only ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... He did not retire. He went into the library, got out some law books, and sitting down at the table, appeared as if about to do some work. But he did not pick up the pen. He sat there, his head sunk on his chest, with a look of misery on his face that was pitiable ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... from his brow as he peered into the mist. His hair was thick with salt, and his eyes smarted from the greenwood fire on the poop. The four slaves who crouched beside the thwarts-Carians with thin birdlike faces-were in a pitiable case, their hands blue with oar-weals and the lash marks on their shoulders beginning to gape from sun and sea. The Lemnian himself bore marks of ill usage. His cloak was still sopping, his eyes heavy with watching, and his lips black and cracked with ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... all? Book-keepers in the great Bureau of Intellect. Monsieur, I don't apply these remarks to you, but I meet on all sides men who make it a business to teach new ideas and disclose chains of reasoning to people who turn pale at the first word. On my word of honor, it is pitiable! But that's the way of the world, and I don't pretend to reform it. Your objection, ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... happier in their slavery than kings in power. There were two lovely girls of three and eight years of age that belonged to Ibrahim; these were not black, but of the same dark brown tint as Kamrasi and many of the Unyoro people. Their mother was also there, and their history being most pitiable, they were always allowed free access to our hut and the dinner bowl. These two girls were the daughters of Owine, one of the great chiefs who were allied with Fowooka against Kamrasi. After the defeat of Fowooka, Owine and many of his ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... and, after eating their eggs, he secured one of the hens, and began plucking it. The noise of the poor bird called some of the servants to the rescue, when they found the half-plucked creature in such a pitiable condition that they killed it at once. After this, Mr. Monkey was chained up, and ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... pitiable, was her expression, half arch, half pleading, and so beautiful! "Oh, lovely and terrible prodigy!" I thought, "draw back; banish those thoughts; or, rather, no longer think at all—for you are on the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... from that glittering hero, at sight of whom, not an hour before, the Trojan dames at their lattices had stopped their needlework to whisper! Down his nose and chin ran a pitiable flood; his scanty locks, before so wiry and obstinate, lay close against his ears; his gorgeous uniform, tarnished with slime, hung in folds, and from each fold poured a separate cascade; the whole man ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... having such things to relate of his father, was almost as pitiable as in their first avowal to himself. He blushed for the narrow-minded counsel which he was obliged to expose. The conversation between them at Northanger had been of the most unfriendly kind. Henry's indignation on hearing how Catherine had been treated, on comprehending his father's ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... are of course no more available than pine splints, though the Graham variety is the best. Aerated bread is probably the most healthful, but this is pitiable to live on; it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Castle,— where Martin Luther sat solitary during the Diet of Augsburg (Diet known to us, our old friend Margraf George of Anspach hypothetically "laying his head on the block? there, and the great Kaiser, Karl V., practically burning daylight, with pitiable spilling of wax, in the CORPUS-CHRISTI procession there), [Antea, vol. v. p. 197.]—where Martin Luther sat solitary, and wrote that celebrated Letter about 16 Crows holding THEIR Parliament all round," and how "the pillars of the world were never seen by anybody, and yet the world is held up, in ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... covered with blood, and she then knew that her neighbour had suffered bodily injury, as she had expected. She at once remade the bed, and put on fresh and clean sheets, and swept the chamber, and then she went to see her neighbour, whom she found in a pitiable condition, and it need not be said was not able ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... your nature, be sure that he has mourned; such lore is the alchemy of tears. Hence the insensible and almost universal confusion of idea which confounds melancholy with depth, and finds but hollow inanity in the symbol of a laugh. Pitiable error! Reflection first leads us to gloom, but its next stage is to brightness. The Laughing Philosopher had reached the goal of Wisdom; Heraclitus whimpered at the starting-post. But enough for Lucy to gain ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little to say, became very voluble, when once she passed into the humor of talking. Therese let her talk unchecked. It seemed to do her good to chatter about Belle and Lou, and Jack Dawson, and about her home life, of which she unknowingly made such a pitiable picture ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... of droning,—I recalled what Marjorie had said of her experiences of the night before, it was like the droning of a beetle. The instant the Apostle heard it, the fashion of his countenance began to change,—it was pitiable to witness. I rushed ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... remedium the girl took—if she be not mad——" The Syndic, stammering and repeating himself, broke off there. He could not meet the other's eyes; between a shame new to him and the overpowering sense of what he had done, he was in a pitiable state. "Curse you," with violence, "I believe you have laid a trap for me!" he cried. "I say if she be not ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the guardianship of his welfare had fallen deemed it advisable to expose Clifford to a miserable resuscitation of past ideas, when the condition of whatever comfort he might expect lay in the calm of forgetfulness. After such wrong as he had suffered, there is no reparation. The pitiable mockery of it, which the world might have been ready enough to offer, coming so long after the agony had done its utmost work, would have been fit only to provoke bitterer laughter than poor Clifford was ever ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... deg. to 104 deg. F.), there are rapid pulse, copious sweating, and often the development of various rashes and minute blisters on the skin. There is also loss of appetite, and the bowels are constipated. The urine is usually very dark-colored. Altogether, victims of the disease are truly pitiable, for they suffer agony, and are unable to move without increasing it. The weakness and prostration are marked. Small, hard lumps, from the size of a shot to that of a pea, sometimes appear on the skin of the fingers, hands, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... as is the nature of its tribe, caught from Hereward himself the mode of applying with most effect his gestures and pitiable supplication, while the Emperor, notwithstanding the serious scene which had just past, could not help laughing at the touch of comedy flung into ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... calling the deal right among friends at his own table—"that is one of the new German kindergarten appliances that even you, madam, may not have seen. We received it as a present from a rich German merchant in Pueblo, who was grieved by our pitiable plight and wanted to do what he could to help ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... commandant of Beausejour, who made enormous profits out of the Acadian's tireless diligence, Lecorbeau became once more fairly prosperous; and Le Loutre had grown again friendly. But most of the Acadians found themselves in a truly pitiable plight. There were not lands enough to supply them all, and they pined for the farms of Acadie which Le Loutre had forced them to forsake. Threatened with excommunication and the scalping knife if they should return to their ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... It is pitiable to see how some among the Master's followers fail to learn this lesson. They contend for high places, where they may have prominence among men, where their names shall have honor. The only truly great in Christ's sight are those who forget self that they may honor their Lord. John said he was not ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... frontier was the scene of desultory warfare, with varied fortune for both sides. The battle of Queenstown, October 13, 1812, although it resulted in the defeat and capture of the Americans engaged and witnessed a pitiable exhibition of cowardice on the part of militiamen who refused to cross the river to the aid of their countrymen, was attended by a loss for the Canadians that more than counterbalanced their victory, in the death of Major-General Isaac Brock, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... had uttered these statements, exasperating and pitiable in the recital, before persons alarmed for themselves, exciting greater indignation in the hearers than was felt by themselves, they affirmed "that there never would be any other limit to their occupying ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... how men and horses went over the precipice and were crushed on the rocks beneath out of all semblance of humanity, so that there was not one whole corpse found for burial. Then there were minute details of the pitiable condition of the German armies ever since they had invaded France: the ill-fed, poorly equipped soldiers were actually falling from inanition and dying by the roadside of horrible diseases. Another article told how the king of Prussia had the diarrhea, and how Bismarck had broken ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... was! you were infected with the illusion, and did not wish that it should be removed! you had no room for laughter! if an unseasonable reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature, that can lay him open to such frenzies—but in truth you rather admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted—you felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age with the eyes open. Who would not wish to live but for a day in the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and one who appears normal. The sterile would marry the sterile, and the fertile the fertile. Even in our civilization what right has anyone to doom his partner to a childless marriage? The overwhelming majority of people want children. Only the highly exceptional and pitiable woman is without this desire. The normal man feels it almost as strongly as the woman when once the little hand of his own child clasps his finger. Of course unforeseen conditions may unexpectedly make one partner ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... scheme, we have ever since had the pitiable sight of the parents, the sisters, and the sweetheart crooning over the emigration of the best able-bodied ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... did not speak at all, but stood motionless, staring in bewildered, pitiable, childlike fashion, and the color had ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... fell with special severity upon the people of the poorer classes in Russia, many of whom, upon the advance of the German and Austrian armies, were compelled to flee from their homes in a practically destitute condition. A graphic description of the pitiable plight of these unfortunate people is given in ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... eager eyes grow dim, and the ears are dulled, and the taste has departed, the tired heart demands rest, and the world has none for it. A worn-out worldling, whom the world has ceased to charm, is one of the most pitiable creatures alive. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... road, pursued it for two or three miles, then branched upon our inland way. The storm showed no sign of coming to an end. Several times the carriage stopped, and the lad got down to examine his horses—perhaps to sympathize with them; he was such a drenched, battered, pitiable object that I reproached myself for allowing ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... He vowed that he could leave her and think no more of her, and so he could pretty well, at least, succeed in quelling that rage and longing he had whenever he was with her; but as soon as he returned he was as bad as ever again. Truly a ludicrous and pitiable object, at least exhausting everybody's pity but his dearest mistress's, Lady Castlewood's, in whose tender breast he reposed all his dreary confessions, and who never tired of hearing him and ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of known name, you will watch him, will listen to him, will try to sneak into his confidence, and you will blab, for money, about him, and your blab will inevitably be mendacious. In short, like the most pitiable outcasts of womankind, and, without their excuse, you will live by selling your honour. You will not suffer much, nor suffer long. Your conscience will very speedily be seared with a red-hot iron. You will be on the road which leads from mere ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... of in a manner unknown; and the harsh and oppressive measures aforesaid being still continued, the Begum did, about the middle of October, 1782, cause to be represented to the said Middleton as follows. "That her situation was truly pitiable,—her estate sequestered, her treasury ransacked, her cojahs prisoners, and her servants deserting daily from want of subsistence. That she had solicited the loan of money, to satisfy the demands of the Company, from every person ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wish is conveyed to Ulysses, who artfully requests that the interview be deferred till night-fall; the wife might see through his disguise. The time for this recognition has not yet come. She wishes to hear of her husband, thinks of him in some such pitiable plight as this beggar is in; she shows sympathy. A charitable disposition is indeed a characteristic of the whole household, nurses and all; misfortune has brought its blessing. Herein the contrast with the Suitors ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... we are capable of dying of ennui at the politeness which people show us. We are lodged like princes. But what hosts, what conversations, what dinners! We laugh at them when we are by ourselves, but when we are before the enemy, what a pitiable figure we selves, make! I am no longer desirous to see you come; but I aspire to depart very quickly, and I understand why you do not wish to give concerts. It is not unlikely that Pauline Viardot may not sing the day after to-morrow, for ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... own heart was at much the same game as the Frenchman's castanets, while the perspiration was pouring from my body, causing the wash-leather-lined shirt to stick to me unpleasantly, and altogether I was in the pitiable state known by schoolboys as ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... He did indubitably look very ill. His appearance of woe, despair, and dreadful apprehension was pitiable in the highest degree. With a gesture of intense weariness he declined food, nor could she persuade him ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... lived all his life in England to share the satisfaction with which the English papers commonly welcome the intelligence that some great American manufacturing concern is establishing branch works in Canada. It is well for Canada that such works should be established; but it is pitiable for the Empire that it should be left to the United States to establish them. British capital was the chief instrumentality with which the United States was enabled to build its own railways and conduct the other great enterprises for the development of the resources of its mighty West, and it is, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... invited to consider anybody's views but his own, he feels personally insulted and wants to resign or leave the room unless he is apologized to. And his panic and bewilderment when he sees that the older hands at the work have no patience with him and do not intend to treat him as infallible, are pitiable as far as they are anything but ludicrous. That is what comes of not being taught to consider other people's wills, and left to submit to them or to over-ride them as if they were the winds and the weather. Such a state of mind is incompatible not only with the democratic introduction of high ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... something really pitiable as she sat, book in hand, trying to puzzle out the simplest problem, and Marion often helped her, until ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... the Carolinas, it was December, and he found the army in a pitiable condition. There was but a single blanket for the use of every three soldiers, and there was not food enough in camp to last three days. The soldiers had lost heart because of defeat, they were angry because they had not ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... quite arbitrary acts. The majority of these were directed against the Spaniards, who, suffering now from the swing of the pendulum of fate, were as much oppressed as they had formerly oppressed. Indeed, the situation of those Spaniards who still remained in Paraguay was now pitiable in the extreme. Persecuted on all sides by the high officials, they could expect, in the face of an example such as this, scant ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... full a hundred or a hundred and fifty men. Should they make a determined effort to board us, we might have our hands full, or at least have to shoot a score or two of the poor ignorant wretches; which seemed a pitiable alternative. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... and you will have great comfort and satisfaction. Yes, I see her arrive at the castle. She rings at the gate; your noble friends come out, and ask who she is; they discover, and drive away such a person as a poor cantatrice. But you hear, you come flying out, you rescue her from scorn—ah, it is pitiable, they all weep, they say to you that you are honorable and just, that they did wrong to despise your charming friend. Perhaps they ask her to dine; and she sings to them after; and Leo says to himself, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... to the end of the long road, past the battle of the pens and the wrangling of tongues, to the arbitration of the Lee-Metford and the Mauser. It was pitiable that it should come to this. These people were as near akin to us as any race which is not our own. They were of the same Frisian stock which peopled our own shores. In habit of mind, in religion, in respect for law, they ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Marriages in High Life! Churchill, I do believe, had Miss Stanley's intended match put into every paper continually, on purpose for the pleasure of plaguing Katrine; and if you could have seen her long face, when she saw it announced in the Court Gazette—good authority, you know—really it was pitiable." ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... His condition was pitiable; from an injury to the spine he was a helpless cripple, while the arm which had been broken in his fall had knit in a way to render it perfectly useless. He was fearfully emaciated, probably from the lack of palatable food, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... abandoned his home of his own free will, leaving his affairs in a pitiable condition. Madame de la Chanterie is, even to this day, amazed at the catastrophe, which no human foresight could have prevented. The persons she prudently consulted before the marriage had assured her that the suitor's fortune was clear and sound, and that no mortgages were on his estate. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... sordid little respectable way, that I'll come up to Oxford to pry and peep into that snug comfortable fellowship of yours? Do you suppose I'm so much in love with you, Herbert Walters, that I can't let you go without wanting to fawn upon you and run after you ever afterwards! Pah! you miserable, pitiable, contemptible cur and coward, are you afraid even of a woman! Go away, and don't be frightened. I never want to see you or speak to you again as long as I live, you wretched, lying, shuffling hypocrite. I'd rather go back to my own people at Hastings ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... crowd of several hundred people, mostly women and children, being herded on to trains by soldiers, to be run out of the town. They seemed to be decently treated but were naturally in a pitiable state of terror. Just inside the gates of the freight yard were a couple of women telling their troubles to a group of officers and soldiers. They had both lost their husbands in the street-fighting, and were in a terrible state. The officers and men were ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... workman. On the other hand, a bricklayer or a painter, whose work in winter is very uncertain, and who earns, maybe, a bare L1 a week during the nine months of the year wherein he can find work, is a poor workman at the best, and his condition is greatly to be deplored. More pitiable still, however, is the case of working-class families in some of the manufacturing towns, where wages are still lower, and where an even tolerable standard of life cannot be maintained unless mother and children take their ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... felt the need of anyone before; his nature clamoured for her, imperiously, as it clamoured for light and air. He had no concern with anyone but her—her only—and he could not let her go. It was not love; it was a bodily weakness, a pitiable infirmity: he even felt it degrading that another person should be able to exercise such an influence over him, that there should be a part of himself over which he had no control. Not to see her, not to be ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... spirit. Can she, with any show of reason, neglect the force furnished her in this mass of youthful energy and enthusiasm. She professes to rescue men from danger. Does she see any danger more imminent than those which menace young men, any temptations more seductive, any ruin more pitiable? Does she see any more susceptible of these influences than youth with their high spirits, superfluous energy and glowing passion? Does she see any victims which appeal more powerfully to her compassion than these sons ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... very morning he had turned his pockets inside out for the remains of the last dollar of the money she had given him when he left home. When it had all been raked together, and its pitiable insufficiency had become apparent, this ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the watching to his, closing her own and lying still, in sheer womanly terror of being sick. Somewhere within was a doubt as to whether she did not already adore him, and a pitiable anxiety that "nothing horrid" should be associated in his mind ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... in a pitiable state of superstitious indecision. It was popularly believed that Quetzalcoatl would some day return, and it was more than probable to the Aztec monarch and his counsellors that he might be reincarnated in the person of Cortes ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... polished state, were passionately set on revelry, on expedients for inflaming licentiousness to madness; or concourses of multitudes for pomps, celebrations, shows, games, combats; on the riots of exultation and revenge after victories. The ruder nations had, in their way, however pitiable on the score of magnificence, their grand festive, triumphal, and demoniac confluxes and revellings. To these joys of tumult, the people of the savage and the more cultivated nations sacrificed everything belonging to the peaceful economy of life, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... ascent; the hill-side was largely planted with sherabeen, (sprouts,) of a kind of cedar, not the real cedar of Lebanon. At a spring half way up we found a poor Turkish infantry soldier resting all alone, he was a pitiable object in a district ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... when I read a book which dealt fully, not only with the public life of the bee, but with the most intimate details of its private life, I have looked at them with a new interest and a new sympathy. For there is no animal which does not get more out of life than the pitiable insect which Dr. Watts holds up as an ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... Four sturdy majos had dragged along with them an old man incapable of resistance, and compelled him, nolens volens, to join in the dance; and as they all kept appearing and disappearing above the bank of foliage, their grotesque attitudes, combined with the pitiable countenance of their helpless victim, could not do otherwise than recall most forcibly the story of Sancho Panza tossed in a blanket by the merry ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... future of society on the bidding of those among the elect who from time to time descended among them, like Moses from the mountain, with transfigured faces and the message of a new revelation. And if the result was sometimes calamitous or pitiable, there were compensating gains; a matter-of-fact prosperity is not altogether preferable to enlistment in the forlorn hope of idealism. Had medieval society been more consistently secular and sceptical, it might have been ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... here the average man needs a guardian to keep him out of the clutches of the 'boodlers.' I almost hate to see this sort of excitement come into Canaan. Father has been pretty busy all his life looking after infant men, but from now on his plight is going to be pitiable. I saw that yesterday afternoon, Dad, when the farmers were filing into the bank to put their money into your hands." The girl, turning back to smile at Madeira, was the cause of Steering's turning back, too, and he was surprised to see a patriarchal, benign expression ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the laurels of victory were within his reach. Graham forgot his bitter disappointments and cowardly friends, the weary journeys and worse anxieties of the past weeks, the cunning cautiousness of the chiefs and their maddening jealousies. Even the pitiable scene at Glenogilvie and his gnawing vain regret faded for the moment from his memory and from his heart. If the Lowlands had been cold as death to the good cause, the Highlands had at last taken fire; if he had not one-tenth the army he should have commanded, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... know not who the peer That in the joust so well maintains his seat, Name many a warrior, famous in career, That often make them shake in fiercest heat. Brandimart many deem the cavalier; More guesses in renowned Rinaldo meet; Many would deem Orlando was the knight, But that they knew his pitiable plight. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the other Billy was for his faith and joy. The former used to go by the name of the "lost soul." The very children in the lanes called after him, "Ah, Billy, you are a lost soul," and laughed at him. I was then in the freshness and power of my first love, and could not help regarding this pitiable object, and considering his case; for I could not imagine why any man should remain unsaved ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... instinctively what the right new thing is to do. A mysterious fiat goes forth and a million women simultaneously put on black straw hats surmounted by a cock in his pride. Another mysterious order goes forth and two million women simultaneously begin reading the latest novel by Robert W. Chambers. Pitiable are those in whom this instinct is wanting and who must tag timidly behind, venturing only where a million others have gone before. Perhaps it is, with such people, a case of arrested development. Boys of sixteen and girls of fourteen have ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Nieuport, from the terrible days of the Spanish invasion down to these days of even worse fate, has been pitiable. Its former sea trade after the Spanish invasion was never recovered, and its population, which was beginning to be thrifty and prosperous up to 1914, has now entirely disappeared. Nieuport is now in ashes and ruins. When I passed the day ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... in a very pitiable plight. Your serious indisposition and the depressed mood it left behind were strange things to you, and have affected me very much. For my comfort I assume that your illness is quite gone; but ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... infancy has been pitiable. A purer or milder spirit than hers, one that more sensitively shrinks from rude collision, does not exist, and yet, on whichever side she turns her eyes, she meets with appalling prejudices or opinions to drive a gentle nature like hers to madness It may be a misfortune, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Christians. It is no doubt true that 'Godliness is profitable for all things,' but there are a great many other things besides the godliness of the man that does them which determine whether a man's undertakings shall prosper in the world's sense or not. It would be a pitiable thing if the full revelation of God in Christ did not teach us Christians more about the meaning and the worth of outward success and inward prosperity than the Old Testament could teach. I hope we have learned that lesson; at least, it is not the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... by William with intense anxiety. With a pitiable look of terror he assured me he could not swim a yard; it was useless for him to try to cross; he would turn back, and find his way ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... This, come what will, was, is, and forever must be sacred; and will one day, doubtless, anew environ itself with fit modes; with solemnities that are not mummeries. Meanwhile, however, is it not pitiable? For though Teufelsdrockh exclaims, "Pulpit! canst thou not make a pulpit by simply inverting the nearest tub?" yet, alas! he does not sufficiently reflect that it is still only a tub, that the most inspired utterance will come from it, inconceivable, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk of, the younger Miss Bennets would have been in a very pitiable state at this time, for from the day of the invitation, to the day of the ball, there was such a succession of rain as prevented their walking to Meryton once. No aunt, no officers, no news could be sought ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... north of the Thames, Pytheas crossed the North Sea to the mouth of the Rhine, a passage which took about two and a half days. He gives a pitiable account of the people living on the Dutch coast and their perpetual struggle with the sea. The natives had not learnt the art of making dykes and embankments. A high tide with a wind setting toward the shore would sweep over the low-lying country and swamp their homes. A mounted horseman could ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... "there are women who have lost their hearts, and there are women who were born without any. The former case has the more suffering, yet methinks the latter is really the more pitiable." ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... Nimes want clothes, equipment, and drilling, say you? What poor reasons you give me there, Augereau! I have destroyed 80,000 enemies with conscripts having nothing but knapsacks! The National Guards, say you, are pitiable; I have 4000 here in round hats, without knapsacks, in wooden shoes, but with good muskets, and I get a great deal out of them. There is no money, you continue; and where do you hope to draw money from! You want waggons; take them wherever you can. You ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... over the severed garment of German royalty—that garment which has been rent by so many little princes! Have you observed, Rosenberg, how they have soiled its majesty? Have you noticed the pretensions of these manikins whose domains we can span with our hands? Is it not pitiable that each one in his principality is equal in power ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" What more pitiable spectacle than the ruin of an angel! We have seen the forsaken halls of time-worn and dilapidated castles, have stood in the unroofed palaces of ancient princes, and have gazed on the moss-covered ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... sailed, a young girl, not more than fourteen years of age, was found concealed among the casks, where she had secreted herself in order to accompany the boatswain to sea: upon being brought on deck, she was in a most pitiable plight, for her dress and appearance were so filthy, from four days' close confinement in a dark hold, and from having been dreadfully seasick the whole time, that her acquaintances, of which she had many on board, could scarcely recognise ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... wander around, supporting themselves on the produce of the fields, which, however, on account of their long bills, they could not readily pick up. For eider-ducks and frogs they had no appetite, for they feared with such dainty morsels to ruin their stomachs. In this pitiable situation their only consolation was that they could fly, and accordingly they often winged their way to the roofs of Bagdad, to see what ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... opposite Michelet's thin ledge. From their point of view, it was like the Jungfrau, as Stephen had seen it from Muerren, on one of his few trips to Switzerland. Somehow, those little conventional potterings of his seemed pitiable now, they had been so easy to do, so ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... entirely unfavorable, for the speed and impetuosity of the muddy stream had given him a good deal to think about. He dismissed his reflections until a more favorable time, and placing the lantern on the sand turned to Nugget, who was in a pitiable ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... fifty miles before we reached the mountain. Then we climbed five miles up its steep side, cutting our own trail as we made our way through the tropical jungle. At last we reached the timber. But before we entered the forest one of the guides came to me and, with the most pitiable and trembling fear in his voice and face, begged us white people not to say anything disrespectful of the mountain; not to joke and laugh, and not to sing; for that would make the mountain angry, and ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... me that it is not my maid," said Strasoldo, in a pitiable voice. "We are sure she is here, as the sentinel at the gate saw her come ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... moved with this pitiable object, thought at first to enter the hut and attack the giant; but considering how unequal the combat would be, he stopped, and resolved, since he had not strength enough to prevail by open force, to use art. In the mean time, the giant having emptied the pitcher, and devoured ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... truth and lost myself, my child,' said Caleb, with a pitiable expression in his bewildered face. 'I have wandered from the truth, intending to be kind to you; ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... look of beings who feel themselves lost yet still are driven by the life within them to press on, the five fugitives—pitiable handful of the Legion—were plodding south-west, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... forebodings, and lived in an atmosphere of terror. Added to the natural horror of her situation were those countless sources of fear which a fright-shaken mind creates and then magnifies. She was, indeed, in a pitiable state, having been driven first by terror to ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... pitiable situation when a captain of an English company happens to stray into the war office, and happens to have a good heart and busies himself to see that our own men are supplied with hammocks and spending money. None of our officers had ever seen khaki until they ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... requisition again, but the word he wants to write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the letter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... sending the despatch, found them several miles west of Appomattox depot feeling their way along, in ignorance of Lee's exact position. As he had the original despatch with him, and took pains to dwell upon the pitiable condition of Lee's army, he had little difficulty in persuading the men in charge of the trains to bring them east of Appomattox Station, but fearing that the true state of affairs would be learned before ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan |
