"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother!" God help her, poor body! Ah, boys, don't forget the dear mother in the old home. She never forgets you, but morning, noon, and night thinks and prays for her soldier-son. Mindfulness of her brings God's blessing; forgetfulness bitter remorse, when too late—after she's gone. There's something more in the breast-pocket. His parchment probably. No; something better still—a small copy of St. John's Gospel, with his name thereon. Let us hope that its presence there, when every ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... were heavily charged with bitter irony; and, thereupon, without seeming to notice it, ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... of punishment to bring the offender to a realizing sense of the nature of his deed, by making him suffer the natural consequences of it, or an equivalent amount of privation, in his own person. Punishment is a favor to the wrongdoer, just as bitter medicine is a favor to the sick. For without it, he would not appreciate the evil of his wrongdoing with sufficient force to repent of it, and abandon it. Plato teaches the true value of punishment ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... lies a little above Suez in a sound that used to form a deep estuary when the Red Sea stretched as far as the Bitter Lakes. Now, whether or not their crossing was literally miraculous, the Israelites did cross there in returning to the Promised Land, and the Pharaoh's army did perish at precisely that locality. So I think that excavating those sands ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the beginning, have men said of women, though neither so many nor so bitter, as the witty Frenchman cynically remarks, as the things women have said of one another. Poor Eve has paid very dear for that apple: the only wonder is, that she was not made responsible also for the Flood: but we have ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... antipathy previously so unhappily existing between Franklin and Adams became greatly aggravated, and their respective advocates in historical literature have not to this day reached an accord. Adams was a relentless hater, and has bequeathed bitter diatribes, which, as they can never be obliterated, can never cease to excite the ire of the admirers of Franklin. On the other side, Franklin has at least the merit of having left not a malicious line behind him. I have no mind to endeavor to apportion merits ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the Opposition may not think it worth while to say much about it. The Government, therefore, is never certain of any criticism; on the contrary, it has a good chance of escaping criticism; but if there be any criticism the Government must expect it to be bitter, sharp, and captious—made as an irresponsible objector would make it, and not as a responsible statesman, who may have to deal with a difficulty if he make it, and therefore will be cautious how he says anything ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... ignorant of the Hebrew original. They studied it diligently, and used it efficiently against the unbelieving Jews. Hence there naturally arose in the minds of the latter a feeling of opposition to this version which became very bitter. They began to disparage its authority, and to accuse it of misrepresenting the Hebrew. The next step was to oppose to it another version made by Aquila, which was soon followed by two others, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the mast our brown sail flapped; Our keel plowed bitter salt, and everywhere The ominous sky in sullen mystery wrapped, What side we looked on, either here or there, The welcome sight of land long sadly sought; And that Atlantis, hid within the sea, The land with all our hope and promise ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... one man who had believed in her underlying womanhood. There was no stain on the red roses worn on her breast for him; only truth in her gleaming Magyar eyes. "He loved me, for what he saw in me—the innocent woman that I once was." And bitter tears mingled with the salt brine flashing by—the tears of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... weight, although some authorities dispute this). But while the atoms thus differ in quantity, their differences of quality are only apparent, due to the impressions caused on our senses by different configurations and combinations of atoms. A thing is only hot or cold, sweet or bitter, hard or soft by convention ([Greek: nom]); the only things that exist in reality ([Greek: ete]) are the atoms and the void. Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities is here anticipated. Thus, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... that I was advised by Mr. Spalding to resign, which I refused to do, preferring to take my medicine like a man, bitter ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... that, and never a sight of the door. It's only recently it has come back to me. With it there has come a sense as though some thin tarnish had spread itself over my world. I began to think of it as a sorrowful and bitter thing that I should never see that door again. Perhaps I was suffering a little from overwork—perhaps it was what I've heard spoken of as the feeling of forty. I don't know. But certainly the keen brightness that makes effort easy ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... said, with a wild look in her side lamps; "this is the happy summer season, but, nevertheless, the next guy that leaves his brains at home and tries to make me tell him what is a good birthday present for his wife will get a bitter ...
— Get Next! • Hugh McHugh
... go to wait on the Duke of Albemarle, who is to go out of towne to Oxford to-morrow, and I being unwilling to go by water, it being bitter cold, walked it with my landlady's little boy Christopher to Lambeth, it being a very fine walke and calling at half the way and drank, and so to the Duke of Albemarle, who is visited by every body against his going; and mighty kind to me: and upon my desiring his grace to give me ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Two Eyes saw that, she went out full of grief, seated herself on a hillock, and wept bitter tears. All at once the wise woman stood near her again, and said, "Little Two ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... upheaved dome of rocks beneath which they slowly cooled. Such intrusions are accompanied —whether as cause or as effect is still hardly known—by deformations, and their masses of igneous rock are thus found as the core of many great mountain ranges. The granitic masses of which the Bitter Root Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas have been largely carved are each more than three hundred miles in length. Immense regional intrusions, the cores of once lofty mountain ranges, are found upon the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... take it," said she, when the young doctor gave her some bitter draught to swallow; "it tastes ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... not snowing so hard now, and the clouds were breaking, but a bitter wind was blowing from the northwest. It drove Deborah along before it, lashing her skirts around her gaunt limbs; but she leaned back upon ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... faculties will be rusted, and my few acquirements in a great measure forgotten. These ideas sting me keenly sometimes; but, whenever I consult my conscience, it affirms that I am doing right in staying at home, and bitter are its upbraidings when I yield to an eager desire for release. I could hardly expect success if I were to err against such warnings. I should like to hear from you again soon. Bring —— to the point, and make him give you a clear, not a vague, account ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... natural mistake of imagining what he would have said himself, and then giving Ralph Gowan credit for having perpetrated like tender gallantries. He never could divest himself of the idea that every living man found Dolly as entrancing as he found her himself. It could only be one man's bitter-sweet portion to be as desperately and inconsolably in love with her as he was himself, and no other than himself, or a man who might be his exact prototype, could have cherished a love at once so strong and so weak. There had been other men who had loved Dolly Crewe,—-adored her for ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a height of about 1,500 feet. The air was bitter chill and warm wraps and furs had been donned long before. Suddenly the aeroplane gave a sickening sidewise dip and seemed about to capsize. Frank caught and righted her just in time. The gyroscopic balance ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... purposes of Pestalozzi were at Yverdon, the scene which is most intimately associated with his name, and which was the theatre of his brightest and most useful achievements, he was destined again to meet with bitter disappointment, and finally to go down to his grave in sorrow. After a series of embarrassments, occasioned principally by the artifices of an unprincipled and intriguing adventurer among his teachers, and having suffered in his property, his happiness, and to a certain extent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... thine infinite despair . . . Oh, delicate mouth, brave eyes, and curled bright hair . . . Oh, lovely body lashed to the rough tree: What brutal fools were those that gave to thee Red roses of thine outraged blood to wear, Laughed at thy bitter pain and loathed the fair Bruised flower of ...
— The Inn of Dreams • Olive Custance
... Mr. Macksey declared. "It would be as much as your life is worth to go out. It is bitter cold and the wind cuts like ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... A bitter smile curved the baron's lips. "What do you fear?" he asked. "Isn't your brother dead? He has defrauded me ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... anything against the other. Where the hell is this spirit of hatred? You go down the line, mile after mile, and most little groups of men facing one another are just the same. Here and there, there's some bitter feeling, through some fighting that's seemed unfair, but that's nothing. The fact remains that those millions of men don't hate one another, that they've got nothing to hate one another about, and they're being driven to slaughter ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... crept the newcomers. If Ted's heart ever warmed toward a living being it surely ought just then; when these lads, whom he was wont to regard as his bitter rivals, and enemies in everything at school, took such chances simply because they could not see a Stanhope boy ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... single file upon her for her hysterical undoing. "Maybe I've had a good deal more experience than you give me credit for!" she hastened excitedly to explain. "I tell you—I tell you I've been engaged!" she blurted forth with a bitter sort of triumph. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... receiving a letter from him, but none came. Ah, how sad and bitter those days and hours were to me, when I first began to doubt and even to disbelieve in my lover's faith! I had to keep watch on my tears, and wear a happy face for fear my parents should find out ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... snow behind it over a belt hundreds of miles wide. But Page's steamers were not stopping for blizzards; they headed out of Duluth regardless of what was to come. And there were a bad few days, with tales of wreck on lake and railroad, days of wind and snow and bitter cold, and of risks run that supplied round-house and tug-office yarn spinners with stories that were not yet worn out. Down on the job the snow brought the work to a pause, but Bannon, within a half-hour, was out of bed and on the ground, and there was ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... establish the school in this state,[204] the deaf are said to be in "entire and invincible separation from the vast stores of knowledge which human talent has accumulated—ignorant of the truths of Revelation, her glorious assurances and unspeakable consolations," all being "among the bitter ingredients which fill up the vast measure of the affliction to the deaf and dumb;" and that "among the various efforts of philanthropy and learning to enlarge the circle of human happiness and knowledge, none should perhaps rank higher than those ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... the idea that the area of moral obligation is co-extensive with the world itself. There are no racial or national lines which can limit the extent of our responsibility. The world today needs to learn this lesson anew, and it is evident that it must acquire this knowledge through bitter and desperate experiences. We must interpret in this large sense the great moral dictum of the German philosopher, Kant, that every one in a particular circumstance should act as he would wish all men to act if similarly circumstanced and conditioned. This is the complete universalizing ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... sword of a song, The sword of my spirit's desire, Feeble; but laid at your feet, That which was weak shall be strong, That which was cold shall take fire, That which was bitter be sweet. ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America. They will never confess it; nevertheless, it is as essential a tonic to them as their bitter ale. Therefore,—and possibly, too, from a similar narrowness in his own character,—an American seldom feels quite as if he were at home among the English people. If he do so, he has ceased to be an American. But it requires no ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prince of the blood by emigration, whilst the king maintained a struggle at Paris, greatly humiliated Louis XVI. and the queen. This usurpation of their rights, although clothed in the dress of devotion and tenderness, was even more bitter to them than the outrages of the Assembly and the people. We always dread most that which is nearest to us, and the triumph of the emigration only promised them a throne, disputed by the regent who had restored it. This gratitude appeared ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... instruments, which consisted of 1 common hand-saw, 1 hatchet, 1 butcher knife, a large variety of smaller knives, and a small mountain of old rag. Neither of the principals exhibited any fear. Culkins insisted that, as the challenging party, he had the right to the word fire. This, after a bitter discussion, was granted. He urged his seconds to place him facing towards the town, so that the lights would be in his favour. This was done without any trouble, the immense benefits of that position not ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... in her room, was shedding bitter tears. She tried to reason with herself, and could not succeed. Never had the strangeness of her situation so clearly appeared to her. She repeated to herself that she must be mad to have thus become attached to a stranger. She wondered how she could have allowed that love, which was now her very ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... a bitter and a hateful good, Because its virtues are not understood; Yet many things, impossible to thought, Have been by need to full ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... vision pierced the mantling mists that circle round the tomb, Where bitter groans resound for aye amid the starless gloom; Who saw the cities of the blest, and with as fearless tread Paced through the ebon halls of hell, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... me, for of a truth I love thee well, though I be not fit to wash thy feet. And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been. To-night the hours are our own, how know we to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from the shore—he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of his race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game to the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The Indians ran down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her headlong progress, grunting approval as she plunged safely ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not yet sunk so low as to regard his own unnatural conduct with indifference. Deep and bitter remorse deprived him of all that tranquillity in the possession of power for the attainment of which he had imbrued his hands in blood. "I have heard by credible report," says Sir Thomas More, "of such as were secret with his chamberers, that after this abominable deed done he never had quiet ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... He had finished reading his second act, and the reading had been a bitter disappointment. The idea floated, pure and seductive, in his mind; but when he tried to reduce it to a precise shape upon paper, it seemed to escape in some vague, mysterious way. Enticingly, like a butterfly it fluttered before him; he followed like a child, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... disheartening. One long, weary expression of pain was all he beheld; no lights and shades of emotion and interest. It was the face of one grown patient under a lifelong course of suffering. Tresler had listened to the bitter cursings against this man, but as the soft voice and cultured expressions fell upon his ears, the easy-flowing, pointed criticisms on matters of public interest, the broad philosophy, sometimes faintly dashed with bitterness and cynicism, but always sound, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... course the father was responsible for the debt. How he was to pay it he did not know, as he had not a single cash about him. The Chinaman of the place threatened to detain him, and the scribe laughed a bitter laugh at the idea. After a great row they ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... only meant a temporary inconvenience. The plan of campaign was the essential thing. Therefore he sacrificed his convoy and hurried his troops upon their original mission. It was with heavy hearts and bitter words that those who had fought so long abandoned their charge, but now at least there are probably few of them who do not agree in the wisdom of the sacrifice. Our loss in this affair was between fifty and sixty killed and wounded. The Boers were unable to get rid of the stores, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his glance with a quiet regard, but he scarcely saw it. He had a stupefied sense of disaster; a feeling of bitter self-commiseration that for the moment outweighed all other considerations. Almost at the moment of justification the good of life had crumbled in his fingers, the soil given beneath his feet, and with an absence ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... window and looked up at the winter sky. "It is a long way off," she said, but the bitter tone had gone, and it was a grieved little voice that added, "and Mrs. Fargo can't ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... to some such being of another nature; thinking how a man might well risk imprisonment, transportation, hanging, for one kind glance of those bright eyes, one smile of those haughty, scornful lips; and comparing in bitter impatience that exotic beauty with the humble, homely creature ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... caught up her husband's Sunday cane, and despite pussy's cries and scratches, she gave him such a beating as she hoped might cure him of his thievish propensities; when lo! and behold, Mrs. Jenkins stood at the door with a face of bitter wrath. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... a few more bitter drops to be squeezed into the cup of Lady Mary's discontent before she laid her head upon her pillow. She had not been ten minutes in her room when there was a tap at ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... remember that we had but nineteen minutes to reach the station. Away we went. Old Crowle's iron grille rolled back before us. I looked on the receding landscape, the giant trees—the palatial, time-stained mansion. A strange conflict of feelings, sweet and bitter, rose and mingled in the reverie. Had I been too hard and suspicious with the inhabitants of that old house of my family? Was my uncle justly indignant? Was I ever again to know such pleasant rambles as some of those I had enjoyed with dear Millicent through the wild and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... alarm, but went instantly in search of the doctor and minister; and on the latter the melancholy duty was devolved of breaking the fearful intelligence to that now broken-hearted widow, over whose bitter Borrow it becomes us to draw the veil. The body was lifted and laid upon the bed. We saw it there a few hours afterwards. The head lay back sideways on the pillow. There was the massive brow, the firm-set, manly features, we had so often looked upon admiringly, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... great inclination for. Pity is a grief at the misery of another who suffers wrongfully; for no one is moved by pity at the punishment of a parricide or of a betrayer of his country. Vexation is a pressing grief. Mourning is a grief at the bitter death of one who was dear to you. Sadness is a grief attended with tears. Tribulation is a painful grief. Sorrow, an excruciating grief. Lamentation, a grief where we loudly bewail ourselves. Solicitude, a pensive grief. Trouble, a continued ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... artist sculptor Bailey, were engaged in the same pursuit, and our plan was to "bag" a whole compartment between us in the boat-special for Cairo. But we never met again till we reached our destination. One expects Egypt to warm the heart with its weather, but the cold was bitter; so was the disappointment about Anthony. Both cut through me like knives. Darkness had fallen before I was ready to join the ladies—if I could. In passing earlier, I had shouted to the maids where to find ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... to pass now through bitter trials. Having secured freedom, after much suffering and oppression, it soon learnt that freedom without common sense and moderation degenerates into licence, and becomes a menace and a terror. ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... indicative mood, still not for a moment the conditional! Rachel did not fail to make another note; but now there was nothing bitter even in her thoughts. She believed in this man, and in his promises; moreover, she began to focus the one thing about him in which she disbelieved. It was his feeling towards her—nothing more and nothing else. There he was insincere; but it was a ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... would have been right in dealing with most natures. But Graham would not give way to his bitter disappointment, and for him there would come no reaction. He quietly read to her the evening papers, and after she had retired stole out and gazed for hours on the St. John cottage, the casket that had contained for him the jewel of the world. Then, compressing his lips, he returned to his room ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... sombre saul On which the eye delights to rest, The betel-nut—a pillar tall, With feathery branches for a crest, The light-leaved tamarind spreading wide, The pale faint-scented bitter neem, The seemul, gorgeous as a bride, With flowers that ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... busily braiding the plaits of the girls in front of them. Two, with very red faces and sparkling eyes, were undeniably quarreling, and whispering bitter denunciations of each other, to the amusement of their immediate neighbors. One girl had a bag of candy which she was circulating among her particular friends. Another had raised the covers of her geography like ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... bolder, advanced out into the open aisle, and, following the preacher's gestures, reproduced them all exactly. It was a moment of tension; but if ever a child had a good angel in attendance, Chellalu has, for something always stops her before the bitter end. I forget what stopped her then; something invisible, and so, doubtless, the angel. But we did not breathe freely till we had her safe ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... consequently in mine, it would be useless, and perhaps invidious, to enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of our fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be observed, however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... out of Egypt. He is said to have been first stoned and then hanged on the eve of the Passover. His disciples are called heretics and opprobrious names. They are accused of immoral practices, and the New Testament is called a sinful book. The references to these subjects manifest the most bitter aversion ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... spiritual change. I knew that since that night in July the world had tried him in its alembic with its severest tests and that he had emerged safely. He was not joyous but he seemed content. Life was no longer a game. It was a study. Bitter as experience had been, it had made him. Perfect he might not be but sound, sane, wholesome. Jerry had ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... Wincing under a bitter sense of defeat, 'Gene Black stepped forward. He was not really a coward, but he valued his life, little as it was actually worth. So he dropped a revolver ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... to marry him, you are to say that you will do so," said Sara, betraying no sign of having heard the bitter words. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... path and persists in walking along it, soon loses his very life as the consequence. The man who, destitute of exertion, tills his land, disregarding the season of rain, never succeeds in obtaining a harvest. He who takes every day food that is nutritive, be it bitter or astringent or palatable or sweet, enjoys a long life. He, on the other hand, who disregards wholesome food and takes that which is injurious without an eye to consequences, soon meets with death. Destiny and exertion exist, depending upon each other. They that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... unpleasant: humiliating, and distressing. Let the playwright, then, before embarking on a theme, make sure that he has some sort of satisfaction to offer us at the end, if it be only the pessimistic pleasure of realizing some part of "the bitter, old and wrinkled truth" about life. The crimes of destiny there is some profit in contemplating; but its stupid vulgarities minister ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... not known at the time that had Lord Roberts' scheme been successful in its entirety, a capture would have been made that might have brought the war to a sudden close. President Kruger was present during the greater part of the battle, and with bitter chagrin saw the burghers ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... blot out the glowing Mediterranean and the western hemisphere. Gray desert banks closed in upon her strictly, slid gently astern, drawing with them to the vanishing-point the bright lane of traversed water. She gained the Bitter Lakes; and the red conical buoys, like beads a-stringing, slipped on and added to the two ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... he, at last, "you don't seem to be getting along; why don't you try the pepper sauce?" and, by way of example, he steeped a morsel of food into his nutful of sea-water. On following suit, I found it quite piquant, though rather bitter; but, on the whole, a capital substitute for salt. The Imeeose invariably use sea-water in this way, deeming it quite a treat; and considering that their country is surrounded by an ocean of catsup, the luxury cannot be deemed ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... passage to the ladies' cloak-room. She had, it seemed to her, no excuse; she was not young enough to have made it pardonable and she had long ago decided that the intoxication of life could be no longer hers. Its loss was to be part of the bitter lesson fate had taught her. Yet as she saw herself in the glass, a ridiculous figure in black flounces with just one scarlet rose pinned at her waist and another nodding on the brim of her hat, she could not keep the excitement from sparkling in ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... claims. Moreover, they were justified in expecting England to provide money in lieu of the troops which her War Office failed to raise. Austria also solemnly covenanted to repay the loans; and her neglect to do so occasioned a bitter dispute which long held the two Powers apart. Pitt also refused her request for a loan in the year 1797. As far as possible, he discouraged the raising of war loans in London. Early in 1796 he did so in the case of Portugal from ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... part of Victoria we are told that "the parents of the deceased lacerate themselves fearfully, especially if it be an only son whose loss they deplore. The father beats and cuts his head with a tomahawk until he utters bitter groans. The mother sits by the fire and burns her breasts and abdomen with a small fire-stick till she wails with pain; then she replaces the stick in the fire, to use again when the pain is less severe. This continues for hours daily, until the time of lamentation is completed; ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... townspeople was for many days even greater than it had been at the time of Tegot's disappearance, and many and bitter were the reproaches heaped ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... we were making his position as easy as we could for him, his eye fell upon the body of the young girl, and once more his tears burst forth, mingled with prayers for her, and the most bitter curses upon ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... indirectly in any system of government. It seemed to him that until man had learned how to use directly and freely the power sources of nature, inequalities of wealth would always persist. And he had learned in one bitter lesson that unhappiness and economic ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... a little sack a few white eagle-down feathers. He blew them from him. At once a fierce storm blew across the valley. The bitter cold froze the water, but only in this one place. It dammed the stream with fast forming ice. The water rose higher and higher. It spread out over the banks. Cold Maker and Broken Bow went far off on the hills and watched it. Little by little it rose. It reached ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... a beautiful Sunday morning found Miss Du Plessis, Miss Halbert, and Miss Graves in bitter sorrow, and little Marjorie beside herself with grief. The very kitchen was full of lamentation; but one young woman went about, silent and serious indeed, yet tearless. This was Miss Carmichael. The ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... confession, but sounding like a Gargantuan order for a dram, brought him into new difficulties by occasioning his parent to pounce at him in a more than usually snappish manner, and to overwhelm him with bitter reproaches. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Sribhashya, II. 2, 27 and Padma-Purana uttarakanda 43 (quoted by Suhtankar in Vienna Oriental Journ. vol. XXII. 1908). Mayavadam asacchastram pracchannam bauddham ucyate. The Madhvas were specially bitter in their denunciation ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... cares and trials, Knew the effort all in vain, And the bitter disappointment, Understood the loss and gain— Would the grim, eternal roughness Seem—I wonder—just the same? Should we help where now we hinder, Should we pity ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... breakfast inside of him, the early morning sun brightening the scene before him, not even combined could they dispel any of Bennington's bitter anger at the memory of ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... tutor's self-possession that in the start produced by this announcement he did not let his victim escape. It spoke still more for his resolution that, having heard it, he continued his horsewhipping to the bitter ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... good in the old boy," admitted Willard. "But I don't happen to like him. I do like the boy. Blood does tell, Jinny. But if he's really as much of an Ellersley as he looks, there's a bitter enlightenment before him when he comes to see Dr. Surtaine ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... signification of my meaning, and 'tis I who am to govern it, to make myself understood: there is a voice to instruct, a voice to flatter, and a voice to reprehend. I will not only that my voice reach him, but, peradventure, that it strike and pierce him. When I rate my valet with sharp and bitter language, it would be very pretty for him to say; "Pray, master, speak lower; I hear you ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... she was loyal to the core—she would be loyal to him, he was sure, in this scrape, with a silly wrong-headed loyalty, more like a man's to a woman than a woman's to a man. She was loyal to her none too reputable family—that family was a bitter thing to his pride of race. She was courageous, too, cheerfully enduring, laughing in the face of disaster, patient when action was impossible and when it was possible—he found himself smiling when he recalled her—surely there was never one more gay, more ready, more steady, more quietly ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... more self-control than had been expected. Her sorrow was mingled with the bitter recollection of all she had experienced and suffered in Rome, the memory of which had been dulled but not wholly obliterated by her life in Ferrara. Twice the murder of her young husband Alfonso must have come back to her in all its horror—once on the death of her father and again on that of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... is such a bitter smart Even the thought of it will break my heart, So take me softly to a leafy bed Where I shall dream and dream you ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... Stoics of old time. Could Zeno himself have asked more from frail humanity? Moreover, Raphael had been of infinite practical use to her. He worked out, unasked, her mathematical problems; he looked out authorities, kept her pupils in order by his bitter tongue, and drew fresh students to her lectures by the attractions of his wit, his arguments, and last, but not least, his unrivalled cook and cellar. Above all he acted the part of a fierce and valiant watch-dog on her behalf, against the knots of clownish and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... both from the position he held in the Senate and from his imposing personal appearance, first attracted the attention of the visitor, was the Vice-President, Breckinridge, of Kentucky. His later treachery has made him justly the object of bitter popular odium, inasmuch as his delinquency was aggravated by his former professions of loyalty. It was hoped by many who had witnessed his early elevation to the highest dignities, his undoubted ability both as an orator and as an administrative officer, and his apparently manly and ingenuous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... debaters were wide-famed. No such "stump" has ever existed in America, commencing with Patrick Henry, whose eloquence was as intense and telling as his statesmanship was errant and inconsistent, and passing through the shrill and bitter apostrophies of John Randolph down to the latest era of Henry A. Wise, the most sufferable and interminable campaign orator extant, and John Minor Botts, scarcely his inferior. With us, out of door rhetoric is dry, studied, and argumentative; here an inspiration, based upon feeling rather than ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... it is beginning to extend itself to the whole race. In some cases it can extend itself to the whole race far more easily than in others. In some cases historical causes have made nations of the same race bitter enemies, while they have made nations of different races friendly allies. The same thing happened in earlier days between tribes and cities of the same nation. But, when hindrances of this kind do ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... such as thou the world has no compassion. Mankind will pursue thee to the grave with execrations. Their cruelty will be justified or palliated, since they know thee not. They are unacquainted with the goadings of thy conscience and the bitter retributions which thou art daily suffering. They are full of their own wrongs, and think only of those tokens of exultation and complacency which thou wast studious of assuming in thy intercourse with them. It is I only that thoroughly ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... The succors he speaks of were sent in July and August, while the English did not fall back till the first of November. Neither army left its position till the season was over, and Abercromby did so only when he learned that the French were setting the example. Vaudreuil grew more and more bitter. "As the King has intrusted this colony to me, I cannot help warning you of the unhappy consequences that would follow if the Marquis de Montcalm should remain here. I shall keep him by me till I ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... plant is known as "Wood Lily," "May Lily," and "May Blossom." Also it bears the name of Mugget, and is said to have grown up after the bloody combat of St. Leonard with the Dragon. The French call it Muguet, or "little musk." The taste of the flowers is acrid and bitter; they have been [314] employed with benefit, when dried and powdered, as snuff, for headache, and giddiness arising from weakness. A tincture of the plant is made, and can be procured from any leading druggist. The active medicinal principle is "convallarin," which slows the disturbed ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of offence even his mere innocent existence, all unknown to himself till afterwards, has been! Swarms, said Christiana. Swarms of hornets armed, said Samson. And many of us understand what that bitter word means better than any commentator on Bunyan or on Milton can tell us. One of the holiest men the Church of England ever produced, and one of her best devotional writers, used to shut his door on the night of every first day of the week, and on his knees spread out a prayer which ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Yugoslavia. Following World War II, Yugoslavia became an independent communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. Under UN supervision the last Serb-held enclave in eastern Slavonia was returned to Croatia ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... President had proposed the subject for debate, and restored some degree of order from that confusion of tongues which followed the announcement of the question, a system of crimination and recrimination was invariably commenced by the several speakers, accompanied with such hideous contortions, such bitter taunts, and such personal invectives, that blows generally followed, until the Assembly was in an uproar. The President's voice was unheeded and unheard; the whole House arose; patriots and antagonists mingled in the fray, and the ground was covered ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... enterprise was attended by terrible dangers. During 1766 and 1767 the steady encroachments of the white settlers upon the ancestral domain which the Indians reserved for their imperial hunting-preserve aroused bitter feelings of resentment among the red men. Bloody reprisal was often the sequel to such encroachment. The vast region of Tennessee and the trans-Alleghany was a twilight zone, through which the savages roamed at will. From time to time war ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... opened the outer door and walked away into the raging storm and darkness,—a less bitter storm it seemed to him now than that created by the violent woman within doors. Some way further on he espied a haystack, under which he lay down, as he had done on many another night before this, and there he slept in the wind ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... The learning, the culture, the civilisation, by which they had been so long distinguished, seemed to drop away from them, cast away like a worn-out garment for which men have no further use. In place of all these things there came a complete and desperate valour, a bitter and headstrong fanaticism. ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... those who were bound to me in some devil's bargain—no kith, no kin, nor the memory of a mother's love. As I lingered there, like some outcast beast waiting for day to drive me to my lair, I envied, with a fierce hatred and with a bitter and passionate pity for myself, those to whom Fate had been more kind and given home and wife and children, or at least the affection of their fellow men, and I envied the lads I had known in college who led clean lives and who had shunned me—they knew not why—and the happy-go-lucky Quirk ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... out of his bed in the morning he stood for a good fifteen minutes, coughing and spitting out a bitter liquid that rose in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... punctuated, a basket of eels. It was noticed that at intervals the engine of the launch would not act properly, and the gringos were seen propelling the boat with oars. Also, the light often went out, leaving them in darkness. They spoke freely of these accidents with bitter annoyance, and ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... only the utter severance of a tie that had lasted for years, nothing more. Yet to Gilbert it seemed a great deal. His little world had crumbled to ashes; love had perished, and now friendship had died this sudden bitter death, from which there ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... were the emotions that struggled in Henry's breast at this declaration. Shame, regret, indignation, all burned within him; but the fear he entertained of his father, and the consciousness of his absolute dependence, chained his tongue, while the bitter emotions that agitated him painted themselves legibly in his countenance. His father observed his agitation; and, mistaking the cause, felt somewhat softened at what he conceived his son's shame and penitence for his folly. He therefore extended ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... have peace," he muttered. "Why cannot I make up my mind to seek it! 'I will arise'—ay, easy to say; it's a hard and bitter thing for a backslider to retrace his steps. How the child stabs me sometimes, and how little she ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre |
