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].
- In the quarrels of the road is the shedding of blood: and their cursing is a grievous hearing.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - But the Lord scourged Pharao and his house with most grievous stripes for Sarai, Abram's wife.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - The complaints I hear of thee are grievous.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands Of this most grievous murder!
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - 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 - 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 - She found me in grievous peril, through despair of ever finding truth.
— from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine - He has been a disappointment to me, Mr. Holmes—a grievous disappointment.
— from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle