Explore Quotations, Proverbs & Sayings

«In winter, when the dismal rain comes down in slanting lines, and wind, that grand old harper, smote his thunder-harp of pines.»

«Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.»

«RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience. It is said to be rich in both obtundite and lethargine, and is brewed in a midnight fog by a fat which of the Dismal Swamp.»

«WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.Should you ask me whence this laughter, Whence this audible big-smiling, With its labial extension, With its maxillar distortion And its diaphragmic rhythmus Like the billowing of an ocean, Like the shaking of a carpet, I should answer, I should tell you: From the great deeps of the spirit, From the unplummeted abysmus Of the soul this laughter welleth As the fountain, the gug-guggle, Like the river from the canon [sic], To entoken and give warning That my present mood is sunny. Should you ask me further question -- Why the great deeps of the spirit, Why the unplummeted abysmus Of the soule extrudes this laughter, This all audible big-smiling, I should answer, I should tell you With a white heart, tumpitumpy, With a true tongue, honest Injun: William Bryan, he has Caught It, Caught the Whangdepootenawah!Is't the sandhill crane, the shankank, Standing in the marsh, the kneedeep, Standing silent in the kneedeep With his wing-tips crossed behind him And his neck close-reefed before him, With his bill, his william, buried In the down upon his bosom, With his head retracted inly, While his shoulders overlook it? Does the sandhill crane, the shankank, Shiver grayly in the north wind, Wishing he had died when little, As the sparrow, the chipchip, does? No 'tis not the Shankank standing, Standing in the gray and dismal Marsh, the gray and dismal kneedeep. No, 'tis peerless William Bryan Realizing that he's Caught It, Caught the Whangdepootenawah!»

«It was the sick and dying who despised the body and the earth and invented the things of heaven and the redeeming drops of blood: but even these sweet and dismal poisons they took from the body and the earth!»

«These bickerings of opposite parties, and their mutual reproaches their declamations, their sing-song, their triumphs and defiance, their dismal and prophecies, are all delusion»

«Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science.»

«What we might call, by way of eminence, the Dismal Science»