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Discontent   Listen
noun
Discontent  n.  
1.
Want of content; uneasiness and inquietude of mind; dissatisfaction; disquiet. "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York." "The rapacity of his father's administration had excited such universal discontent."
2.
A discontented person; a malcontent. (R.) "Thus was the Scotch nation full of discontents."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Discontent" Quotes from Famous Books



... developing a consciousness of its own racial solidarity. It is finding its own distinctive voice, and through its own books and papers and magazines, and through its own social organizations, is at once giving utterance to its discontent and making known ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... "I go home on this day of days, this day of 'peace on earth and good will to men'—and alas! the world a seething mass of discontent!" ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... I forgot you was a orphing. Well, you see, I think it must ha' bin a love o' change or a love o' discontent, or suthin' o' that sort, as brought me cruising in these here waters, for I can't say what else it was. You see I was born a ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... Alps, to determine the most practicable route for the march of the army, and to form alliances with the tribes of Southern Gaul and Northern Italy. Their reports were favourable, for they had found the greatest discontent existing among the tribes north of the Apennines, who had but recently been conquered by ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... which is capable more or less of madness, whether solitary or epidemic. It may be very active; it may be very quick at catching at new and grand ideas—all the more quick, perhaps, on account of its own secret malaise and self-discontent; but it will be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt to mistake capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for earnestness, virulence for force, and, too often; cruelty for justice. It will lose manful independence, individuality, originality; and when ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... folds settled back into their places about his mouth and my neighbour once more gave an uneasy attention to the weaver of beautiful phrases, meanwhile drinking repeated glasses of burgundy. Soon his huge form heaved with an inarticulate discontent, and as the speaker sat down amid perfunctory applause Vogelstein snorted twice into ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... land, subjected as it is to frequently recurring showers of rain all the year round, that it will be, in course of time, one of the greatest nations on the earth. It is nearer to Europe than India; it is far more fertile, and it possesses none of those disagreeable elements of discontent which have been such a sharp thorn in our sides in India—I mean a history and a religion far anterior to our own, which makes those we govern there shrink from us, caused by a natural antipathy of being ruled by an inferior ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... laying aside his sledge with an aggrieved manner which was, however, as complacent as his fatigue and discontent, "ez one of them nat'ral born finikin skunks ez I despise. I reckon he began to give p'ints to his parents when he was about knee-high to Richelieu there. He's on them confidential terms with hisself ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... a murmur of discontent through the room, but no one took upon himself to rise and become spokesman of the community. Disregarding the manifestation, Hubert described in a few words how and when this final business would be transacted; ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... the secret discontent existing in her husband's mind, which, if she had lived, would in time, perhaps, have abated, began instead to increase, and at length he came to talk openly of departure. The Doctor, perceiving that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... the League into confusion, and filled the hearts of the people and the Catholics of the royal party with joy. The Protestants, although they had expected it, discovered their discontent by signs and low murmurs, and did, for form's sake, all that such a juncture required of them, but they did not go beyond the bounds of obedience. All the ecclesiastics, with Du Perron, intoxicated with his triumph, at their head, flocked together; everyone was desirous of a share ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... expects every body to wait upon him, and try to amuse him, as if that were his right. He gives his mother a great deal of trouble, by first wanting this and then that, and by uttering a great many expressions of discontent, impatience and ill-humor. Thus his accident is not only the means of producing inconvenience to himself, but it makes the whole family uncomfortable. This is boyishness of a ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott

... of its enterprise. I was not long in discovering, however, that it was found in the spirit of this Commercial Club; a spirit, it is, of hope, of civic pride, of optimism, yet a spirit of almost divine discontent. You have all the time been proud of your city, but yet not satisfied with it; not satisfied, because you saw visions of a finer city into which yours might grow. Your city was not up-to-date—to help make it so you needed a street railway system; what did you do? Worked for it ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... maintain a quiet and cheerful frame of mind while tones of discontent and displeasure are sounding on the ear. We may gradually accustom ourselves to the evil till it is partially diminished; but it always is an evil which greatly interferes with the enjoyment of the family state. There are ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... have been to you a true and humble wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure; that never contrarised or gainsaid anything thereof; and being always contented with all things wherein you had any delight or dalliance, whether little or much, without grudge or countenance of discontent or displeasure. I loved for your sake all them you loved, whether I had cause or no cause, whether they were my friends or my enemies. I have been your wife these twenty years or more, and you have had by me divers children; and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... said to be a "few disaffected, embittered women, met for the purpose of giving vent to petty personal spleen and domestic discontent." I repel the charge; and I call upon every woman here to repel the charge. If we have personal wrongs, here is not the place for redress. If we have private griefs (and what human heart, in a large sense, is without them?), we do not come here to recount them. The grave will lay its ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... would have been, Doctor, to some extent." At hearing this the Doctor made very evident signs of discontent. "You cannot alter the ways of the world suddenly, though by example and precept you may help to improve them slowly. In our present imperfect condition of moral culture, it is perhaps well that the company of ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... French Class that he caused to be held during School hours in his own house, by a man of his own choice. On both occasions the immediate cause of disagreement was but the final spark of a smouldering and mutual discontent, and it is impossible to distribute ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... subject of it before him in all its length and breadth, and then he will appreciate what can be done even by one earnest man; and gathering fresh inspiration, he will chide himself for all previous discontent, and address himself with stronger purpose than ever to the lowly works and lofty aims of the ministry entrusted ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare

... Mother West Wind came with her big bag to take the Merry Little Breezes to their home behind the Purple Hills, Johnny Chuck waddled back up the Lone Little Path chuckling to himself, for that little feeling of discontent was all gone. He had found that after all he could do something better than anybody else on the Green Meadows, for in his heart he knew that none could dig so fast ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... difficulties which Washington's administration had to overcome was the hostility of the Indians. Indian discontent and even lawlessness had been going on for years, with only a desultory and ineffectual show of vigor on the part of the whites. Washington, who detested whatever was ineffectual and lacking in purpose, determined to beat down the Indians into submission. He sent out a first army under ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... imagine some reason likely to disprove the possibility of that contempt, but in vain. Absorbed in that dark discontent, I believed myself wantonly trifled with, deceived, despised, and I spent half an hour silent and gloomy, staring at C—— C——, who scarcely dared to breathe, perplexed, confused, and not knowing in whose presence she ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... I can get," quietly responded Sarah. "Mother says (if you don't care for it, Emma may) that discontent is the worst companion a girl can have for making everything look miserable. You'll be a deal happier, she says, with a dry crust and a good will to it, than with a roast ox and a ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt

... London Season Christmas The New Year February Tub-thumpers I Wonder If . . . Types of Tub-thumpers If Age only Practised what it Preached! Beginnings Unlucky in Little Things Wallpapers Our Irritating Habits Away—Far Away! "Family Skeletons" The Dreariness of One Line of Conduct The Happy Discontent Book-borrowing Nearly Always Means Book-stealing Other People's Books The Road to Calvary Mountain Paths The Unholy Fear The Need to Remember Humanity Responsibility The Government of the Future The Question The Two Passions Our "Secret Escapes" My Escape ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... But I must say, modern books are very consolatory and congenial to my feelings. There is, as it were, a delightful north-east wind, an intellectual blight breathing through them; a delicious misanthropy and discontent, that demonstrates the nullity of virtue and energy, and puts me in good humour with myself and ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... capacity, are facts which will be denied by no one who familiarizes himself with the local legislative, official and newspaper literature of the time. An apparently well-informed contributor to Blackwood's Magazine for September, 1829, in an article headed "Colonial Discontent," comments on this retrograde system in the following terms:—"A system of espionage assumes that there is something which ought to be watched and to be prevented; and as the existence of such a system probably did exist in Upper Canada during the administration of Sir ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... it was only a man being arrested for leaning against a lamp-post—a rather common offence at that time, for most of the normal occupations of the citizens had been prohibited, and they mooned about the highways in a state of listless discontent. But then, farther down the channel of the street, he saw something that caught his eye. A group of people were marching with flags and signs toward the railway station. SATURDAY SCHOOL PICNIC TO SOUSE TEMPLE, he read on a banner. He noticed that in spite ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... legislation, combined with an agricultural depression and widespread discontent in the agricultural states, caused the defeat of the Republicans in the elections of 1890. The Democratic minority of 21 in the House of Representatives of the Fifty-first Congress was turned into a Democratic majority of ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... the part of foreign governments, however, did not cease with the organization of State government. The Spanish governor at New Orleans continued to send emissaries into the State, seeking to arouse a spirit of discontent, and if possible bring about a separation of the State from the Union. So successful were these agents that they were able to secure the good will of some men in high places, by paying as high as two thousand dollars a year salary. One Thomas Power seems to have been the most active agent ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank

... fairly outstripped himself in willingness and civility; he was all smiles to everyone. If an order were given, John would be on his crutch in an instant, with the cheeriest "Ay, ay, sir!" in the world; and when there was nothing else to do, he kept up one song after another, as if to conceal the discontent of the rest. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... interchange of ideas and feelings, these were what Pepe Rey's nature imperatively demanded. Deprived of them, the darkness that shrouded his soul grew deeper, and his inward gloom imparted a tinge of bitterness and discontent to his manner. On the day following the scenes described in the last chapter, what vexed him more than any thing was the already prolonged and mysterious seclusion of his cousin, accounted for at first by ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... who comes to complain of the bad conduct of those in power. The dialogue is at once sensible and animated. Aesop shews him what he reckoned the oppressions of the administration, flowed from the prejudices of ignorance, contemplated through the medium of popular discontent. In the interview between the Beau and the Philosopher, there is the following pretty fable. The Beau observes to Aesop, 'It is very well; it is very well, old spark; I say it is very well; because I han't a pair of plod shoes, and a dirty shirt, you think a woman won't venture ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... asked me, in that tone of discontent which seemed habitual to her, "Do you know at what time we shall get ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... jaded and worn, but happy and relieved, being able now to get some of the much-needed rest so long denied him when in the ice fields. When congratulated by the passengers upon his skill, for by this time they had entirely forgotten their discontent of the previous days and were willing to give him and his crew due praise, he smiled and thanked them kindly, then went away ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... the country will be well advised not to be too coldly cautious. Every one, of course, must wish to ease to the utmost the unprecedented economic and industrial confusion which the signing of peace will bring, but it will be better to risk a good deal of momentary unemployment and discontent rather than neglect the human factor and keep men back long months in a service of which they will be deadly sick. How sick they will be may perhaps be guessed at from the words of a certain soldier: "After the war you'll have to have conscription. You won't get a man to go into the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... though he were a distillation of smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are business men who all day long are mild, and courteous, and genial, and good-natured in commercial life, damming back their irritability, and their petulance, and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam breaks, and scolding pours forth ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... antidote to such morbid thoughts, and he would never make advances to her, of that she was sure. As for the days that she might spend alone with Lawrence, he was too self-centered, too much wrapped up in his wood-carving, to think of a woman—and she disregarded the little pang of discontent that accompanied ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... people were growing desperate under the enormous taxation made necessary by incessant wars and by the extravagant expenditures of the court? Louis simply turned his back upon the whole problem of administration, and left his ministers, Fleury, and later de Choiseul, to deal with the misery and the discontent and to make their way through the financial morass ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... reforms to improve relations with the Shia community and Shia political societies participated in 2006 parliamentary and municipal elections. Al Wifaq, the largest Shia political society, won the largest number of seats in the elected chamber of the legislature. However, Shia discontent has resurfaced in recent years with street demonstrations ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... which was, that he was pretty old, and had no children, though he had so many wives. He knew not what to attribute this barrenness to; and what increased his affliction was, that he was likely to leave his kingdom without a successor. He dissembled his discontent a long while; and, what was yet more uneasy to him, he was constrained to dissemble. At length, however, he broke silence; and one day, after he had complained bitterly of his misfortune to his grand vizier, he demanded of him if he knew ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... walking in the same place, he met two lions, he would write a letter to the Times complaining of the growing prevalence of lions in the public thoroughfares and placing the blame on the Suffragettes or Lloyd George or the Nonconformists or the increasing discontent of the working classes—that is ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... brief report. But I must end by admitting that though we have done all we could, the hidden distress that still exists in rich homes is widespread. Families continue to engage in poisonous quarrels, idleness and chronic unemployment remain unabated, and discontent is gradually darkening the minds of its victims, depriving them of true mental vigor and ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.

... jogging along the road bordered by the high smooth wall, despairingly efficient, guarding treasures bought with gold; and the tall elm-trees looked over it as though they wanted to escape. The murmuring in their branches seemed to be of discontent, and the birds singing in them had a taunting note. The road mounted a little and the wall went with it, backed by the imprisoned trees. But at last, at the cross-roads, the wall turned and the road went on without it. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... whole day in the highest spirits and highest good humour imaginable, never once remarking that appearance of discontent in her husband of which the colonel had taken notice; so much more quick-sighted, as we have somewhere else hinted, is guilt than innocence. Whether Booth had in reality made any such observations on the colonel's behaviour as he had suspected, we will not ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... late years our Irish labourers do not carry on the same business in England to the great discontent of many there? But whether we have not much more reason than the people of England to ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... I am happy, and somehow discontent and I am thankful to God, and tears are not far off. ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... from despair,—even when they were most gay, most fearfully gay, from constitution. Sir, I saw the priest rack and grind, and the seigneur exact and pillage, and the tax-gatherer squeeze out the little the other oppressors had left; anger, discontent, wretchedness, famine, a terrible separation between one order of people and another; an incredible indifference to the miseries their despotism caused on the part of the aristocracy; a sullen and vindictive ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Michael Malone would be sowing the seeds of discontent in this parish, with his silk hats and his grand talk," said Mr Conroy angrily, "but I didn't think you were the fish to be caught ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... this first winter must have indeed "produced discontent," as Champlain rather mildly expressed it, but it did not impel De Monts to abandon his plans. St. Croix, however, was given up and, after a futile search for a better location on the New England coast, the colony moved across the bay to ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... of the main causes of discontent which led to this convention, that which had the strongest influence in overcoming our veneration for the work of our fathers, which taught us to contemn the sentiments of Henry and Mason and Pendleton, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... communities, as well as individuals. If fastidiousness, selfishness, pride, and sensuality, conspire to cloud, with imaginary woes, the enjoyments of those whom others deem happy and prosperous; faction, discontent, a querulous appetite for freedom, and an inordinate ambition to acquire sudden pre-eminence, disturb public tranquillity, when a country has long enjoyed the blessings of plenty and repose. Previous to the commencement of that great rebellion, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... girlish passion for Edward Langham had been a kind of accident unrelated to the main forces of character. He had crossed her path in a moment of discontent, of aimless revolt and longing, when she was but fresh emerged from the cramping conditions of her childhood and trembling on the brink of new and unknown activities. His intellectual prestige, his melancholy, his personal beauty, his very strangenesses ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... day that people are always talking about. So Mrs. Bingle stayed at home, and contrived to love her good little husband more and more as each narrow day went by, winter and summer, year in and year out, and not once did the iron of discontent enter her soul. Some day, when they could really afford it, they were going away for a month's fishing-trip in the wilds of Maine, but all that could wait. It was something to look forward to, and there is ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... visitation of the sun. At this time all the town was ghostly, and she loved it so. She took her mind by the arm and marched it up and down among the sights of Edinburgh, telling it that to be weeping with discontent in such a place was a scandalous turning up of the nose at good mercies. Now the Castle Esplanade, that all day had proudly supported the harsh virile sounds and colours of the drilling regiments, would show to the slums its ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... looked appealingly at the rough faces for assistance. But instead of help she only beheld an expression of general discontent turned on the unconscious back of the spokesman. And coming back to the boy she pursued the only ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... conversation; but the consequence was a fancy of the idle younglings to make Mary accountable for the 'infesting of their evenings,' and as she was always ready to afford sport to the household, they thus obtained a happy outlet for their drollery and discontent, and the imputation was the more comical from his apparent indifference and her serene composure; until one evening when, as the bell rung, and mutterings passed between Aubrey and Gertrude, of 'Day set,' and 'Cheviot's mountains lone,' the head of the family, for the first time, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had had his struggles and his sorrows. The civil power had thwarted him; famine, discontent, and disaffection were rife among his soldiers; and no small portion of the Canadian militia had dispersed from sheer starvation. In spite of all, he had trusted to hold out till the winter frosts should drive the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... agreeable than I had ventured to expect. He said times were mending gradually but steadily, and that the poor-rates were decreasing, of which none can be so good a judge as the churchwarden. Some months back the people had been in great discontent on account of the power engines, which they conceived diminished the demand for operative labour. There was no politics in their discontent, however, and at present it was diminishing. We again pressed on—and by dint of exertion reached Kendal to sleep; ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... the red mark upon her forehead grew redder as she pouted in visible discontent. But the great world moves on, carrying alternate storms and sunshine upon its surface. The company rose from the table—some to the ball-room, some to the park and conservatories. Cecile's was a happy disposition, easily consoled for her sorrows. Every trace of her displeasure ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... scarcely a higher place in history than the actions of the three kings do. Shortly before the death of Philip the Handsome, his greedy despotism had already excited amongst the people such lively discontent that several leagues were formed in Champagne, Burgundy, Artois, and Beauvaisis, to resist him; and the members of these leagues, "nobles and commoners," say the accounts, engaged to give one another mutual support in their ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Roman is but a lukewarm partisan. The Papal Government repressed grumbling as a nuisance, and the people consequently took a delight in annoying the authorities by grumbling in secret places and calling themselves conspirators. The harmless whispering of petty discontent was mistaken by the Italian party for the low thunder of a smothered volcano; but, the change being brought about, the Italians find to their disgust that the Roman meant nothing by his murmurings, and that he now not only ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... himself:—"Between friends, I am now convinced that my brain was in some measure affected; for I had a kind of Coma Vigil upon me from April to November, without intermission. In consideration of this circumstance, I know you will forgive all my peevishness and discontent; tell Mrs. Moore that with regard to me, she has as yet seen nothing but the wrong side of the tapestry." Thus it happens in the life of authors, that they whose comic genius diffuses cheerfulness, create a pleasure ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... [superscription]. O thou who art my Ḳibla! My condition, thanks to God, has no fault, and "to every difficulty succeedeth ease." You have written that this matter has no end. What matter, then, has any end? We, at least, have no discontent in this matter; nay, rather we are unable sufficiently to express our thanks for this favour. The end of this matter is to be slain in the way of God, and O! what happiness is this! The will of God will come to pass with regard to His ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... the present occasion, the Parson, who had always his eye and heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the Squire; seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... first, the danger from mutiny; second, the evils arising from the mixture of the two races, which had augmented their vices, without a corresponding improvement in their good qualities; third, and perhaps most important of all, the discontent very properly felt by the French Zouaves, who were compelled to work at the trenches, to dig, to plant, etc., while the Mussulmans utterly refused to take part in this, to their mind, degrading toil. The Gordian knot was cut, and all difficulty done away, by making the regiment, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... market prices can have a substantial domestic impact. Growth has been uneven in recent years as the government has repeatedly initiated ill-conceived fiscal stabilization measures. The populist government of Abdala BUCARAM Ortiz proposed a major currency reform in 1996, but popular discontent with new austerity measures and rampant official corruption undermined his government's position. Congress replaced BUCARAM with Fabian ALARCON in February 1997. ALARCON has adopted a minimalist economic program ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... motive power of human action. Nor is a large and active development of hope incompatible with a temperament habitually grave and often profoundly melancholy. For hope itself is often engendered by discontent. A vigorous nature keenly susceptible to joy, and deprived of the possession of the joy it yearns for by circumstances that surround it in the present, is goaded on by its impatience and dissatisfaction; ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... I hope, be a non-commissioned officer in the 30th Foot one of these days," the sergeant said. Jane looked up at her husband. There was no touch of envy or discontent in his voice. She was about ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... strength; but throttling is the custom between them, and we are used to see men of murdered halves. These men have what they fought for: they are unaware of any guilt that may be charged against them, though they know that they do not embrace Life; and so it is that we have vague discontent too universal. Change, O Lawgiver! the length of our minority, and let it not end till this battle is thoroughly fought out in approving daylight. The period of our duality should be one as irresponsible in your eyes as that of our infancy. Is he we call a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... dry afternoon, though cloudy and cold. It was so near Christmas that the shops were gay with Christmas goods; but in those who have no money to spend in such luxuries, the Christmas display can only awaken a dull feeling of envy and discontent. By dint of much asking, after leaving the car, Gladys found the street where the Hepburns lived. It was not so squalid as the immediate neighbourhood of her own home, but it was inexpressibly dreary—one of these narrow long ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... bow. Amidst your train, this unseen judge will wait; Examine how you came by all your state; Upbraid your impious pomp; and, in your ear, Will hollow,—"Rebel, tyrant, murderer!" Your ill-got power wan looks and care shall bring, Known but by discontent to be a king. Of crowds afraid, yet anxious when alone, You'll sit and brood your sorrows ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... my arms and eyes say, Come, Pained with such discontent. For though thought have you all my senses ache— O, it was not meant My body should never wake But on ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... of this life may be compared to the gourd of Jonah, that notwithstanding we take great delight for a season in them, and find their Shadow very comfortable, yet their is some worm or other of discontent, of feare, or greife that lyes at root, which in great part withers the pleasure which else we should take in them; and well it is that we perceive a decay in their greennes, for were earthly comforts permanent, who would ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... impropriety of ceasing to exact legacy and probate duties beyond a certain sum, thus favouring the millionaire, as well as of excusing the highest of our society from all manner of taxation. These pieces of favouritism to the rich and great are only too reasonable causes of popular discontent, and must ere long cease. I would shut up half the public-houses in spite of all the brewers in the Lords and Commons; and for Church matters, parishioners should have some control over their pastors. If ever our Establishment is overthrown, that catastrophe will be due to clerical faults and defaults, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... conclude with the statement that not to move at all, not to stir, is the best rule. To lie naked, bitten by vermin, and not to disturb them, is religion. Like a true Puritan, the Jain regards pleasure in itself as sinful. "What is discontent, and what is pleasure? One should live subject to neither. Giving up all gaiety, circumspect, restrained, one should lead a religious life. Man! Thou art thine own friend; why longest thou for a friend beyond thyself?... First troubles, then pleasures; first pleasures, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... old Pyncheon House! Is it a wholesome place to live in, with its black shingles, and the green moss that shows how damp they are?—its dark, low-studded rooms—its grime and sordidness, which are the crystallization on its walls of the human breath, that has been drawn and exhaled here in discontent and anguish? The house ought to be purified with fire,—purified till only ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... it. Do all things without, apart from (choris), in a definite isolation from, murmurings and disputes, thoughts and utterances of discontent and self-assertion towards one another, grudgings of others' claims, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... will speak for yourself by your noble appearance—your self- reliant bearing, your energy and strength, which do not shrink from truth. Come, let us get ready for the ball, and, my friend, do not impose any restraint upon yourself there; give the reins to your discontent; tell every one frankly and bluntly that you are dissatisfied—that you ardently desire to be appointed general-in- chief, and that you would consider it a great misfortune if another man ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... the discontent became general, and every symptom became exaggerated. "When will he return?" said one. "What can he be thinking of?" said another. "This is death," said a third. This question was then put, but not determined, "Shall we ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... by an old priest nearly a hundred years of age, was listened to with interest; but what astonished me was to see the crowd stop at the church door, the women kissing; to hear laughter, chat, and criticism at the door of this sacred place as if it were the public square. I understood the discontent that knit my father's brows and the alacrity with which he descended the church steps. Tonton saw and came to us—so fresh, so young, she was indeed the queen of beauty and fashion. Out of nothing Tonton could work wonders. Her dress to-day was of camayeu the pattern of ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... other things to annoy him. He had fortunately transferred many of his trustworthy men from the Serapis to the Alliance, but there were enough of the latter ship's old officers and men to divide the crew into two hostile camps. The discontent at the delay over payment of wages and prize money had deepened. Although the crew was large, fierce in temper, and at first very anxious to look for further prizes, they yet, after the cruise had continued for some ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... to night, Of night scarce dark to day not bright. Still his road wound towards the right, Still he went, and still he went, Till one night he espied a light, In his discontent. ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... knowledge of how to dress, and a pleasant disposition, cankered just a little by a perpetual dread of the non-recognition of her genius. As the woman, Augusta Smith, she probably would have been unreservedly happy; as the super-woman, Rhapsodic Pantril, she lived within the border-line of discontent. Her most ordinary remarks were framed with the view of arresting attention; some one once said of her that she ordered a sack of potatoes with the air of one who is making ...
— When William Came • Saki

... themselves on arrival. 'At the time labourers were required in the interior, there were numbers idle in Sydney, supported at the expense of the government. Things wore a serious aspect; mischief-making parties, for some paltry gain, fed the spirit of discontent. The Irish lay in the streets, looking vacantly, and basking in the sun. Apart from them, Englishmen, sullen in feature, sat on gates and palings, letting their legs swing in the air. Another group was composed of Scotchmen, their hands ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... year following the attempt to remodel the certificate laws, certain legislative measures with reference to Yale College fed the discontent among the dissenting sects. For some years there had been an increasing dissatisfaction with the management of the college. It culminated in 1792 in the reorganization of the governing board, to which were added eight civilians, including the governor, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... most indigestion is in very truth nothing more nor less than an emotional disturbance, worked up by fear, anger, discontent, worry, ignorance, suggestion, attention to bodily functions which are meant to be ignored, love of notice and the conversion of moral distress into physical distress, the best diet list which ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... there is a draught, or the flies disturb one. Man is not capable of as much physical enjoyment as the other animals, though perhaps his enjoyment is keener during the first moments. Then comes thought, restlessness, discontent, change, effort, and progress, and the history of man's superiority is the ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... But discontent again became rife when it began to dawn on the Provincials that they would have to garrison Louisbourg till the next open season. The unwelcome truth was that, except for a few raw recruits, no reliefs were forthcoming from any quarter. The promised regulars had left Gibraltar ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... member of which family it was said she had been promised. There they had already painted the walls, and swept the courtyard, and all was in readiness to receive the bridal carriage. Sia was overcome with remorse and discontent. He no longer ate, and fell ill. His parents were quite stunned by the anxiety they felt on his account, and were incapable of ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... Glen Cove all that troubled Jeanne was that her pony had sprained a tendon, and that in the mixed doubles her eye was off the ball. Proctor Maddox suggested other causes for discontent. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... disease by its symptoms as well as the best, for I then thought the big men of the profession knew everything they pretended to know This was my ambition, but the ability to size up symptoms under given conditions and tell their true worth forever eluded me and kept me in a state of unrest and discontent that was next to ruining my life. If light had not come when it did I should have abandoned the profession, but it came accidentally; it could not come otherwise for I did not know how to look for it. In the course of time I stored in my memory many cases that from accident or caprice had recovered ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... reluctantly, "but of his physical superiority, and—and influence in the school. I may say, in fact, Mr. Roscoe, that till your ward entered the school it was a happy and harmonious family. His coming stirred up strife and discontent, and I consider him primarily responsible for all ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... no positive complaint, but she writes in a tone of weariness and discontent; she says next to nothing of Marmaduke, and she dwells perpetually on the one idea of my going to London to see her. I hope with my whole heart that I am wrong; but the rare allusions to her husband, and the constantly repeated desire to see her father (while ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... calumny is fitter to be scrawled with the midnight chalk of incendiaries, with "No Popery," on walls and doors of devoted houses, than to be mentioned in any civilized company. I had heard that the spirit of discontent on that subject was very prevalent here. With pleasure I find that I have been grossly misinformed. If it exists at all in this city, the laws have crushed its exertions, and our morals have shamed its appearance in daylight. I have pursued this spirit wherever I could trace it; but ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... out by constant chafing, sweaters torn, the blades of their shovels reduced by the work demanded of them, the drills, shortened by steady sharpening, gone like the spare flesh of the laborers, who, at last, began to show signs of quicker and quicker exhaustion with occasional mutterings of discontent, while Lund, intent only upon cleaning off the rock as a dentist cleans a crumbling tooth, coaxed and cursed, blamed and praised and bullied, and did the actual work ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... discontented. There is no end to discontentment, and contentment is the highest happiness. People who have reached the perfect way, do not grieve, they are always conscious of the final destiny of all creatures. One must not give way to discontent[17] for it is like a virulent poison. It kills persons of undeveloped intelligence, just as a child is killed by an enraged snake. That man has no manliness whose energies have left him and who is overpowered with perplexity when an occasion for ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... your poor brains," said she. "You can't escape me, however hard you try. But why should you wish to escape? I shall give you new forms that are much better than the ones you now have. Be contented with your fate, for discontent leads to unhappiness, and unhappiness, in any form, is the greatest evil that can ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... things began ere long to produce mortal effects on my constitution. I sickened. The lady of the house told me coolly I was the victim of 'wounded vanity.' She hinted that if I did not make an effort to quell my 'ungodly discontent,' to cease 'murmuring against God's appointment,' and to cultivate the profound humility befitting my station, my mind would very likely 'go to pieces' on the rock that wrecked most of my sisterhood—morbid self-esteem—and that I should die an ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... inhabitants. It was what I expected in a degree, because it is rare that the exercise of authority should prove satisfactory to all who are the objects of it. The distresses which were produced by the long continued drought unavoidably tended to heighten the general discontent; yet I have reason to fear that the cause existed principally in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppressive administration. Of a multitude of petitions which were presented to me, and of which I took minutes, every one that did not relate to a personal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... conceived that by persuading them, they would be actuated by greater zeal, than by commanding their obedience. It was, moreover, by their sentiments that he was enabled to judge of those of the rest of his army; in short, like all other men, the silent discontent of his household disturbed him. Surrounded by disapproving countenances, and opinions contrary to his own, he felt himself uncomfortable. And, besides, to obtain their assent to his plan, was in some degree to make them share the responsibility which possibly weighed ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... widened the fruit and game supply. Plenty reigned at Settlement Cliffs; and a prosperity such as the Folk had never known in the Abyss, a well-being, a luxurious variety of foodstuffs—fruits, meats, wild vegetables—as well as a profusion of furs for clothing, banished discontent. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... into deeper unfoldment we come into the real work of life, we meet with responsibilities and its experiences; we are baffled again, buffeted, besieged by the perplexities of doubt and fear and human discontent and we feel that, strive as we will, we are not yet ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

... and misery, experienced by the peasants in their comfortless hovels, awakens a feeling of discontent and protest. This feeling of protest, among the poor and illiterate, permeates upward and becomes more intense as it proceeds. In this unorganized protest the hand of one is arrayed against his fellow man. The common people are arrayed against the nobles; the nobles, against each other, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... in the two languages of the country were issued and sold in all the public-houses. Congregations were gathered in all the cities, and even small towns, and everywhere the authorities could see that no spirit of discontent with anything but sin and evil habits was being created, but that the police would find their tasks lightened, and the life of the poorest of the people brightened and bettered, if they let the work ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... power to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in you. What you have said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have misunderstood you. If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise, I much wish you would think seriously before you decide. What I have said I will most ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... worked stockings, striped gaiters, and silver buckles for the shoes, all disappeared; and Gaspard Caderousse, unable to appear abroad in his pristine splendor, had given up any further participation in the pomps and vanities, both for himself and wife, although a bitter feeling of envious discontent filled his mind as the sound of mirth and merry music from the joyous revellers reached even the miserable hostelry to which he still clung, more for the shelter than ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... with Life! in discontent Restless thro' Fortune's mingled scenes I went, 10 Yet wept to think they would return no more! O cease fond heart! in such sad thoughts to roam, For surely thou ere long shalt reach thy home, And pleasant is the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... who demands free trade. This is substantially correct, although the Populists seem to be as strong in the agricultural South as in the silver-producing West. The Populist Party, indeed, originated among, the agriculturists of the South, and was the outgrowth of discontent among the farmers; and in saying that Populism has its stronghold in the West, or silver-producing section, we simply mean that the farmers' organization has been captured by the silver interest. They seem to think that their own prosperity ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... night could have fallen asleep, between memory, or longing and discontent, is difficult to tell, had he not on his arrival home found a package of papers, an interesting theft case. He sat down instantly to read, and day dawned ere they were finished. His last thought, before his eyelids closed, was,— Two years ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various

... and nothing short of direct administration under the authority of the Crown will, in my opinion, remedy the evil. Two prisoners have been, in separate instances, forcibly rescued from jail, and they, with about thirty to fifty others implicated in the riots, are still at large, fostering discontent, and creating great disquiet. Their secret instigator controls the only paper published in the settlement, and its continued attacks upon the Company find a greedy ear with the public at large, both in the settlement and in Canada. The position ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... spirits brightened the quiet cottage and left their echo behind through the dull week. She was by no means an unmixed good when she lived there. Her vivacity, having nothing to expend itself on, often turned to desperate fits of discontent and ennui, but now, coming home was a ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... power which propelled them. On arriving in New York, one's first thought is of riches; in Washington, of glory. What a difference between this capital and those he had seen abroad! There was no militarism here, no conscription, no governmental oppression, no signs of discontent, no officers treading on the rights and ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath



Words linked to "Discontent" :   yearning, dysphoria, rebellious, longing, restless, discontentment, unhappy, disaffected, discontentedness, dissatisfied, contentment, disgruntlement



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