"Maudlin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crossing-sweeper, 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 as ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... 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 would silence him, but in answer to my appeals he raised his ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... well to register a protest against the curious but prevalent notion that any such concentrated effort for the spiritualization of society must tend to work itself out in the direction of a maudlin humanitarianism, a soft and sentimental reading of life. This idea merely advertises once more the fact that we still have a very mean and imperfect conception of God, and have made the mistake of setting ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... to fade on St. Mary Magdalene's Day (July 20), to whom we find numerous flowers dedicated, such as the maudlin, a nickname of the costmary, either in allusion to her love of scented ointment, or to its use in uterine affections, over which she presided as the patroness of unchaste women, and maudlin-wort, another name for the moon-daisy. But, as Dr. Prior remarks, it should, "be observed ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... unappetising—reputation. In some cases they have been messed and meddled in usum vulgi. But their worst enemy recently has been, it may be feared, the irreconcilable opposition of their spirit to what is called the modern spirit—though this latter sometimes takes them up and plays with them in a fashion of maudlin mysticism. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the cup. "What I am about to say," he explained as he suddenly heaved a sigh, "is not the maudlin talk of a man under the effects of wine. As far as the subjects at present set in the examinations go, I could, perchance, also have well been able to enter the list, and to send in my name as a candidate; but I have, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... down and wept maudlin tears, disgusting to witness. He said he was an old man who had always lived honestly, and it would break his heart if his grey hairs were to be disgraced. As he sat rocking himself with his hands over his face, I saw his wicked little eyes peering ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... and sit down in the kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, with Socrates and Jesus." (Discourses, p. 83) The charity which hopes that men may be forgiven the crime of "religions" which, if there be a God at all, must be "abominations," one can understand; but these maudlin apologies for the religions themselves, —as if they were not themselves crimes, and involved crimes in their very practice,—I do not understand. According to this, all that man has to do is to be sincere in any thing, however diabolical, and it is ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... could desire. But, being confined to his room, haunted by the vision of his flame, yet debarred from any attempt to see her, his mood presently changed; his heart became as water, and he fell into a maudlin state about her. Dwelling constantly on memories of his Briseis—whose name, by the way, was Julia—having her shape and complexion, her gentle touch and her smile, always in his mind, while he was unable in the body to see so much as the hem of her gown, Achilles grew ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... 1846. For, said he, it is a trait of 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
... began; once more the Golden Horde was on the march. They did not come, as had their ancestors, on wildly charging horses, threatening with lances and deadly scimitars, but on foot, wretched and begging. Even had I been as maudlin as Stuart Thario desired I could not have fed these people, for there were no longer railroads with rollingstock adequate to carry the freight, no fleets of trucks in good repair, nor was the fuel available had they existed. The world receded rapidly from ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 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 ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... Faco were not in the sheep business for any maudlin sentiment. They did not march ahead of their beloveds waving a crook as wand of office or appealing to the esthetic sides of their ideal followers with a tabret and pipe. Far from leading the flock with a symbol, they drove them with an armful of ever-ready ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... said to himself, "is where Hugo Werner takes to the tall timbers. I don't hypnotise worth a cent. All Koppy's eagle eye does to me is warn me I'm not bullet-proof. Me for the safe spots; they can get as maudlin as they like. I got a hunch this is ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... chatted pleasantly about the remarkable spirit of the poor, and the world's maudlin sentiment towards it and them. The lovely maid professed herself completely puzzled by ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 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 talk sentimentality ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... was sleeping heavily, curiously, irregularly, his breath coming in jerky little snorts. "Oh," she wailed in her guilt heart, "he is, he is! Poor dear old Joey, drunk! And it's all, all my fault!" Swiftly she undressed in the dark. If he were to awaken, to begin saying awful maudlin things—- ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Brill, on the way. They had persuaded Charter to accompany them to the Brice cottage, and there all had witnessed a bitter quarrel between Henry Parwick and Koswell, Larkspur and Flockley. Parwick was semi-intoxicated, and in a maudlin way had exposed all that had been done at the haunted house. He had spoken about getting the powder for them, and mentioned how Koswell had fixed a fuse and lit it, and he told of getting the liquor bottles and flasks and other things. He had warmed up during his recital, and had demanded ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... alone. It's the giggles! She's just being normal," said John, laughing softly in sympathy as the shrieks grew weak and maudlin. ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... speak he yawned in a pitiable manner, and his presence threw a damp upon the modest proceedings of the evening, for Miss Crawley and Lady Jane at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work, felt that his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy under that maudlin look. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sonny—don't stand gaping at me like a stuck pig: I never expected ye to know him! And now the time's past, and ye'll go far afore finding a better. Bill Adams his name was; but Bill to me, always, and in all weathers." Here for a moment he became maudlin. "Paid off but three days agone, same as myself, and now—cut down like a flower! He's the corpse, ahead, in the ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bitter curse of rage Cummings stepped forward, and, with rough hands, separated the boon companions, thrusting the tramp without ceremony under the table, Moriarity in the meantime shaking Cook in vain attempts to rouse him from his maudlin stupor. Cook, however, was too far "under the influence" to be aroused, and to the vigorous shakings and punchings would respond only with a hiccough and part of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... as if a 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 dear brothers, were ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... 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 ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... and glanced at him a couple of times, and seemed to become impatient, and to make up his mind about something; or perhaps he got an idea that Mitchell had been "having" him, and felt angry over being betrayed into maudlin confidences; for he ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... of fact, all would have gone well had not one of the chosen messengers been a little too fond of his nightly drink, and more or less inclined to talk when in his cups. True, on this particular evening he had exercised a kind of maudlin caution, but the tactics of Mr. Jack Bradby were of the sort to extract valuable information in the least noticeable way possible, and as a consequence the man, while keeping a strict guard of his tongue, at the same time let fall enough ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... old man singing now, in a cracked, maudlin voice, and his keeper was beating time with a billiard cue. Then the amateur conductor had one ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... too that except upon a basis of even such rigor, sorrowful, silent, inexorable as that of Destiny and Doom, there is no true pity possible. The pity that proves so possible and plentiful without that basis, is mere ignavia and cowardly effeminacy; maudlin laxity of heart, grounded on blinkard dimness of head—contemptible ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... on a chair. He did not take off his hat, but began to stare around him, with the maudlin, stupid grin of drunkards and coarse people who know that they are insolent. Felicite was so ashamed that she stood in front of the shop door in order that people outside might not see what strange company she ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... 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 impulses; a man of morbid ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... a wonderful plot," he replied. "It has every element—maudlin sentiment, mystery, touches of your characteristic ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... His maudlin speech and woe-begone manner roused Jack's sympathy. He knelt down beside him, and made a ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... which Nick lived, they came to the village dram-shop. Forgetting all that had passed, the willing shoemaker stopped and listened. He could hear the clinking sound of glasses ringing on the night air, mingled with the maudlin shouts and songs of his boon companions. The old feeling returned; he grew weak in his resolution, and, turning to the Goblin, said, "Just come in and have one drink with me—the last one." Immediately ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... an intelligible sort it begins to fade and lower; so far as "Lenore" and "Annie" and "Annabel Lee" are human, they are feeble ghosts of that sentimentality which was so rife in Poe's time and so maudlin in his own personal relations; and except for a half- dozen pieces, in which his quality of rhythmical fascination is supreme, his verse as a whole is inferior to the point of being commonplace. Small as the quantity of his true verse is, it more sustains ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had succeeded at length in collecting and carrying off such among the hiccupping husbands, and maudlin sons, who were able to move, Sir Thomas re-entering the hall, after speeding the last departing chariot, and prudently leaning upon his tall son—for though he had a seasoned head the night's potations had been deep and fiery—was startled well-nigh into soberness, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... vain for 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 face with ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 Communist ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... shower beat upon the shingled roof, but the western sky was clear and flushed with vivid crimson, toward which the prairie rolled away in varying tones of blue. Lights shone in the windows behind the veranda, and from one which stood open a hoarse voice drifted out, singing in a maudlin fashion snatches of ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord Warwick, as he was dying, to shew him in what peace a Christian could die—unluckily he died of brandy—nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but then with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation there is always more or less of a maudlin character which exposes it to the contempt of the by-stander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears—no mortal knows why—and the sensual creature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... dealing the cards a few minutes later, when the long-haired man emerged from the gambling hell, and imitating the maudlin, sauntered up to the bar and asked for a drink. After being served, he walked about halfway to the door, then whirling suddenly, stepped to the end of the bar, placed his hands upon it, sprang up and stood upright ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... the night before, all misdemeanants had been cast loose again. Culpepper had been kept by the guards from entering the palace, where he had no place. But he had fallen in with the Magister Udal in the courtyard. Being maudlin and friendly at the time, he had cast his arms round the magister's neck claiming him for a loved acquaintance. They had drunk together and had started, towards midnight, to find the chamber of Katharine Howard, Culpepper seeking his ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... for absorbing the faiths that come into contact with it, and the maudlin tendency of the people of India to yield to pressure and to sacrifice all in behalf of peace, has been the grave of many a noble endeavour and many an impassioned attempt for new religious life ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... show his heart was not of human decency bereft, Peter paid the undertaker. He got drunk on what was left; Then he shed some tears, half-maudlin, on the grave where lay the Co., And he drifted to a township where the city failures go. Where, though haunted by the man he was, the wreck he yet might be, Or the man he might have been, or by ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... nodded agreement, and fixed me with a maudlin stare. Something prompted me to fill his glass again. He drank it off mechanically. Again I poured, and he obediently drank. With an effort he tried to pick up the thread ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Bishop. And Jim'll send the whole bunch of you to the pen. I'll not go back to him till I get good and ready. And that means, I won't go back at all, no matter what he offers me." She began to cry in a maudlin way. "I hate him. I'm tired of living as if I was back in ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of his ardent youth, Or comrades of his riper years; The poor who felt his kindly ruth, And mourn him with unpurchased tears; Men of the world whose mordant sense Shorn of all maudlin sentiment Seemed the sharp touchstone of pretence; Soft hearts on swift world-bettering bent, All miss, all mourn the man whom all Responsive found to each ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... and pleasing glimpses of country life. He is more happy in this direction than in his humour, which generally drifted away into maudlin and indelicate love-making between pseudo-Roman Corydons and Phyllises. The following effusion is very characteristic ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Red distinguished himself by rolling the round stove through the door into the snow. He was badly burned in accomplishing this delicate jest, but minded the smart no more then he did the admiring cheers of his maudlin but emulative mates. FitzPatrick extinguished a dozen little fires that the coals had started, shifted the intoxicated Mallan's leg out of the danger of someone's falling on it, and departed from that roaring hell-hole to the fringe of the solemn forest. And this ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... from all others, Scott is never wanting, and is almost always pre-eminent. If his patriotism, intense as it is, is never grotesque or offensive, as patriotism too often is to readers who do not share it; if his pathos never touches the maudlin; if his romantic sentiment is always saved by the sense of solid fact,—and we may assert these things without hesitation or qualification,—it is due to his humour. For this humour, never merely local, never bases its appeal on small private ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... comes to Milan, after a passionate outburst of weeping—at leaving her beloved Paris. In Italy she shows herself scarcely more than affectionate to her doting spouse. Marlborough's letters to his peevish duchess during the Blenheim campaign are not more crowded with maudlin curiosities than those of the fierce scourge of the Austrians to his heartless fair. He writes to her agonizingly, begging her to be less lovely, less gracious, less good—apparently in order that he may love her less madly: but she is never to be jealous, and, above all, never ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... allies fled, Demosthenes himself among them, leaving Philip to become at his leisure the master of every city so far south at least as the northern confines of Sparta. He might have realized his wish at once but for his excesses. He drank himself drunk, dancing over his slain foes, and beating time in maudlin song to the caption of the Athenian decree which Demosthenes had procured against him. But it is said that when sober again he trembled to remember "the prodigious power of that orator who had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... of loves that are loose, (Those little perversionist scribes of the Deuce!) Laughter of lies lilting lewd at their lips, Their souls and brains both in a maudlin eclipse; Their bosoms as bare as their stories and songs; These coaxers of dogs with their "rights" and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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 creatures have schools and kindergartens, ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... certain court; the departure of the fair but frail culprit. And yet Pott with an ineffable effrontery that would do credit to a fishwife in and from Billingsgate, clamours about this Pickwick and his virtues, and drops his maudlin tears upon his coffin! Why was he not there to give his hand to Mr. Lothario W—-le, who, we understand, was also present? By the way, we have received the following lines ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... 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. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... 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
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is profound and subtle, and therefore original. I would especially insist on its manliness, because our present literature abounds in so-called passion which is but half-sincere or wholly insincere sentimentalism, if it be not thinly disguised prurient lust, and in so-called pathos which is maudlin to nauseousness. The great unappreciated poet last cited {George Meredith} has defined passion as 'noble strength on fire'; and this is the true passion of great natures and great poets; while sentimentalism is ignoble weakness dallying with fire; . . . Browning's ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... back, his heart thumping heavily at sound of the voice, thick though it was and maudlin. Dade drunk and full of coarse foolery was a sight he had never before looked upon; but Dade's presence, drunk or sober, made his own plight seem a shade less hopeless. He did not dare a second glance, with Davis and the Captain walking at either stirrup; but he listened anxiously—listened and caught ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... will be left to go on sucking things dry, constantly missing the loveliness of them, until they come at last to loathe the lovely husks, turned to ugliness in their false imaginations. Loving but the body of Truth, even here they come to call it a lie, and break out in maudlin moaning over the illusions of life. The soul of Truth they have lost, because they never loved her. What may they not have to pass through, what purifying fires, before ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... off the mood, angry with himself for entertaining it. It was maudlin. After all Chabrillane and La Motte-Royau were quite exceptional swordsmen, but neither of them really approached his own formidable calibre. Reaction began to flow, as he drove out through country lanes flooded with pleasant September sunshine. His ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the maudlin hero, who is sneaking round the right entrance, in wait to steal the pretty wife of his rich and tyrannical neighbor from the paste-board cottage at the left entrance? and when he advances down to the foot-lights ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chant our undeserved praises. And alas, how much more ridiculous, at certain times, he has made us appear—nay, be! With what lecherous sweetness or ponderous grief he has put us to bed with our wives or our ancestors, with what maudlin sentiment he has crooned over us in our cradles! And how poor a show we present when poetry thus tries to make our ordinary human doings appear so different from those of other men! England set us that bad example; and, as usual, we followed her. Only think ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... understand," he broke in, half amused, though somehow the words did not seem so full of maudlin pathos to him now. "And there—" he drew her head towards ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... maudlin complaint in this book, about men of Science being hard upon "the 'Orphan' Home", and as the "gentle and uncombative nature" of this Medium in a martyred point of view is pathetically commented on by the anonymous literary friend who supplies him with an introduction and appendix—rather ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... Bowles? Sure the priest is maudlin! (To the public) How can you, d—n your souls! Listen to his twaddling? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... "Matilda, you're getting maudlin," she said, "you are getting romantic, too. You are reading too many sensational novels and seeing ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... (interrupting). "Spit it out, Giglamps! Dis child can't hear whether it's Maudlin Hall ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... such a favourable impression that Cap-tain Barber, who was in a semi-maudlin mood, took him by the arm to the now deserted parlour, and ensconcing him in a corner, told him all his troubles and warned him of the pitfalls which beset the feet of good-looking bachelors. Mr. Green was sympathy itself, and for some time sat silently evolving ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... those who remain in the 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
... the turning of each sentence. They knew that Karl was her cousin, and almost as close to her as her own brother. She was sure they had seen the tear stains on some of that maudlin copy she had handed in about him. When she turned in her story she was ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... bitten off his tongue. Now she would think him a maudlin flirt. He looked to the ground and saw his dusty, worn shoes. He was afraid to hear her speak, afraid to look up. At last he did, expecting to find her gone. But she was there, looking at him as she had when he told her she was beautiful, the ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... 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 ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Then he fell on his knees, and drank it; and having done, the King began to drink it. "Nay, Sir," says Armerer, "by God you must do it on your knees!" So he did, and then all the company: and having done it, all fell a-crying for joy, being all maudlin and kissing one another, the King the Duke of York, and the Duke of York the King: and in such a maudlin pickle as never people were: and so passed the day. But Sir H. Cholmly tells me, that the King hath this good luck, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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 ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... education that would have qualified him to move in a respectable sphere of society, had he been so disposed. Upon his right was seated no less a personage that "Sow Nance," the hideous girl who had that day entrapped poor Fanny Aubry into the power of Mr. Tickels; she was much intoxicated, and by the maudlin fondness which she displayed for Jew Mike, it was easy to surmise the nature of the relation existing between her and him. Included in the company were several other "apple girls," whose proficiency as thieves entitled them to the distinction of being considered as competent "Grabbers;" each ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... George Sheldon with unmitigated disgust; "a regular raven, by Jove! You come to a fellow's office just as matters are beginning to look like success—after ten years' plodding and ten years' disappointment—and you treat him to maudlin howls about the Court of Chancery. This is a new line you've struck out, Hawkehurst, and I can tell you it ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... down and getting up again. You see, their nerves were gone. The fumes, the gases, the shock, the fire, what they had endured and what they had escaped—all these had distracted them. They danced, sang, wept, laughed, shouted in a sort of maudlin frenzy, spun about deliriously until they dropped. They were deafened, and some of them could not see but had to grope their way. I remember one man who sat down and pulled off his boots and socks and threw them away and then hobbled on in his bare ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... he know anything about being and not-being when he is only a maudlin compromise between them, and all he wants is to be a maudlin compromise? He is neither one nor the other. He has neither being nor riot-being. He is as equivocal as the monks. He was detestable, mouthing Hamlet's sincere words. He has ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... sentimental methods of argument he undoubtedly did one great service to the causes for which he stood. Every vulgar anti-humanitarian, every snob who wants monkeys vivisected or beggars flogged has always fallen back upon stereotyped phrases like "maudlin" and "sentimental," which indicated the humanitarian as a man in a weak condition of tears. The mere personality of Shaw has shattered those foolish phrases for ever. Shaw the humanitarian was like Voltaire the humanitarian, a man whose ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... 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
... I found that in most essentials the two stories were identical, although Gedge had been maudlin drunk when he admitted Randall ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... would have done, this indulgent parent encourages them rather than otherwise, and the more deeply intoxicated and hilariously happy the sons become, the happier seems the mother. About nine o'clock they fall to weeping tears of affection for each other and for myself, and degenerate into such maudlin sentimentality generally, that I naturally become disgusted, accept a parting glass of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "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 more ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... for children to recite; yet in the one case it is beyond any teacher's power to show children the unearthly flaming beauty which alone gives the poem its peculiar quality and undefinable power; and in the other the maudlin sentimentalism and almost priggish piety of the verses are positively dangerous to the child's health of mind. Both types of recitation work out in the end to this—that when the child attains adolescence, and the great world of literature dawns ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... 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 ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... who has the nobility to understand the dream that raised it, he burlesqued its ideals. Cruel, corrupt, lazy, and sloven of soul, he found there what he knew best because it was his own. Aping a sympathy he could not feel, he grew maudlin: ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... but when this delicacy became apparent in 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 hope ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... at Eldridge's Crossing. From the stately pine-trees on the hill-tops, which were dignifiedly protesting through their rigid spines upward, to the hysterical willows in the hollow, that had whipped themselves into a maudlin fury, there was a general tumult. When the wind lulled, the rain kept up the distraction, firing long volleys across the road, letting loose miniature cataracts from the hill-sides to brawl in the ditches, and beating down the heavy heads of wild oats on the levels; when the rain ceased for a moment ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... England on the very day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. When the news reached Norman William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to council, and presently ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... wept at this point, and the maudlin tears were not altogether insincere. His own wife and children he heartily loved, and remembered them now with honest tenderness. At home he was not a drinker and a rough; only amid the hardships and ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... general hilarity. It was now sunset and the Japanese prepared to depart, with quite as much wine in them as they could well bear. The jovial Matsusaki threw his arms about the Commodore's neck, crushing in his tipsy embrace a pair of new epaulettes, and repeating, in Japanese, with maudlin affection, these words, as interpreted into English: "Nippon and America, all the same heart." He then went toddling into his boat, supported by some of his more steady companions, and soon all the happy party had left the ships and were making rapidly for the shore. The Saratoga ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... father cried happily. Then, abruptly his manner changed, for he felt himself perilously close to the maudlin in this new yielding to sentimentality. Such kisses of tenderness, however agreeable in themselves, were hardly fitting to one of his dignity. "You clear out of here, boy," he commanded, brusquely. "I'm a working man. But here, wait a minute," he added. He brought forth from ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... 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
... of crying out to the Government for aid" in the way of labor legislation. Without a quiver, a member of the capitalist group will run tens of thousands of pitiful child-laborers through his life-destroying cotton factories, and weep maudlin and constitutional tears over one scab hit in the back with a brick. He will drive a "compulsory" free contract with an unorganized laborer on the basis of a starvation wage, saying, "Take it or leave it," knowing that to ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... he murmured, and sighed heavily. "God! How happy might we not have been but for that evil chance...." He checked abruptly. His hands fell from her shoulders to his sides, he half-turned away, brusque now in tone and manner. "I grow maudlin. Your sweet pity has so softened me that I had almost spoke of love; and what have I to do with that? Love belongs to life; love is life; ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... flung himself upon his knees to address not so much a prayer as a maudlin grievance to his Creator. He felt himself a craven—doubly so by virtue of the peaceful breathing of that sinner he despised—and he told himself that it was not in fear a gentleman ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... on the list!" commanded Madden brusquely, with ill-concealed disgust that Smith should be maudlin ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... address, the manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions, steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost every thing:—no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning,—slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, supplied by the weak ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... 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 'walk in the Spirit,' esteem each the other better ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the sort," I denied testily. "Because a man reaches the age of thirty without making maudlin love to every—" ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sent to Dr Rider's; and could guess the curious questions and large answers which had followed. He sprang to the ground with a painful suppressed indignation, intensified by many mingled feelings, and waited the arrival of the maudlin wanderer. Ah me! one might have had some consolation in the burden freely undertaken for love's sake, and by love's self shared and lightened: but this load of disgrace and ruin which nobody could take part of—which it was misery so much ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... with you about Tom Pinch. He is a despicable kind of character; just the kind of character Dickens liked, because he had himself a thick streak of maudlin sentimentality of the kind that, as somebody phrased it, "made him wallow naked in the pathetic." It always interests me about Dickens to think how much first-class work he did and how almost all ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... been beguiled by a cheap and spurious variety of the wine of Shiraz, and now sat maudlin on the steps, weeping for his home in Singapore, I despatched peremptorily in search of Beebe, bedsteads, and boxes. But the Kralahome's brother had vanished, doubtless routed by ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... there! Keep your guns on a line with the windows; don't fire till I give the order!" Barney could be heard at the window in suppressed tones, as he, too, covered the maudlin company. Gabe and his brother added to the effect of numbers by clattering the stirrups of the horses, so that the clearing ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... a trace of impatience, for Grenfell's half-maudlin observations occasionally jarred on him; but the latter still looked at him ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... maudlin pity for mere death, and dread of the unknown, crowding in cruel rivalry to destroy her weakened self-control, sent her staggering to Dick over ground which seemed to rise and fall like the sea. For she was keeping hold on common sense by the thought that there was something that Dick wanted—what, ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... pleasure 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 Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... eminently proper words for a husband to address to his wife, but the circumstances under which they were uttered made them maudlin sentiment rather than a manly pledge. As spoken, they were so ominous that the loving woman might well have trembled and lost her girlish flush. But even through the lurid hopes and vague prospects created by dangerous stimulants, Mr. Jocelyn saw, dimly, the spectre of coming trouble, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... heaven the holy Sage In silent agony sustains their rage; While each fond Youth, in vain, with piercing cries Bends on the tortured Sire his dying eyes. 355 "Drink deep, sweet youths" seductive VITIS cries, The maudlin tear-drop glittering in her eyes; Green leaves and purple clusters crown her head, And the tall Thyrsus stays her tottering tread. —Five hapless swains with soft assuasive smiles 360 The harlot meshes in her deathful toils; "Drink deep," she carols, as she waves in air The mantling goblet, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... growing maudlin over a raft of saints who never did me any good. Your Titians and your Veroneses are splendid; there's color and life there. But these cross-eyed mosaics!" Merrihew threw up his hands ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath |
