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More "Bane" Quotes from Famous Books



... and great beauty of person, and he returned only vanity and weakness for these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die a moral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vain of God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity is the bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because it is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... faint sigh of assent. She was disappointed by her sister's tone; for in the time past she had more than once suspected that Geraldine Challoner loved George Fairfax with a passionate half-despairing love, which, if unrequited, might make the bane of her life. And, lo! here was the same Geraldine discussing her engagement as coolly as if the match had been the veriest marriage of convenience ever planned by a designing dowager. She did not understand how much pride had to do with this reticence, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... will, Or that renown'd Ulysses were my sire, 120 Or that himself might wander home again. Whereof hope yet remains! then might I lose My head, that moment, by an alien's hand, If I would fail, ent'ring Ulysses' gate, To be the bane and mischief of them all. But if alone to multitudes opposed I should perchance be foiled; nobler it were With my own people, under my own roof To perish, than to witness evermore Their unexampled deeds, guests shoved aside, 130 Maidens dragg'd forcibly ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... thou bane of fear, And last deserter of the brave, Thou soothing ease of mortal care, Thou traveller beyond the grave; Thou soul of patience, airy food, Bold warrant of a distant good, Reviving cordial, kind decoy; Though fortune frowns and friends depart, Though Silvia flies me, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... or seventy years after date, is of the finest, whilst Sir Mungo Malagrowther[18] all but deserves the same description. But this most cantankerous knight is not touched off with the completeness of Dalgetty, or even of Claud Halcro. Lord Glenvarloch adds, to the insipidity which is the bane of Scott's good heroes, some rather disagreeable traits which none of them had hitherto shown. Dalgarno in the same way falls short of his best bad heroes. Dame Suddlechop suggests, for the first time unfavourably, a Shakespearean ancestress, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... of Normandy has won The battle, to our bane. On the field of Hastings, where he fought, The king ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... your wisdom the fruits of our joint councils, joint efforts, and common dangers; reverence religion, diffuse knowledge throughout your land, patronize the arts and sciences; let Liberty and Order be inseparable companions. Control party spirit, the bane of free governments; observe good faith to, and cultivate peace with all nations, shut up every avenue to foreign influence, contract rather than extend national connection, rely on yourselves only; be Americans in thought, word and deed;—thus will you give immortality to that ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... vineyards, but a humid air is fatal to success especially if the air is both warm and wet. Moist weather during the time of maturity is particularly disastrous to the grape, as are frequent fogs. Cold wet weather in blooming time is the grape-grower's vernal bane, since it most effectually prevents the setting of fruit. It may be laid down as a rule that the grape lives by sunlight, warmth and air—it often thrives on the desert's edge. These considerations make ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... poison in my breast, and here at my girdle hangs a dagger; are not the two of them enough to make an end of one frail life? Should they dare to touch me, I shall tell them through the bars that most certainly I shall drink the bane, or use the knife; and when they know it, they will leave me unharmed, hoping to starve me out, or trusting to chance to ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... bed room, is contained a very large collection of tracts and printed volumes relating to the FAIR SEX: being, in fact, nothing less than a prodigious heap of publications "FOR and AGAINST" the ladies. M. Chardin will not separate them—adding that the "bane and antidote must ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... again: "Cousin, forsooth of this opinion Thou hast a vain imagination. This prison caused me not for to cry; But I was hurt right now thorough mine eye Into mine heart; that will my bane* be. *destruction The fairness of the lady that I see Yond in the garden roaming to and fro, Is cause of all my crying and my woe. I *n'ot wher* she be woman or goddess, *know not whether* But Venus is it, soothly* as I guess, *truly And therewithal on knees ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... favorable opinion of the Jesuit missions than Protestants have usually allowed themselves to entertain, and felt both kindly and respectfully toward the padres, who in the earlier days of these settlements had done, he believed, a useful work. But the great bane of the Portuguese settlements was slavery. Slavery prevented a good example, it hindered justice, it kept down improvement. If a settler took a fancy to a good-looking girl, he had only to buy her, and make her his concubine. Instead of correcting the polygamous habits of the chiefs and others, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... no Dirzee? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... bane and admiration. He was presumed by the verdant patrons of the paper to be its owner and principal editor, its type-setter, pressman, and carrier. His hair was elaborately curled, and his ears were perfect racks of long and dandyfied pens; a broad, shovel-shaped ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... it were not for the incredulity and doubt and agnostico-schismatical hesitation, and very cumbersome air of questioning-and-peering-about, which is the bane of our moderns, very certainly I should now go on to tell of giants as big as cedars, living in mountains of precious stones, and drawn to battle by dragons in cars of gold; or of towns where the customs of men were remote and unexpected; of countries not yet visited, and of the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... of this series contains different varieties, no Stamp being included in two Packets, and purchasers will by this novel method be saved the inconvenience of acquiring duplicates, which is as a rule the bane of most ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell

... Almond along the vale are associated with much romance. Some time in the last century there lived at Corrivarlich a noted sheep-stealer named Alastair Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... decrease, So by degrees they leave the seas. Not merchants now, but companies, Remove whole manufactories. All arts and crafts neglected lie: Content, the bane of industry, Makes 'em admire their homely store, And neither seek nor covet more. So few in the vast hive remain, The hundredth part they can't maintain Against th' insults of numerous foes, Whom yet they ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... night I am sleepless * and by day in distress * consumed with increasing wasting and pain * and longing and love unfain * abounding in sighs * with tear flooded eyes * by passion captive ta'en * of Desire the slain * with heart seared by the parting of us twain * the debtor of longing bane, of sickness cup-companion * I am the sleepless one, who never closeth eye * the slave of love, whose tears run never dry * for the fire of my heart is still burning * and never hidden is the flame of my yearning." Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... meadows blooming with parsley and violet. Yea, if thither indeed had come e'en one of the Deathless, e'en he Had wondered and gladdened his heart with all that was there to see. And there in sooth stood wondering the Flitter, the Argus-bane. But when o'er all these matters in his soul he had marvelled amain, Then into the wide cave went he, and Calypso, Godhead's Grace, Failed nowise there to know him as she looked upon his face; For never unknown to each other are the Deathless Gods, though ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... bore himself with the honor of a soldier and the purity of a Christian,—triumphantly sustaining himself throughout a Congressional investigation set on foot by political malice, and confronting with equal credit a military inquiry which had its origin in the jealousy that is often the bane ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... whom thy brooding parents love For what thou art, and what they hope to see thee, Unhallow'd sprites, and earth-born phantoms flee thee; Thy soft simplicity, a hovering dove, That still keeps watch from blight and bane to free thee, With its weak wings, in peaceful care outspread, Fanning invisibly thy pillow'd head, Strikes evil powers with reverential dread, Beyond the sulphurous bolts of fabled Jove, Or whatsoe'er of amulet or charm ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... whereon to gaze, And sighing, shivering there around to stray; To give a penny would the niggard craze, And worse than bane ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... court, rise and begin with "May it please the Court," "May it please your honor," or, before a court in bane, "May it please your honors." The term "you" would never be used to a judge on the bench; but that of "your Honor" would ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... what a stately pace Comes thine alabaster steed; Servant of heroic deed! O'er his loins, his trappings glow Like the northern lights on snow. Mount his back! thy sword unsheath! Sign of the enchanter's death; Bane of every wicked spell; Silencer of dragon's yell. Alas! thou this wilt never do: Thou art an enchantress too, And wilt surely never spill Blood of those ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats

... have collected. He is decidedly our beat conchologist in New York, and I would rather trust him than most men—for he is by no means afflicted with the mania of desiring to multiply new species, which, is, at present, the bane of natural history. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... gracefully as he paced along. His gait confounded all those who gazed upon him, as he shamed the branches with his shape and belittled the rose with the redness of his cheeks and his black eyes of Babili witchcraft: thou wouldst deem that whoso looked on him would surely be preserved from bane and bale;[FN288] for he was even as saith of him one of his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... toil in the rocky soil He dug a trench profound, That in the flood of serpent blood And bane ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... of Eleusis came to Theseus and wanted to make him their king. "You have slain the tyrant who was the bane of Eleusis," they said, "and we have heard how you have also rid the world of the giant robbers who were the terror of the land. Come now and be our king; for we know that you will rule ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... all!" exclaimed Vane, with a burst of righteous wrath, "they are the bane and curse of Christianity, and have been ever since Constantine made it official and fashionable. They are responsible for every corruption that has crept into the Church, for every blot that defiles the purity of the Creed. They are not Christians, and they never have been, for they cannot ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... how fierce a king is here The stayer of falling folks, the bane of fear! Fair life he liveth, ruling passing well, Disdaining praise of Heaven and hate of Hell; And yet how goodly to us Great in Heaven Are such as he, the waning world that leaven! How well it were that such should never die! ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, By the cross are sanctified; Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that through ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton

... ascended since we abandoned our canoes we have risen to no less than three thousand feet above sea-level. Hence there is a considerable change both in the temperature and in the vegetation. We have shaken off some of that horrible insect life which is the bane of tropical travel. A few palms still survive, and many tree-ferns, but the Amazonian trees have been all left behind. It was pleasant to see the convolvulus, the passion-flower, and the begonia, all reminding me ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... frescoes we have, it is true, many a quaint bit of genre (superior to Teniers only because of superior associations), but never again the fairy tale. And as the better recedes, it is replaced by the worse, by the bane of all genre painting, non-significant detail, and positive bad taste. Have London or New York or Berlin worse to show us than the jumble of buildings in his ideal of a great city, his picture of Babylon? It may ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... the people cannot be permitted to land, the different men-of-war in company are sure to send boat-loads of visitors, or what are called "liberty men," on board one another's ships, to pass the afternoon of Sunday. This practice is the very bane of good discipline, and ought at all times to be discouraged in every way; for it almost inevitably leads to drunkenness, rioting, and bitter heart-burnings. It has, moreover, the effect of making the men discontented with ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... perhaps one should say a trench-hold word. Who is ever the worse for a laugh? Certainly not the soldier in trench or dug-out or shell-swept billet. Rather may it be said that the Bairnsfather laughter has acted in thousands of cases as an antidote to the bane of depression. It is the good fortune of the British Army to possess such an antidote, and the ill-fortune of the other belligerents that they do ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather

... evangelicals in Germany trembled at the onslaught of the new theologians. For these services the Brethren have been both blamed and praised. According to that eminent historian, Ritschl, such men as Spangenberg were the bane of the Lutheran Church. According to Dorner, the evangelical theologian, the Brethren helped to save the Protestant faith from ruin. "When other Churches," says Dorner, "were sunk in sleep, when darkness was almost everywhere, it ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... beheldest them. Thine ear Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen, In shattering the dark in evil's den, Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain Lost Paradise, or bane its atmosphere. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... the world," she replied. "Men whose lives were the bane of their fellow creatures. Men who poisoned the air, which is the common breath of all, for their own selfish purposes. There was short work with such men in old Roman times. Just in the moment of their triumph, a hand, as of an avenging giant, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... doctor, getting out his clinical thermometer. "It has been her bane, poor lady, that difficult temper. Years have ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... man save when that bane of the woodsman, rheumatism, laid him by the heels. He had a bit of a farm in the tamarack swamp. Once, being laid up by his arch enemy, with his joints stiffened and muscles throbbing with pain, Toby had seen the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... rank, however, that seemed most busy for good or mischief in human affairs: such gods as Pele, the spirit of the volcanoes, with her five brothers and eight sisters who lived in the flaming caverns of Kilauea; or as Kalaipahoa, poison-goddess of Molokai, and her two sisters, who put a bane on the trees so deadly that they rivalled the fabled Upas of Java, and birds fell lifeless as they attempted to fly above them (a volcanic sulphur vent was probably the origin of this tale); or, as Kuahana, who slew men for sport; or, as Pohakaa, who rolled rocks down the mountains to scare ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... the tenth of the produce in kind. Curiously enough, the converse proposition has lately found favour in India in connection with the agrarian riots in the Dekkan, and what is there regarded as the bane of the Indian system is now proposed here as the antidote of the Turkish system. Like the Cypriote, but in a greater degree, the Dekkan peasant is poor, indebted, and indifferent to the improvement of his land, and both ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... drew on with rain, nor yet they ceased Within the hall to drink the gleaming wine, And late they pour'd the last cup of the feast, To Argus-bane, the Messenger divine; And last, 'neath torches tall that smoke and shine, The maidens strew'd the beds with purple o'er, That Diocles and Paris might recline All night, beneath the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... yourself, there, there, my dear, there, poor dear man'! Ach, mercy on us! Calm yourself, will you?" she shouted frantically. "Oh, you bane of my life!" ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... "Well, Bane," and the officer eyed his trim appearance with manifest approval, "what did you succeed ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... You know perfectly well, Jack, that insincerity is the bane of domestic and social life; that hypocrisy is a child of the Evil One, and that vain and false pretensions are the fatal lures that lead us on to destruction. How can we respect ourselves or expect our friends to respect us if the most conspicuous ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... for the natives than the cold seasons; and the explorer is often urged to take advantage of them. He must, however, consult local experience. Whilst ascending rivers in November, for instance, he may find the many feet of flood a boon or a bane, and his marching journeys are nearly sure to end in ulcerated feet, as was the case with poor Dr. Livingstone. The rains drench the country till the latter end of December, when the Nanga or "little ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... of change, in a portion of our people, this craving for universal equality, by the blind victims of popular fanaticism, finds its parallel in the destructive element of European radicalism, (that bane of European democracy,) which mistakes freedom for the right of plunder, and Democracy for the right of popular despotism. It is that blind spirit of rage which adapts not the means to the end, but overreaches itself, and falls a prey to its own ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... of them to the poison of whiskey, which is desolating their houses. No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey. Fix but the duty at the rate of other merchandise, and we can drink wine here as cheap as we do grog: and who will not prefer it? Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a much enlarged circle. Every one in easy circumstances (as the bulk of our citizens are) will prefer it ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... thou ne'er gavest nane, Every nighte and alle; The whinnes shall pricke thee to the bare bane, And ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... incurable antagonism in which they dwell. But can men, whose interests are diverse, ever hope to live together in a harmony uncoerced? Can the brotherhood of the race of mankind ever hope to prevail in a man-of-war, where one man's bane is almost another's blessing? By abolishing the scourge, shall we do away tyranny; that tyranny which must ever prevail, where of two essentially antagonistic classes in perpetual contact, one is immeasurably the stronger? Surely it seems all but impossible. And as the very object of a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... the wrist the other's hand, while among them sings one neither unlovely, nor of body contemptible, but divinely tall and fair, Artemis the Archer, nurtured with Apollo. Among them sport Ares, and the keen-eyed Bane of Argos, while Phoebus Apollo steps high and disposedly, playing the lyre, and the light issues round him from twinkling feet and fair-woven raiment. But all they are glad, seeing him so high of heart, Leto of the golden tresses, and Zeus the Counsellor, beholding their ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... remarked by an elegant historian,[**] that conquerors though usually the bane of bunian kind, proved often, in those feudal limes, the most indulgent of sovereigns: they stood most in need of supplies from their people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit to the necessary impositions, they were obliged to make ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... of the Muse, Which to divulge might shake profane belief, And tell the irreligion of my grief; Grief that excused the tribute of my knees, And shaped my passion in such words as these! Malignant goddess! bane to my repose, Thou universal cause of all my woes; Say whence it comes that thou art grown of late A poor amusement for my scorn and hate; The malice thou inspirest I never fail On thee to wreak the tribute when I rail; Fool's commonplace thou art, their weak ensconcing fort, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... first peopling of paradise the Almighty had never laid so strict a charge on our father Adam to refrain from eating of the tree of knowledge except he had thereby forewarned that the taste of knowledge would be the bane of all happiness. St. Paul says expressly, that knowledge puffeth up, i.e., it is fatal and poisonous. In pursuance whereunto St. Bernard interprets that exceeding high mountain whereon the devil had erected his seat to have been the mountain of knowledge. And perhaps this may be another ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... mingle. Corydon, You are a boor, nor heeds a whit your gifts Alexis; no, nor would Iollas yield, Should gifts decide the day. Alack! alack! What misery have I brought upon my head!- Loosed on the flowers Siroces to my bane, And the wild boar upon my crystal springs! Whom do you fly, infatuate? gods ere now, And Dardan Paris, have made the woods their home. Let Pallas keep the towers her hand hath built, Us before all things let the woods delight. The grim-eyed lioness ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... very few people know it, the most valuable of all metals has been discovered on the upper waters of the Pahang River and tributaries. The Chinese swarm in their thousands on the western slopes, and outnumber the Malays by more than three to one. They are surely the bane of the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... points upon which Mr. Hathorn had laid the greatest stress Mr. Porson was indifferent—dates, which had been the bane of many a boy's life and an unceasing source of punishment, he regarded but little, insisting only that the general period should be known, and his questions generally took the form of, "In the beginning or at the end of such and such a century, what was ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... Blind instruments of many-eyed Rapine And purposes they share not, and scarce know; And this fell hate that makes a gulf between The Lombard and the German, aids the foe Who tramples both divided, and whose bane Is in the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... school. The good city of Boston alone teems with transcendental schemes for the total and immediate regeneration of mankind. There we find Peace Societies, and New Moral World Societies, and Teetotal Societies, and Anti-Slavery Societies, all "in full blast," each opposing to its respective bane the most sweeping and exaggerated remedies. The Americans never do things by halves; their vices and their virtues are alike in extremes, and the principles of the second book of the Ethics of Aristotle[5] are altogether unknown ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... thy flocks to Cleitor's bounds thou'st hied, Take from this fount a draught, and grant a rest To all thy goats the water nymphs beside. But bathe not in't when full of drunken cheer, Lest the mere vapour may bring thee to bane; Shun my vine-hating spring—Melampus here From madness once washed Proetus' daughters sane, And all th' offscouring here did hide, when they From Argos came to ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... slave! Gold is my fear, my bane, my death! I hate Its yellow glare, its aspect hard and cold. I would be rid of ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... quieted his doubts and fears when he was received into the Roman Church. To many of us Authority is the life-buoy which supports us "o'er crag and torrent till the night is gone"; but Francis Newman could not believe in it. "Authority is the bane," he would say, "of religion." He must see with his intellectual eyes, to be saved. He must see and touch Truth for himself; his intellectual self must be convinced, or he must stand outside the creeds he knew—a ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... universally installed First Physician and Man of Science, which last qualification he could apply to all purposes, from the boiling of an egg to the giving a lecture. He was, indeed, qualified, like many of his profession, to spread both the bane and antidote before a dyspeptic patient, being as knowing a gastronome as Dr. Redgill himself, or any other worthy physician who has written for the benefit of the cuisine, from Dr. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, to the late Dr. Hunter of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... this contretemps would have been avoided had I not been followed by one of those pests, a guide, the sight of whom caused me to make undue hurry over the frozen surface. Harpies of this ilk are the bane of sight-seeing ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... though we had been princesses. But everything we said was noted, and everything we did cautiously watched; therefore for a short time we tasted something of the horrors of that publicity which must be the bane ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... kings and queens And falling leaves and flying rain, With Time to mow, and Fate who gleans Their good and evil, boon and bane. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... its paying into the treasury above 900,000l. near a million of money annually. And thus, under the names of rum, brandy, gin, whisky, usquebaugh, wine, cyder, beer, and porter, alcohol is become the bane of the Christian world, as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... spurns What Wisdom did ordain: God's rest to Satan's use he turns,— A blessing to a bane. Flowers above and thorns below, Little pleasure, lasting woe,— Such is the ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown

... to that restless desire for change which is the bane of so many persons of both sexes at the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... the throne of his father, was a shy, proud, delicate youth of twenty-four years, having only a superficial knowledge of public affairs, scarcely known to the Ministers, and endowed with a narrow pedantic nature which was to be the bane of his people. He lacked alike the sagacity, the foresight, and the suppleness of Leopold. Further, though his inexperience should have inspired him with a dread of war for his storm-tossed States, yet that same misfortune subjected ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... It reminds me of the first chapter of Genesis. But how should they know that it is good? That is the mystery to me. I am always agreeably disappointed; it is incredible that they should have found it out. Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane, and which the antidote. There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite. Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices both always in full blast. Yet you must take advice of the one school as if there was no other. In ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... hound both fleet and strong: He ate at my board, and he slept by my bed, And ran with me all the day long. But my wife took a priest, a shaveling priest, And 'such friendships are carnal,' quoth he. So my wife and her priest they drugged the poor beast, And the rat's bane is waiting for me. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... gratified by your communicative letter on your return from Scotland, where you spent, I find, some considerable time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry; because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do: but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... and anxiety to exalt himself, came forward to the rescue, and, with a mixture of casuistical cunning and real ingenuity, tried, as some one has it, "to make Pope a Christian," although, even in Warburton's hands, like the dying Donald Bane in "Waverley," he "makes but a queer Christian after all;" and his system, essentially Pantheistic, contrives to ignore the grand Scripture principles of a Fall, of a Divine Redeemer, of a Future World, and the glorious light ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... Ulick, changing his note to eagerness. 'La grande nation herself finds that logic was her bane. Consistency was never made for man! Why where would this world be if it did not go two ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... our Mystical Chorus, O come to the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon's pride— On the lips of that foreigner base, of Athens the bane and disgrace, There is shrieking, his kinsman by race, The garrulous swallow of Thrace; From that perch of exotic descent, Rejoicing her sorrow to vent, She pours to her spirit's content, a nightingale's woeful lament, That e'en though ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... twice his back. But when his nut-brown sword was out, With stomach huge he laid about, Imprinting many a wound upon 800 His mortal foe, the truncheon. The trusty cudgel did oppose Itself against dead-doing blows, To guard its leader from fell bane, And then reveng'd itself again. 805 And though the sword (some understood) In force had much the odds of wood, 'Twas nothing so; both sides were ballanc't So equal, none knew which was valiant'st: For wood with Honour b'ing engag'd, 810 Is so implacably ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... to have the best Portland stone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury, it so happened that parliamentary interest, which is often the bane of fair pursuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never sunk either in its foundation or in its arches, which were so much the subject ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... league. Still from his cave the Seer Admonished, 'Set the foe against the foe; Slay last the conqueror!' and from rock and hill The Bard cried, 'Vengeance!' In the bardic clan That hatred of their country's ancient bane Lived like a faith. One night it chanced a tarn, Secreted high 'mid cold and moonless hills, Bursting its bank down burst. That valley's Bard Clomb to the church-roof from his buried house: Thence rang his song,—'twas 'Vengeance!—Vengeance' ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... look before we part, * Nerving my heart this severance to sustain: But, an this parting deal thee pain and bane, * Leave me to die of love and spare ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... his magic can invent an antidote to the bane," said he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into the wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, the secret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... replied Jadee, "have been the bane of the Malay race; no one knows the amount of villainy, the bloody cruelty of their system towards us. They drive us into our prahus to escape their taxes and laws, and then declare us pirates and put us to death. ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he wamblet to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster.—Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound, the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... botanist Karl recognised at a glance. It was a species of aconite, or wolf's-bane, and very similar to the kindred species, Aconitum napellus, or "monk's hood," of Europe, whose roots furnish the most potent ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... land in which I lived, by a fell bane Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side, 695 And stabled in our homes,—until the chain Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide That blasting curse men had no shame—all vied In evil, slave and despot; fear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... beginning to cry (for the last letters received from Berenger had been those from Paris, while he still believed Eustacie to have perished at La Sablerie); 'and I do say it is very hard that just when he is rid of the French baggage, the bane of his life, and is coming home, maybe with a child upon his hands, and all wounded, scarred, and blurred, the only wench he would or should have married should throw herself away on a French vagabond beggar, and you aiding ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... public voice. They continue singular and alone, without making parties, or forming sects: the whole weight of the public authority falls upon them; a price is set upon their heads; whilst they are universally regarded as execrable persons, the bane of civil society, with whom it is criminal to have ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... should be a constant defence and battle, but I am not fit for it. I argue for my own triumph, and, in heat and harassing, devotion is lost. Besides, the comparison of intellectual power has been my bane all my life." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... woods; North and West. Mount. honeysuckle Yellowish Mountain woods and bogs; Mass., West. N. American papaw Lurid purple Banks of streams; Pa. and South. Pepper-root White Rich woods; Middle States. Rare. Puccoon Yellow Shady woods; N. Y. and West. Red bane-berry Rocky woods. Common Northward. Red sandwort Sandy fields; sea-coast. Common. Rheumatism-root White Low woods; Middle States, West. Rhodora Rose-color Damp, cold New England woods. Scarlet corydalis Dry woods and fields; Northeast ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... agreeable chum. What you've done to-night has given you a greater hold on my affection than you could ever have gained in any ordinary social way; but you're going to promise me that you won't drift into any of that silly love-making that has always been the bane of my existence." ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... fatal gift to her husband. In his ignorance, the hero receives it, and places upon his shoulders the venom of the Lernaean Echidna. He is placing frankincense on the rising flames, and {is offering} the words of prayer, and pouring wine from the bowl upon the marble altars. The virulence of the bane waxes warm, and, melted by the flames, it runs, widely diffused over the limbs of Hercules. So long as he is able, he suppresses his groans with his wonted fortitude. After his endurance is overcome by his anguish, he pushes down ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... utterances as that of Dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout Protestant Christendom; and in due time we see their working in New England. That same tendency to provincialism, which, save at rare intervals, has been the bane of Massachusetts thought from that day to this, appeared; and in 1664 we find Samuel Danforth arguing from the Bible that "comets are portentous signals of great and notable changes," and arguing from history that they "have ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... there are caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral nature of humanity; and I will say further—the art of these chemists is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the remedy and the bane to yearnings for love or desires ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... "Then is Leif's luck very much like the sword that becomes one man's bane in becoming ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... turn," she writes, "that I have not the faculty to frame easy, polished sentences. If I could but do this, I would finish up the History without asking aid of anyone." And again: "It has been the bane of my life that I am powerless to put on paper the glimpses of thoughts which come and go like flashes of lightning." As has been said before in these pages, she is a perfect critic and delightful letter-writer, but finds difficulty in doing what is called ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... of marshmallow, and white of egg, flea-bane seeds, and lime; powder them and mix juice of radish with the white of egg; mix all thoroughly and with this composition annoint your body or hand and allow it to dry and afterwards annoint it again, and after this you may boldly take up hot iron ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... That, as I proposed to board in a convent, a small sum would answer my occasions; but, if that should be denied, I would actually go to service, or take some other desperate step, to avoid the man who was my bane ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... of the father of him whose life he was fool enough to preserve. Yet, what but ingratitude of the grossest nature could a Morton expect at the hands of the false family of De Haldimar! They were destined to be our bane, and well have they fulfilled the end for which they ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... Oh, tell me not of danger, death, and Burleigh; Let every star shed down its mortal bane On my unshelter'd head: whilst thus I fold Thee in my raptured arms, I'll brave them all, Defy my fate, and meet its ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... weight of bronze before Thy feet, And bought of God new child souls, as were meet For each man's sacrifice, and dwelt in homes Free, where nor Love nor Woman goes and comes How, is that daughter not a bane confessed, Whom her own sire sends forth—(He knows her best!)— And, will some man but take her, pays a dower! And he, poor fool, takes home the poison-flower; Laughs to hang jewels on the deadly thing He joys in; labours for her robe-wearing, Till wealth and ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... Henry the VIIth's Chapel lies in royal pomp she who so long was Britain's bane—'the daughter of debate, who discord still did sow'—poor Mary Queen of Scots. But English and Scots alike have forgotten the streams of noble blood she cost their nations; and look sadly and ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... my lower deep once more. My name is JEREMY BENTHAM; I am very unhappy in my mind; and, with your permission, will often escape this way from him who is the bane of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... the kinges dere sone, The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free, Which alwey for to do wel is his wone, The noble Troilus, so loveth thee, That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be. 320 Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye? Doth what yow list, to make him live ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... sensational story-writers. No intelligent person really trusted the army, although its ranks, such as they were, were filled with as gallant soldiers as ever carried a rifle, but it had been afflicted ever since men could remember with the bane and blight of politics and social influence. It had never been really a serious profession, and its upper ranks had been little better than the playground of the sons of the wealthy ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... when the cherished secret was to be divulged. Don Roderic, who had seized the throne by violence, and bore in his heart the fatal bane of curiosity, determined to learn what had lain for centuries behind those locks. The whole affair, he declared, was the jest of an ancient king, which did very well when superstition ruled the world, but which was far behind the age in which he lived. Two things ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... full-fledged habitual criminals and can be easily recognized by their "degenerative habitus." They are that indolent, obstinate, querulent, unapproachable, and irritable class of prisoners who form the bane of prison officials. Constantly in trouble of some sort, they are subject to frequent disciplinary measures, which, however, serve not in the least to improve their conduct. Their extremely fluctuating mood and emotional ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... are the bane of modern methods of education in our country have not spared sanctuary ordinances and family religion. "The church which is in thy house" is an empty form of speech when applied to a majority of so-called Christian ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at present—a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between that we ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... wise, but feeble-hearted. Yet the Norns have spoken; and it must be that another hero shall arise of the Volsung blood, and he shall restore the name and the fame of his kin of the early days. And he shall be my bane; and in him shall the race ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... man," said Media, "that, bane or blessing, Bello will yield his birthright? Will a tri-crowned king resign his triple diadem? And even did Bello what you propose he would only breed still greater perplexities. For if granted, full soon would Verdanna be ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... had been to tell Florence of the resuscitated prospects of her son and heir, Florence was prepared for the meeting: so, a favourable moment presenting itself, they both hastened across, without any further contemplation of Mrs Richards's bane' That sporting character, unconscious of their approach, again whistled with his utmost might, and then yelled in a rapture of excitement, 'Strays! Whip! Strays!' which identification had such an effect upon the conscience-stricken pigeons, that instead of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... joy, and I * Strain to my breast the branch I saw upon the sand-hill[FN61] sway? O favour of full moon in sheen, never may sun o' thee * Surcease to rise from Eastern rim with all-enlightening ray! I'm well content with passion-pine and all its bane and bate * For luck in love is evermore the butt ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... he to none but her his lady fair. 10 Now must he wander o'er the darkling way Thither, whence life-return the Fates denay. But ah! beshrew you, evil Shadows low'ring In Orcus ever loveliest things devouring: Who bore so pretty a Sparrow fro' her ta'en. 15 (Oh hapless birdie and Oh deed of bane!) Now by your wanton work my girl appears With turgid eyelids tinted ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... patients. Cowper, after his recovery, speaks of that intercourse with the keenest pleasure and gratitude; so that in the opinion of the two persons best qualified to judge, religion in this case was not the bane. Cowper has given us a full account of his recovery. It was brought about, as we can plainly see, by medical treatment wisely applied; but it came in the form of a burst of religious faith and hope. He rises one ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... greater bane to friendship than adulation, fawning, and flattery. For this vice should be branded under as many names as possible, being that of worthless and designing men, who say everything with a view of pleasing, and nothing with regard to truth. Now while hypocrisy in ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... The bane of this science, as every one knows, has been its theorizing, and its want of careful inductive reasoning from facts. The classifications in it have been endless, varying almost with the fancies of each new student; while every prominent follower of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... young exquisite. "Why can we not rise from our couches like the beast of the field, give ourselves a shake, and be ready for the day's work? These levees are the bane of my life. But fashion, fashion, fashion! She is the goddess of the hour. Tom, sit over yonder, and watch the follies of thy kind. Keep a quiet tongue, and I'll see you are ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... like to be Smellie's bane. He is jealous of sharing any credit with the Preventive crews, and is keeping them without information. On the other hand he delights in ordering about a military force; which, in a civilian, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and suspicious, the Catholics cool and unstable allies; during these years the chronic quarrel between himself and Parliament broke out with renewed vigour. How bitterly did he deplore party spirit, the bane of German life, which seemed each year ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... my dear wife, you will forgive me, will you not? I torment you sometimes. Ah, great God, how canst Thou make use of me thus to prove these two angelic creatures! I, who should be their joy, am their bane!" ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... dismiss'd them; they with speed Their course through thickest constellation held, Spreading their bane; the blasted stars look'd wan, And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse, Then suffer'd." —Paradise Lost, ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... East India Hair Dye, colors the hair and not the skin Acoustic Oil, for deafness Vermifuge Bartholomew's Expectorant Syrup Carlton's Specific Cure for Ringbone, Spavin and Wind-galls Dr. Sphon's Head Ache Remedy Dr. Connol's Gonorrhea Mixture Mother's Relief Nipple Salve Roach and Bed Bug Bane Spread Plasters Judson's Cherry and Lungwort Azor's Turkish Balm, for the Toilet and Hair Carlton's Condition Powder, for Horses and Cattle Connel's Pain Extractor Western Indian Panaceas Hunter's Pulmonary Balsam Linn's Pills and Bitters Oil of Tannin, for Leather Nerve & ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... the constitution of human nature as he feels it in himself, or has observed it in others,—whether as shown in the private society with which he has mingled, or the public concerns of nations he has observed,—will at once admit that SELFISHNESS is its greatest bane. It is at once the source of individual degradation and of public ruin. He knew the human heart well who prescribed as the first of social duties, "to love our neighbour as ourself." Of what incalculable importance was ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... recommended to the thoughtless and indifferent by the beauty which generally accompanies it, that is the bane of modern art. Even our greatest painters have yielded to its fascination. Who has not gazed upon one of Turner's fading pictures with still more of sadness than enjoyment, that anything so grand, so beautiful, so true, should slowly ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... steadily worked their way north and west, and had crossed the Saskatchewan, and were approaching the Eagle Hill country. Preceding the construction army, and following it, were camp followers and attendants of various kinds. On the one hand the unlicensed trader and whiskey pedlar, the bane of the contractor and engineer; on the other hand the tourist, the capitalist, and the speculator, whom engineers and contractors received with welcome or with scant tolerance, according to the letters of introduction they brought from the great men ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... the same as you yourself saw, I wished no one ill; but these misfortunes were written in my destiny, and the lines of fate cannot be effaced. My eyes have been the cause of all these calamities: if I had not had a strong desire to behold beautiful persons, then that wretch would not have been my bane. [184] God so ordained that He made thee arrive there; and, He made thee the means of saving my life. After undergoing these disgraces, I am ashamed to reflect that I should yet live and show my face to any one. But what can I do? the choice of death ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write poetry in French now than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been licked and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... thinks it might be something simpler. I think Mr. 'Opkins very nice. He says you promised to lend him a book. What would help him to talk like a real country boy. So I have lent him a book about a window. By Mr. Bane. What came to see us last year. It has a lot of funny words in it. And he is going to learn them up. But he don't know what they mean. No more do I. I have written a lot of the book. It promises to be very interesting. It is all a dream. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... picture on the wall. Had it ever yet befallen any young woman in the world to wish with secret intensity that she might have been, for her convenience, a shade less inordinately pretty? She had come to that, to this view of the bane, the primal curse, of their lavish physical outfit, which had included everything and as to which she lumped herself resentfully with her mother. The only thing was that her mother was, thank goodness, still so ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... uniform system of pronunciation should be aimed at in every country of the British Isles. So long as clear and expressive enunciation of English is attained, intelligible differences of vocalisation, pitch, and even of vocabulary, are allowable, and at times positively charming. Monotony is the bane of life. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... a twain of days, this of blessing that of bane * And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure that of pain. See'st not when blows the hurricane, sweeping stark and striking strong * None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain? How many trees earth nourisheth of the dry ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... instance of the capriciousness of the human mind that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old; and which is, in itself, evidently incompatible with the idea of a government; a principle, in short, which, if it is to be executed at all, must substitute the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword to the mild influence of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... that bane a queer 'bus," said Mrs. McNally, puzzled. I think the excellent woman suspected ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... them. Thine ear Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen, In shattering the dark in evil's den, Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain Lost Paradise, or bane its atmosphere. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... cried; 'has not that light already proved your bane? Do you wish to fight a second ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... gangs had steadily worked their way north and west, and had crossed the Saskatchewan, and were approaching the Eagle Hill country. Preceding the construction army, and following it, were camp followers and attendants of various kinds. On the one hand the unlicensed trader and whiskey pedlar, the bane of the contractor and engineer; on the other hand the tourist, the capitalist, and the speculator, whom engineers and contractors received with welcome or with scant tolerance, according to the letters of introduction they brought from the great men ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... those lessons! They were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... was this thy fate? May Paradise thy soul await. Who slew thee wrought fair France's bane: I cannot live so deep my pain. For me my kindred lie undone; And would to Holy Mary's Son, Ere I at Cizra's gorge alight, My soul may take its parting flight: My spirit would with theirs abide; My body rest their dust beside." With sobs his hoary ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... and Beasts the Food. But now by new-inspired Force, It keeps alive both Man and Horse. Then speak, my Muse, for now I guess E'en what it is thou wouldst express: It is not Barley, Rye, nor Wheat, That can pretend to do the Feat: 'Tis Oates, bare Oates, that is become The Health of England, Bane of Rome, And Wonder of all Christendom. And therefore Oates has well deserv'd To be from musty Barn prefer'd, And now in Royal Court preserv'd, That like Hesperian Fruit, Oates may Be watch'd and guarded Night and Day, Which is but just retaliation ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... things, seeing that a mighty woe is rolling upon them. For Odysseus shall not long be away from his friends, nay, even now, it may be, he is near, and sowing the seeds of death and fate for these men, every one; and he will be a bane to many another likewise of us who dwell in clear-seen Ithaca. But long ere that falls out let us advise us how we may make an end of their mischief; yea, let them of their own selves make an end, for this is the better way for them, as will soon be seen. For I prophesy ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... ended by leaving the country a wilderness. In reference to union, we showed that they ought to have seen justice done to the man who lost his wife and child at their very doors; but this want of cohesion is the bane of the Manganja. If the evil does not affect themselves they don't care whom it injures; and Gombwa confirmed this, by saying that when he routed Khambuiri's people, the villagers west of him fled instead of coming to ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... conduct will tell against them in the country, and when the House of Lords is accused of stopping legislation, people will not fail to ask, What else is the House of Commons doing, or rather how much more? They assert that tithes are the great bane of Ireland, and the cause of the disorder which prevail, and they propose a Tithe Bill as the remedy, but they clog it with a condition which they know, with as much certainty as human knowledge can attain, will prevent its passing into a law, and in this shape they persist in producing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... other by pay, Milton regards the last as the most dangerous. "Under force, though no thank to the forcers, true religion ofttimes best thrives and flourishes; but the corruption of teachers, most commonly the effect of hire, is the very bane of truth in them who are so corrupted." Nor can we tax this aversion to a salaried ministry, with being a monomania of sect. It is essentially involved in the conception of religion as a spiritual state, a state of grace. A soul in this state can only be ministered ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... that the history of 'Wuthering Heights' commences, that violent and bitter history of the "little dark thing harboured by a good man to his bane," carried over the threshold, as Christabel lifted Geraldine, out of pity for the weakness which, having grown strong, shall crush the hand that helped it; carried over the threshold, as evil spirits are carried, powerless to enter of themselves, and yet no evil demon, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... Morality, thou deadly bane, Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain! Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is In moral mercy, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... years. She was to grow up free from the impending care and responsibility, happy and healthful in her unconscious girlhood—above all, unassailed by the pernicious attempts to bespeak her favour, the crafty flattery, the undermining insinuations which have proved the bane of the youth of so many sovereigns. In order to preserve this reticence, unslumbering care and many precautions were absolutely necessary. It is said the Princess was constantly under the eye either of the Duchess of Kent or the Baroness Lehzen. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... him killed by the hunters. 'Tis the Fox's cunning that brings him to the furrier at last. 'Tis the plumes of the Peacock that men covet; hence his ruin. The Elephant is hunted for his tusks, and they are his bane." In the mark of your vanity is ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... top is a burden, the bugle a bane; (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!) When one would be faring down Dream-a-way Lane. (So hush-a-by, weary ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... comfort; Oh, tell me not of danger, death, and Burleigh; Let every star shed down its mortal bane On my unshelter'd head: whilst thus I fold Thee in my raptured arms, I'll brave them all, Defy my fate, and ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... oak adapts itself to the bank of a stream, though its true character develops best in the drier ground. Its strength has been its bane, for the value of its timber has caused many a great isolated specimen to be cut down. It is fine to know that some States—Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island also, I think—have given to trees along highways, and in situations where they are part of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... you should run out once," he said as he brought it in. "My wife she bane uneasy when she ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... son! Was it for this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with my friends, to become an example to the neighborhood? The jovial good fellow has made a goose of himself. Oh! if I had to begin again! No, no! you see women and children are our bane. They soften our hearts; they lead us a life of hope and affection; we pass a quarter of our lives in fostering the growth of a grain of corn which is to be everything to us in our old age, and when the harvest-time comes—good-night, the ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... know that the question he had so summarily disposed of had much excited and disturbed the legal world of Middle and Southern Ohio; that the best legal minds had been divided on it; and that a case had just been reserved for the court in bane, which turned on ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... the loom, Where the dusky warp we strain, Weaving many a soldier's doom, Orkney's woe, and Randoer's bane. The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... the fabrick, it is certain that the City of London took every precaution to have the best Portland stone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury, it so happened that parliamentary interest, which is often the bane of fair pursuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never sunk either in its foundation or in its arches, which were so much the subject of contest, but any injuries which it has suffered from the effects ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... with wit, there is too good an accord in a government. Essays be oft dangerous, specially when the cup-bearer hath received such a preservative as, what might so ever betide the drinker's draught, the carrier takes no bane thereby. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... feeble-hearted. Yet the Norns have spoken; and it must be that another hero shall arise of the Volsung blood, and he shall restore the name and the fame of his kin of the early days. And he shall be my bane; and in him shall the race ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... fatal to success especially if the air is both warm and wet. Moist weather during the time of maturity is particularly disastrous to the grape, as are frequent fogs. Cold wet weather in blooming time is the grape-grower's vernal bane, since it most effectually prevents the setting of fruit. It may be laid down as a rule that the grape lives by sunlight, warmth and air—it often thrives on the desert's edge. These considerations make it manifest that the monthly and seasonal means of precipitation must be considered ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... many friends whom he never forgot, being of a very generous and loving disposition. I think that those years at Harrow were the happiest he ever knew, for he was under a strict discipline, and was too young to indulge in those dissipations which were the bane of his subsequent life. But he was not distinguished as a scholar, in the ordinary sense, although in his school-boy days he wrote some poetry remarkable for his years, and read a great many books. He read in bed, read when no one else read, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... Come! Let us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... the lover's bane, Poor maids rewarded be, For their love lost their only gain Is but a ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... constantly offers bread and salt—yes, and speeches—to authors, as to other guests, from older lands, and many of us often have joined in this function. But we do not remember that it has been a habit for New York to tender either the oratorical bane or the gustatory antidote to her own writers. Except within the shade of their own coverts they have escaped these offerings, unless there has been something other than literary service to bring ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... marketable wares, avoiding motion to avoid shattering or tarnishing. This is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of Hellenic and Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves to the dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and their source of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... scorn thy gilded veil to wear, Soft Simulation!—wisely to abstain From fostering Envy's asps;—to dash the bane Far from our hearts, which Hate, with frown severe, Extends for those who wrong us;—to revere With soul, or grateful, or resign'd, the train Of mercies, and of trials, is to gain A quiet Conscience, best of blessings ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... pleaded on his knee, the pale face pleaded a few yards off; he sat between the two bleeding lovers, their sole barrier and bane. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... world. By day the sons of the world do. It darkens, and they dance together downward. Then comes there one of the world's elect who deems old counsel devilish; indifference to the end of evil worse than its pursuit. He comes to reclaim her. From deepest bane will he bring her back to highest blessing. Is not that a bait already? Poor fish! 'tis wondrous flattering. The Serpent has slimed her so to secure him! With slow weary steps he draws her into light: she clings to him; she is human; part of his work, and he loves it. As ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... / "Upon his tunic sew Thou a little token. / Thereby shall I know Where I may protect him / when in the fight we strain." She weened to save the hero, / yet wrought she nothing save his bane. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... great beauty of person, and he returned only vanity and weakness for these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die a moral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vain of God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity is the bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because it is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than weaken its possessor, ought to elevate rather ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... heaven. I never saw so curious a place in my life. It soon opened out, and we followed up the little stream which flowed through it. This was no easy work. The scrub was very dense, and the rocks huge. The spaniard "piked us intil the bane," and I assure you that we were hard set to make any headway at all. At last we came to a waterfall, the only one worthy of the name that I have yet seen. This "stuck us up," as they say here concerning any difficulty. ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... native Scandinavia to escape the sway of Harold Fairhair, yet each wealthy and powerful chief lived in the manner of a Homeric "king." His lands and thralls, horses and cattle, occupied his attention when he did not chance to be on Viking adventure— "bearing bane to alien men." He always carried sword and spear, and often had occasion to use them. He entertained many guests, and needed a large hall and ample sleeping accommodation for strangers and servants. His women were as free and as much respected as the ladies in Homer; and for a husband to slap ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... silence of a forest, the gloom of a deep ravine, resides a living mystery, indefinite, but redoubtable. Through all the works of Nature or of man, nothing exists, however seemingly trivial, that may not be endowed with a secret power for blessing or for bane. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... me to do? It's born with me—lies in my very blude and bane. Why, man, the lads of Westburnflat, for ten lang descents, have been reivers and lifters. They have all drunk hard, lived high, taking deep revenge for light offence, and never wanted gear for ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... immediately disclaimed by the public voice. They continue singular and alone, without making parties, or forming sects: the whole weight of the public authority falls upon them; a price is set upon their heads; whilst they are universally regarded as execrable persons, the bane of civil society, with whom it is criminal to have any kind ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... of days, this of blessing that of bane * And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure that of pain. See'st not when blows the hurricane, sweeping stark and striking strong * None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain? How many trees earth nourisheth of the dry and of the green * Yet none but those ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... reverses, affliction, calamity, misfortune; vexation, annoyance, inconvenience, worry, disturbance; torment, plague, thorn, bane. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... wench, thou must be gone; thou art chang'd for Antenor; thou must to thy father, and be gone from Troilus. 'Twill be his death; 'twill be his bane; he cannot bear it. ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... had not seen a single line of it up to that time—significant, as one of the several indications that the union of Browning and his wife was indeed a marriage of true minds, wherein nothing of the common bane of matrimonial life found existence. Moreover, both were artists, and, therefore, too full of respect for themselves and their art to bring in any way the undue influence of each other ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... the house of the poison monger, {42} where we buy three pennies' worth of bane, and when we return to our people we say, we will poison the porker; we will try and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... awhile staring into the dark. Then she groped her way to a place where there was a carven chest of olive-wood and ivory, and drawing a key from her girdle she opened the chest. Within were jewels, mirrors, and unguents in jars of alabaster—ay, and poisons of deadly bane; but she touched none of these. Thrusting her hand deep into the chest, she drew forth a casket of dark metal that the people deemed unholy, a casket made of "Typhon's Bone," for so they call grey iron. She pressed a secret spring. It opened, and feeling within she found ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... hear people say, "He is charming, that man, but he is a girl, a regular girl." They are alluding to the effeminates, the bane of our land. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Table-Talk of Christians. The Nature of Things is not dumb, but very loquacious, affording Matter of Contemplation. The Description of a neat Garden, where there is a Variety of Discourse concerning Herbs. Of Marjoram, Celandine, Wolfs-Bane, Hellebore. Of Beasts, Scorpions, the Chamaeleon, the Basilisk; of Sows, Indian Ants, Dolphins, and of the Gardens of Alcinous. Tables were esteemed sacred by the very Heathens themselves. Of washing Hands before Meat. A Grace before ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... commerce of the streets of Madrid seems to be fire and water, bane and antidote. It would be impossible for so many match-venders to live anywhere else, in a city ten times the size of Madrid. On every block you will find a wandering merchant dolefully announcing paper and phosphorus,—the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... colonial days. The exigencies of the cotton culture, rendered immensely profitable by a mechanical invention which infinitely lessened the cost of preparing the staple for the market, had thus renewed and prolonged the original and fast-decaying social and political bane of a region associated with the noblest names and most benign prospects. Chief-Justice Marshall aptly described to an English traveller this sad and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... is one of the textual cruces of the play. 'Law' is Johnson's conjecture for the 'lane' of the Folios. It was adopted by Malone. In previous editions of Hudson's Shakespeare, Mason's conjecture, 'play,' was adopted. 'Line,' 'bane,' 'vane' have each been proposed. Fleay defends the Folio reading and interprets 'lane' in the sense of 'narrow conceits.' 'Law of children' would mean 'law at the mercy of whim ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... Darwin. In the party of engineers which first camped there was Sinclair and it was by his advice that the contractors selected it for division headquarters. Then came drinking "saloons" and gambling houses—alike the inevitable concomitant and the bane of Western settlements; then scattered houses and shops and a shabby so-called hotel, in which the letting of miserable rooms (divided from each other by canvas partitions) was wholly subordinated to the business of the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... recognized by the many. And the same, I think, may be said of his painting. Those who had the privilege of a personal acquaintance with him knew how ā€œof imagination all compactā€ he was. Imagination, indeed, was at once his blessing and his bane. To see too vividly—to love too intensely—to suffer and enjoy too acutely—is the doom, no doubt, of all those ā€œlost wanderers from Ardenā€ who, according to the Rosicrucian story, sing the world’s songs; and to Rossetti this applies more, perhaps, than to most poets. And when ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... kitchen, and with a firm but slow step, entered. And here, if you be an Old or a New Englander, let me introduce you—as little at home would be Queen Victoria holding court in the Sandwich Islands, as you here. You may look in vain for that bane of good dinners, a cooking stove; search forever for a grain of saleratus or soda, and it will be in vain. That large, round block, with the wooden hammer, is the biscuit-beater; and the cork that ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... case of the black dog is the bane of the shepherds; for, not seeing or hearing anything of the enemy for months altogether, in spite of former experience their vigilance relaxes, and suddenly, while they sleep, their flocks are scattered. We ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... this dovecote, one built with so much hope and alight with so much real happiness, could ever come tumbling to the ground. We Anglo-Saxons flame up indignantly when those we love are attacked, and we demand proofs. "Critica," that bane of Venetian life—what this, that, or the other neighbor tattles to this, that, and the other listener, we dismiss with a wave of the hand, or with fingers tight clenched close to the offender's lips, or by a blow in the face. Not so the Italian. He also ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... themselves; the conversation was free and they swore liberally. When all was said and done, it was prudery that was Norway's curse and Norway's bane; people preferred to let their young girls go to the dogs in ignorance rather than enlighten them while there was time. Prudery was the nourishing vice of the moment. So help me, there ought to be public men appointed for the sole purpose of shouting obscenity on ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... one righteous man succeeds The seer Amphiaraus, good and brave. His post is at the Homoloian gate. Here he reproaches heaps on Tydeus' head, Calling him murderer and the public bane, Leader of Argos in all evil ways, The Furies' pursuivant, henchman of death, That has Adrastus to his ruin trained. Thy brother too, stained by his father's fate, Great Polynices, with accusing face Turned heavenward, he upbraids and thus he ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... "aye bat you that bane de ole man so sure as you bane alive. And aye bat new hat he skall be glad to see Neils Halvorsen. I guess aye hire Kanaka boy an' he bane pull me out to ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... anything's sufficient, why forswear, Embezzle, swindle, pilfer everywhere? Can you be sane? suppose you choose to throw Stones at the crowd, as by your door they go, Or at the slaves, your chattels, every lad And every girl will hoot yon down as mad: When with a rope you kill your wife, with bane Your aged mother, are you right in brain? Why not? Orestes did it with the blade, And 'twas in Argos that the scene was laid. Think you that madness only then begun To seize him, when the impious deed was done, And not that Furies spurred him on, before The sword grew purple ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... expir'd, with'ring the lily's flower. Look there how he doth knock against his breast! The other ye behold, who for his cheek Makes of one hand a couch, with frequent sighs. They are the father and the father-in-law Of Gallia's bane: his vicious life they know And foul; thence comes the grief that rends them thus. "He, so robust of limb, who measure keeps In song, with him of feature prominent, With ev'ry virtue bore his girdle brac'd. And if that stripling who behinds him sits, King after him had liv'd, his virtue ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... Sharks are the bane of tuna fishermen. More tuna are cut off by sharks than are ever landed by anglers. This made me redouble my efforts, and in half an hour more I was dripping wet, burning hot, aching all over, and so spent I had to rest. Every time I dropped ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... very fond of it," said the clergyman, "but have little knowledge of it. I wish I had more," he added in a tone of so much regret as to cause his hearer to look curiously at him. "Yes," he said, "I wish I knew more—or less. It's the bane of my existence," declared the rector with a half laugh. John looked inquiringly at him, but ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... the South Sea bubble should always stand as a beacon to warn us that reckless speculation is the bane of commerce, and that the only sure method of gaining a fortune, and certainly of enjoying it, is to diligently prosecute some legitimate calling, which, like the quality of mercy, is "twice blessed." Every man's occupation should be beneficial to his fellow-man ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... passionately, "I love you! and I want you to be entirely mine! Take me, and cure me of the bashful folly which has been the bane of my life!" ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... the rector, followed, a gentleman who had many staunch friends and many bitter enemies in the town. He addressed himself chiefly to that bane of the whole country,—as he conceived them,—the godless dissenters; and was felt by Tregear to be injuring the cause by every word he spoke. It was necessary that Mr. Williams should liberate his ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... have found out a shrub whose bark would kill the fever poison and make a man himself again. They say—put the cup away, Poole—that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out here, and quinine acts as a cure. But there's one thing I want to know, ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... or a cause of destruction; often used to mean an enemy or slayer, e.g. Sigurd's sword is called "Fafnir's bane," and in the old saga Sigurd ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... works its will, Sped thus on Troy its destined ill, Well named, at once, the Bride and Bane; And loud rang out the bridal strain; But they to whom that song befel Did turn anon to tears again; Zeus tarries, but avenges still The husband's wrong, the household's stain! He, the hearth's lord, brooks not to see ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... muttered Grimsby: 'they're the very bane of the world! They bring trouble and discomfort wherever they come, with their false, fair ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... people will "take intellectually if sufficiently exposed." A scholarly attitude implies first of all a growing mastery of subject matter. To quote an eminent writer on religious education, "A common bane of Sunday school teaching has been the haziness of the teacher's own ideas concerning ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... which perhaps we are not sufficiently thankful; and it never was more strongly manifested than in my own case, for both fear and apprehension vanished with habit, and I became fearless of those animated creatures which at first seemed to be the bane of my existence. When living in Cape Coast Castle, I used to see the rats come in troops past my door, walking over my black boys as they lay there, and who only turned themselves over to present the other sides of their faces and bodies, when the rats ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... her biting way. "By all means take him! You can wash yourself in it if water gets scarce, and I'll place my kitchen orders with you." Lucinda, who had perhaps sniffed timidly at release, burnt crimson: thank you! she would rather eat rat-bane.—He supposed they pinched and scraped along as of old—the question of money was never broached between him and them. Prior to his marriage he had sent them what he could; but that little was in itself an admission of failure. They made no inquiries about his mode of life, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... tendency to exaggerate their importance in relation to drama. The error is very common, and the idea that plays should be written primarily to exhibit the players and not the ideas of the author is the bane of our theatre. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... from us, Mr. Alwyn!" she said with a slight smile—"I do not wonder at it. These receptions are the bane of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... and I have been talking the matter over, Mr. Brook," the schoolmaster said, "and we deplore these feasts, which are the bane of the place. They demoralize the village; all sorts of good resolutions give way under temptation, and then those who have given way are ashamed to rejoin their better companions. It cannot be put down, ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... who now suffer an ignominious and an early death; and many might be so much purified in the furnace of punishment and adversity, as to become the ornaments of that society of which they had formerly been the bane. The vices of mankind must frequently require the severity of justice; but a wise State will direct that severity to the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... old woman at Houghton, had been the bane of her existence. Like an interdict of the Pope in olden times, it had kept her apart from the people of her own rank, as an excommunication would have done in past ages. But all this was removed. As it would seem by a miracle, the bitter prejudices of that old lady had given way, and through ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... snake which lurked mid flowers where she did pass, Pierced her fair foot with his envenomed bane: So fierce, so potent was the sting, that she Died in mid course. Ah, woe that this ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... that which cannot be recall'd. Is it your servant's carelessness you 'plain? Tully by one of his own slaves was slain. The husbandman close in his bosom nurs'd A subtle snake, that after wrought his bane. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... upon the Harkaways one and all," was the speech ever upon his tongue; "they have been my bane—my curse through life." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... There sat the earl, in his library now, in his nine-and-fortieth year, and ruin had not come yet—that is, it had not overwhelmed him. But the embarrassments which had clung to him, and been the destruction of his tranquility, the bane of his existence, who shall describe them? The public knew them pretty well, his private friends knew better, his creditors best; but none, save himself knew, or could ever know, the worrying torment that was his portion, wellnigh driving him to distraction. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Sessions dock for suffering the refuse of his mansion to be thrown into the street; while in N. York he would be fined $1 if he allowed it to be thrown elsewhere near his premises. Swine is a Bostonian's bane, and a N. Yorker's antidote,—indeed this animal is as much caressed by the ladies and gentlemen of the latter city, as a lap-dog in London or Paris. The Governor and his twenty chosen ministers have made it a capital offence ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... forthwith to rail at tobacco as a noxious, nauseous weed, filthy in all its uses; and as to smoking, he denounced it as a heavy tax upon the public pocket, a vast consumer of time, a great encourager of idleness, and a deadly bane to the prosperity and morals of the people. Finally, he issued an edict, prohibiting the smoking of tobacco throughout the New Netherlands. Ill-fated Kieft! Had he lived in the present age, and attempted to check the unbounded license of the press, he could not have struck more ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... lady, she took a fish bane and wipit it, and gae it to the king; and after he had cleaned his teeth wi' it, he said, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... few people know it, the most valuable of all metals has been discovered on the upper waters of the Pahang River and tributaries. The Chinese swarm in their thousands on the western slopes, and outnumber the Malays by more than three to one. They are surely the bane of the wanderer's existence. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... relation of the true Border breed, named Margaret Elliot—a lass whose ideas of hussyskep were so peculiar, that she thought Gilnockie and its laird were going to ruin when she saw in the kail-pot a "heugh bane" of their own cattle, a symptom of waste, extravagance, and laziness, on the part of her husband, that boded less good than the offer made by "the Laird's Jock," (Johnny Armstrong's henchman,) to give "Dick o' the Cow" a piece of his own ox, which he came to ask reparation ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... plough. Theiodamas was cleaving with his plough the soil of fallow land when he was smitten with the curse; and Heracles bade him give up the ploughing ox against his will. For he desired to find some pretext for war against the Dryopians for their bane, since they dwelt there reckless of right. But these tales would lead me far astray from my song. And quickly Hylas came to the spring which the people who dwell thereabouts call Pegae. And the dances of the nymphs were just now being held ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... is desolating their houses. No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey. Fix but the duty at the rate of other merchandise, and we can drink wine here as cheap as we do grog: and who will not prefer it? Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... if an old practitioner ventures to offer (from the respect he bears you) the fruits of his long experience. Half-price is a very proper privilege for those whose time or pockets do not afford them an opportunity of visiting the theatre earlier; but it is often the bane of an author on the first night of a five-act play. The new-comers know nothing of the foregone part of the drama; and having no context with which to connect allusions in the fourth and fifth acts, are apt to damn without ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... still time, though one has escaped me," said the Dark Master, looking up suddenly at his sightless harper, who seemed to fall atrembling beneath the look. "The one who has escaped matters not, for his bane comes not at my hands. It is the other whom I shall slay—Brian Buidh of the hard eyes. Then the Bird Daughter. But it seems to me that one stands in my path of whom I ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... to throw away; a time to keep and a time to destroy; 7. a time to rend and a time to repair; a time to be silent and a time to speak; 8. a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. VIII. 6. For every thing hath its season and its destiny,[270] for the bane of man presses heavily upon him. 7. Because he knoweth not what shall be; for who can tell him how it ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... Indians followed at Neponset, around the wigwam of a Sachem named Cutshamakin, a man of rank much superior to Waban. He had already been in treaty with the English, and had promised to observe the Ten Commandments, but had unhappily learnt also from the English that love of drink which was the bane of the Indian; and while Mr. Eliot was formally instructing the family, one of the sons, a boy of fifteen, when learning the fifth commandment, persisted in saying only "honour thy mother," and, when admonished, declared that his father had ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... will catch here, and we'll lunt [*Burn] like a tar-barrel a' thegither.—Eh! it wad be fearsome to be burnt alive for naething, like as if ane had been a warlock! [*witch]—Mac-Guffog, hear ye!"—roaring at the top of his voice; "an ye wad ever hae a haill bane in your skin, let's ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... my being, foes, If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread, I find—my daunted soul doth there repose.... On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane.... Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade, I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink Her lovely face I picture from my mind.... Oft hath her living likeness met my sight, (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... wandered about in Wales for a time, and by-and-by found his way to London; in 1803 was sent to Oxford, which in 1807 he left in disgust; it was here as an anodyne he took to opium, and acquired that habit which was the bane of his life; on leaving Oxford he went to Bath beside his mother, where he formed a connection by which he was introduced to Wordsworth and Southey, and led to settle to literary work at Grasmere, in the Lake District; here he wrote for the reviews and magazines, particularly ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... of his sermon. I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race, so strenuously laboring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought among them by enlightened Christians. It is quite certain that his exemplary endeavors have completely abolished the practice of drinking whisky in his tribe."—Catlin, vol. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... deeply graven on his face during the years that followed Caesar's death. A high soul, incarnating, must take many risks; and before it has found itself and tamed the new personality, may have sown griefs for itself to be reaped through many lives. The descendants of Augustus and Scribonia were the bane of Augustus and of Rome. But Livia was his good star, and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... place was taken by one of the figures of the dream; a man with a thick mop of fair hair and a face of blank good-nature, and whose store of English seemed to be comprised in a single sentence: "Ja, ja; Hae bane poorty vell, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... "Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?" Then suddenly screwing up his little blue eyes, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... instrument. As a fact he was not really busy; he was only pretending to be busy; and he rather enjoyed the summons of the telephone, with its eternal promise of some romantic new turn of existence. Nevertheless, though he was quite alone, he had to affect that the telephone was his bane. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... supply me with the money that I need. DERRIC. Money! that is eternally your cry. Your extravagances have almost ruined and soon will dishonour me. Oh! I am but justly punished for my mad indulgence of a son who was born only to be my bane and curse. HERMAN. If you could but invent some fresh terms for my reproach! such frequent repetition becomes, I assure you, very wearisome. DERRIC. You have caused me to plunge into debt, and I am now pursued by a host of creditors. HERMAN. We ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke

... this curious "monk-bane" etymology is its absurdity. The real origin of the word has given etymologists ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... Marquesas Islands have been converted to Christianity! and this the Catholic world will doubtless consider as a glorious event. Heaven help the 'Isles of the Sea'!—The sympathy which Christendom feels for them, has, alas! in too many instances proved their bane. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... attended by the town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he wamblet to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster.—Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound, the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin was ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... and you enter the loess country, dear to the tiller of the soil, but the bane of the traveller, for the dust is often intolerable. But there was little change in scenery until toward noon of the following day, when the faint, broken outlines of hills appeared on the northern horizon. As we were delayed by a little accident it was getting dark when we rumbled along below ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... Teuton bane! Again rings out the trumpet call; France, England, Russia, joined again, For freedom fight, for Greece, for all; And Greece—shall she that call ignore? Then is she ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... Ay had van chance not to get out. But Ay bane not forget dees. Eef you ever get in a tight place, ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... Basil. Our older sermons are headier than these, Master Silas! our new beer is the sweeter and clammier, and wants more spice. The doctor hath seasoned his with pretty wit enough, to do him justice, which in a sermon is never out of place; for if there be the bane, there likewise ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... is dead," said she, "what matters it? If, by God's mercy, he is alive still, he will not let me die for want of a word from him. Impatience hath been my bane. Now, I say, God's will be done. I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... and played with her till Addie married and mama come close to Martin to live with them. Addie took consumption and died, then mama married Frank Bane and he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... displeasure; for he did not like to be circumvented when he had set his mind upon a thing, especially if it chanced to be one of his philanthropic schemes. And that same quick temper, which he had found his own bane, showed itself now, in the flush which mounted to his brow, and the sudden flash which shot from his eyes. "Then, my dear, all I ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... of Thursday, October 30th, 1845, contains an article on the damage sustained by the potato crops here and in Ireland, full of matter calculated to enlighten our first rate reformers, who seem profoundly ignorant that superstition is the bane of intellect, and most formidable of all the obstacles which stand between the people and their rights: one paragraph is so peculiarly significant of the miserable condition to which Romanism and Protestantism ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... be gone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in their ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... degenerative soil giving rise to these psychoses. As we have stated, the great majority of them are full-fledged habitual criminals and can be easily recognized by their "degenerative habitus." They are that indolent, obstinate, querulent, unapproachable, and irritable class of prisoners who form the bane of prison officials. Constantly in trouble of some sort, they are subject to frequent disciplinary measures, which, however, serve not in the least to improve their conduct. Their extremely fluctuating mood and emotional instability calls forth a quite ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... the young Prince, with almost a frantic air. "Tell me all, tell me all! This suspense fires my brain. Iskander, you know not what this woman is to me; the sole object of my being, the bane, the blessing of my life! Speak, dear friend, speak! I beseech you! ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli

... 4 Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, By the cross are sanctified; Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that through ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... pointed to the broken china, and gave a great sigh of relief. "You behold there," he said, "now happily in fragments, the bane of my existence. That—that horror—was given me three years ago by a valued servant and friend, my man Guiseppe. He bought it for my birthday; spent ten of his hard-earned dollars on it, foolish, faithful creature ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... the thing, you would know that green water is a sailor's bane. He scarcely relishes a ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... of dealing with the solemn subjects connected with their office. Thus I have heard of a grave-digger pointing out a large human bone to a lady who was looking at his work, of digging a grave, and asking her—"D'ye ken wha's bane that is, mem?—that's Jenny Fraser's hench-bane;" adding with a serious aspect—"a weel-baned ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... enjoyment of a pretended power of free contract he was left without that protection of the officers of State which, under the Prussian regime from 1795 to 1807, had shielded him from the tyranny of his lord. It has been the fatal, the irremediable bane of Poland that its noblesse, until too late, saw no country, no right, no law, outside itself. The very measures of interference on the part of the Czar which this caste resented as unconstitutional were in part directed against the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... assistants into the cell, but too late. The spirit had departed; and they found but the now silent mourner, with folded arms, and a countenance that had in it volumes of unutterable wo, bending over the inanimate form of one whose life and misnamed love had been the bane of hers. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... young ladies, are our bane," quoted Laura, talking through her nose. "Dr. Beulah has been away—has not arrived home yet—and we unfortunate orphans have been driven to bed with the chickens. I, ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr

... himself; and form it into a kingdom large enough to have weight in the balance of power; the Pope has been forced, again and again, to keep himself on his throne by intriguing with foreign princes, and calling in foreign arms; and the bane of Italy, from the time of Stephen III. to that of Pius IX., has been the temporal ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... animal; but milch cows are dear, in consequence of the great demand for sour curd. Sheep and goats sell according to their skills; a large one is preferred to a shukka, equal to one dollar; but a dhoti, the proper price of three small goats, is scarcely the value of the largest. The bane of this people is their covetousness. They do not object to sell cheaply to a poor man, yet they hang back at the sight of much cloth, and price their stock, not at its value, but at what they want, or think they ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... his arms, His burnished arms, the foeman's bane, That he would never wake alarms In this fond breast of ...
— The Song of Deirdra, King Byrge and his Brothers - and Other Ballads • Anonymous

... inequality—that bane of all human society, which produces pride in some, debasement in others, corruption in all. And yet such a generous abandonment of every thing demonstrated that this excessive luxury, as yet however entirely borrowed, had not rendered ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... and sometimes milk, Sometimes apple-jack as fine as silk; But, whatever the tipple has been, We shared it together in bane or in bliss, And I warn you, friend, when I think of this: We have ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd

... satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them; but, in every page you see he intended to be witty: every paragraph would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, would be his bane;' and Lord Hervey was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... farmer's bane is the farm labourer's boon. The scarcity of labour has checked the farmer's operations, but it gives the man seeking employment a ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs

... spoke with some heat about delinks, who are the bane of all police forces everywhere. They practice adolescent behavior even after they grow up—but they never grow up. It is delinks who put stink-bombs in public places and write threatening letters and give warnings of bombs about to go off—and sometimes set them—and stuff dirt ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... Tom Staple was not a happy man; university reform had long been his bugbear, and now was his bane. It was not with him, as with most others, an affair of politics, respecting which, when the need existed, he could, for parties' sake or on behalf of principle, maintain a certain amount of necessary zeal; it was not with him a subject for dilettante warfare ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... his bane; they have flung him into a set of ideas which don't seem to have any common-sense in them ever since he has been employed at the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... have will, Or that renown'd Ulysses were my sire, 120 Or that himself might wander home again. Whereof hope yet remains! then might I lose My head, that moment, by an alien's hand, If I would fail, ent'ring Ulysses' gate, To be the bane and mischief of them all. But if alone to multitudes opposed I should perchance be foiled; nobler it were With my own people, under my own roof To perish, than to witness evermore Their unexampled deeds, guests shoved ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... magical or mystic properties. The apple has been supposed to possess peculiar virtues, especially in the way of health. 'The relation of the apple to health,' says Mr. Conway, 'is traceable to Arabia. Sometimes it is regarded as a bane. In Hessia it is said an apple must not be eaten on New Year's Day, as it will produce an abscess. But generally it is curative. In Pomerania it is eaten on Easter morning against fevers; in Westphalia (mixed with saffron) against jaundice; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... should they know that it is good? That is the mystery to me. I am always agreeably disappointed; it is incredible that they should have found it out. Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane, and which the antidote. There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite. Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices both always in full blast. Yet you must take advice of the one school as if there was no other. In respect to religion and the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... the widest part of the valley, a sort of platform of rock jutted out from the hill-side, and afforded a station for one of those tall, narrow, grim-looking fastnesses that were the strength of Scotland, as well as her bane. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... (loq.): Thus am I doubly arm'd; my death and life, My bane and antidote are both before me: This in a moment brings me to an end; But this informs me I shall never die. The soul, secured in her existence, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... is sold; the solace of all woe Is turned to deadliest agony, old age Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, And youth's corrupted impulses prepare A life of horror from the blighting bane Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism has filled All human life with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... Paris!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "After being bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a dandy in the Champs-Elysees with impunity!—Oh! I am unlucky! bankrupts are my bane." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... white. Chinese yellow is used largely in studios in place of white in make-up because it does not cause halation, which, to the picture people, is the bane of their existence. White is too glaring, reflects rays that blur the ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... daughter, with a poison that would make me mad and incapable of rule, yet leave me living—because he feared lest the curse of the Sun should fall upon him if he murdered me. I recovered from that bane and wandered to a far land. Now I have returned to take my own, if I am able. All that I say I can prove ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... loop of leather handle Peeping underneath the sofa! Is tuition worth the candle When the conscience turns a loafer? 'Tis the rich and backward Boarder Proves indeed the Tutor's bane, Sir, When the turf's in ripping order And the weather like ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... probability this contretemps would have been avoided had I not been followed by one of those pests, a guide, the sight of whom caused me to make undue hurry over the frozen surface. Harpies of this ilk are the bane of sight-seeing all ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... the privative into a contrary, or a contradictory, has been the bane of metaphysical reasoning. From it has arisen the doctrine of the synthesis of an affirmative and a negative into a higher conception, reconciling them both. This is the maxim of the Hegelian logic, which starts from the synthesis of Being and Not-being into the Becoming, a very ancient ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... far above their former Births refin'd, As Firmamental Fires t'a Tapers ray, Or Prodigies to Natures common Clay. Empires in Blood, or Cities in a Flame, Are work for vulgar Hands, scarce worth a Name. A Cake of Shew-bread from an Altar ta'ne, Mixt but with some Levitical King-bane, Has sent a Martyr'd Monarch to his Grave. Nay, a poor Mendicant Church-Rake-hell slave Has stab'd Crown'd Heads; slight Work to hands well-skill'd, Slight as the Pebble that Goliah kill'd. But to make Plots no Plots, to clear all Taints, Traitors transform to Innocents, Fiends to Saints, Reason ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... the Pope for her young mistress, refusing herself to accompany my mother, and declaring that neither should her charms ever cross the water,—that all their blessing would be changed to banning, and that bane would burn the bearer, should the salt-sea spray again dash round them. But when, in process of Nature, the Asian died,—having become classic through her longevity, taking length of days for length of stature,—then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... so. He was the harbinger of catastrophe. He who preached wisdom and claimed to be taught by the flowers, who loved life and hated injustice, who mingled with his kind, ever searching for that one who needed him, he must become the woe and the bane and curse of those he would only serve! Insupportable and pitiful fate! The fiends of the past mocked him, like wicked ghouls, voiceless and dim. The faces of the men he had killed were around him in the gray gloom, pale, drifting visages of distortion, accusing him, claiming ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... ripples that run away with it so sweetly. I cannot even find it in me to scold you for your many follies. Young woman, I don't approve of you, but you are the sweetest creature that ever walked this earth. Thanks be where thanks are due that I am a woman; you would have been my bane had I been born ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema

... killed. But the white man saved him by his wit. Yes, and at times he came to visit me, for he still loved me as of old; but now he has fled north, and I shall hear his voice no more. Nay, I do not know all the tale; there was a woman in it. Women were ever the bane of Umslopogaas, my fostering. I forget the story of that woman, for I remember only these things that happened long ago, ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... on that alane; He can fell twa dogs wi' ae bane, While ither folk Must rest themselves content ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... that savour joy, and I * Strain to my breast the branch I saw upon the sand-hill[FN61] sway? O favour of full moon in sheen, never may sun o' thee * Surcease to rise from Eastern rim with all-enlightening ray! I'm well content with passion-pine and all its bane and bate * For luck in love is evermore the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... class distinctions would be fostered; and here, in France, popular legislation would promote the spirit of frivolity, the sudden craze for an idea, and the readiness to split into factions which has always been our bane. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and Dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river Pactolus, a small stream in Lydia, in order to lose the power which had become the bane of his life. Midas joyfully obeying the injunction, was at once freed from the consequences of his avaricious demand, and from this time forth the sands of the river Pactolus have ever ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... more: He was the bane and ruin of my peace. This anguish, and these tears, these are the legacies His fatal love has left me. Thou wilt see me, Believe me, my Alicia, thou wilt see me, Ere yet a few short days pass o'er my head, Abandon'd to the very utmost ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... there should be a constant defence and battle, but I am not fit for it. I argue for my own triumph, and, in heat and harassing, devotion is lost. Besides, the comparison of intellectual power has been my bane all my life." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... its will, Sped thus on Troy its destined ill, Well named, at once, the Bride and Bane; And loud rang out the bridal strain; But they to whom that song befel Did turn anon to tears again; Zeus tarries, but avenges still The husband's wrong, the household's stain! He, the hearth's lord, brooks not to see Its ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... constantly reinforced by those who are ever and anon being born. Let no one of you think that I am ignorant of the many disagreeable and painful features that belong to marriage and child-rearing. But bear in mind that we possess nothing at all good with which some bane is not mingled, and that in our most abundant and greatest blessings there reside the most abundant and greatest woes. If you decline to accept the latter, do not strive to obtain the former. Practically ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... With red beer and brown beer. An old man plays the bagpipes In a golden and silver wood, Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, Are dancing in a crowd. The little fox he murmured, 'O what is the world's bane?' The sun was laughing sweetly, The moon plucked at my rein; But the little red fox murmured, 'O do not pluck at his rein, He is riding to the townland ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats

... their own evidence of the eloquence of his sermon. I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race, so strenuously laboring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought among them by enlightened Christians. It is quite certain that his exemplary endeavors have completely abolished the practice of drinking whisky in his tribe."—Catlin, vol. ii., ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... them in the country, and when the House of Lords is accused of stopping legislation, people will not fail to ask, What else is the House of Commons doing, or rather how much more? They assert that tithes are the great bane of Ireland, and the cause of the disorder which prevail, and they propose a Tithe Bill as the remedy, but they clog it with a condition which they know, with as much certainty as human knowledge can attain, will prevent its passing into a law, and in this shape they persist in producing it. Lord ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... women!' muttered Grimsby: 'they're the very bane of the world! They bring trouble and discomfort wherever they come, with their false, fair ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... in time and be gone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... and here at my girdle hangs a dagger; are not the two of them enough to make an end of one frail life? Should they dare to touch me, I shall tell them through the bars that most certainly I shall drink the bane, or use the knife; and when they know it, they will leave me unharmed, hoping to starve me out, or trusting to ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in every corner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number of heads; while Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir Breuse Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters; and the firmament rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... are stupid, homes are dreary, homes are insufferable. If one can be pardoned for the Irishism of such a saying, homes are their own worst "banes." If homes were what they should be, nothing under heaven could be invented which could be bane to them, which would do more than serve as useful foil to set off their better cheer, their pleasanter ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... were the joint proprietors. That is to say, Charteris was talking and playing the banjo alternately, while Welch was deep in a book and refused to be drawn out of it under any pretext. Charteris' banjo was the joy of his fellows and the bane of his House-master. Being of a musical turn and owning a good deal of pocket-money, he had, at the end of the summer holidays, introduced the delights of a phonograph into the House. This being vetoed by the House-master, he had returned at the beginning of the following term with a penny ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... adolescent grace, might have suggested to the imagination a reminiscence of Orpheus in Hades. They all listened in languid pleasure, without the effort to appraise the music or to compare it with other performances—the bane of more cultured audiences; only the ardent amateur, seated close at hand on a bowlder, watched the bowing with a scrutiny which betokened earnest anxiety that no mechanical trick might elude him. The miller's half-grown son, whose ear ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... antagonism in which they dwell. But can men, whose interests are diverse, ever hope to live together in a harmony uncoerced? Can the brotherhood of the race of mankind ever hope to prevail in a man-of-war, where one man's bane is almost another's blessing? By abolishing the scourge, shall we do away tyranny; that tyranny which must ever prevail, where of two essentially antagonistic classes in perpetual contact, one is immeasurably the stronger? Surely it seems all but impossible. And as the very object of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... moral strength, contrary to the impressive experience of his real weakness. His virtues were many, and his foibles few; yet few as they were, our readers perceive that, in consequence of his indulging them, they proved the bane of his life and happiness. They need not be surprised, then, to hear that from the want of any self-sustaining power in himself he fell into the use of liquor again; he said he could not live without it, but ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... destroy; 7. a time to rend and a time to repair; a time to be silent and a time to speak; 8. a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. VIII. 6. For every thing hath its season and its destiny,[270] for the bane of man presses heavily upon him. 7. Because he knoweth not what shall be; for who can tell him how it will ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... desired to know The ways of sin, seductive, The hellish tempter, to our woe, Became a power destructive; He cursed our earth and ruin brought on all, Yea, very nature felt the bane - Its blighted walls now totter to their fall, And soon disorder rules again. This earthly palace then at last, Unroofed, dismantled and decayed, A hideous, barren waste is laid ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... for it was the folk amongst the mountains—should have found out a shrub whose bark would kill the fever poison and make a man himself again. They say—put the cup away, Poole—that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out here, and quinine acts as a cure. But there's one thing I want ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... time, though one has escaped me," said the Dark Master, looking up suddenly at his sightless harper, who seemed to fall atrembling beneath the look. "The one who has escaped matters not, for his bane comes not at my hands. It is the other whom I shall slay—Brian Buidh of the hard eyes. Then the Bird Daughter. But it seems to me that one stands in my path of ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones

... have been the bane of humanity. They have given us the stiletto, the Morgue, the bowie-knife. Our race must inevitably in the end outlive them. The test of man's plane in the scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They are surviving relics ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... palaces She raises under glasses, But souls like these, heav'n's hostages, Spring shelterless as grasses: 140 They share Earth's blessing and her bane, The common sun and shower; What makes your pain to them is gain, Your weakness is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... my only comfort; Oh, tell me not of danger, death, and Burleigh; Let every star shed down its mortal bane On my unshelter'd head: whilst thus I fold Thee in my raptured arms, I'll brave them all, Defy my fate, and ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... thy gilded veil to wear, Soft Simulation!—wisely to abstain From fostering Envy's asps;—to dash the bane Far from our hearts, which Hate, with frown severe, Extends for those who wrong us;—to revere With soul, or grateful, or resign'd, the train Of mercies, and of trials, is to gain A quiet Conscience, best of blessings here!— Calm Conscience ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... worry, for the occasion of it was gone. She was pained, she was grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. Sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store. It is ever thus. Vast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals. When the Fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with untold candles. But now they—but let us not dwell upon it. From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; then soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... ever I think, What warning voice should call, Or show me bane from food, with tedious art, When love—the perfect instinct, flower of all Divinest potencies of choice, whose part Was set 'mid stars and flame To keep the inner place of God—became A blind and ravening fever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... those of Religion and Equity, they are the greatest Depravations of human Nature, by giving wrong Ambitions and false Ideas of what is good and laudable; and should therefore be exploded by all Governments, and driven out as the Bane and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... comprehended in the fortunes of two confederacies, or leagues, one of which was called the Achaean, and the other the AEtolian League. United, these two confederacies might have maintained the political independence of Greece; but that spirit of dissension which we have seen to be the bane of the Hellenic peoples caused them to become, in the hands of intriguing Rome, weapons first for crushing Macedonia, and then for grinding each other to pieces. Finally, in the year 146 B.C., the splendid city of Corinth was taken by the Roman army and laid in ashes. This was ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... kinges dere sone, The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free, Which alwey for to do wel is his wone, The noble Troilus, so loveth thee, That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be. 320 Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye? Doth what yow list, to make ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... circumstances, to a solitary stranger the risk would be serious; though generally, and in the case of cavalcades, the dogs fasten chiefly upon the horses. But endless are the compensations which we find in the distributions of nature. Is there a bane? Near it lies an antidote. Is there a disease? Look for a specific in that same neighborhood. Here, also, the universal rule prevails. As it was destined that Greece in all ages should be scourged by this intestine enemy, it was provided that a twofold specific should ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... concern. This was in connection with the fact that the easterly breeze seemed to have bobbed around to the southwest. Now, from all that he had heard this was a quarter that nearly always brings one of those howling "northers" that prove such a bane to Florida cruisers. ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... Thackeray's greeting as they met at Evans's—"Ah, here comes Colonel Newcome!" "From his aristocratic mien and premature baldness," says Vizetelly, "Wiltshire Austin christened him 'the wicked old Marquis.' The keeping of late hours was Ponny Mayhew's bane. For a quarter of a century—save an annual fortnight devoted to recruiting himself at Scarborough or elsewhere—he scorned to seek repose before the milkman started on his rounds, and during the greater portion of the year never ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... raise up the Shield of Peace, and the battle was stayed; and therewith he cried to King Halfdan: "Two choices are in thine hands now, either that thou give up all to my will, or else gettest thou thy bane like thy brother; for now may men see that mine ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous

... of conscience, under the French Crown. In due time they got their answer. The King replied, through the minister, Ponchartrain, that he had not expelled heretics from France in order that they should set up a republic in America.[295] Thus, by the bigotry that had been the bane of Canada and of France herself, Louis XIV. threw away the opportunity of establishing a firm and healthy colony at the mouth of ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... gorse, or furze. Just in the widest part of the valley, a sort of platform of rock jutted out from the hill-side, and afforded a station for one of those tall, narrow, grim-looking fastnesses that were the strength of Scotland, as well as her bane. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fruit-tree's bane; the brook's, a summer hot and dry; The stag's a woven net, a gin the dove's; Mankind's, a soft sweet maiden. Others have pined ere I: Zeus! Father! hadst not thou ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... that the Chart was complicated beyond all need. There was one who said, "The multiplication of non-essentials has become the bane of the forest." Even a little meadow which he had found, and which he called the "Saints' Rest," was so entangled in paths and counterpaths that once out of sight of it one could never ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... essential than the mosquito net under which I slept every night for nearly four months. Insects are the bane of Africa. The mosquito carries malaria, and the tsetse fly is the harbinger of that most terrible of diseases, sleeping sickness. Judging from personal experience nearly every conceivable kind of biting bug infests the Congo. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... never hear of her again. I do. She's been the bane of my Roger, that's what she has. I have not slept half the night, and it's all her fault. Why, there's my boy saying now that he has no heart for ever marrying, poor lad! I wish it had been you, Molly, my lads had taken a fancy for. I told ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... (lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. (17) Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may, rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people - a system which has been ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza

... he dismiss'd them; they with speed Their course through thickest constellation held, Spreading their bane; the blasted stars look'd wan, And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse, Then suffer'd." —Paradise Lost, Bk. ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... when a person believed himself bewitched, a shot at the image of the witch with a bullet melted out of a half-dollar was the favorite curative agency. Luck was an active divinity in their apprehension, powerful for blessing or bane, announced by homely signs, to be placated by quaint ceremonies. A dog crossing the hunter's path spoiled his day, unless he instantly hooked his little fingers together, and pulled till the animal disappeared. They were familiar with the ever- recurring mystification of the witch-hazel, or divining-rod; ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... groped her way to a place where there was a carven chest of olive-wood and ivory, and drawing a key from her girdle she opened the chest. Within were jewels, mirrors, and unguents in jars of alabaster—ay, and poisons of deadly bane; but she touched none of these. Thrusting her hand deep into the chest, she drew forth a casket of dark metal that the people deemed unholy, a casket made of "Typhon's Bone," for so they call grey iron. She pressed a secret spring. It opened, and feeling within she found a smaller casket. Lifting ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

... ingredients which make up "a love of a man." Added to this, he really did possess a good share of common sense, and with the right kind of influence would have made a far different man from what he was. Self-love was the bane of his life, and as he liked dearly to be flattered, so he in turn became a most consummate flatterer; always, however, adapting his remarks to the nature of the person with whom he was conversing. Thus to Nellie Kennedy he said a thousand foolish things, just because he knew he gratified her vanity ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... am I doubly arm'd: my Death and Life, My Bane and Antidote are both before me. This in a Moment brings me to an End; But This informs me I shall never die. The Soul, secur'd in her Existence, smiles At the drawn Dagger, and defies its Point. The Stars shall fade away, the Sun himself Grow dim with Age, and Nature sink in Years; But thou ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... for many a changeful year, Studious or sensual, gay or wild, or sad, An earnest votary of Evening. She Had something wondrous winning to my eye, So soft she was, and quiet. Often too, Absorbed in books, which were perchance a bane, Perchance a blessing; or in glittering crowds, Gazing all rapt on woman's eloquent face, Nature's most witching and most treacherous page; Or high in mirth with those whose senseful wit Outflashed the rosy wines that warmed its flow, I've held my vigils till the brow of Night Grew ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... soul, incarnating, must take many risks; and before it has found itself and tamed the new personality, may have sown griefs for itself to be reaped through many lives. The descendants of Augustus and Scribonia were the bane of Augustus and of Rome. But Livia was his good star, and always added ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... intend thei bot only thy death and destructioun? as thow may easilie perceave, suppoise thei cullour thair false intent and mynd, with the persute of heresye. For when thy baronis ar putt doun, what arte thow bot the King of Bane?[110] and then of necessitie man be guydit be thame: and thare, (no doubt,) whare ane blynd man is guyd, mon be ane fall in the myre. Thairfoir lett thy Grace tack hardiment and authoritie, quhilk thow hes of God, and suffer nott thair crewell persecutioun to procead, without ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... and a Whig, I must have Charity for those that differ from me in religious Opinions, whether Pagans, Turks, Jews, Papists, Quakers, Socinians, Presbyterians, or others. I look upon Bigotry to have always been the very Bane of human Society, and the Offspring of Interest and Ignorance, which has occasion'd most of the great Mischiefs that have afflicted Mankind. We ought no more to expect to be all of one Opinion, as to ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman

... irrespective of any considerations as to what may be right or just; hence the stubborn tenacity with which Nihilism maintains its grip upon the middle and lower classes. If the 'Little Father' wishes to stamp out that terrible scourge of secret and deadly conspiracy which is the bane and menace of his existence, he must purge the Russian nobles of their present lust of cruelty and oppression, and must render it possible for every one of his subjects, from the highest to the lowest, to obtain absolute justice. When ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... quite uncomfortable, and four had snored beneath his bunk all night; but then it had added appreciable weight to the sack in which he kept his gold dust. That sack, with its glittering yellow treasure, was at once the chief delight and the chief bane of his existence. Heaven and hell lay within its slender mouth. In the nature of things, there being no privacy to his one-roomed dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft. It would be very easy for these bearded, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... "Ay bane work any time skol be," spoke the Norwegian, and a puzzled expression flitted over his face as both Cassells broke into what was to him an inexplicable fit of laughter at ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... she cried; 'has not that light already proved your bane? Do you wish to fight a second time ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... curls, another too much paint, A third—where did she buy that frightful turban? A fourth's so pale she fears she's going to faint, A fifth's look's vulgar, dowdyish, and suburban, A sixth's white silk has got a yellow taint, A seventh's thin muslin surely will be her bane, And lo! an eighth appears,—"I'll see no more!" For fear, like Banquo's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... to avoid shattering or tarnishing. This is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of Hellenic and Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves to the dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and their source ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... self-aggrandizement. Others are mere parasites, that well know the tenure on which they hold their offices, and will ever pay implicit obedience to those who administer to their wants. Many of your followers are among the most profligate of the community. They are the bane of social and domestic ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... at this point that the history of 'Wuthering Heights' commences, that violent and bitter history of the "little dark thing harboured by a good man to his bane," carried over the threshold, as Christabel lifted Geraldine, out of pity for the weakness which, having grown strong, shall crush the hand that helped it; carried over the threshold, as evil spirits are carried, powerless to enter of themselves, and yet no evil demon, only ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... to all sorts of inflammatory discourse, that he durst not presume upon the footing he had gained in her affection, to explain the baseness of his desire; he therefore applied to another of her passions, that proved the bane of her virtue. This was her timidity, which at first being constitutional, was afterwards increased by the circumstances of her education, and now aggravated by the artful conversation of Fathom, which he chequered with dismal stories ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... him civilly enough that, with "freedom" for a watchword, the fashion of my chin was a matter of mere private concern. But as that did not satisfy him, and as he seemed to be one of those quarrelsome fellows that are the bane of every community, I took him suddenly by the throat and the shoulder, and bent his neck with the old, quick turn till I heard it crack, and had unhanded him before any of his neighbours had seen what had befallen. The fierce press ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... frequently impossible; and in cases when the people cannot be permitted to land, the different men-of-war in company are sure to send boat-loads of visitors, or what are called "liberty men," on board one another's ships, to pass the afternoon of Sunday. This practice is the very bane of good discipline, and ought at all times to be discouraged in every way; for it almost inevitably leads to drunkenness, rioting, and bitter heart-burnings. It has, moreover, the effect of making the men ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... book to the careful attention of teachers and others interested in instruction. In the hands of an able teacher, the book should help to relieve parsing from the reproach of being the bane of the school-room. The Etymological Glossary of Grammatical Terms will also supply a ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... which Plato there mentions as the bonds and ligaments of the commonwealth, the pillars and the sustainers of every written statute; these they be which will bear chief sway in such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissness, for certain, are the bane of a commonwealth; but here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... republic, and dream of the successes of the First Revolution. The politicians hardly know what they want. Their main idea is to keep up for their own purposes that centralization which has so long been the bane of this country. If they agree to terms before Paris has given France an example of heroism, they fear that her supremacy will be compromised; if they allow the insulation to continue, they fear that the Provinces will accustom ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... return demanded that he be court-martialled for murder. [Footnote: Virginia State Papers, vol. iv., p. 212.] Logan, to his discredit, refused the court-martial, for fear of creating further trouble. The bane of the frontier military organization was the helplessness of the elected commanders, their dependence on their followers, and the inability of the decent men to punish the atrocious misdeeds ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... value me and what I said accordingly. At dinner we had a great deal of good discourse about Parliament; their number being uncertain, and always at the will of the King to encrease as he saw reason to erect a new borough. But all concluded that the bane of the Parliament hath been the leaving off the old custom of the places allowing wages to those that served them in Parliament, by which they chose men that understood their business and would attend it, and they could expect an account from; which now they cannot: ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... they exclaimed with astonishment, "but Lamh Laudher's afeard of him!—the garran bane's in him, now that he finds he ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the tale never flagged; ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... countenance was open, and his spirit was clear. He was a man of passions, my lord. He acted in every momentous concern, more from the dictates of his heart, than his head. But this is the key to his conduct; He kept a watchful eye upon that bane of every patriot minister, secret influence. If there were one feature in his political history more conspicuous than the rest, if I were called to point out the line of discrimination between his character and that of his contemporaries upon the public stage, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... spreading disappointment, weeping, lamentation, and broken hearts through the habitations of the children of men. "He is," as an old writer quaintly observes, "the moth of liberal men's coats, the ear-wig of the mighty, the bane of courts, a friend and slave to the trencher, and good for nothing but to be a factor ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... love has been my bane! My cunning fails, and all my arts are vain. Have mercy, fair one, lest my pupils all Mock me, who point a path in which ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... communicative letter on your return from Scotland, where you spent, I find, some considerable time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry; because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do: but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... victims escaped to the British colonies, and became a part of them. The Huguenots would have hailed as a boon the permission to emigrate under the fleur-de-lis, and build up a Protestant France in the valleys of the West. It would have been a bane of absolutism, but a national glory; would have set bounds to English colonization, and changed the face of the continent. The opportunity was spurned. The dominant Church clung to its policy of rule and ruin. France built its best ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... inhabitants was too great for the city; the shepherds also were included among that population, and all these readily inspired hopes that Alba and Lavinium would be insignificant in comparison with that city, which was intended to be built. But desire of rule, the bane of their grandfather, interrupted these designs, and thence arose a shameful quarrel from a sufficiently amicable beginning. For as they were twins, and consequently the respect for seniority could not settle the point, they agreed ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius

... regulated that which we should have left to regulate itself. We have left unregulated that which we were bound to regulate. We have given to some branches of industry a protection which has proved their bane. We have withheld from public health and public morals the protection which was their due. We have prevented the labourer from buying his loaf where he could get it cheapest; but we have not prevented ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... only things worth living for in this world, and I am determined to have my revenge. While we remain together on earth, I will pursue you—whatever your course in life may be, I will find you out; I will balk you in your dearest wishes—I will prove your bane in whatever you undertake—I will destroy your happiness—I will stand like a lion in your path, and bar your progress. I will not injure you in life or limb—I might kill you, but I will not do that—as ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... that did not contribute to support the family of Mahtoree. But the policy of the chief seldom permitted more to remain than sufficed for the wants of the day, perfectly assured that all must suffer before hunger, the bane of savage life, could lay its fell fangs ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Shall grasp you not as prey, nor we ourselves Betray you thus embracing sacred shrines, Nor make the avenging all-destroying god, Who not in hell itself sets dead men free, A grievous inmate, an abiding bane.— Spake I not right, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... the physical, intellectual and moral man, work is the essential factor in procuring health and happiness. Idleness is the bane of both. Man and woman were born to work either by hand or brain. Man in the outer world, woman in the home. The man who lives without an object in life is not only not doing his duty to God, but he is a curse to himself and others. But work, like everything else, should be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... "I have long wished to spend a few days in New York, but that bane of my life, poverty, has always prevented. Now, however, as old Uncle Nat has kindly furnished us with the means, I propose that Alice and I start day after to- morrow, and return on Saturday. That will give us ample time to ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... the doctor, getting out his clinical thermometer. "It has been her bane, poor lady, that difficult temper. Years have ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... not for that which cannot be recall'd. Is it your servant's carelessness you 'plain? Tully by one of his own slaves was slain. The husbandman close in his bosom nurs'd A subtle snake, that after wrought his bane. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... another's loss, Nor grudge not at another's gain; No worldly waves my mind can toss; I brook that is another's bane; I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend; I loathe not life, nor ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... prescriptive rights at all: all her privileges and property being held on sufferance of the State, which could withdraw its toleration when it chose. Illustrious Italians, from Dante downwards, denounced the love of power and money of the Church as the bane of Italy. Had not Machiavelli said, "If Italy has fallen a prey not only to powerful barbarians but to whatsoever attack, we Italians are indebted for it to the Church and to nothing else"? Respect ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... Gettysburg. General George Gordon Meade succeeded Hooker in command of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was not a brilliant man, but he was a thorough soldier, and eminently free from that spirit of envy which was the bane of our armies, which had nearly driven Grant from the service, and which was responsible for the loss of more than one battle. Elated by Chancellorsville, Lee determined to invade the North. The South made an extreme effort to replenish its armies, and ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... sword and a dagger he wore by his side, Of manye a man the bane; And he was clad in his capull hyde Topp and ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... rent-roll is sixty thousand per annum, does not go to ruin in a day. There sat the earl, in his library now, in his nine-and-fortieth year, and ruin had not come yet—that is, it had not overwhelmed him. But the embarrassments which had clung to him, and been the destruction of his tranquility, the bane of his existence, who shall describe them? The public knew them pretty well, his private friends knew better, his creditors best; but none, save himself knew, or could ever know, the worrying torment that was his portion, wellnigh ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... watchful for our good, guard me from men, From their deceitful tongues, their vows and flatteries; Still let me pass neglected by their eyes: Let my bloom wither and my form decay, That none may think it worth their while to ruin me, And fatal love may never be my bane." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... man at the table laughed suddenly. "Ay bane laik to know how yuh feel now, Yorky?" ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... injustice of maintaining protection for protection's sake enjoins upon the people's servants the duty of exposing and destroying the brood of kindred evils which are the unwholesome progeny of paternalism. This is the bane of republican institutions and the constant peril of our government by the people. It degrades to the purposes of wily craft the plan of rule our fathers established and bequeathed to us as an object of our love and veneration. It perverts the patriotic sentiments ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... which, if he could but be taught to believe it, is of all earthly anticipations the most remote and uncertain. A passion for unnecessary expense is, under different circumstances, frequently repressed by an inability to procure credit; but it is the curse and bane of Mr. Omnium's nephew, and Miss Saveall's niece, that so far from any obstacle being opposed to their prodigality, almost unlimited indulgence is offered, nay, actually pressed upon them, by the trades-people of their wealthy relations; who take especial care that their charges shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... with a sunny smile. "As well ask me how much my living expenses must be in order to cover my earnings. Whatever one is, the other will be approximately ditto—or perhaps slightly in excess thereof. Anyhow, nothing but rigid economy—bane of my life—will make the one fit into the other. But I have a thought. Something tells me these boys need white flannels, so get out your stock, Kurtz. If they can't play tennis they must learn, for my sake." Bob's remarkable stroke of fortune called for a celebration, and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... rainbow—syne to the Tolbooth, which is a terror to evil-doers, and from which the Lord preserve us all!—syne to the Market, where ye'll see lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on cleeks, in roasting and boiling pieces—spar-rib, jigget, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the greatest prodigality of abundance;—and syne down to the Duke's gate, by looking through the bonny white-painted iron-stanchels of which, ye'll see the deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in the inside of which dwells one that needs not be proud to call ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... go home immediately. He had a commission to execute in the town, and went to do it. It took him about an hour, which brought it to five o'clock. In returning through the Boundaries he encountered Roland Yorke, just released from that bane of his life, the office, for the day. Arthur told him how near he had been ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... San Francisco the earthquake has been its bane. During the past fifty years fully 250 shocks have been recorded, while all California has been subject to them. But frequency rather than violence of shocks has been the characteristic of the seismic history of the State, there having ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... children. All the members of such a family commonly live in the greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village held in farm under Government, was considered as a principality, and subject ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... gold and silver be not a drug, where they do not promote industry? Whether they be not even the bane and undoing of ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... Norman and Dane, With the Northman's sinew and heart and brain, And the Northman's courage for blessing or bane, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... Dory's hand, but he appeared to be very sad. His son's trouble caused him a great deal of sorrow: in fact, the bad conduct of Pearl was the bane of his life. He told Dory that he had sold his farm in order to get his son away from his evil associates near Plattsburgh. He had come to the conclusion that Pearl was worse than his companions. He had done all he could to save him, and had failed. He was going into ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... as often a symbol of malevolence and enmity. It appears among the emblems of Siva-Roudra, the power of desolation and death: it is the bane of Aƫpytus, Idom, Archemorus, and Philoctetes: it gnaws the roots of the tree of life in the Eddas, and bites the heel of unfortunate Eurydice. In Hebrew writers it is generally a type of evil; and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the one thing that I try with all my might to impress on boys; that the essence of all style is to say what you mean as forcibly as possible; the bane of classical teaching is that the essence of successful composition is held to be to "get in" words and phrases; it is not a bad training, so long as it is realised to be only a training, in obtaining a rich and flexible vocabulary, so that the writer ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... (4) Muchomor [fly-bane]. Amanita muscaria, or Agaricus muscarius (fly-agaric). This is the Siberian fungus, with remarkable ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... his irreversible relations towards his creatures, that his united justice and love shall follow both holiness and iniquity now and ever, pouring his beneficence upon them to be converted by them into their food and bliss or into their bane and misery. There is, then, no essential need of adventitious accompaniments or results to justify and pay the good, or to condemn and torture the bad, here or hereafter. To be wise, and pure, and strong, and noble, is glory and blessedness enough in itself. To be ignorant, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... it should be so; but it is the direful truth. We bear the same name, we had the same father; and yet I have been the curse and bane ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... distant relation of the true Border breed, named Margaret Elliot—a lass whose ideas of hussyskep were so peculiar, that she thought Gilnockie and its laird were going to ruin when she saw in the kail-pot a "heugh bane" of their own cattle, a symptom of waste, extravagance, and laziness, on the part of her husband, that boded less good than the offer made by "the Laird's Jock," (Johnny Armstrong's henchman,) to give "Dick o' the Cow" a piece ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... Don't I know that type?" said the magnate, who confounded all scientists with inventors, the capital-seeking inventor being the bane and torment of ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams









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