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Literary notes about grievous (AI summary)

Literature employs the term "grievous" to evoke a sense of profound sorrow, moral weight, or calamity, often intensifying the emotional impact of a scene or character’s plight. In religious texts, for instance, it underscores divine wrath or sinfulness, as when harsh penalties or curses are described with a weighty severity [1], [2]. In dramatic works, it highlights emotional or physical despair, whether through expressions of deep personal loss or the bitter consequences of fate [3], [4]. The term also appears in philosophical and critical discussions, where it labels significant errors or burdens that afflict the human condition [5], [6]. Across varying contexts, "grievous" is consistently used to denote something not merely unfortunate, but marked by an almost tangible intensity of suffering or wrongdoing [7], [8].
  1. In the quarrels of the road is the shedding of blood: and their cursing is a grievous hearing.
    — from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete
  2. But the Lord scourged Pharao and his house with most grievous stripes for Sarai, Abram's wife.
    — from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete
  3. The complaints I hear of thee are grievous.
    — from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
  4. How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands Of this most grievous murder!
    — from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
  5. Did perhaps a new knowledge come to thee, a bitter, grievous knowledge?
    — from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
  6. There is nothing more certain than the general truth that it is the grievous sin of the world which has produced the grievous suffering of the world .
    — from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer
  7. She found me in grievous peril, through despair of ever finding truth.
    — from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
  8. He has been a disappointment to me, Mr. Holmes—a grievous disappointment.
    — from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

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