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Maudlin   Listen
adjective
Maudlin  adj.  
1.
Tearful; easily moved to tears; exciting to tears; excessively sentimental; weak and silly. "Maudlin eyes." "Maudlin eloquence." "A maudlin poetess." "Maudlin crowd."
2.
Drunk, or somewhat drunk; fuddled; given to drunkenness. "Maudlin Clarence in his malmsey butt."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Maudlin" Quotes from Famous Books



... Parson, much bemus'd in beer, 15 A maudlin Poetess, a rhyming Peer, A Clerk, foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, Who pens a Stanza, when he should engross? Is there, who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls With desp'rate charcoal round his darken'd walls? 20 All fly to TWIT'NAM, and in humble strain Apply ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... or an ambassador to the Court of St. James. And once a bottle of Cte Rtie or Scharlachberger is in her, even the least emotional woman shows the same complex of sentimentalities that a man shows, and is as maudlin and idiotic ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... draughts of maddening wine are calculated to inspire; he laughs the world away, and bids it pass. The poor dupe, without his periwig, in the back-ground, forms a good contrast of character: he is maudlin drunk, and sadly sick. To keep up the spirit of unity throughout the society, and not leave the poor African girl entirely neglected, she is making signs to her friend the porter, who perceives, and slightly returns, her love-inspiring glance. This print is rather crowded,—the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... for a glass; but the camaraderie is apt to end in blows, and is a poor caricature of the bond knitting all who are filled with the Spirit to one another, and making them willing to serve one another. The roystering or maudlin geniality cemented by drink generally ends in quarrels, as everybody knows that the truculent stage of intoxication succeeds the effusively affectionate one. But they who have the Spirit in them, and not only 'live in the Spirit,' but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... construction. There are scenes of positively breathless excitement, preceded and followed by dreary drivel; but the success of the book does not depend on its action, but rather on the characters of Sonia, her maudlin father, the student Raskolnikov, and his sister. It is impossible to read "Crime and Punishment" without reverently saluting the author's power. As is well known, the story gave Stevenson all kinds of thrills, and in a famous letter written while completely ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... at him, divided between anger caused by the sore stirring of his old self-importance, and a tumultuous flood of self-pity, roused irresistibly in him by Robert's piercing frankness, and aided by his own more or less maudlin condition. The latter sensation quickly undermined the former; he turned his back on the rector and leant over the railings of the lane, shaken by something it is hardly worth while to dignify by the name of emotion. Robert stood by, a pale embodiment of mingled judgment ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not bright when he comes from hunt—" Here and there in his talk a few words were distinguishable as he stood lurching before them. He reached out in a maudlin effort to touch the maid's white face. She drew in her breath quickly and stepped back; then Menard had sprung forward, and she covered her eyes ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... and friendship had brought poor Dick to a perfectly maudlin state, and he hiccupped out the last line with a tenderness that set one of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... maudlin Alexander, Blubbering because he had no job in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? His crying was not womanish, nor plann'd For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled With its own agony, when he the grand, Natural arrangements for ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... said Weston with a trace of impatience, for Grenfell's half-maudlin observations occasionally jarred on him; but the latter still looked at ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... everywhere, and in my own experience nearly as often, you will see the proprietor, or his sons or his hired men, bearing the marks of strong drink; and too often, if you come unexpectedly, you will see some poor wretch in the wine-house who about four o'clock is maudlin. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... several dwarfed trees. One was a very weak young weeping willow, so very limp and maudlin, and so evidently bent on establishing its reputation, that it had to be tied up against the house for support. The dampness of that portion of the house was usually attributed to the presence of this lachrymose shrub. And to these a couple of highly objectionable ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte

... Very suddenly the surrounding group had scattered, and he peered up through maudlin tears to learn the cause. One man alone stood above him. The room had grown still ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... were suspended, and General Leiningen proceeded to Constantinople, where he demanded the total withdrawal of the Turkish forces. This was acceded to, and Turkey thus lost the hold which it had acquired upon the lawless Montenegrins. The idea of Ottoman decay acquired daily fresh strength, and a maudlin sentimentality was excited in behalf of these Christian savages. Taking advantage of this, they made constant forays across the border, stirring up by their example such of the borderers as were disposed to rise, and using force ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... other men, Mr. Cleveland's conduct was not distinguished by any of the little improprieties of behaviour by which a man is always known by his friends "to be very drunk." He neither reeled, nor hiccuped, nor grew maudlin. The effect of drinking upon him was only to increase the intensity of the sensation by which his mind was at the moment influenced. He did not even lose the consciousness of identity of persons. At this ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... it. Hereafter, I was to live on dangerous ground, at least in thought. No more doubt, no more shuffling now. I must try the chords of my heart, the sympathy of my soul, in open rebellion. The iniquities of civilisation had ruined a fine barbarian in me, and almost made of me a maudlin miscreant, willing to hang upon the skirts of a false society. The Haymarket bomb made me strip again and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... curious non sequitur which the restraint, consciously or unconsciously inculcated by the Gaelic League, is likely to make more apparent, for it is killing that conception of the Irishman as typically a boisterous buffoon with intervals of maudlin sentimentality which the stage and the popular song have so long been content to depict without protest from us, and which left Englishmen with feelings not more exalted than those of their sixteenth and seventeenth century ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... man spending his life to show the folly of Methodism should burst into maudlin tears at sight of John Wesley, and say, 'Oh, if all men, my ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Instantly silence settled over the crowd, and Kay thought that she had never seen a more perfect tribute of respect paid anyone. He spoke to them briefly, with a depth of sentiment only possible in a descendant of two of the most sentimental races on earth; but he was not maudlin. When he had concluded his remarks, he repeated them in Spanish for the benefit of those who had never learned English ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... to make struts, which they secured against the side walls or frame of the gateway. These formed buttresses of considerable strength; and the landlord, instead of grumbling at the damage which might be done to his bordj, and the danger which threatened himself, was maudlin with delight at the prospect of killing a few ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... or to submission to the evils of life, which it catalogues with amazing detail; a book not even conducive to innocent entertainment. It is the revelation of the inner life of a sensualist, an egotist, and a hypocrite, with a maudlin although genuine admiration for Nature and virtue and friendship and love. And the book reveals one of the most miserable and dissatisfied men that ever walked the earth, seeking peace in solitude and virtue, while yielding to unrestrained ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... him much trouble. The fact is that when the British author tells his own story he tries to make himself respectable, and the more respectable a man is the less interesting does he become. Rousseau may prove himself a maudlin degenerate. Cellini may stand self-convicted as an amorous ruffian. If they are not respectable they are thoroughly human and ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... There was nothing in it then out of the ordinary. Just a usual Lascar, very frightened, waving a cheap cane with a handle like a snake's head. Then another policeman came up in a hurry, and pushed through the crowd. The crowd was on my side, maudlin and sympathetic. They knew all about it. The coolie had tried to stab me. An eager young lady in an apron asked a boy in front—he had just forced through—what was the matter. He ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... requite you, Sir, and we'll eat it cheerfully. And if you come this way a-fishing two months hence, a grace of God! I'll give you a syllabub of new verjuice, in a new-made hay-cock, for it. And my Maudlin shall sing you one of her best ballads; for she and I both love all anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men. In the meantime will you drink a draught of red cow's milk ? you ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... players had been there all the evening; and there was more than two hundred dollars in the till. But now, in the quiet of the early morning, as he sat alone, the reaction had come. He remembered how Rob MacFlynn had had too much, and gone home maudlin to the wife who had toiled all day at the wash-tub. He thought of the fight Joe Frier and Tom Stacey had had. And—he did not drink much himself; he despised a drunkard—and these things disgusted him. There was little Phil, too,—"the saloon-keeper's ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... at Mildenham, followed them even to Scotland, where Winton had carried her off. But she had not weakened in her resolution a second time, and suddenly he had given up pursuit, and gone abroad. Since then—nothing had come from him, save a few wild or maudlin letters, written evidently during drinking-bouts. Even they had ceased, and for four months she had heard no word. He had "got over" her, it seemed, wherever he was—Russia, Sweden—who ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... when the party broke up, chiefly because the "Woolpack" was closed and the supply of beer was cut off. Some of the men had reached the disagreeable stage, maudlin drunk or pugnacious, anxious to quarrel, but forgetting the cause of dispute. The police, who had looked on with a tolerant eye, began to clear the footpaths, shaking the drowsy into wakefulness, threatening and coaxing the obstinate till they began ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... his heels. It was with the utmost difficulty they could be extricated from the clutches of the publicans and the embraces of their pot companions, who followed them to the water's edge with many a hug, a kiss on each cheek, and a maudlin benediction in Canadian French. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... replied the man, who said afterward that his knees shook under him with terror at the look on the Scotchman's face. He feared he would strike him dead for his reply. But, instead, Angus burst into a maudlin laugh, and, turning away, went staggering down the street, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... return thanks," replied his friend, grasping Sammy's hand, and looking at him with that fixed and glassy gaze which indicates the happy state of inebriety, termed maudlin; "I know you're a sincere friend, and there ain't nobody as I value more: man and boy have I knowed you; you're unchanged! you're the same!! there ain't no difference!!! and I hope you may live many years to go a-fishing, and I may live to see it, Sammy. Yes, old ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... Farce shall Beauties show, Shall praise thy ribald Mirth, and maudlin Woe; Praise ev'n thy imitating Chaucer's Tales, And call that merry [1] Temple, Fame's Versailles: Thy [2] Shepherd-Song with Rapture they shall see, Which rivals Philips, as Banks rivals Lee; Thy [3] Guernsey and Barbados Wreath ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... with hair unkempt, and hat awry, maudlin tears in her swollen eyes, and swaying as she held the rail, looked shiftily up into the magistrate's ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... perfect in his gamblers, robbers, and martyrdoms, and should never have meddled with Saints and Madonnas. In his famous Pieta in the Vatican, the Virgin is an old beggar-woman, the two Maries are fish-wives, in "maudlin sorrow," and St. Peter and St. John, a couple of bravoes, burying a murdered traveller: dipinse ferocemente sempre perche feroce era il suo carrattere, says his biographer; an observation, by the way, in ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... of derision only, instead of admiration; that men pause to regard him as a miracle of conceit and assurance rather than as a prophet; and that his commonplaces about "olive leaves," "calumets," "universal brotherhood," "fatherland," etc., have no more influence than the maudlin rigmarole of the madman whose preternatural force is lost in senility. It is time for Elihu Burritt to go back to his shop: the world wants a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... Daisy is named Maudlin-wort from St. Mary Magdalene, and bears its lunar name from the Grecian goddess of the moon, Artemis, who particularly governed the female health. Similarly, our bright little Daisy, "the constellated flower that never sets," owns the name Herb Margaret. The ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... interesting.... Packed with incidents, infused with humor and wit, and faithful to the types introduced, this book will surely appeal to the large audience already won, and beget new friends among those who believe in fiction that is healthy without being maudlin, and is strong without losing the ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... not given me flashing eyes and raven hair—without which, as everyone knows, no bad fairy can hold up her head and respect herself. But at the time I felt distinctly rebuffed, and only the extreme beauty of my dress as the maudlin "good fairy" Goldenstar consoled me. Milly Smith (afterwards Mrs. Thorn) was Dragonetta, and one of her ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... was injured and though stories of wild happenings at the horse ranch were current it was considered nobody's business. Wyatt once, staggering out of some blind pig in Hereford, still existent despite the suffrage sweeping, babbled in maudlin drunkenness of his determination to get even with Plimsoll for stealing his sweetheart. For Wyatt, for the sake of the girl, had gone back to Plimsoll's employ. The new sheriff took Wyatt's guns away and locked him up overnight in the "cooler," letting him go in the morning, soberer ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... noble of dissolute character, who gained a bare subsistence by frequenting the gaming-tables. His child had been brought up in a convent renowned for strict discipline—she knew nothing of the world. She was, he assured me, with maudlin tears in his eyes, "as innocent as a flower on the altar of the Madonna." I believed him—for what could this lovely, youthful, low-voiced maiden know of even the shadow of evil? I was eager to gather ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... has piled together in a heap, and beside which lay several chapeaus said to have belonged to distinguished Britishers. Mr. Soloman suddenly makes his appearance in the little shop, much to Mr. McArthur's surprise. "Say-old man! centurion!" he exclaims, in a maudlin laugh, "Keepum's in the straps-is, I do declare; Gadsden and he bought a lot of niggers-a monster drove of 'em, on shares. He wants that trifle of borrowed money-must have it. Can have it ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... themselves with an annual exposition of the grievances of Ireland, over the short leg of a turkey, a "bumper of Burgundy," and that roar of lip artillery, against the usurper, which dies away in a few maudlin hiccups, about two o'clock in the morning, to be revived only at the expiration of another twelve months. Under the burden of any commonplace name, such, we say, might have been the fate of the organization ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... think that love is not the principal passion for tragedy, you will not find me a popular writer. Unless it is Love, furious, criminal, and hapless [as in The Mysterious Mother, or in Alfieri's Mirra, or Shelley's Cenci], it ought not to make a tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it does, but it ought not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price boxes." It is probable that he owed these sentiments to the theory and practice of Vittorio Alfieri. "It is extraordinary," writes M. de Fallette Barrol (Monthly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... heart, it is all so true; it is too much for me, when I think of my wretched, wasted years—paying all that money for my own labour, too! I am sober again after a debauch, I see what the object of my maudlin affection is like, and what it ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... hysterical indifference to facts.) As a history it would be beneath criticism, were it not that the high character of the author and her excellent literary work in other directions have given it a fictitious value and made it much quoted by the large class of amiable but maudlin fanatics concerning whom it may be said that the excellence of their intentions but indifferently atones for the invariable folly and ill effect of their actions. It is not too much to say that the book is thoroughly untrustworthy from cover to cover, and that not ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... work—miserable, dirty work, the work of a hound and a cur! And the Rat's logic was unassailable. From Patsy Marles' maudlin babbling it was evident that Reddy Curley had bought Haines, his partner, out; that the price was fifteen thousand dollars; and that Grenville, acting for Haines obviously, had received the purchase money from Curley, and in return ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... maudlin brain, Which, addled by some gilded toy, Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again Cries for it, like a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... of his life. It was the pulpit that reconciled him to exile within a great city, and persuaded him to the enjoyment of roguish company. Those there were who deemed his career unfortunate; but a sense of fitness might have checked their pity, and it was only in his hours of maudlin confidence that the Reverend Thomas confessed to disappointment. Born of respectable parents in the County of Cambridgeshire, he nurtured his youth upon the exploits of James Hind and the Golden Farmer. His boyish pleasure was to lie in the ditch, which bounded his ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... account to give of his meeting with Dick Hardman down at Yellow Mine. The young scion of the would-be dictator of Marco fortunes had been drunk enough to rave about what he would do to Panhandle Smith. Some of his maudlin threats, as related by Brown, caused a good deal of merriment in camp, except to Blinky, who grew ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... immediately relax his grasp. It was evidently not safe to let him go. His fit of anger bordered upon hysterics. Presently he grew calmer but more maudlin. Trent at last released him, and, thrusting the bottle of brandy into his coat-pocket, returned to his game of Patience. Monty lay on the ground watching him ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... you know. Yesterday we were sitting together in the tavern, and the lining of my coat was—quite accidentally, of course—sticking out right in front. The general squinted at it, and flew into a rage. He never looks me quite in the face now, unless he is very drunk or maudlin; but yesterday he looked at me in such a way that a shiver went all down my back. I intend to find the purse tomorrow; but till then I am going to have another night ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... profession that is overworked. The hours are long and holidays and vacations are few and far between. Mother gets a great deal of maudlin sympathy and not enough tangible aid, says a writer in the Housekeeper. Our poetic conception of the true mother is that her whole life is bound up in the welfare of her children and her family. At what age are her children ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... did despise Anarchists and Nihilists," sighed Ray, "since I was trapped into reading some of those maudlin Russian novels, with their eighth-century ideas grafted on nineteenth-century conditions. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... one appearance towards the end, got up like comic military characters in a musical comedy—just as, in mediaeval miracle plays, the comic character was Satan. The play's intention was to show a typical Russian working-class family. There were the old father, constantly drunk on vodka, alternately maudlin and scolding; the old mother; two sons, the one a Communist and the other an Anarchist; the wife of the Communist, who did dressmaking; her sister, a prostitute; and a young girl of bourgeois family, also a Communist, involved in a plot with ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... certain savage delight in scenes of grotesque and exaggerated terror. No one who has read "Les Miserables" can deny the existence in him of a vein of lovely tenderness that, with a little tiny push over the edge, would degenerate into maudlin sentiment of the most ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... trial by law for those accused of crime, and punishment by law after honest conviction. No maudlin sympathy for criminals is solicited, but we do ask that the law shall punish all alike. We earnestly desire those that control the forces which make public sentiment to join with us in the demand. ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... House met his defiance by a concurrent resolution emphatically condemning his reconstruction policy, and thus opening the way for the coming struggle between Executive usurpation and the power of Congress. His maudlin speech on the 22d of February to the political mob which called on him, branding as traitors the leaders of the party which had elected him, completely dishonored him in the opinion of all Republicans, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... a large crowd of the new men who welcomed him heartily, plying him with countless questions, and harking to his maudlin tales of this new country which to him was old. He had followed the muddy river from Crater Lake to the Delta, searching the bars and creek-beds in a tireless quest, till he knew each stream and tributary, for he had been one of the hardy band that used to venture forth from Juneau on the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... to me that he'd not have done it, except that she begged him with her last breath to promise it. He said the words with great maudlin tears raining down his face, when my own eyes ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... on the list!" commanded Madden brusquely, with ill-concealed disgust that Smith should be maudlin just when needed. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... me to try to escape from my false position. The nearer the Philosophers approached, the more maudlin and effusive these unprincipled young females became, flinging their arms tragically round my neck, and bedaubing my ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... tramp along with at least a suggestion of having once walked over plowed fields and breathed country air. The second generation of city poor too often have no holiday clothes and consider their relations a "bad lot." I have heard a drunken man in a maudlin stage babble of his good country mother and imagine he was driving the cows home, and I knew that his little son who laughed loud at him would be drunk earlier in life and would have no pastoral interlude to his ravings. Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... said Sibley in tones of maudlin sentiment, "you are cruel to deprive me of your cousin's society even for a moment. I'll forgive you this once, but never again." And then he availed himself of the opportunity to pay ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... very dirty; their hair had fallen over their eyes, which were bloodshot; the expression of their faces was imbecile. As the phaeton passed, they hailed its occupants in thick voices, shouting against the wind maudlin invitations to drink. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... baked in the true "camp-meeting" style, the whisky was drunk, and—so was the company. Bill Day's rather red eyes grew redder, and his nose shone with delight as he shuffled the greasy pack of "kyerds." The maudlin smile crossed the habitually melancholy lines of his face in a way that split and splintered his visage into a curious ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... wrote, "there is nobody in the whole of the Roullens Aerodrome whom I do not detest with a detestation beside which my hatred for you seems as maudlin adoration. This is notwithstanding the fact that I make the most marvellous progress in the art of flying. It is merely something in their faces which annoys me. Let me therefore see yours again, in the hope that it will make me think ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... palpitations and shortness of breathing, it was treated as affectation—as a phase of imaginary indisposition, which could be dissipated by a good scolding. She had been brought up rather in a school of Spartan endurance than in one of maudlin self-indulgence, and could bear many a pain and relinquish many a ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Lot's wife, and Argus his eyes, Tom Piper, poor Cobler, and Lazarus's thighs: Rough Esau, with Maudlin, and gentles that scrawl, With Bishop that burneth—ye ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... middle-aged, maudlin moonshine is this, anyway?" said I. "Let's go back to Junior. We've passed the time of life when people can ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... living greatest. There was an outward starch and acerbity produced by toil and danger. But when people felt they could unbend, they were not icebergs but volcanoes, because the fires which burned unseen were those of the soul. The mirth of wine is maudlin and short-lived. It prompts to no labor, and kindles no sacrifices. It is satanic; it blazes and dies, a horrid mockery, exultant and evanescent. But the joy of homes, the beaming face of forgiveness, the charity which covers a multitude of faults, the assistance rendered ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... of learning, Magdalen is pronounced Maudlin, probably in subtle tribute to the condition of the person who first pronounced it so. General-admission day is not the day you enter, but the day you leave. Full term means three-quarters of a term. An ordinary degree is a degree obtained by a ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... Lavender, Rosemary, Muscovy, Maudlin, Balm, Thyme, Walnut Leaves, Damask Roses, Pinks, of all a like quantity, enough to fill your Still, then take of the best Orrice Powder, Damask Rose Powder, and Storax, of each two ounces; strew one handful or two of your Powders upon the Herbs, then distil them with a soft fire; tie ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... and then listened to two English officers who were seated at a table, drinking. They had reached a maudlin state, and were bewailing the ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... as he spoke, accompanied by a jutting and hissing and spraying, by outburst of yells, jeers, maudlin laughter, there came sudden vomiting forth of drenched and dripping forms. Over the heads of the throng within, into the hot faces of the throng without the double door, hurling them back from the battered entrance ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... volume. It is the story of three little children, barely out of infancy, awaking, playing, eating, wondering, slumbering, in solitude through a summer day in an old tower. As a rule the attempt to make infancy interesting in literature ends in maudlin failure. But at length the painters have found an equal, or more than an equal, in an artist whose medium lends itself less easily than colour and form to the reproduction of the beauty and life of childhood. In his poetry Victor Hugo had already shown his passing sensibility to ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... passages in it which possess life: a variant of a theme from Euryanthe, and a theme distinctly suggestive of the Wagner of Tristan. Then Rienzi goes off, ostensibly to prepare for battle, but in reality to leave the scene clear for Adriano and Irene to sing a rather maudlin love-duet. A trumpet-call is heard; people rush in from all sides; Rienzi addresses them; and after choruses, partly double-choruses, all go off to fight the patricians. There is plenty of bustle; there is tremendous vigour; and the scene affords chances ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... Reed, endeavours to throw light on the preponderating role played by American capitalism in the war. In an article which adopts as title that of Norman Angell's book The Great Illusion, Reed declares that the pretence of fighting kings is maudlin, and that Money is the true king. Putting his finger on the sore spot, he adduces figures showing the colossal profits made by the great American companies. Under the bizarre title The Myth of American Fatness,[27] he shows that it is not, as Europe fancies, the American ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... unaccountably supposes to be peculiar to Ratzeburg,) represents the mother as 'weeping aloud for joy'—the old idiot of a father with 'tears running down his face,' &c. &c., and all for what? For a snuff-box, a pencil-case, or some article of jewellery. Now, we English agree with Kant on such maudlin display of stage sentimentality, and are prone to suspect that papa's tears are the product of rum-punch. Tenderness let us have by all means, and the deepest you can imagine, but upon proportionate occasions, and with causes fitted to justify it and sustain its dignity.] ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the present nautical circumstances. After much persuasion The Crew was induced to add to the harmony of the evening. His voice was strong, but, like many strong things, under imperfect control; his tune was nowhere, and his intended pathetic unction was simply maudlin. Coristine could recall but little of the long ballad to which he listened, the story of a niggardly and irate father, who followed and fought with the young knight that had carried off his daughter. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... bemused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk, foredoomed his father's sou to cross, Who pens a stanza, when ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... he sprang toward me and threw his arms about my neck, and for a brief moment as I held my boy close to me the tears welled to my eyes and I was like to have choked after the manner of some maudlin fool—but I do not regret it, nor am I ashamed. A long life has taught me that a man may seem weak where women and children are concerned and yet be anything but a weakling in the sterner avenues ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... so sure of that," Borrowdean answered, seriously. "Mannering is au fond a man of sentiment. There is no clearer thinker or speaker when his judgment is unbiassed, but on the other hand, the man's nature is sensitive and complex. He has a sort of maudlin self-consciousness which is as dangerous a thing as the nonconformist conscience. Heaven knows into whose hands he ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... said in a hicuppin', maudlin way that "the world had better stop, if there had got to be such doin's, wimmen risin' up on every side, and pretendin' to be ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley

... song. This choice, thanks to the popular misconception, did him some harm. As a "monodramatic Idyll," a romance in many rich lyric measures, Maud was at first excessively unpopular. "Tennyson's Maud is Tennyson's Maudlin," said a satirist, and "morbid," "mad," "rampant," and "rabid bloodthirstiness of soul," were among the amenities of criticism. Tennyson hated war, but his hero, at least, hopes that national union in a national struggle will awake a nobler than the commercial ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a sense of values—you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact from a trivial one. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... bloomed the livid, over-rated edelweiss, dear to the maudlin and sentimental side of an otherwise wolfish race, its rather ghastly ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... torn the red hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she despised utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince who might have set the clocks going and the pages to running in fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the court had not stirred at the false alarm; she must forevermore remain ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... falls to telling of her Grievance, till (half maudlin) she weeps again: Just my Condition, cries a third: so the Frolick goes round, and we poor Cuckolds are anatomiz'd, and turn'd the right side outwards; adsbobs, we are, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of protector and preserver of the family. She would have preferred, if possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the expression of Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... metaphor a little—by the time that old Quirk had reached his office in the morning, the heated iron had cooled. If his heart had retained any of the maudlin softness of the preceding evening, the following pathetic letter from Titmouse might have made a very deep impression upon it, and fixed him, in the benevolent and disinterested mind of the old lawyer, as indeed his "poor neighbor." The following is an exact copy of that lucid and eloquent ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... believed in her boy—what mother does not? But her love was not tempered by reason, and in it there was a sentimental flavor akin to the maudlin. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... upon you is somewhat similar to what would probably be produced by a combined attack of toothache, indigestion, and cold in the head. You become stupid, restless, and irritable; rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends; clumsy, maudlin, and quarrelsome; a nuisance to yourself and ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... So many other couples about them were squeezing hands and cuddling waists that no one took any notice of their affability or thought it odd. A drunken sailor behind them kept asking the company with maudlin reiteration what time the last train left for Plymouth, but beyond crying "hush" nobody rebuked him. In truth, the young people had come there to make love, and when the lights were turned down and the curtain of the biograph revealed, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... snowdrift and that throat like the swan's. But, although he vanishes finally, the street has become alive. Two men pass in deeply-interesting conversation, one of them assuring the other that he has not done "a stroke's work" in two years. He is maudlin, of course. "A stroke's work"? And as if any man could expect to find work and to do it after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... statements were rendered by a man addicted to excessive use of intoxicating liquors; that he was even inordinately drunk at the time referred to; that he had voluntarily complicated himself in the concealment of the arms by John H. Surratt and his friends; that he was in a state of maudlin terror when arrested and when forced to confess; that for two days he maintained denial of all knowledge that Booth and Herold had been at his house; and that at last, and in the condition referred to, he was coerced by threats to confess, and into a weak and common effort to ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... Falstaff?" broke in the maudlin Secretary. "Doth he not bear testimony that good sherris maketh the brain apprehensive and quick; filleth it with nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which being delivered by the tongue become ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... us,' says the king. Then he fell on his knees and drank it; and having done, the king began to drink it. 'Nay, sir,' says Armorer; 'by God, you must do it on your knees!' So he did, and then all the company; and having done it, all fell acrying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another, the king the Duke of York, the Duke of York the king; and in such a maudlin pickle as never ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... under a trial so overwhelming in its nature, and the piety with which she supported it, struck them, half tipsy as they were, so forcibly, that they became sobered down—some of them into a full perception of her firmness and high religious feelings; and those who were more affected by drink into a maudlin gravity of deportment still more honorable to the admirable principles of the ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... stepped in and deprived Japan of the fruits of her victories, the action of those Powers was applauded, and the undoubted sympathy of the English people in England with Japan in the matter was derided by English editors in Japan as mere maudlin sentimentality. Language of this kind occasioned deep resentment among the people of the country. The foreign press is now, I am glad to say, saner, inasmuch as it to some extent recognises facts and the trend of events, but I fear it even still is for the most part representative of a community ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... suppositions and analysis," panted Fitzgerald, reknotting his silk tie. "As for me, I go to the Arctic; cold, but safe. I have never fallen in love. I have enjoyed the society of many women, and to some I've been silly enough to write, but I have never been maudlin. I'm no fool. This is the place where it would be most likely to happen. Let us beat an orderly retreat. What the devil ails my fingers to-night? M'h! There; will you stay tied as I want you? She has traveled, she has studied, she is at ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... crying, that she was suffering cruelly, but he offered her courage rather than maudlin sympathy. Hope seemed to flow through her veins at the meeting of the eyes. Whatever a man could do for her would ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... of wild and fierce desires! Why languish thus the wonted fires That arm'd thine heart and nerved thine hand To do whate'er thy firmness planned? Has maudlin love subdued thy soul, Once so impatient of control? Has amorous play enslaved the mind Where erst no common chains confined? Has tender dalliance power to kill The wild, indomitable will? No more must love thus paralyze And crush thine iron energies; No more must maudlin passion stay ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... deviltry. They swung their heads from side to side in rhythmic movement. High in air curled the smoke from the innumerable cigarettes. The long, black claret bottles were in clusters upon the tables. At an end of the hall two men with maudlin grins sang the waltz uproariously, ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane

... a maudlin impulse to cheer at Feeny's enthusiastic answer. Even poor old Plummer gave a half-stifled cry. Possibly he dreamed that rescue was at hand; but there was little time for rejoicing. Springing back whence he came, the unseen emissary was heard shouting some order to his ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... Boy! O Innocent of the innocent! Go to, for a bookish fool! Learn that lovely ladies yield themselves but to those who are masterful in their wooing, who have wooed often, and triumphed as often. O Innocent of the innocent! Forget the maudlin sentiment of thy books and old romances—thy pure Sir Galahads, thy "vary parfait gentil knightes," thy meek and lowly lovers serving their ladies on bended knee; open thine eyes, learn that women to-day love only the strong hand, the bold eye, the ready tongue; kneel to her, and she will scorn ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... remembered my sire, revived when I remembered my ancestors. I became resolved to emulate them, to restore a sunken name, and vowed a world of nonsense on the subject. The habit of brooding over these ideas grew on me. I never heard a jest broken on my paternal guardian, I never caught the maudlin look of his reeling eyes, nor listened to some exquisite inanity from his besotted lips, but that my thoughts flew instantly back to the Sir Charleses and the Sir Roberts of my race, and I comforted myself with the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hadn't quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... case—you must rush special incidents to back up any theory you may advance—whereas men, for the most part, are content with abstract reasoning and supply their own incidents if they feel inclined. Also that a finely bred fragile type of woman such as Beatrice inspires both fear and a maudlin sort of sympathy, and that man is prevented from crossing such a one to any great extent since men are as easily conquered by ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... up like a jack-knife beside her, was drunk with ecstasy. His expression when he looked at her resembled that of a particularly maudlin Airedale. Having her all to himself, with nobody to interfere, was an almost overwhelming joy. He longed to pour out his soul in gratitude for all that she had done for him at the hospital; he burned to tell her that she was the most beautiful and holy thing ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... survey, Big with the wonders of each passing day; Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and wrecks, Harangues and hailstorms, brawls and broken necks; Where half-fledged bards, on feeble pinions, seek An immortality of near a week; Where cruel eulogists the dead restore, In maudlin praise, to martyr them once more; Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite, And need no venomed ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... infantile and "goody-good;"—in fact, involved still in the shadows of the surplice, and inculcating (on hearsay mainly) a weak morality, which he would one day find not to be moral at all, but in good part maudlin-hypocritical and immoral. As indeed was to be said still of most of his performances, especially the poetical; a sickly shadow of the parish-church still hanging over them, which he could by no means recognize for sickly. Imprimatur nevertheless was the concluding word,—with ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... skimmed palely along the street like blown bits of paper on a gray lake. They were agreed on all things, from the absurdity of the bouncer in Childs' to the absurdity of the business of life. They were dizzy with the extreme maudlin happiness that the morning had awakened in their glowing souls. Indeed, so fresh and vigorous was their pleasure in living that they felt it should be ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... The spectacle of the faces wilting into maudlin abstractions under the caress of the music brought a grin to him. The sounds had drugged the polite little masks and left them poised morosely in a sleepy dream. The lavender stocking crept tenderly into evidence. The ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... country, the argument for the continuance of this wasteful course because, forsooth, a fraction of the enslaved may find good masters, seems of no great value. This reasoning, if not the result of ignorance, may be of maudlin philanthropy. A small armed steamer on Lake Nyassa could easily, by exercising a control, and furnishing goods in exchange for ivory and other products, break the neck of this infamous traffic in that quarter; for nearly all must cross the Lake or ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... her from the nervous, dreamy mood. Some one was coming along the hall. Her heart gave a wild bound—then sank. The steps passed by her door. She heard the thick, maudlin voice of a man and the hollow, trilling laugh of ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... good-humored yet firm determination, perhaps it was his resigned philosophy, but something in the speaker's manner affected Mr. Byers's alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner's hand with drunken fervor. "Thash so! your thinking o' me an' Mish Byersh is like ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... me as to quit laying it on the line and start sifting out your language...." Garlock paused. For one of the very few times in his life, he was at a loss for words. He thrust his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. "Hell, I don't want to get maudlin, either ... so ... well, how many men, do you think, could have gone the route with me on this hellish job without killing me or ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... On March 4 Representatives' Hall was packed to hear addresses against the amendment by Miss Emily P. Bissell of Delaware; Mrs. A. J. George of Brookline, Mass.; Judge David Cross of Manchester and Dr. Abbott. The Concord Monitor of that date in a leading editorial said: "Through a maudlin sense of false sentiment the constitutional convention sent this question to the people ... and the people will deal with it as it deserves." On March 5 came the speeches of the suffragists. Representatives' Hall was even more crowded than ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... lower animals. Many a wholesome feeling can be pushed so far that it becomes a weakness and a sign of disease. Pity for the sufferings of our brute neighbors may be a manly feeling; and then again it may be so fostered and cosseted that it becomes maudlin and unworthy. When hospitals are founded for sick or homeless cats and dogs, when all forms of vivisection are cried down, when the animals are humanized and books are written to show that the wild ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... Barry Lyndon, Esq.' will not be written in vain. Not that my Lady was a scold or a shrew, as some wives are; I could have managed to have cured her of that; but she was of a cowardly, crying, melancholy, maudlin temper, which is to me still more odious: do what one would to please her, she would never be happy or in good-humour. I left her alone after a while; and because, as was natural in my case, where a disagreeable ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... human nature to side with the under-dog. And it is this trait which causes some people to be pleased at the quack's success, for they regard him, in a sporting sense, as a little dog, and demand for him fair play. The maudlin sympathies of such persons are aroused by the sight of an adventurer striving against odds, with one sole end in view, namely, the accumulation of shekels ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... midnight, with my drunken father talking maudlin conceited nonsense beside me, I developed curious ideas on the fifth commandment. Those journeys in the spring-cart through the soft faint starlight were conducive to thought. My father, like most men when under the influence of liquor, would allow no one but himself to handle the reins, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... Betsy Brindle and her daughter, a pretty little year-old heifer, were unquestionably, undeniably, hopelessly intoxicated. Betsy was swaying and staggering from side to side, wagging her head foolishly and mooing in the most maudlin manner, while Sally, whose potations affected her quite differently, was cavorting madly thither and yonder, one moment almost standing upon her head, with hind legs and tail waving wildly in mid- air, the next with the order reversed and pawing ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... thy soft idea brings" [xxiv] A thousand visions of a thousand things, And shows, still whimpering thro' threescore of years, [xxv] The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers. 330 And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles! [47] Thou first, great oracle of tender souls? Whether them sing'st with equal ease, and grief, [xxvi] The fall of empires, or a yellow leaf; Whether thy muse most lamentably tells What merry sounds ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... feelings of the singer with barbaric fitness. He took it first in the time and manner of a rant; presently this ill-favoured gleefulness abated, he began to dwell upon the notes more feelingly, and sank at last into a degree of maudlin pathos that was to me scarce bearable. By equal steps, the original briskness of his acts declined; and when he was stripped to his breeches, he sat on the bedside and fell to whimpering. I know nothing less respectable than the tears ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... more than I do," was Andy's mental comment, when to his question, "What shall we do next?" Richard replied, in a maudlin kind of way, "Yes, that is a very proper course. I leave it ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... Anthony, and Lucy Stone, as refined and remarkable an assembly of men and women as could be found in any European court. Yet these were the people so hated and ridiculed by the press and the pulpit, whose grand utterances and spicy debates were stigmatized as "the maudlin sentimentalisms of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... said, old Brooke triumphed, and the boys cheered him and then the Doctor. And then more songs came, and the healths of the other boys about to leave, who each made a speech, one flowery, another maudlin, a third prosy, and so on, which are not ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... much maudlin sympathy expressed for the "downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment," and with it all often go many hard words for the men ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard

... ability to be moved by strong imaginative work may be abused until it becomes a maudlin and quite disordered sentiment. Keats was too well balanced to be carried into appreciative excesses. He knew that mere yearning could not make a poet of one any more than mere ambition could. He understood the limits of ambition as a force in literature. Keats's ambition ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... ramble on in your maudlin talk, Woodman, because it amused me. For years I've waited for your coming. Your unexpected advent is the sweetest triumph of this festival night. The offer I made you was at the suggestion of my wife. I did it solely to please her. I think you will take my word for it to-night." He paused and a ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... was the only way I could prevent him from doing it. He said you told him to carry them up, and that up they must go, if he had to break down the front door to do it. I think he must have been drinking, Tom, he used such awful language, and at last he got quite maudlin about it and sat down on one of the trunks and cried, actually cried! He said that for years and years he had refused to carry trunks upstairs, and that now, just when he had joined the Salvation Army, and was ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler

... helper was taking off his shoes and singing, "There were three lovely girls." He had probably had a good day, for he seemed even more maudlin ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... which could protect an innocent person or 'bring a rogue to the gallows.' Good Parson Adams could lay his cudgel on the back of a villain with hearty goodwill. He believes too easily in human goodness, but there is not a maudlin fibre in his whole body. He would not be the man to cry over a dead donkey whilst children are in want of bread. He would be slower than the excellent Dr. Primrose to believe in the reformation of a villain by fine phrases, and if he fell ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... Desire for originality has led him to such startling comparisons as that between a warrior drawn from his horse and a bird snared by the limed twig of the fowler,[509] surely as inappropriate a simile as was ever framed. More distressing still is the maudlin pathos of the simile which likens Medea to a dog on the verge of madness.[510] But such gross aberrations are rare; against them may be set some of the freshest and most beautiful similes in the whole range of Latin poetry. The silence that follows on the wailing of the women of Cyzicus ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... bitter retorts he provoked, how at one place he was troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the prayerbook and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, how he went to see men hanged and came away maudlin, how he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because she was not scared at Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child, how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one evening ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness that I was entirely mistaken,—that I was intoxicated; then asked me to swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he drew a small case ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... his surprise to Hogg at finding him such a sensible fellow, and asks him what is to be done with the scapegoat. "Let him be married to a girl who will sober him." The wine moves briskly round, and Mr. Shelley becomes maudlin and tearful again. He is a model magistrate, the terror and the idol of poachers; he is highly respected in the House of Commons, and the Speaker could not get through the session without him. Then he drifts to religion. God exists, no one can deny ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... Billy Bowles? Sure the priest is maudlin! (To the public) How can you, d—n your souls! Listen ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... if she'd better have them telephone to Billy from the bank and have him get little Billy. She half turned to do that and then out of the hotel door Jim Tumley came reeling and singing. Only his voice was a maudlin screech. Little Billy had by this time gotten into the wagon, pulled the whip from its socket, and just as Jim came staggering up, touched the more nervous of the two horses with it. And then it happened—what Green Valley had been dreading ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... difference noted everywhere. Your bourgeois goes and rams his bull's head against everything he meets; he's in wonderment and ecstacy almost before he lands; he stares with astonishment at a fisherwoman on Calais pier and weeps maudlin tears over the masonry of the Sainte Chapelle. Then Lady Adela's style—marvellous, marvellous. I give you my word as an expert! Full of distinction; choice; fastidious; penetrated everywhere by a certain je ne sais quoi of dexterity and aptitude; each word charged with color, as a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... and like a true-born Englishman as he is, who loves the people and whose fathers before him loved the people (great cheering). Three cheers for Mr Trafford I say;" and they were given; "and three cheers for Mrs Trafford too, the friend of the poor!" Here the mob became not only enthusiastic but maudlin; all vowing to each other that Trafford was a true-born Englishman and his wife a very angel upon earth. This popular feeling is so contagious that even the Hell-cats shared it—cheering, shaking hands with each other, and almost shedding tears—though it must be confessed ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... there were many, many bad ones. Moreover, the sorrow and bitterness that he brought into his father's last days, and the shame that he put upon his mother, who lived to see his end, made it impossible for our paper to say of him any kind thing that would not have seemed maudlin. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... were aroused with difficulty: the Colonel, poor old gentleman, to a sort of permanent dream, in which you could say of him only that he was very deaf and anxiously polite; the Major still maudlin drunk. We had a dish of tea by the fireside, and then issued like criminals into the scathing cold of the night. For the weather had in the meantime changed. Upon the cessation of the rain, a strict frost had succeeded. The moon, being young, was already near the zenith when we started, glittered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "chasing the rosy hours," and so on, tended to keep up the delusion, and make it a monstrous fine thing for men to sit up drinking half the night, to have frightful headaches all next day, to make maudlin idiots of themselves as they were going home, and to become brutes amongst their family when they arrived. And here I may introduce the mention of a practice connected with the convivial habits of ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... tactics, he turned his back on the snuggery and surveyed the offended woman, with just a touch of maudlin sentiment. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... neighborhood, a mournful sense of distress at the scene exhibited, and sufficiently hinted in the few unpleasant words we have italicized. A muster of Englishmen preferred coughing down their favorite bard, to allowing him to mouth out maudlin twaddle, before the Prince, then first formally introduced to the public, and before a meeting whereat "was collected much of the prominent talent of the kingdom." Mr. Irving, himself most deservedly a man of mark, looked on with much, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... condition would not have excited the disgust it would at the present in the mind of a well-educated girl, she was evidently anxious to obtain a seat, and to release herself from his society. Still he held her hand with a look of maudlin admiration, and insisted on forcing her once more down the dance. It was evident that she would have to struggle to escape from him, and rather than attract observation she allowed herself to be dragged once more towards ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... his company—at some with the maudlin tear of sentiment still on their cheeks, at others eager to escape this soft moment and make ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... trade. All that are writing now he would disown, But then he must except—even all the town; All choleric, losing gamesters, who, in spite, Will damn to-day, because they lost last night; All servants, whom their mistress' scorn upbraids; All maudlin lovers, and all slighted maids; All who are out of humour, all severe; All that want wit, or hope ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... came home very much the worse of drink, and in maudlin affection insisted on taking the baby from its cradle. The baby shrieked. Tom was angry with the weakling, rated him soundly for ingratitude to "the author of his being," and shook him roughly to teach him the good manners of the world he ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... bread and a quarter of a pound of Carnyl per diem. My triumph over Mikouline cost me several gallons of vodka, to say nothing of hours of disgust and annoyance passed in close companionship with the now maudlin, now abusive, little half-breed. To make matters worse, the weather during that wasted fortnight was still, clear, and perfect for travelling, and the very morning of our departure it broke up with a gale and blinding snowstorm ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... I rather think you wouldn't have minded the chance of a dance in Horsemonger Street. However, I'm not going to Plato's Well. If you go with me, you go to Saint Maudlin's; and if you don't, you may find your way back by yourselves, ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... used to see a brother-in-law of mine, now dead, mad with drink—beating his wife in his frenzy, and then sobbing and howling in maudlin repentance, vowing never to touch liquor again, and yet, the very same evening, sitting down to drink and drink—it would fill me with disgust. But my intoxication today is still more fearful. The stuff has not to be procured or poured out: it springs within my veins, ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... When I tried to make myself heard, his voice swelled up louder. Never before had James sung as he was singing now, and I watched him first with wonder and then with increasing terror. As we dragged our way up the ridge, out of the narrow gut, he droned his music in maudlin fashion in time to the slow motion of the beasts. When the valley stretched before us he fairly thundered, striving to make himself heard across the broad land. I hoped that before we entered the village exhaustion ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... purple, exhibit greater pride than did Patsey in his buckskin suit. But, alas! pride must have a fall; and, within a very few hours, I saw him sitting on the ground, clothed in his new suit, and protesting with maudlin earnestness that he was ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... had enough drink to make him very good-tempered, or else his wife would not have dared to have acted as she did; and this maudlin amiability took the shape of hospitable urgency that Kinraid should come as often as he liked to Haytersbank; come and make it his home when he was in these parts; stay there altogether, and so on, till Bell fairly shut the outer door to, and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... stage of mental decrepitude, went out with two objects; firstly, to establish a claim he conceived himself to have upon any licensed victualler living, to be supplied with threepennyworth of rum for nothing; and secondly, to bestow some maudlin remorse on Mr Eugene Wrayburn, and see what profit came of it. Stumblingly pursuing these two designs—they both meant rum, the only meaning of which he was capable—the degraded creature staggered into Covent Garden Market and there bivouacked, to have ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... glad to see this great humorist's works put forward in a popular form, and at a price exceedingly low. A man may be very much injured by perusing maudlin sentimental tales, but cannot be hurt, though he may be shocked every now and then, by reading works of sound sterling humor, like the greater part of these, full of benevolence, practical wisdom, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... roughly, and with maudlin shoutings, to a small tree that stood by itself, and bound him to it with so many lashings that only his head was free to move. Then they heaped dry wood about him, piling it up until it was above ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... heard him croak with maudlin accent. "Pink Angel, begorrah! What doin' 'ere, eh? Whoop! Go back to sky, Angel!" and lifting a brutal foot he kicked the image into the street. Then with a shriek of laughter he staggered away out ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown



Words linked to "Maudlin" :   kitschy, schmaltzy, soppy, mawkish, hokey, mushy, bathetic, slushy, schmalzy, sentimental, emotional



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