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More "Wretched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Danville, and my mother, the daughter and grand-daughter of two Revolutionary soldiers, said they wanted me to go, and would let me go, when I was older—I was too young and small as yet. But I was afraid it would be all over before I got in, and I would lay awake at night, sad and wretched with this fear. I need not have been afraid of that. There was going to be plenty to go around, but I did not know that then, and I was low in mind. I suppose that my very strong feeling on the subject was natural. It was the inherited microbe in the blood. Though I was only a school boy ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... after all was human, was tortured at the sight of his tortures. She felt she must end it, or her nerves would give way. She trebled, she quintupled the dose of aqua distillata embittered with quinine. One night when the night nurse was sleeping ("resting her eyes," she called it) the wretched man stole from his bed to the night nursery and kissed both his boys. He then swiftly took the phial from its hiding place and drank the contents and died in one ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... you less often than I might, because, though I am always wretched, yet when I write to you or read a letter from you, I am in such floods of tears that I cannot endure it. Oh, that I had clung less to life! I should at least never have known real sorrow, or not much of it, in my life. Yet if fortune has reserved for me any hope of recovering at any ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Elsie. "I've been particularly wretched all day, scarcely able, with all my will-power at full strain, to ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... eyes deceive me," said the Baron, "there is the Frau von Ilmenau, with her pale daughter Emma, and that eternal Polish Count. He is always hovering about them, playing the unhappy exile, merely to excite that poor girl's sympathies; and as wretched as genius ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this," muttered he, uneasily, "I foresaw it. That's the worst of it! Some wretched trifle like this might spoil it all. Yes, this hat is certainly too remarkable; it looks so ridiculous. I must get a cap to suit my rags; any old thing would be better than this horror. Hats like these are not worn; this one would be noticeable ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... to shiver in an uncontrollable manner. I could endure it no longer, and made a step forward; but, growling something that I did not catch, Sarlaboux seized me by the arm and drew me back. Just at this moment Montluc laughed a bitter, stinging laugh; and the wretched prisoner, swinging round, nerved himself to step again to the embrasure, and stopped there tottering. Again the shout rose from below, and Montluc ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... here. Her mind had been never farther from peace. She could not feel that she had done wrong herself, but she was disquieted in every other way. Her heart and her judgment were equally against Edmund's decision: she could not acquit his unsteadiness, and his happiness under it made her wretched. She was full of jealousy and agitation. Miss Crawford came with looks of gaiety which seemed an insult, with friendly expressions towards herself which she could hardly answer calmly. Everybody around ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... catching it so hot. So when he had humbugged thus awhile, and now his wretched play Was halfway through, a dozen words, great wild-bull words, he'd say, Fierce Bugaboos, with bristling crests, and shaggy eyebrows too, Which not a ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... for he had been unable to secure his suit of ordinary garments, so that even if the King came to London, or if he could elude the other fools, he could not get out to visit her. He was no better than a prisoner here, he only marvelled that the King retained so wretched a jester, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this pool to bathe. The pool itself was tapu save for those consecrated to the gods, yet this wretched pair crept through the lantana there on the bank, and watched her. She stood on the rock above the pool and put off her pae, her cap of gauze, her long robe, and her pareu, all of finest tree-cloth, for in those days before the whites came our people ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... creature that I am! There isn't a single girl who will marry me. Well, as I went along I became exceedingly wretched, and in my misery I said: 'If the devil offered me a bride, I'd ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... I could not tell him everything as I have told you, and so I must not tell him anything, nor anybody else. How wretched it ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... poet's singing room—now inaccessible, the haunt of hawks and swallows. Within this rocky honeycomb— "cette ville en monolithe," as it has been aptly called, for it is literally scooped out of one mountain block—live a few poor people, foddering their wretched goats at carved piscina and stately sideboards, erecting their mud-beplastered hovels in the halls of feudal princes. From Les Baux road to Fontvieille, 7m.; whence rail to Mont-Majour and ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... splendid acting of young Carr, who became afterwards a more special object of favor even than he was before. It was bitterly cold when we landed early in January at Southampton, and my native land seemed to have retired from view behind a thick veil of fog. We had a wretched journey up to London, packed as tight as sardines in a tin, much to the disgust of Carr, who accompanied me to town, and who, with his usual thoughtfulness, had in vain endeavored to keep the carriage to ourselves, by liberal tips to guards and porters. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... I to know it wasn't Ju—Miss Summers' room?" he demanded angrily. "Didn't I follow the dratted dog? And wouldn't you have thought the wretched beast would have known me instead of sitting on its tail under the bed and yelling for mother? I gave her the dog myself. Oh, I tell you, Minnie, if I ever get away from ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... men speak in courtly chambers Words by which the wretched are consoled? What, thou think'st this aching brow was cooler, Circled, Tristram, by a ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... 132"Now, then, you wretched old beggar," shouted Lawless, "don't stand there winking and blinking like an owl; pull away like bricks, or I'll break your neck for you; go to work, I say!" and the miserable sexton, with a mute gesture of despair, resuming his occupation, a peal of four bells ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... stay if you like. We shall both be ruined, we shall have no one to come to our aid. But when we are both equally wretched, and every one shuts their door upon us both, when failure (for we must look all possibilities in the face), when failure drives us back to the Escarbas, then remember, love, that I foresaw the end, and that at the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... man is not man. Duty is more important than being. Nearly everything in our life is fixed by fate; there may seem to be exceptions, because some wicked men are prosperous and some righteous men are wretched, but these are not real exceptions to the general rule that we are made for our environment and fitted to it. And then, again, it may be that our judgments are not correct. Let the heart be right and all is well. Let man be obedient and his outward circumstance is nothing, having ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... blankets on the bed, his mother trying for the hundredth time to light the fire which had been drowned by the rain that came down the chimney. The clay floor was one mass of mud, and the whole place looked wretched. But the faces of the mother and the princess shone as if their troubles only made them the merrier. Curdie burst out laughing ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... human affairs is often strange and perplexing. When we formed the Committee of Union and Progress and deposed the wretched ABDUL from the Sultanate no sane man can have thought that you and I should ever be friends. ABDUL was your friend; you and yours had lavished upon him and his creatures all your arts for the purpose of obtaining influence and promoting the interest—forgive me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... are taught from their cradles that English rule is the cause of all their miseries. They were as ill off under their own chiefs; but they would bear from their natural leaders what they will not bear from us, and if we have not made their lot more wretched we have ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war—hell-hounds, I say, of savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman example of even Spanish cruelty—we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America—of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion..... endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity. My ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... all these rogues have good dinners; even Bois l'Hery has his meals sent in to the prison from the Cafe Anglais, and poor old Passajon is reduced to live on scraps picked up in the kitchen. Still we must not grumble too much. There are others more wretched than we are—witness M. Francis, who came in this morning to the Territorial, thin, pale, with dirty linen and frayed cuffs, which he still pulled down by force ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... said appreciatively, "it means another wretched night for us." She toyed with the tin-cup with nervous fingers for a moment and then turned to the expectant Grinaldi. "We have been obliged to ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... does very well for a short time, but you will soon grow tired of it. To be sure, I have been here only three weeks, but I liked it better every day, and I am wretched at leaving it. What could I ever mean by thinking it was not gay, and less lively than Genoa? To-night, as I came home from riding, the shore was covered with lazaroni and throngs of people, dancing, singing, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... hall stood and shouted, and Philip found that he was expected to take his turn at speech-making. He stood up trembling and wretched. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... and bedraggled and shabby-looking troop; and still, as always, Joan was the freshest of us all, in both body and spirits. We had averaged above thirteen leagues a night, by tortuous and wretched roads. It was a remarkable march, and shows what men can do when they have a leader with a determined purpose and a resolution that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shall arrive, On Saturday, if still alive: Perhaps your pirate doctor might See me on Sunday? If all's right, I should then lunch with you and with she Who's dearer to you than you are to me. I shall remain but little time In London, as a wretched clime, But not so wretched (for none are) As that of beastly old Braemar. My doctor sends me skipping. I Have many facts to meet your eye. My pig's snout's now upon my face; And I inhale with fishy grace, My gills outflapping right and left, Ol. pin. sylvest. I am bereft Of a great deal of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tones of disgust, as they walked down towards the harbour under the lee of the houses. "There was no need to put on these wretched stiff things." ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... agonising flow, Witness how deep ev'n now my heart is rent! Yet one is lovely—one is innocent! 170 Protect, protect, (and faint in death she smiled) When I am dead, protect my orphan child! The dreadful prison, that so long detained My wasting life, her dying words explained. The wretched priest, who wounded me by stealth, Bartered her love, her innocence for wealth! I laid her bones in earth; the chanted hymn Echoed along the hollow cloister dim; I heard, far off, the bell funereal toll, And sorrowing said: Now peace be with her soul! ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... sort of niche, the walls of which were covered with a cheap, blue paper dotted with silver stars. The smoking kerosene footlights on one side of the stage cast a drab light upon a musician with a disheveled gray beard and grease-stained coat, who was pounding away at the keyboard of a wretched piano with an automatic motion ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... on each of his hollow cheeks. His hands were tremulous and his voice deep and husky. After a few personal inquiries the old man broke out into a most extraordinary and characteristic harangue on the wretched degeneracy of these evil days. The prophet Jeremiah was cheerfulness itself in comparison with him.... Most of his extraordinary harangue was like an eruption of Vesuvius, but the laugh he occasionally gave showed ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... that made themselves his judges, without further examination confirmed the former sentence, that he was generally and absolutely useless. This was the grain of sand which decided the doubtful balance of his wretched destinies. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... parted at the door of the sitting-room Brother Nathan plucked at the Eldress's sleeve; "Is she very wretched—Lydia? Where is she now, Eldress? Poor Lydy! ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... Back to the inn for my horse, and to C.-S.'s, when I find him just returned and he accepts my letter. Thence home, by 12.30, jolly tired and wet. And to-day have been in a crispation of energy and ill-temper, raking my wretched mail together. It is a hateful business, waiting for the news; it may come to a fearful ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ideas are extreme, Dick. There is no such general opinion of you. Were you not exonerated from having stolen the wretched little Jew's goods? It is all forgotten," and George Taylor paused in his restless pacing, before the long, graceful figure on the bunk against the wall. Dick raised handsome eyes whose flashing light was ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... constantly over with a red paint, of a clayey or coarse ochry substance, mixed with oil, their garments, by this means, contract a rancid offensive smell, and a greasy nastiness; so that they make a very wretched dirty appearance, and what is still worse, their heads and their garments swarm with vermin, which, so depraved is their taste for cleanliness, we used to see them pick off with great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... came thick and heavy, and with great difficulty; though the wretched father had risen, and was standing by the table, leaning hard with both hands ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... poor book which had given her pleasure, and which she had saved up her pence to buy—the book which had drawn her out of herself, and made her forget her wretched surroundings, committed to the flames—ignominiously destroyed, and called bad names, too. How dared her mother do it? how dared she? The girls were right when they said she was tied to apron-strings—she ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... purpose of forcing Naples to let the Sicilian rebels alone. But then it is said, and it is the pitiful pretext of equal treatment to both parties, that the orders were alike to prevent action of the King's troops and the revolters. Was ever there a more wretched shift, a more hollow pretence, than this? Keep the Sicilians from breaking an armistice enforced to save them from utter and final destruction! Keep the beaten Sicilian rebel from overpowering his victorious masters! Keep the felon convicted ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... motoring with friend; hence delay in reporting. The house will not do. Plumbing in wretched condition, and house generally out of repair. Sorry but you will have to ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Heaven forgive me! Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense? God be wi' you: take mine office. O wretched fool, That lov'st to make thine honesty a vice! Ob monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world! To be direct and honest, is not safe. I thank you for this profit, and from hence I'll love no friend, since love breeds ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... windows of Astolaine. At that moment I was with her in her room. She has a soul that fears so much to trouble, with a tear or with a simple movement of her eyelids, the happiness of those about her, that I shall never know if she, as I, surprised that wretched kiss. But I know what she has the power to suffer. I shall not ask you anything you cannot avow to me, but I would know if you had any secret design in following Palomides under the window where you must have seen us. Answer ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... he never, where the flame Sprang to the roofs, and Helen ne'er he found Where flock'd the wretched women in their shame The helpless altars of the Gods around, Nor lurk'd she in deep chambers underground, Where the priests trembled o'er their hidden gold, Nor where the armed feet of foes resound In shrines to ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... by reminding his audience that, in the days of their fathers and grandfathers, fifty years ago, towards the close of the Nineteenth Century, the wretched Public had to content themselves with a miserable conveyance called a Pullman Car, that they in those days considered a triumph of elegant and convenient locomotion, because they could get tucked away on a shelf at night as a sort of apology ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Time we live ought not to be computed by the Numbers of Years, but by the Use has been made of it; thus tis not the Extent of Ground, but the yearly Rent which gives the Value to the Estate. Wretched and thoughtless Creatures, in the only Place where Covetousness were a Virtue we turn Prodigals! Nothing lies upon our Hands with such Uneasiness, nor has there been so many Devices for any one Thing, as to make it slide away imperceptibly and to no purpose. A Shilling shall ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... morally perverted, and while she admitted the right of people to be paid, did not admit the right of any one to annoy her father by presenting his bill. She looked at the letters, and, remembering the wretched expression on her father's face on receiving some the night before, it actually entered into her mind to tear these letters up and never let him see them at all. But she put them in her little bag, and opened her own letters and stood in the office to read them. The train was not due for fifteen ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the pale features of the window-pane. I was very irritated and angry, and spoke harshly; and then, all at once, I am sure I don't know how it happened, but it flashed upon me that I, of all men, had no right to utter a harsh word to one oppressed with so wretched a Christmas as this poor creature was. I couldn't say another word, but began feeling in my pocket for some money, and then I asked a question or two, and then I don't quite know how it came about—isn't it very warm here?" exclaimed Bachelor Bluff, rising and walking ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... Somehow it had got into the papers—probably through Colonel Morris' gossips at the club—that ours was likely to prove a very interesting case, and though the morning was damp and wretched, ladies and gentlemen had turned out into the fog and drizzle, as ladies and gentlemen will when there seems the least chance of a new ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... stroking his hand from wrist to fingertips with one soft finger. 'You mustn't be miserable. You and me have never done such a thing before; have we? Was it that wretched old Flu?' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... in the case, my boy," said the doctor. "It was a battle between the poor fellow's strength and the poison on that wretched arrow, ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... Homeric heaven,—in those quiet seats of the gods of the heroic world, which were never shaken by storm-wind, nor lashed by the tempest that raved far below round the dwellings of wretched mortals,—in those quiet abodes above the thunder, there was for the most part nought but festal joy, music, choral dances, and emptying of nectar-cups, interrupted now and then by descents into the low-lying region of human life in quest of adventure, or on errands of divine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... was indeed a miserable initiation into the hitherto unknown horrors of the sea, and no greater contrast could be possible than the calm of the night before and that wretched Sunday. It rained and blew great guns all day long, and by 6 P.M. the weather culminated in a severe gale, with the glass steadily falling, followed by a heavy thunderstorm, with vivid forked lightning. So furious indeed was ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... school. You'll go to the county balls. Your husband will join the agricultural society, and act as a magistrate. He'll subscribe to the hounds. He'll attend to the registrations. He'll have shooting-parties in September. And as to any old-world, wretched talks about chivalry and antiquity, we'll show him that there never was a time like the present—commerce, land, property, and intelligence, all in the very best condition. We'll make Lutter superintendent of the whole estate, and send old Peeper about his business. And in all this you must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... ranks of our party," writes Herve, "are to be found small merchants, small employers, wretched, impoverished, educated people, small peasant proprietors, none of whom on account of occupation can enter into the general Federation of Labor, which only admits those receiving wages and salaries. These are revolutionary elements which cannot be neglected; these volunteers of the Revolution ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book-factor, and, when wanting anything, writes to his bookseller and pays his bill. And it is wretched to consider what pickpocket work, with the help of the press, these demi-booksellers make. They crack their brains to find out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, at hard meat, to write and correct by the groat; and so ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... with their officials. But the most helpless mass of misery is to be found among the unorganised labourers who have no Union, and who are, therefore, the natural prey of the middleman. Take, for instance, one of the most wretched classes of the community, the poor fellows who perambulate the streets as Sandwich Men. These are farmed out by certain firms. If you wish to send fifty or a hundred men through London carrying boards announcing the excellence of your goods, you go to an advertising firm ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... artists sometimes placed the Magdalen in a very awkward, and perhaps impossible, situation; and she was even made to be buried up to the bosom in earth—still exercising her devotions. Canova has doubtless displayed great pathos in the wretched aspect, and humiliated attitude, of his Magdalen; but he has, at the same time, not been inattentive to beauty of form. I only wish she appeared to be in as good condition as the torso indicates. A fastidious observer might say the figure was not quite ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... said Jane; 'I was afraid he might speak to me; but then I knew I was too near friends for harm to come to me;' and she laughed at her own fears. 'How ragged and wretched he looks! Has ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... matters led an agricultural authority whom I met during my trip in Shidzuoka to deliver himself on the general question of the condition of the farmer in Japan. He expressed the opinion that 10 per cent. of the farmers were in a "wretched condition." Big holdings—if any holdings in Japan can be called big—were getting bigger; it was an urgent question how to secure the position of the owners of the small and the medium-sized classes of holding. The fact ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... poverty!" she burst out vehemently. "I'm sick of it all—of our wretched, miserable makeshifts. I'm tired, so tired, of everything. It will be such a rest." She rushed excitedly to the door, and ran, with the air of one who knows delay is fraught with danger, downstairs to her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... perishing with hunger. Month after month this cruelty continued, till at length, after twelve hundred thousand pounds had been wrung out of the Princesses, Hastings began to think that he had really got to the bottom of their coffers, and that no rigor could extort more. Then at length the wretched men who were detained at Lucknow regained their liberty. When their irons were knocked off and the doors of their prison opened, their quivering lips, the tears which ran down their cheeks, and the thanksgivings which they poured forth to the common Father of Mussulmans ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... meal to which he had looked forward all day, he enjoyed it much less than usual. A more sensitive person in his place must have found it wretched. Deb was a chilling hostess. Her frigid dignity and forced politeness caused discomfort even to him, thereby lowering her status in his eyes, lessening the ardour of his admiration for her. Mr Pennycuick, such a stickler for hospitality, scarcely spoke a word to the guest. Rose ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... a high priest of Apollo Had two nephews soft and silly, More than silly, wretched creatures, More than wretched, doltish drivels; And perceiving from experience How love smartens up its victims, He but said to them this only, "Fall in love at least, ye ninnies".— Thus, though not in love, sir, now, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... who, after writing, had conceived the most sanguine hopes, was now as wretched as Bella. Only, now that he was refused a hearing, he had wounded pride to support him a ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... wretched man, to urge to the commander in chief why you should not die?" said the major, recovering from the surprise created by the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... her some milk, and picked a good potato out of the bowl for her. She was sorry to see such an old woman in such a wretched condition. Goody Grope said she would rather have spirits of some kind or other than milk; but Mary had no spirits to give her; so she sat herself down close to the fire, and after she had sighed and groaned and smoked for some time, she said to Mary, "Well, and what have you done with the treasure ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... The thought made him wretched. He was unfit for study, and wanted to get out to learn if any such report had actually ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... me fit to hold a candle to him," he said. "But I happen to know, for all he rides such a good horse, he's not above doing the work of a wretched menial, for he polishes his ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... beginning to have tea, or, rather, coffee. It was the modern version of those seventeenth century Flemish pictures which one sees in most Museums, where a brutal and licentious soldiery are in possession of some wretched Belgian yeoman's house. The Tommies were, of course, going to pay liberally for their coffee and were evidently behaving with ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... power over my life. To elude the storm of invective and upbraiding, to quiet the uproar of my mind, I did not betake myself to voluntary death. My pusillanimity still clung to this wretched existence. I abruptly retired from the scene, and, repairing to the port, embarked in the first vessel which appeared. The ship chanced to belong to Wilmington, in Delaware, and here I sought out an ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... what he has got already; and what he has got already he cherishes with a passionate joy. I cherished my gallimaufry of rainbow-coloured labels almost as passionately as the miser his hoard of gold. Why do we call the collector of current coin a miser? Wretched? He? True, he denies himself all the reputed pleasures of life; but does he not do so of his own accord, gladly? He sacrifices everything to his mania; but that merely proves how intense his mania is. In that the nature of his collection cuts him off from all ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... woes, as great as the Romans could inflict upon it, from the action of the factions. Under the pretense of punishing all who were supposed to be favorable to making terms with Rome, bands of armed men pervaded the whole country, plundering and slaying the wretched inhabitants. ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... The wretched night in the forge at last came to an end, and the next morning we looked around for more comfortable billets. We selected the cellar of a house in fairly good condition and prepared to move in, when we discovered that we were not the first ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... And a wretched little man, with a miserable face and little thin legs and arms, came out of the shadows and went home with the ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... lofty emprise of thine, to wit, of being liberal to all comers: and for that thou art envious of Nathan's merit I greatly commend thee; for were many envious for a like cause, the world, from being a most wretched, would soon become a happy place. Doubt not that I shall keep secret the design which thou hast confided to me, for the furtherance whereof 'tis good advice rather than substantial aid that I have to offer thee. Which advice is this. Hence, perhaps half a mile off, thou mayst see a ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... his vision but it came back to him, working among the wretched little peasants, brought from Italy to be exploited by the organ-grinders. He taught the boys himself and found friends to tend them. Grisi, the famed singer, would help to earn money for ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... conjointly or separately: "A perfect daub, possessing not one single quality necessary to create even the slightest interest—a disgrace to the Exhibition—who allowed such a wretched production to disgrace these walls?—woefully out of drawing, and as badly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... gave me my life, and it makes me very unhappy to think that I can give you nothing in return. Oh, Beatrice, I will tell you what I have never told to any one. I am lonely and wretched. With the exception of yourself, I do not think that there is anybody who really cares for—I mean who really sympathises with me in the world. I daresay that it is my own fault and it sounds a humiliating thing to say, and, in a fashion, a selfish thing. I never should have said it to any living ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... my imperfections!' For, Tom, if thou dost persevere in careless and evil courses, it may be that the power to ask the Lord's forgiveness may pass from thee; and if it comes to such a pass, may the Lord have mercy upon thy wretched soul!" ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... views,—the city is spread before it, with its many churches and towers, and for many miles you see the magnificent Tagus, rolling by banks crowned with trees and towers. But to arrive at this enormous building you have to climb a steep suburb of wretched huts, many of them with dismal gardens of dry cracked earth, where a few reedy sprouts of Indian corn seemed to be the chief cultivation, and which were guarded by huge plants of spiky aloes, on which the rags of the proprietors of the huts were sunning themselves. The ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suffer in silence no longer. Nobody in this city, much less in these wretched lodgings, has an ear for anything but the clink of money and the shrill laughter of women. If fifty men were to file saws in front of the entrance of any one of these rooms, there would be not the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... at that time highly esteemed. I became much acquainted with the private Secretary of that Minister, a man of an enlarged benevolent heart; and found that his sentiments and my own perfectly agreed with respect to the madness of war, and the wretched impolicy of two nations, like England and France, continually worrying each other, to no other end than that of a mutual increase of burdens and taxes. That I might be assured I had not misunderstood him, nor he me, I put the substance of our opinions into writing and sent it to ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... hitherto been entirely with Frankenstein, is unexpectedly diverted to the monster who, it would seem, is wicked only because he is eternally divorced from human society. Amid the magnificent scenery of the Valley of Chamounix he appears before his creator, and tells the story of his wretched life, pleading: "Everywhere I see bliss from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... the slow-pac'd sun, Pursue their toils till all his race is run. No eye to mark their suff'rings with a tear; No friend to comfort, and no hope to cheer: Then, like the dull unpity'd brutes, repair To stalls as wretched, and as coarse a fare; Thank heaven one day of mis'ry was o'er, Then sink to sleep, and wish to wake ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... had rarely been heard to speak so bitterly. It was clear that opposition had gone far enough. Sim's watery eyes were never for an instant still. Full of a sickening apprehension, they cast furtive glances into every face. The poor creature seemed determined to gather up into his wretched breast the scorn that was blasting it. The turf on the hearth gave out a great heat, but the tailor shivered as with cold. Then Ralph reached the coat and cap, and, after satisfying himself that they were dry, he handed ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... person was Warren Hastings. This was the only time he was ever out of ammunition. Some of his acts have left stains upon his name which can never be washed away, but he saved to England the Indian Empire, and that was the best service that was ever done to the Indians themselves, those wretched heirs of a hundred centuries of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... doubtless, a wretched substitute for that beautiful contrivance, the alphabet, which, employing a few simple characters as the representatives of sounds, instead of ideas, is able to convey the most delicate shades of thought ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... forward, because eclat and noise supply the means of deadening the conscience; while, as regards the grand instincts of charity, it has been well said that—"the obscure acts of devotedness are the most magnificent." The poor and wretched shed tears in obscurity over benefits done secretly, while folly loves to display its glittering spangles, and shakes its bells in the public squares. There is in each one of us more evil than we think; but there is in the world more good than is commonly known. There are concealed ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... a private gentleman of the Augustan time, show a delicacy of sentiment almost modern. Of the ribald curses which Catullus hurls after his departing Lesbia, there is nothing. He throws the blame on others: and if, just to frighten, he describes the wretched old age of the girls who never were faithful, it is with a playful tone and hoping such bad luck will never befall any sweet-heart of his. This delicacy and tenderness, with the playful accent, are, ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... you say! That gentleman is a knave, a wretched scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless, soulless, haughty, and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in obedience to the harangues of two patriotic ecclesiastics, Canon de Luca and Carlo da Celle, superior of a capuchin convent. This was meant to develop into a general insurrection, but it was nowhere followed up, and the sword of vengeance fell speedily on the wretched villagers. Surrounded by the royal troops, they were forced into submission, many were shot on the spot, others were dragged in chains to Salerno, not even a drop of water being allowed them during the journey under the scorching sun. The village of Bosco was rased to the ground. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... that my own utterance sympathized with his—but, shewing him a shilling—and indicating, by signs, the difficulty I felt in putting him in possession of it—"here sir," said he, "and God bless you;" then, stooping with his mouth, I put it between his lips!—Ah, thought I, as I turned from this wretched object, the most hard-hearted of those who were concerned in breaking public treaties, and rejecting overtures for peace, would have relented, if with my feelings they had beheld this single victim of the millions that have ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... 'Ill! wretched! ungrateful girl!' was the reply. 'And whose fault is it that you are so? Not mine! Blame yourself, if you will, and him, your darling Andre. What will he do now that you have no more to give? nothing even that you can sell, to supply him with the means of gratifying ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... to her son Cupid. "Wound that proud, impertinent girl with your arrows, and see to it that she falls in love with some wretched, depraved human being. She shall pay ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Horace Walpole writes, in 1756: "Lord Stafford carried us to Worksop, where we passed two days. The house is huge and one of the magnificent works of Old Bess of Hardwick, who guarded the Queen of Scots here for some time in a wretched little bedchamber within her own lofty one:—there is a tolerable little picture ('The story of Bathsheba, finely drawn and shaded, in faint colours') of Mary's needlework. The great apartment is vast and triste, the whole leanly furnished: the great ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... in your heart, "to go home and begin leading a new life. I will do that, please God, but I want to know at once that I am forgiven. I want to be saved. I cannot save myself. I cannot save myself from hell hereafter, or from this miserable sinful life, nearly as bad as hell here. Oh! wretched being that I am, who shall deliver me from ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... charred stake in Antilochus's shield, while the other lay on the ground. Adamas then sought shelter under cover of his men, but Meriones followed after and hit him with a spear midway between the private parts and the navel, where a wound is particularly painful to wretched mortals. There did Meriones transfix him, and he writhed convulsively about the spear as some bull whom mountain herdsmen have bound with ropes of withes and are taking away perforce. Even so did he move convulsively for a while, but not for very long, till Meriones came up and drew the spear ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... suffered more than any of the rest, and nothing of it is now to be seen but a few wretched remains of buildings of the Roman period, and the ruins of a barbaric colonnade on the site of a Byzantine basilica almost contemporary with the Arab conquest. Perhaps the enormous mounds which cover its site may still conceal ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the very few victories ever obtained by the Spaniards against the French, where a division of 14,000 men surrendered to Castanos. This was on the 20th of July, and nine days afterwards Joseph retreated to Burgos with the crown jewels. The wretched Spaniards, however, were incapable of improving their victory; and General Castanos instead of following up the retreating enemy, went to Seville to fulfil a vow he had made of dedicating his unexpected victory to St. Ferdinand, on whose tomb he deposited ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... half of this world that we occupy on the northern half; so that, when it is winter with us, it is summer there. The climate is rigorous and stormy in the extreme, and the description given of the natives shows that they are a wretched and forlorn race of human beings. Captain Cook visited one of their villages before leaving the coast. It contained about a dozen dwellings of the poorest description. They were mere hovels; nothing more than a few poles set up in a circle and meeting together at the top, each forming a kind ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... made persistent efforts to fan the embers of discontent into a flame.[109] Lord Sheffield declared that even the neighbourhood of Sheffield Park, near Lewes, was thoroughly worked by French emissaries; but it is not unlikely that landlord nervousness transfigured some wretched refugees, on their way from the coast, into Jacobinical envoys. Certainly the town which gave him his title was in a dangerous state. An officer stationed there describes the joy of the men of Sheffield in celebrating ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and they prepared to leave. We paid our bill and went out into the street. Numbers of soldiers were straggling past. They looked wretched and exhausted. Their boots and puttees were caked with mud. They had neither rifles nor packs. Three men were lying up against a garden wall. We asked them for news. They could not tell us much, except that the ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... exile from Geraldine G—, How aimless, how wretched an exile is he! Promenades are not even prunella and leather To lovers, if lovers can't ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... thou hast slain, and [over whom] thou speakest boastingly; and thou hast widowed his wife in the recess of her new bridal chamber, and caused accursed mourning and sorrow to his parents. Certainly I should be some alleviation of woe to them wretched, if indeed, bearing back thy head and armour, I should place them in the hands of Panthus and noble Phrontis. Nor shall the labour of valour or flight be untried ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... all the spittoons are cleaned, that the ink wells at the desk are provided with ink, that the pens are good enough for use (I never yet have seen a public office where the writing facilities were not wretched), abundance of blanks on hand, and that everything is tidied up. In summer, you must wash off the ice and place it in the cooler, and in winter, see that the fires are going and the office comfortable at the time we go there for business. Can you do ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... and sobbed, and called herself the most wretched of women; and among other out-of-the-way provoking things, asked my master, was he fit company for her, and he drinking all night? This nettling him, which it was hard to do, he replied, that as to drinking all night, he was then as sober as she was herself, and that it was no matter how ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... huts, with mud beehives plastered against the walls, stands on the lowest bench of the foothills of Mount Gilboa, opposite the equally wretched hamlet of Sulem in a corresponding position at the base of a mountain called Little Hermon. The widespread, opulent view is haunted with old stories of battle, murder ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... curious assortment of garments, which he laid on the floor beside him. They were not Smarlinghue's clothes—they were even more shoddy and disreputable. His brows gathered critically as he surveyed the wretched boots, the mismated socks, the frayed, patched trousers, the greasy flannel shirt, the ragged coat, and the battered, shapeless slouch hat. Matched closely enough to the originals to pass without question, gathered from ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... their world, and was not supposed to know the ins and outs of their customs. Besides, why should custom stand between such a love as mine and its object? Conventional propriety was for the pitiful earth and its wretched abortive passions. Perhaps I should frighten her? No, I did not believe it. In this golden land even the birds seemed fearless. As well think to frighten an angel ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... glass, his sickle, hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st; If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure: Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be, And her quietus ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... still, some said, if every one had his own. Their grandeur was shown by the prevalence of their name. The barony in which they lived was the barony of Desmond. The river which gave water to their cattle was the river Desmond. The wretched, ragged, poverty-stricken village near their own dismantled gate was the town of Desmond. The earl was Earl of Desmond—not Earl Desmond, mark you; and the family name was Desmond. The grandfather of the present earl, who had repaired his fortune ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... refuge in the first shelter that offered. If only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere! As the gig traversed the short distance between the quay and the yacht, Lily grew more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her long absence. What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long hours no soul to turn to—but by this time Lily's eager foot was on the side-ladder, and her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be unfounded; for there, in the luxurious shade of the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... of battle came into Molly's eyes. "I feel like a knight pricking o'er the plain to slay a dragon," she thought, waving an imaginary sword in the air. "When it's all over I wish I had the nerve to say, 'Thou wretched, rash, intruding ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... his weakness better than the Spanish Admiral. He had fine ships and fine guns, but his crews were undisciplined. They were wretched marksmen and in no respect to be compared with our gunners, who demonstrated in the War of 1812 that they have no equals in the whole world. Knowing all this, Admiral Cervera was loth to venture out of the harbor ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... Jimmy began to feel very wretched again. He wondered where he should sleep, and he could hear that it was raining ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... examples. To please her, this lazy, bored, highbred woman, with all the squeamishness and caprice of high birth and laziness about her, becomes their ideal; to be favourably noticed, their highest glory; to be loved, these wretched mortals, by this divinity—that thought must often pass through their brain and terrify them with its delicious audacity; oh no, such a thing is not possible. But it is. The lady at first, perhaps most often, singles out as a pastime some young knight, some squire, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... but one dagger from my breast; for if I have lost your heart, what matters whether indifference or more powerful charms than mine have robbed me of it? You love me no longer; neither do you love another? Wretched man indeed, ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... full of dreary, dark despair. Outstretched along the plains of Shunem lay The army of the heathen Philistines—(f) A countless horde, at whose relentless head Achish, the King of Gath, with stern acclaim Breathed war against the Israelitish host. Heedless of help from God, the wretched Saul Had called his tribes together, and they swarmed Along the plains of Gilboa, whence they saw The mighty army of their heathen foe Lie like a drowsy panther in its lair With limbs all wakeful for the hungry leap. "Enquire me of the Lord!" the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... as bright as day. The moon right over Vaea—near due west, the birds strangely silent, and the wood of the house tingling with cold; I believe it must have been 60 deg.! Consequence: Fanny has a headache and is wretched, and I could do no work. (I am trying all round for a place to hold my pen; you will hear why later on; this to explain penmanship.) I wrote two pages, very bad, no movement, no life or interest; then I wrote a business letter; then took to tootling on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by this time a saint in Paradise." As for going to bed, all wish for sleep was put out of their heads by the rocking of the ship and the uncomfortable berths, and the poor Marchesana was so cold and wretched without a fire that she wished herself dead, and her lady-in-waiting could not keep back her tears. However, at length these miseries were ended, Piacenza was safely reached, on the 12th of January, and the royal ladies and their companions ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... chapter of Romans, begins, and instead of the utterance of the moralist: "I have kept the everlasting law, give me my dues," there bursts forth the self-despairing cry of the penitent and the child: "O wretched man that I am.! who shall deliver me? Father I have sinned against ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... parents could not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must find themselves sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their turn, that they condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings, and I was as wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the innocence of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... formed; one little thought or feeling at a time adds its influence. If these thoughts and feelings are pure and right, the character will be lovely and will sparkle with light; but if they are impure and evil, the character will be wretched and deformed. ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... method, with certain modifications, has yielded such good results that I now undertake with reasonable confidence the charge of such patients; and the subject is so important and has as yet influenced so little the futile drugging treatment of these wretched cases that it seems worth while to devote a special chapter to it, although the affections named can scarcely be said to be included under the head ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... instituted. Such was the penurious love he bore for the science which he had adopted, that the extraordinary discoveries of thirty years subsequent to his own first essays could never excite even an idle inquiry. He tells us that he preferred "his larches to his laurels:" the wretched jingle expressed the mere worldliness that dictated it. In the same spirit of calculation with which he had at first embraced science and literature, he abandoned them; and his ingenuous confession is a memorable example of that egotistic pride which betrayed in the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... decent men, many knights and nobles joined against him, and contrived to take him by strategem. He was brought to London, tried, and condemned to death with sixteen accomplices, dragged from Westminster to the Tower, and there hanged. "When he had there breathed out his wretched soul," he was drawn and quartered—a literal account of which, as given in Matthew Paris, I forbear to set down—and the quarters of his body sent to the four principal cities of England. His father, Geoffrey, fled ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... iii., p. 7.).—The ballad adverted to, which is the one translated by Vincent Bourne, is by Tickel, and will be found in any collection of his works. Notwithstanding Southeys epithet "wretched!" it will always be admired, both in the original and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... more, but supper being served up, hindered her. She made prince Assad sit at table with her, being charmed with his beauty and eloquence, and touched with a most ardent passion, which she hoped soon to let him know. Prince, said she, we must make you amends for so many fasts and wretched meals which the pitiless adorers of fire forced you to make; you will want to be nourished after such sufferings. With these and such like words supper began; and the queen plied the prince with wine to recover his spirits; of which he drank more ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... variety of miseries she had undergone in so little time, for all her misfortunes had happened within the compass of two years; I compared her situation with my own, and found it a thousand times more wretched. I had endured hardships, 'tis true—my whole life had been a series of such; and when I looked forward, the prospect was not much bettered, but then they were become habitual to me, and consequently I could bear them with ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... work in the fields alongside the tramps and transients and hoboes who drifted back and forth as the casual market for labor and the lure of the cities swept them. Save for his mother and their cow and garden and flock of fowls and their wretched little rented house, ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... last came the worst indignity of all: Pepper was driven from his rug—his own particular rug—to make room for the baby; and when he had got away into a corner to cry quietly, all by himself, that wretched baby came and crawled after him and pulled ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... me just like a querulous, vulgar, middle-aged woman in her talk; she repeats herself in the same scolding sort of way; and she's so eager to blame somebody besides Bartley for Bartley's wickedness that, when she can't punish herself, she punishes her father. She's merciless to that wretched old man, and he's wearing his homesick life out here in the city for her sake. You heard her just now, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not made such a monster of that species of dramatic entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see wretched tragedies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... drive of fifteen hours, without a resting-place for our wearied bodies or a dinner to restore our failing strength and spirits. One hotel, we found, was indeed shut up, and in the other they had only two close, wretched-looking rooms to offer us—one with two, and one with three, beds. We were very reluctant to accept these; and, after all, how could seven persons, a lady and six gentlemen, be thus accommodated? Mr. M—— and I determined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... change horses and dine. We snatched a moment to visit the hospital of St. Anna and the prison of Tasso—the glory and disgrace of Ferrara. Over the iron gate is written "Ingresso alia prigione di Torquato Tasso." The cell itself is miserably gloomy and wretched, and not above twelve feet square. How amply has posterity avenged the cause of the poet on his tyrant!—and as we emerge from his obscure dungeon and descend the steps of the hospital of St. Anna, with what fervent ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... animadversion. Francis Thynne tells us that Bale has "mistaken infynyte thinges in that booke de Scriptoribus Anglie, being for the most part the collections of Lelande." Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer; p. 23. Picard, in his wretched edition of Gulielmus Neubrigensis (edit. 1610, p. 672), has brought a severe accusation against the author of having "burnt or torn all the copies of the works which he described, after he had taken the titles of them;" but see this charge successfully rebutted in Dr. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the side of the mountain; and there by torchlight they suffered the cruel tortures of their overseers without having power to make their groans heard above ground. No lot upon earth could be more wretched than that of these unhappy men; to all of them death would have been thought ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... meant to do a very important piece of work that day, but I couldn't get my mind off Herbert's wretched problem. Happening to see Carey at tea-time, I mentioned it ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... Hervey formed a continual subject for the satire of his opponents. Pope's bitter lines on him- are well remembered. The old Duchess of Marlborough, too, in her "Opinions," describes him as having "certainly parts and wit; but he is the most wretched profligate man that ever was born, besides ridiculous; a painted face, and not a tooth in his head." on which the editor of that curious little book, Lord Hailes, remarks, "Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of the epilepsy, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the best of which were from his burin. In addition there are to be editions of these compositions in middling and small sizes as well as in wood engravings. The object is to provide something which has real artistic merit in place of the wretched pictures which are offered for the devotion of the faithful in so many churches and in Catholic prayer-books. The Pope himself, to whom the first colored drawings have been shown, takes a lively interest in the enterprise, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... "And if she succumbs to the temptation, she will be faithless to the love which has coursed through her whole life as the Nile flows through the land of her ancestors. Then, Charmian, stay, stay under any circumstances, cling to her more firmly than ever, for then, then, my sister, she will be more wretched—ten, a hundred fold more wretched than if Octavianus deprives her of everything, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... after nouns they become more like verbs and are in fact conjugated like them; e.g., tacai iama 'a high mountain,' xiguei ideiri 'frequent comings and goings,' caxicoi (10 fito 'a wise man,' cavaij mono 'a wretched thing,' aiaui coto 'a dangerous thing,' umare tuqi no cuchi 'one's natural, or mother tongue.' There are also adjectives ending in na which, when they are placed before nouns, do not alter the construction; e.g., qirei na coto 'a clean thing.' ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... need not be told at length. My fortunes underwent the variations which befall all. Sometimes I was rich one day, and poor the next. I never thought too exclusively of money, believing rather that we were born to be happy, and that the surest way to be wretched is to prize it overmuch. Had I done so, I should have mourned over many a promising speculation proving a failure, over many a pan of preserves or guava jelly burnt in the making; and perhaps lost my mind when the great fire of 1843, which devastated Kingston, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... some have a scull-cap, white or red, and others are bare-headed. I laughed when I surveyed with my inexperienced eye these grisly, skeleton, phantom troops, and thought of the splendid invincible guard which the Pasha promised me. And yet amongst these wretched beings was riding sublime ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... brings with it; so that, if God has not made you miserable, you should never fail, like the ascetics, to make yourself so. I fear you never can be perfectly 'spiritual' till you have made yourself supremely wretched. But to quit this point," I continued; "if immortality be a delusion, I fear we say that it covers the divine administration with an penetrable cloud,—one which we cannot hope will removed. The inequalities of that ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... at 9.30 a.m. on January 11th, striking south for Warmal. There were a good many wretched villages in succession half a mile or so apart from one another, such as Dubna, Hasan-Jafa, Luftulla and Husena Baba. The ground was covered with white salt ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... or was there, to cloud Percy's life with such knowledge? Why, my dear Miss Elliott, if we all knew what other people know about us, we should be wretched! No! the mysteries of life are as merciful as the revelations; let us be thankful for all that we do ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of his time with his friend the bishop; much with his daughter Mrs. Bold, now, alas, a widow; and had almost daily visited the wretched remnant of his former subjects, the few surviving bedesmen now left at Hiram's Hospital. Six of them were still living. The number, according to old Hiram's will, should always have been twelve. But after the abdication of their ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... was a vain, fussy, and spiteful fool, with power enough to thwart Montcalm at every turn. The intendant, Bigot, was the greatest knave ever seen in Canada, and the head of a gang of official thieves who robbed the country and the wretched French Canadians right and left. The French army, all together, numbered nearly seventeen thousand, almost twice Wolfe's own; but the bulk of it was militia, half starved and badly armed. Both Vaudreuil and Bigot could and did interfere disastrously with the five different forces ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... Assign'd for life to unremitting grief; For, let Heaven's wrath enlarge these weary days, If hope e'er dawns the smallest of its rays. Time o'er the happy takes so swift a flight, And treads so soft, so easy, and so light, That we the wretched, creeping far behind, Can scarce th'impression of his footsteps find; Smooth as that airy nymph so subtly born With inoffensive feet o'er standing corn;[3] Which bow'd by evening breeze with bending stalks, Salutes the weary traveller as he walks; But o'er ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Dr. Lacey, "I will care for her; for though you did me a great wrong, you saved me from being today the most wretched of men." ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... distress. "You know he is my trustee—I told you, didn't I? I see him very seldom, and we don't take much interest in each other; he's nothing but a man of business, the kind I detest; he can't talk of anything but money and shares and wretched things of that sort. But you know ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... three wretched days on that Chicken, and when it was finished Thor again took down his gun—it seemed a much heavier gun now. He crawled to the barn, but he was so weak and shaky that he missed several times before he brought ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... morning, while she was feeding the chickens; and the eldest girl screaming and screeching at the thoughts of going to bed, because Sally, in order to bring her under her authority, had told her a frightful 'raw-head-and-bloody-bones' story; the horse had broken into the garden, and made wretched work with the vegetables; and fifty pounds of butter had become fit for the grease-pot, because the hoops of the firkin had sprung, and Sally had so much to do, that she never thought of going to see whether the butter was covered ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... fall into a fit, or drop in an apoplexy, on hearing the news. There is a most melancholy instance of this in the very next house,—of a Jew made suddenly and unexpectedly rich, who instantly became insane in consequence, and is now the most wretched and melancholy spectacle that man can ever become,—starving in the midst of abundance, and moving like a beast about his house. But of all ill luck that can happen to the lottery-gambler, the worst is to win a small prize. It is all over with him from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... indignity of the Christian priests standing upon him while he was being dragged out. That seems to have helped cure his followers of their faith in him. They delivered the temple treasure into the hands of the King—seven chests filled with money and valuables, among them a silver cup which the wretched King Svend had sent to Svantevit as a bribe to the Wends for joining him against his own country and kin. But those days were ended. It was the Danes' turn now, and Wendland was laid waste until "the swallows ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... but one Mind, and that it is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, the influence of all other thoughts will fade quite away. It is because we recognize the carnal mind whose thoughts are frivolous, vain, wretched or miserable, that we are unsettled and dissatisfied. There can be no foundation, no sense of security, to the one who is continually listening to ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... returned the wretched Biler, blubbering again, and again having recourse to his coat-cuff: 'I shouldn't care, sometimes, if it was growed too. My misfortunes all began in wagging, Sir; but what could ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... and swallows. Within this rocky honeycomb— "cette ville en monolithe," as it has been aptly called, for it is literally scooped out of one mountain block—live a few poor people, foddering their wretched goats at carved piscina and stately sideboards, erecting their mud-beplastered hovels in the halls of feudal princes. From Les Baux road to Fontvieille, 7m.; whence rail to Mont-Majour and Arles (see ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... should do this when he is running for his life, thou wouldst condemn him. And dost thou not condemn thyself that dost the very same in effect? nay worse; that loiterest in thy race, notwithstanding thy soul, heaven, glory, and all is at stake? Have a care, have a care, poor wretched sinner; ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... action. The charitable man is loved by all, well-known and far-renowned! his friendship prized by the gentle and the good, in death his heart at rest and full of joy! He suffers no repentance, no tormenting fear, nor is he born a wretched ghost or demon! this is the opening flower of his reward, the fruit that follows—hard to conjecture! In all the six conditions born there is no sweet companion like pure charity; if born a Deva or a man, then charity brings worship and renown on every hand; if born among the lower ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... into a matter of no small importance. The story itself cannot here be related; it would not well bear recital: enough that the person flogged was a middle-aged man of the Waist—a forlorn, broken-down, miserable object, truly; one of those wretched landsmen sometimes driven into the Navy by their unfitness for all things else, even as others are driven into the workhouse. He was flogged at the complaint of a midshipman; and hereby hangs the drift of the thing. For though this waister was so ignoble ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... it's any use to you I'm prepared to admit once for all that I was an ass. We'll never have the wretched Mimi in the house again. I'll give ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... where he droops between the sister dames, And fondly melts—the other scorns his flames,— The mighty slave of Omphale behind Is seen, and he whom Love and fraud combined Sent to the shades of everlasting night; And still he seems to weep his wretched plight.— There, Phyllis mourns Demophoon's broken vows, And fell Medea there pursues her spouse; With impious boast, and shrill upbraiding cries, She tells him how she broke the holy ties Of kindred for his sake; the guilty shore That from her poignard drank ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... broom. Mercy on us! how my mistress began to rave and tear! Well, after all, there's nothing like good ironstone ware for wear. If ever I marry, that's flat, I'm sure it won't be John Dockery— I should be a wretched woman in a shop full of crockery. I should never like to wipe it, though I love to be neat and tidy, And afraid of meat on market-days every Monday and Friday I'm very much mistook if Mr. Lambert's will be ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the ruins of a wretched little village called Belhhamiyeh, formerly under the patronage of the 'Adwan; and thence appeared in full view upon the hill above the great castle of the Crusaders called Belvoir, but now named Cocab, or Cocab el Hawa. Upon the plain by the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... I think anybody could believe, or even understand; and when I hope to have her well again with me, it would be sinning against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I can conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older and wiser and better than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... opportunity to violate. In 1540 the war recommenced, and a number of dissolute young men of good family formed themselves into organized companies of bandits and overran the country, to the terror of the wretched peasantry and the utter ruin of many hundreds of honest families. But in 1543 a second Joan of Arc was raised up by Providence to deliver the Nicois in the person of the still popular heroine, Catterina Segurana. Francis I. had recently scandalized Christendom by allying himself with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... which long afterwards checked my growth. I recollect it as a dream, that I would go home to my mother, but that my cries were hushed by the Sergeant, first with good words and then with menaces. I remember dimly, that I at one time found myself in a foul and wretched house, where hideous men treated me harshly, and I longed to die.—— Then comes, like a sunbeam, the impression of another home, of a clear heaven, pure air, green meadows, and of friendly, mild people, who, with infinite ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... more nervous every minute. "Hurry!" she cried every few seconds. "I am sure those men will return before you ever get the wretched place afire. What is ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... of the strongest opponents of the South and of Slavery were disposed to accept the dismemberment of the Union almost complacently, there were men of a very different type to whom it seemed an outrage to be consummated only over their dead bodies. During the wretched months of Buchanan's incurable hesitancy the name of Jackson had been in every mouth. And at the mere sound of that name there was a rally to the Union of all who had served under the old warrior in the days when he had laid his hand of steel upon the Nullifiers. Some ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... humanity long adjourned and put off. The hideous aspect of pauperism, the debasement and vice in our cities, tell us by their eloquent silence or in inarticulate mutterings, that the rich and the powerful and the intellectual do not do their duty by the poor, the feeble, and the ignorant; and every wretched woman who lives, Heaven scarce knows how, by making shirts at sixpence each, attests the injustice and inhumanity of man. There are cruelties to slaves, and worse cruelties to animals, each disgraceful to their perpetrators, and equally ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... which he had displayed on several trying occasions; and his death was as unexpected as it was shocking to the whole community. Other outrages might be enumerated, but these are sufficient to illustrate the wretched state of the country and the unprotected condition of the persons and property of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... belong to their world, and was not supposed to know the ins and outs of their customs. Besides, why should custom stand between such a love as mine and its object? Conventional propriety was for the pitiful earth and its wretched abortive passions. Perhaps I should frighten her? No, I did not believe it. In this golden land even the birds seemed fearless. As well think to frighten ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... lance, doubling backward in his death-agony as he fell; there, another turned fiercely, and fired his pistol full at the dragoon who charged him, but missed, and was cleft next moment to the chin. In another place a wretched man had dropped on his knees, and, while in a supplicating attitude, was run through the neck by a lancer. But, to say truth, little quarter was asked by these Bashi-Bazouks, and none was granted. They fought on foot, fiercely, with spear ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... done in 1438! The first: void, weak and without expression; the second: full of life and character; and note that this difference strikes the eye even now, notwithstanding the difficulty of comparison owing to the wretched condition to which the panel at ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... repartees, sarcastically observed, "I do not quarrel with the Abbe d'Aubignac for having so closely followed the precepts of Aristotle; but I cannot pardon the precepts of Aristotle, that occasioned the Abbe d'Aubignac to write so wretched a tragedy." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... home. When Doctor Wicker came to-day, and I looked out and saw you with that miserable little coat with the sleeves half-way up to the elbows and great holes in it which you will not let anybody patch because you are too proud to wear patches, and those wretched faded trousers, out at the knees, and which have been turned up and hemmed at the bottom so often that they are six inches above your shoes, and your whole scarecrow appearance, I was so ashamed of you that I could not keep the tears ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... man resembles a fiddler, whose music, though liked, is not much praised, because he lives by it; while a gentleman performer, though the most wretched scraper alive, throws ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... an enemy. He seems to have been a wretched, contemptible spy; but what's wrong with you?" he suddenly exclaimed, as his eyes went to the boy's face. It was of an ashen pallor, and he was trembling in ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... Reina, who was one of the foremost religious in the Bisayan province—a fine linguist, and one who added much to the sacristies, and was very discerning in things pertaining to the altar—was prior in the same village, he heard that a wretched mestizo woman in his district was leading a dissolute life; for on that occasion the encomendero Don Agustin Flores was there. This man came at the head of a number of blinded and unruly Spaniards. The religious had the woman seized and placed in a private ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... his heart. He often had to pawn his clothes to keep from starving. He sold his "Life of Voltaire" for twenty dollars. After great hardship he managed to publish his "Polite Learning in Europe," and this brought him to public notice. Next came "The Traveller," and the wretched man in a Fleet Street garret found himself famous. His landlady once arrested him for rent, but Dr. Johnson came to his relief, took from his desk the manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it for three hundred dollars. He spent two years revising "The Deserted Village" after ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... great anxiety, we passed a wretched night; and, at daylight, commenced a thorough search for traces of the missing boys. Finally Jerry discovered their tracks in the road leading towards camp; and it seemed possible that we might have missed them in the darkness, and, if we at once returned, should ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... in adversity to despise death; but he acts more bravely, who can live wretched."—Martial, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... express purpose of driving him several steps to the bad, this must have been it. The line was only just opened. The station was a rude wooden hut, and there was no village near at hand. Alone in the wilds of Yorkshire, with few books, little to do, no prospects, and wretched pay, with no society congenial to his better taste, but plenty of wild, rollicking, hard-headed, half-educated manufacturers, who would welcome him to their houses, and drink with him as often as he chose to come, what was this morbid ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... circumstances. The confused state of the furniture, displaced for the convenience of being easily viewed and carried off by the purchasers, is disagreeable to the eye. Those articles which, properly and decently arranged, look creditable and handsome, have then a paltry and wretched appearance; and the apartments, stripped of all that render them commodious and comfortable, have an aspect of ruin and dilapidation. It is disgusting also to see the scenes of domestic society and seclusion thrown open to the gaze of ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 'Where do those foolish, wretched, and sinful men go, O chief of men, that steal or misappropriate such ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... well-regulated equine couple would permit themselves. In fact, our great satirist was of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and illustrated the theory by his own practice and example—God help him—which made him about the most wretched being ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Giver!" cried Miss Thacker, with an accent on the adjective which brought the blood into Lilias's cheeks. The wretched woman seemed to have fathomed her reluctance, and to be scoffing at her beneath a pretence of approval; but surely, now that she had got what she wanted, she would take her departure, and end this most trying scene. She made a little movement of dismissal, whereupon ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... districts it was quite impossible for them to keep up the amount of the tribute. Yet the hawks' bells, which once had been so eagerly coveted and were now becoming hated symbols of oppression, had to be filled somehow; and as the day of payment drew near the wretched natives, who had formerly only sought for gold when a little of it was wanted for a pretty ornament, had now to work with frantic energy in the river sands; or in other cases, to toil through the heat of the day in the cotton fields which they had formerly only cultivated enough to furnish ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... I found more leisure for reflection, the dire doubt returned in full strength, and I bitterly pondered upon it. Need I name the subject of my wretched reflections? Isolina de Vargas! ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... danger to the community. Native Commissioners have been permitted to practise extortion, injustice, and cruelty upon the natives under their jurisdiction. The Government has allowed petty tribes to be goaded into rebellion. We have had to pay the costs of the 'wars,' while the wretched victims of their policy have had their tribes broken up, sources of native labour have been destroyed, and large numbers of prisoners have been kept in goal for something like eighteen months without trial. It was stated in the newspapers that, out of 63 men imprisoned, 31 had died in that ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... remained some time in this wretched little room, as though at the bottom of a hole. All at once, Therese heard a clock in the neighbourhood strike ten. She felt as if she would have liked to have been deaf. Nevertheless, she looked for her hat which she fastened to ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... about to happen, and those magnates had rushed to the paying teller's side. "Do you know that signature?" said the old man with a gleam in his eye. Now it was the teller's turn to feel wretched. "Pay five hundred and fifty thousand—Babbit, soap man! oh! what an idiot I am!" All this went through his head. The president, the cashier, abased themselves before the irate old man. It was all a mistake! They assured him! They assured him! Beg pardon! Impertinence of new teller. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... of this song is the precision with which each character enters and joins the slowly increasing circle. But that is its only merit. It is wretched doggrel, and would make the play far too tedious. I was, however, ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fact, made no secret to Lord Melbourne, in the famous interview at Brighton, of his conviction that Lord John Russell had neither the ability nor the influence to qualify him for the task; and he added that he would 'make a wretched figure' when opposed in the Commons by men like Peel and Stanley. His Majesty further volunteered the remark that he did not 'understand that young gentleman,' and could not agree to the arrangement proposed. William, moreover, took occasion ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... healthy sleep that wraps her now, Else would she waken at my anxious cry; 'Tis death-sleep, wretched man. ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... an irreparable wrong, oh, THAT was too much for him. For he had kept two of his sons out of their own all these years, only in order to make the position and prospects of the third, at last, certainly doubtful, and perhaps wretched. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... said the priest, "philosophy conducts the soul to clemency. As far as I am concerned I willingly give absolution to knaves, rogues and rascals and all the wretched. And more, I owe no grudge to good people, though in their case there is much insolence. And if, Master Leonard, like myself, you should have been familiar with respectable people, you would know that they are not a rap better than the others, and are often of a less ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... it more strongly? She had, indeed, opposed it; and for a whole wretched week she who had never yet gainsaid him in anything had argued and pleaded with her son, attempting at the same time to bring in his uncles to wrestle with him, seeing that his poor paralyzed father was of no account, and so to make a stubborn family fight of it. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... signs, the difficulty I felt in putting him in possession of it—"here sir," said he, "and God bless you;" then, stooping with his mouth, I put it between his lips!—Ah, thought I, as I turned from this wretched object, the most hard-hearted of those who were concerned in breaking public treaties, and rejecting overtures for peace, would have relented, if with my feelings they had beheld this single victim of the millions that ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... midday, as she watched by the bedside of a little patient with a branch of maple in her hand to keep the flies away, she drowsed, and one of the wretched little insects lighted on her moist red lips. Soon thereafter the "walking typhoid" caught her as she was striding past Lum Chapman's blacksmith-shop. Instinctively she kept on toward home, and reached there raving: "Don't let him come—don't let him come!" And when the news got about ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... not a man and brother? Have I not a soul to save? Oh, do not my spirit smother, Making me a wretched slave; God of mercy, God of mercy, Let ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... the purpose of furthering their own vicious ends. They live principally in a neighborhood which abounds in lodging-houses for sailors, the lowest class of liquor stores, dancing and concert rooms, and various other low places of amusement; a neighborhood swarming with brothels, whose wretched inmates are permitted to flaunt their sin and finery, and ply their hateful trade openly, by day and night; where at midnight the quarrels, fights, and disturbances, are so noisy and so frequent that none can hope for a night's rest until they are inured by habit; where, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... hill, and across the river, is the village of Pucyura. When Raimondi was here in 1865 it was but a "wretched hamlet with a paltry chapel." To-day it is more prosperous. There is a large public school here, to which children come from villages many miles away. So crowded is the school that in fine weather the children sit on benches out of doors. The boys all go barefooted. The girls wear ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... have settled the feud, but for my positive command that they should follow me in as much peace as the rascally vulgar would permit. And thus they arrived here in the guise of flying men, when, with my command to repel force by force, they might have set fire to the four corners of this wretched borough, and stifled the insolent churls, like malicious fox cubs in a burning brake ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... being Sunday, my uncle found her as he went to church. She was sweeping a new crossing. She seemed to have found a lower deep still, for, alas! all her new clothes were gone, and she was more tattered and wretched-looking than before. As soon as she saw my uncle she burst ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... the wood, trying to daunt him, Led him confused in circles through the brake. He was forgetting his old wretched folly, And freedom was his need; his throat was choking; Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. Mumbling: 'I will get out! I must get out!' Butting and thrusting ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... glides away 'Mid mirth and music, flattery's whispered tone, Her dreary penance—ever to be gay, Yet longing, oh! how oft—to be alone; But when all other hearts seek needful rest, And heavy sleep the saddest eyelids close, Her dreams are those the wretched only know, As memory o'er her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Washington brought him to the front of the English troops at a moment when the French fleet held the sea, and the British army was driven by famine in October to a surrender as humiliating as that of Saratoga. The news fell like a thunderbolt on the wretched Minister, who had till now suppressed at his master's order his own conviction of the uselessness of further bloodshed. Opening his arms and pacing wildly about the room, Lord North exclaimed, "It is all over," and resigned. At this ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... JUST BEFORE MAXEN (an exultant exuberant curious Letter; too long for insertion,—part of it given above).... "For your Tragedy of SOCRATE, thanks. At Paris they are going to burn it, the wretched fools,—not aware that absurd fanaticism is their dominant vice. Better burn the dose of medicine, however, than the useful Doctor. I, can I join myself to that set? If I bite you, as you complain, it is without my knowledge. But I am surrounded with enemies, one ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the window, the broken panes of which were stuffed with rags, dry grass, and heather, though not tight enough to prevent the wind from whistling, and the rain, snow, and sleet from driving in upon the wretched inmate. Except where the solitary gleam of cold evening light fell upon the crouching figure of poor Mountain Moggy, all else in the hovel was gloom and obscurity. Little, however, did Moggy heed the weather. Winter or summer, chilling blasts or warm sunshine, the changeful seasons brought no change ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... to his wretched home, and eyed the dismal scene, and the havoc one man had made—the marble floor all stained with blood—Ina Klosking supported in a chair, white, and faintly moaning—Zoe still crushed and glaring at vacancy, and Fanny sobbing round her with pity and terror; for she knew there must be worse to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the results. Demented individuals are met in no small numbers inside of hospitals and asylums, and outside as well, who owe to this vice their awful condition. Plenty of half-witted men whom one meets in the every-day walks of life have destroyed the better half of their understanding by this wretched practice. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... that they had all gained the shore, the day was far spent; the natives, who were of the Caffre race, and who had been busy in obtaining all the iron that they could from the mainmast, which had drifted on shore, left the beach at dark. The wretched sufferers lighted fires, and having collected some casks of beef and flour, and some live stock, they remained on the rocks daring that night. The next morning the captain proposed that they should make their way to Cape Town, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sounded to me insufferably disagreeable. And now whatever I write I shall have to send because if I destroy this letter also I shall not have time to write another before you come to see me as you promised. And the reason for my wretched night was that I was haunted by all the reasons there are why you should not come. They are so difficult to put into words that I despair, after three attempts, of doing it in any but an offensive manner. Pity, Aurora, the plight of your poor patient; ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... dog had not changed its attitude. The moments sped by. Suddenly the poor beast began to struggle violently. It was a huge specimen of the husky breed, exceptionally powerful and wolfish in its appearance. The wretched brute moaned incessantly, but its pain only made it struggle the harder to free itself from its harness. At length it succeeded in wriggling out of the primitive "breast-draw" which held it. Then the suffering beast limped painfully ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... ability to do this is less than that of any one else. In very truth he seems to despise and hate me now. The barriers between us grow stronger and higher every day. How different it all might have been if—. But what is the use of these wretched 'ifs'? What is the use of resisting this blind, remorseless fate that brings happiness ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... he clutched at his breast, the hand which Roy tried to grasp trembled and was like ice. The two scouts saw that there was no use talking with him. The wretched creature was out of his senses. Huddling in a posture of abject terror he clutched the object which he held tighter against his breast, his head bowed and shaking, his whole form ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... could not fight the Turks single-handed I was always told that Bulgarian help was certain. The army was anxious to begin, for it was mobilized, and the revolt had cost more than had been expected. But for the fund I raised the wretched refugees would have suffered yet more bitterly. Montenegro cared nothing for them. All she wanted was territory. Great Serbia was discussed with singular cold-bloodedness, one of the schoolmasters saying at the dinner-table that it would never be "made till the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the past—of the short and secret courtship with its illusions, greater and more perilous than love's illusions commonly are—of her first days of married life, when, in spite of her rash disobedience, she was feverishly happy; of the awaking, and total disenchantment, and the wretched years that followed, all came to her in a floating, broken vision, filling her with emotions which had, at last, lost their bitterness. She yielded to them without resistance and without effort, and sank into a long silence, which was broken at last ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... God will die, He who dies to do Him honour. And a man whose life is here But a round of cares and crosses, Should be grateful unto death As the end of all his sorrows; Since it comes the tangled thread Of a wretched life to shorten, Which to-day the evil Phoenix Of its works that now prove mortal Would revive amid the ashes Of my wrong and my dishonour. Then my life, my breath were poison, Venom would my breast but foster, Until I had shed ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... will never ask me to marry a man I do not love, and I shall never love Arthur Fletcher. If this is to be as you say, it will make me very, very wretched. It is right that you should know the truth. If it is only because Mr. Lopez has ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the Hindoos, have been occasioned by the cruel and unjust monopolies of certain unworthy servants of the East India Company, who to aggrandize their own fortunes have oftentimes bought up, on speculation, all the salt in the different ports and markets, and thus have deprived the ingenious but wretched natives of their only remaining comfort, salt being the only addition they are usually enabled to make to their poor pittance of rice. Many of the poor in England, previously to the late reduction especially, have loudly lamented the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... of the officials, offered to undertake it. He was a handsome man, thirty-six years old or thereabouts: nothing in his looks betrayed his connection with the police; he wore any kind of dress with equal ease and grace, and was familiar with every grade in the social scale, disguising himself as a wretched tramp or a noble lord. He was just the right man, so his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... high. There are two little inns, with five or six rooms each, and one boarding-house of the same size. We could only get one small room, into which all three were packed, at a charge of a dollar and a quarter per day; while for two wretched meals we paid a dollar and a half each. The reader may judge of our fare from the fact that one day our soup was raspberry juice and water, and another time, cold beer, flavoured with pepper and cinnamon. Add tough beafsteaks swimming in ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Sinclair, "these wretched fools thought my organization was a utopia until they learned that I was no better for them than the Solar Guard. Unfortunately they learned too late and were sent here to dig underground pits for my spaceships and ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... say it? Why do you torment me? Why do you banish me at once, and tell me that I must go home a wretched, miserable ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... can have been that moved me to act as I then did, for, in the truth, the manner of that rascal of a groom was little prepossessing, and his master, I doubted, could be little better that he left the fellow to hector it thus over that wretched tavern oaf. But I ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... fidelity to his God. He begged her to recall Samuel to life, that he might be comforted and instructed by him. She pretended to comply with his request; but, before she could commence her usual mysterious operations, Samuel arose! and the forlorn, wretched, and heart-broken king listened to his tremendous doom, as it was uttered by the spirit of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Boggs is present, an' is leanin' back appreciatin' the show an' the Valley Tan plenty impartial. Dan likes both an' is doin' 'em even jestice. Over opp'site to Dan is a drunken passel of sports from Red Dog, said wretched hamlet bein' behind Wolfville in that as in all things else an' not ownin' no ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... between Madame Bonaparte (the mother), Madame Napoleon Bonaparte, Princesse Louis Bonaparte, Princesse Murat and the Princesse Borghese. By this you may conclude in what manner we intend to treat the wretched inhabitants of the other side of the Rhine. This Daru is too good a calculator and too fond of money to throw away his expenses; he is master of a great fortune, made entirely by his arithmetical talents, which have enabled him for years to break ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to the village we found the people on the eve of one of those terrible outbursts of superstitious passion which rarely if ever pass away without some wretched human creature perishing under ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... yielded up their meaning as they have been practically applied and extended. The act of September 28th, granting land bounties to the soldiers of the Mexican war, opened the way for the monopoly of many millions of acres of the public domain by sharks and speculators, while proving a wretched mockery of the just claims of the men in whose name it was urged. The Swamp Land Act of the same date, owing to its loose and unguarded provisions and shameful mal-administration, has been still more fruitful of wide-spread spoilation and plunder. The act of September 20th, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... said Sally, shortly. She had never felt so wretched in her life. Foreign travel, she decided, was a mistake. It might be pleasant and broadening to the mind, but it seemed to put you so out of touch with people when you got back. She analysed her sensations, and arrived at the conclusion that what she was resenting ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... oxen, employed in dragging the canes and other produce of the plantation. Jenks his garden we found in good order, and beautiful with many plants in full blossom; but Jenks his house seemed dreary and desolate, with no books, a wretched print or so, dilapidated furniture, and beds that looked like the very essence of nightmare. Nothing suggested domestic life or social enjoyment, or anything—; but as Jenks is perfectly unknown to us, either by appearance or reputation, we give only a guess in the dark, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... anticipated. The lay intruders were making a last attempt to keep up their evil custom; and, after the death of the usurper who made this false claim, another person attempted to continue it; but popular feeling was so strong against the wretched man, that he was obliged to fly. Ecclesiastical discipline was soon restored; and after Malachy had made a partition of the diocese, he was permitted to resign in favour of Gelasius, then Abbot of the great Columbian ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... sight, little wretch, born to worry the blessed gods and plague the race of men!" "Mother," said Hermes, gently, "why talk thus to me, as though I were like mortal babes, a poor cowering thing, to cry for a little scolding? I know thy interest and mine: why should we stay here in this wretched cave, with never a gift nor a feast to cheer our hearts? I shall not stay. It is pleasanter to banquet with the gods than to dwell in a cavern in draughts of whistling wind. I shall try my luck against Apollo, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... their guns relatively to those of his own vessel, it would seem that his action, though immediate, should have been only tentative. If it proved on trial that the speed of the Tennessee was greater than that of the monitors, she might yet prove master of the situation. Despite the beak, which her wretched speed and exposed steering chains rendered untrustworthy, her great defensive strength and the fact of carrying rifled guns indicated that long range, and not close quarters, was the first game of the Tennessee. ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... caused. Indeed, for a long time, her only thought was for herself and her unfortunate predicament. She had never been so frightened in her life. Nothing had ever looked so big, so dismal, and so altogether hopeless as this wretched side street where her fugitive had disappeared. There was not a policeman in sight. She didn't know which way to go, but promptly realized that she should not stay just there in that degraded neighborhood. Even the wider street from which she had diverged, with its endless lines of wagons and ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... I was hired for!" he mused, "a fence; a wretched mask put up to hide the trickery and chicanery and criminality—the crookedness which has never been put aside; which nobody ever meant to put aside! My God! they've let me stultify myself in a thousand ways; let me sit here day ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... revolting food had been consumed." "The scenes I have witnessed of misery are something dreadful; and I must say that your wish for me to return with the work incomplete would not be expressed if you saw the state of these poor people. The horrible furtive looks of the wretched inhabitants hovering about one's boats haunts me.... I hope to get the Shanghai people to assist, but they do not see these things: and to read that there are human beings eating human flesh produces less effect ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Patterson sent a letter to President Dickinson, accusing the farmers of sedition, and hinting that extreme measures were necessary. Having thus, as he thought, prepared the way, he attacked the settlement, turned some five hundred people out-of-doors, and burned their houses to the ground. The wretched victims, many of them tender women, or infirm old men, or little children, were driven into the wilderness at the point of the bayonet, and told to find their way to Connecticut without further delay. Heartrending scenes ensued. Many died ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... fact, says he, Bruno has advanced all that was ever brought forward by all heathen philosophers, and by all heretics, ancient and modern. A time for retractation was given, both before sentence and after, which should be noted, as well for the wretched palliation which it may afford, as for the additional proof it gives that opinions, and opinions only, brought him to the stake. In this medley of charges the Scriptures are a dream, while Adam, Eve, devils, and salvation are truths, and the Saviour a deceiver. We have examined no work of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Maria's indisposition was over, but Harry was wretched. Then in the evening the horse Harry was riding, in the matter of which he had been cheated by his cousin Will, at Castlewood, came down on his knees and sent the rider over his head. Mr. Harry was picked up insensible and carried home into a house called Oakhurst ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
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