Word Finder - pathos

definition

The quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, especially that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality.

definition

A writer or speaker's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions such as pity.

definition

An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.

definition

In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully lived, engaged life.

definition

Suffering; the enduring of active stress or affliction.

The dramatic performance was rich in sad pathos and left the audience with teary eyes.

The pathos of the Children's Crusade of 1212 only nerved him to fresh efforts.

The tender, half-broken tones in which these words were said, the inexpressible pathos of his voice and manner, were never forgotten by those who heard that Wednesday morning speech.

The pathos at the underfunded orphanage left me overwhelmed.

The autobiography in Latin verse, with its playful humour, occasional pathos and sublime self-complacency, was thrown off at the age of eighty-four.

Pathos and indignation, subtlety and simplicity, personal appeal and political reasoning, were the alternate weapons with which she fought against all odds of evidence or inference, and disputed step by step every inch of debatahle ground.

Many masterpieces in this museum are iconic representations of pathos in art.

And in these three works of fiction there are not only humour and pathos, character and truth, there is also the largeness of outlook on life such as we find only in the works of the masters.

The pathos of such tragedies as the death of Gunnar and Hoskuld and the burning is interrupted by the humour of the Althing scenes and the intellectual interest of the legal proceedings.

His quaint humour alternating with genuine pathos, and above all his simple and singularly unaffected devotional nature, made him as a preacher without a peer in his own time and country.

However, a performance of the role that brings that pathos out more effectively would give greater weight to the happy ending.

She's written so much for the stage and screen that have so much pathos, which I find a very interesting angle.

And we read, the story told with great pathos, what happens next.

Yet there is genuine pathos in the regrets and resentments of the two sisters.

The medieval church was not really interested in the human pathos of the infant Jesus.

Peter, how- ever, supposed a certain pathos in Jesus ' question.

Although marred by occasional schmaltz, it generally manages to strike a good balance between pathos and lightheartedness.

The magnificent piece in praise of winter, the solemn and beautiful cadences of "Departure," and the homely but elevated pathos of "The Toys," are in their various manners unsurpassed in English poetry for sublimity of thought and perfection of expression.

The fine Thucydidean speeches, the dramatic power of grasping character, and the pathos and poetry that run through the stories, along with a humour such as is shown in the Edda, and a varied grace of style that never flags or palls, make Snorri one of the greatest of historians.

On the one hand, they produce a theatrically enthralling combination of brilliant farce and deep pathos.

Hulk's diary As with much of the best comedy, there are glimpses of real pathos here.

In front of a work of such tender pathos the viewer is almost compelled to offer a hand in aid.

Pathos Poetry (or other literature) which evokes pity or sadness in the reader e.g. Send No Money by Philip Larkin.

The cast fires on all cylinders and is aided by a fine witty script which crackles with pathos.

Already in this play Ford exhibits the singular force of his pathos; the despondent misery of the aged Meleander, and the sweetness of the last scene, in which his daughter comes back to him, alike go to the heart.

No contemporary, unaided by personal knowledge, could be expected to trust in Wagner's purity of ideal on the strength of Tannhauser, which actually achieved popularity by such coarse methods of climax as the revivalistic end of the overture, by such maudlin pathos as 0 du mein holder Abendstern, and by the amiably childish grand-opera skill with which half the action is achieved by processions and a considerable fraction of the music is represented by fanfares.

The pathos of natural affection is occasionally recognized in Statius and more rarely in Martial,' but it has not the depth of tenderness found in Lucretius and Virgil.

In the Silvae, though many of them have little root in the deeper feelings of human nature, we find occasionally more than in any poetry after the Augustan age something of the purer charm and pathos of life.

The generous scorn and pathos of the historian acting on extraordinary gifts of imaginative insight and characterization, and the fierce indignation of the satirist finding its vent in exaggerating realism, doubtless to some extent warped their impressions; nevertheless their works are the last voices expressive of the freedom and manly virtue of the ancient world.

From a literary point of view Phaedrus is inferior to Babrius, and to his own imitator, La Fontaine; he lacks the quiet picturesqueness and pathos of the former, and the exuberant vivacity and humour of the latter.

Even in the existing versions of the letters, translated from the lost originals and retranslated from this translation of a text which was probably destroyed in 1603 by order of King James on his accession to the English throne - even in these possibly disfigured versions, the fiery pathos of passion, the fierce and piteous fluctuations of spirit between love and hate, hope and rage and jealousy, have an eloquence apparently beyond the imitation or invention of art (see Casket Letters 1).

In his greatest extant speech-that Against Eratosthenes-and also in the fragmentary Olympiacus, he has pathos and fire; but these were not characteristic qualities of his work.

He was the first to impart to the Roman adaptations of Greek tragedy the masculine dignity, pathos and oratorical fervour which continued to animate them in the hands of Pacuvius and Accius, and, when set off by the acting of Aesopus, called forth vehement applause in the age of Cicero.

A national policy of "growling before fighting" - later practised successfully enough by the United States - was not then possible; and one writer has very justly said that what chiefly affects one in the whole matter is the pathos of it - "a philosopher and a friend of peace struggling with a despot of superhuman genius, and a Tory cabinet of superhuman insolence and stolidity" (Trent).

He chose his subjects from the national history, and began with the Auto de Gil Vicente, in which he resuscitated the founder of the theatre, and followed this up with other prose plays, among which the Alfageme de Santarem takes the palm; finally he crowned his labours by Frei Luiz de Sousa, a tragedy of fatality and pathos and one 'of the really notable pieces of the century.

Though these Triumphs, as a whole, are deficient in poetic inspiration, the second canto of the Trionfo della morte, in which Petrarch describes a vision of his dead love Laura, is justly famous for reserved passion and pathos tempered to a tranquil harmony.

His mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic power, his instinctive art of impersonation, which had become a second nature, his vivid imagination, his breadth of intellectual view, the catholicity of his sympathies, his passionate enthusiasm, which made for the moment his immediate theme seem to him the one theme of transcendent importance, his quaint humour alternating with genuine pathos, and above all his simple and singularly unaffected devotional nature, made him as a preacher without a peer in his own time and country.

To these generalizations there are few exceptions, though Icelandic literature includes a group of poems which possess qualities of high imagination, deep pathos, fresh love of nature, passionate dramatic power, and noble simplicity of language which Icelandic poetry lacks.

He surpasses the school of Antiphon in perspicuity, the school of Lysias in verve, the school of Isocrates in variety, in felicity, in symmetry, in pathos, in power.

Even without understanding the words of the Italian opera, the American students felt the passion and pathos of the performance.

Movie companies invest time and effort to craft a compelling trailer that captures their movie's excitement, intrigue, suspense, romance, laughs, drama, and pathos.

The abbreviated version is easy to follow and doesn't skimp on the pathos featured in the original series.

Alexander Carlyle, the famous divine (1 77 2-1805), whose Memorials of his Times still affords fascinating reading, ministered for fifty-five years in the parish church, in the graveyard of which lies David Macbeth Moir (1798-1851), who under the pen-name of " Delta " wrote Mansie Wauch, a masterpiece of Scots humour and pathos.

His music is in this way singularly expressive; its humour and pathos.

For the most part flowing easily along, it rises on fit occasions to splendour, picturesque beauty or pathos.

Prayers and other formulas have been copied down by Sahagun and other chroniclers, of endless prolixity, but not without occasional touches of pathos.

She wrote to Elizabeth and the duke of Guise two letters of almost matchless eloquence and pathos, admirable especially for their loyal and grateful remembrance of all her faithful servants.

Several of the more important fragments are found in Cicero, who expresses a great admiration for their manly fortitude and dignified pathos.

His style is clear, absolutely unadorned, and somewhat lacking in force; he appeals constantly to the intellect rather than to the emotions, and is seldom picturesque, though in describing a few famous scenes, such as the execution of Charles I., he writes with pathos and dignity.

Heber's hymns and other poems are distinguished by finish of style, pathos and soaring aspiration; but they lack originality, and are rather rhetorical than poetical in the strict sense.