"Disenchantment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the scene were conducive to melancholy. We had walked a good fifteen miles into the open country and back again under chilly clouds, and were now paying for it with an empty sense of weariness and disenchantment. There is nothing so depressing as a bare room lit up by flaring gas-jets against the gloom of a late afternoon of rain; and the lights in Scipione's little cellar restaurant flared away in the most outrageous manner. Harding, across the table from me, wretchedly fluttered ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... grade Johnnie Thorpe fell, and exercising a singular muscular ability, rolled out in time from the track of the on-coming wheel, and arose, dishevelled and aggrieved, casting a look of mournful disenchantment upon the black crowd that poured after the machine. The cart seemed to be the apex of a dark wave that was whirling as if it had been a broken dam. Back of the lad were stretches of lawn, and in that direction front-doors were banged by men who hoarsely shouted ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... only the bitterness that springs from disenchantment in individuals, the sense of the miserable insufficiency of human love to satisfy her spiritual aspirations producing "that widely concluding unbelief which," as her sister in greatness has said, "we call knowledge of the world, but which is really disappointment in you and in ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... over his ears was the valiant hero who had held Hougomont through cannon fire and musketry fire and hand-to-hand bayonet fighting on the day of Waterloo while the post he was defending was ablaze, and who had actually killed Frenchmen with his own good sword, was a severe disenchantment. When I had breakfasted he asked leave of my father to let me go with him to the waterside, promising to send me home safely later in the day. When he was in Spey up to the armpits—for the "Holly Bush" takes deep wading from the Dundurcas side—the old lord looked even droller than he ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... olive-trees like sylphs: the river ran silver in the hollow, and the mountain-side on which the town is piled was solid gold. Then came the dirty dull interior of Girgenti, misnamed the magnificent. But no disenchantment could destroy the memory of that vision, and Pindar's [Greek: philaglaos Akragas] remains ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of Lieut. Sassoon is not cynical, it is the rage of disenchantment, the violence of a young man eager to pursue other aims, who, finding the age out of joint, resents being called upon to help to mend it. His temper is not altogether to be applauded, for such sentiments must tend to relax the effort of the struggle, yet they can ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... influence even now in solving the social problem on which we are engaged. In fact, a marriage sealed under the auspices of the religious scrutiny which assumes the existence of love, and subjected to the atmosphere of that disenchantment which follows on possession, ought naturally to be the most firmly-welded ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... not complain, however, and did not say anything to Mamma Stirling, but worked as he had done in the past, and mastered himself with superhuman energy, so as to hide the grief that was gnawing at his heart and killing him, and the disenchantment with everything that was making him sick ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... do—I thought it very beautiful. It was our secret, do you see? But she seems to have taught the marchese—and it is a secret no more, and not beautiful at all." He begins to wonder to himself, and grows suddenly homesick under disenchantment. He has many artless, touching things to say concerning his happiness with his sister in his own country, there far away on ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... came to me that neither was there any one in the gray heavens above to see them; the overcast sky seemed as lonely as the solitary street. That little band of orphaned children intensified my feeling of sorrow and added to the disenchantment of the May night, and I had a consciousness of the vanity of prayer, of the emptiness of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... had been deceived as to the state of public opinion in England." The messengers of the Peace Society, the language held by the organs of the Manchester school, had emboldened him to try to realize the secular dream of Russian despots,—namely, the conquest of Constantinople. The disenchantment he experienced gave even his iron frame a terrible shock. Yet his haughty temper forbade him to entertain offers of, still more to sue for, peace. Those surrounding him, including his nearest by kinship, were afraid of angering the ruthless man by ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... found than the old becomes grievous, a burden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritably repellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted. Which is the illusion, one wonders,—the original enchantment or the final disenchantment? ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... that a naked woman is such a fright "that Don Juan himself were fain to hide his eyes in sorrow and disenchantment and fly to other climes." How thankful Cupid must be that he was born blind! Still the most of us are willing to risk one eye on the average "altogether" model. Du Maurier—who is a somewhat better artist than author—illustrates ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... back in the bottom of the boat, and looked up into the blue dome. It was the same azure as ever, but a strange feeling of disenchantment seemed to have come over him. For the first time he realized the deadly stakes for which he and his party were playing their game. What fate had been treasured up for him in the impending chaos of civil war? If he perished in battle or by ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... find they have no health with which to enjoy the gathered sweetness. Haste in cooking the dinner has destroyed the appetite. We are told that "moderation and poise are the secrets of all successful art," as they are of all successful life. Give the rein to appetite and passion, and satiety, disenchantment, and the grave quickly come. Health, happiness, and character are through restraint. Thus truly, habit and trait in the individual or the generation become a mark in the body that is the revelator ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of Disenchantment"[7] is an ingratiating account of the pessimism of Schopenhauer, a philosophy with which it would seem, Saltus is fully in accord. Two-thirds of the book is allotted to Schopenhauer, but the remainder is devoted to an exposition of the teachings ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... debt and disenchantment came news of a slight inflicted by the Latin sister of the North. France had seized Tunis, a land on which Italian patriots looked as theirs by reversion, whereas the exigencies of statecraft assigned it to the French. It seems that during ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Scribe I had learnt from M. Duval; the naturalistic school had taught me to scorn tricks, and to rely on the action of the sentiments rather than on extraneous aid for the bringing about of a denouement; and I thought of all this as I read "Disenchantment" by Miss Mabel Robinson, and it occurred to me that my knowledge would prove valuable when my turn came to write a novel, for the mise en place, the setting forth of this story, seemed to me so loose, that much of its strength had dribbled ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... there, at the condition—then, abruptly, with a gesture, she gave it up. She had a headshake of disenchantment—so far as the idea had appealed to her. It all appeared too difficult. "Oh, my 'condition'—I don't hold to it. You may cry it on the housetops—anything I ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... be made to Lord Byron, but the fumes of incense never hid from him the sight of his ideal. And as the comparison was not favorable to realities, disenchantment took place on his side, without a corresponding result on the other. THENCE many heart-breakings. Nevertheless there was no ill-nature, no indelicacy, none of those proceedings that the world readily forgives, but which his feelings as a man of honor would have condemned. Calantha, in despair ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... went, arms flashing, drums beating, colors flying, till the last column had turned the hill, and then evening came on all at once, and we felt a dreary sense of disenchantment creeping over us. It was as if we had been dreaming during the last few weeks, and now we were waked, indeed! Dominique recalled us to ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... squat tower-like building, almost hemmed in by a monster gas reservoir, fantastic wooden galleries, and the gigantic silhouettes of strange machinery, that relieved his mind. But this house and its surroundings soon repelled him. His reception was the final disenchantment. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... labored in vain. A man who might some day make gold at will was certainly not to be despised; rather, he should be cultivated. Nor was her esteem for Dee lessened by the success with which, by astrological calculations, he named a favorable day for her coronation; and, a little later, by solemn disenchantment warded off the ill effects of the Lincoln's Inn Fields incident, when a puppet of wax, representing Elizabeth, was found lying on the ground with a huge pin ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... disappointment in reliance upon the righteous purposes of God, which must prevail at last: to have a sure escape from personal grief in the largeness of human sympathy and the vista of universal hope: to feel, as life wears away, no disenchantment of purpose, no stealing languor upon the will, no freezing chill upon the heart, but only a passionate desire to live to the last in the full glow of service, and an absolute completeness of self-renunciation—then are these strong souls happy. They ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... right, betrayed a rather vulgar stagnation of mind. There might have been once a dim spiritual light in her face; but it had long since begun to wane. And furthermore, in plain prose, she was growing stout. My disappointment amounted very nearly to complete disenchantment when Theobald, as if to facilitate my covert inspection, declaring that the lamp was very dim, and that she would ruin her eyes without more light, rose and fetched a couple of candles from the mantelpiece, which ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... at their mastheads and carry its colours. Or perhaps it is a simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from every eye some imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which knows not truth," he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is already so much inclined to melancholy, for ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... one of the few close friendships which were to remain until the end, unclouded in fact and in remembrance; and although some weight may be given to those circumstances of their lives which precluded all possibility of friction and risk of disenchantment, I believe their rooted sympathy, and Mr. Browning's unfailing powers of appreciation would, in all possible cases, have maintained the bond intact. The event was at the last sudden, but happily not ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... my soul, which is free, was born free, and shall remain free. If you remain, I shall esteem you much; if you depart, I shall do so no less; for I hold that amorous impulses run with a loose rein, until they are brought to a halt by reason or disenchantment. I would not have you be towards me like the sportsman, who when he has bagged a hare thinks no more of it, but runs after another. The eyes are sometimes deceived; at first sight tinsel looks like gold; but they soon recognise the difference between the genuine ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and with experience disenchantment comes to all, Even pleasure on the keenest appetite ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... with England, Austria, and Sweden, and the prosperity of the empire seriously impaired by the continental blockade. But when Bonaparte began to show scant courtesy to his Russian ally, and to act as if he were his master, then Alexander's disenchantment was complete. He freed himself from the unnatural alliance, and faced ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... continued Trefusis, observing the gesture with some anger, "that he thinks more highly of you than you deserve; but you, on the other hand, think too lowly of him. When you marry him you must save him from a cruel disenchantment by raising yourself to the level he fancies you have attained. This will cost you an effort, and the effort will do you good, whether it fail or succeed. As for him, he will find his just level in your estimation if your thoughts reach high enough ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them.[4] And while such an one is ploughing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to understand his resentment, when ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instantly composed a copy of touching verses, setting forth her desertion and disenchantment. It was only the old story, she wrote, of love meeting with coldness, and fidelity returned by neglect; and some new neighbours arriving from London about this time, in whose family there were daughters, Miss Amory had the advantage of selecting an eternal friend ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... residence in the tower of Oakwood. The peasants point out, upon the plain, those electrical rings, which vulgar credulity supposes to be traces of the Fairy revels. Here, they say, were placed the stands of milk, and of water, in which Tamlane was dipped, in order to effect the disenchantment; and upon these spots, according to their mode of expressing themselves, the grass will never grow. Miles Cross (perhaps a corruption of Mary's Cross), where fair Janet waited the arrival of the Fairy train, is said to have stood near the duke of Buccleuch's seat of Bowhill, about ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... under these circumstances, a too cruel blow—one of those mean acts which a man never lets a woman know of unless he believes himself to be her assured master—puts the crowning touch to her revulsion and disenchantment, the moment has come for the intervention of the friend who undertakes the cure. Madame Piedefer had no great difficulty now in removing the film from ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the world is evil and disenchantment old. Man's ancient heart is bitter, his hard eyes doubt of a sign. Blown hair beneath that banner that floated in folds of gold, In spirit I see you standing first in ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... not with these. A little frown shaded her eyes, and her mouth was curved by a smile more sad than sweet. The happiest woman in the world! Yet, as she stood there, she felt an utter disenchantment with life seize upon her; she felt an overwhelming weariness in the battle that was not yet over. For Julia knew now that life to her must be a battle; whatever the years to come might hold for her, they could not hold more than an occasional heavenly interval ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... who do not look at it too closely into ardent championship. Even Mr. Russell, so long as he looked into white faces in South Carolina, was fascinated, and only when he came to look into black faces along the Mississippi found the disenchantment. The decisive difference is, that the North is purposing to settle and possess this land according to the law of right, and the South according ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... which was at last secured at the cost of half her vast estates, ended in a brief reunion. A secret marriage, a swift discovery that her idol was of very common clay, abuse so violent that she was obliged to forbid him forever her presence, and the disenchantment was complete. The sad remnant of her existence was devoted to literature and to conversation; the latter she regarded as "the greatest pleasure in life, and almost the only one." When she died, the Count de Lauzun wore the deepest mourning, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason |
