"Destitution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the food of hate ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Dauphin on one side of her and a great French Duke on the other. Louis amused himself with compliments and questions that sometimes nettled her, sometimes pleased her, giving her a sense that he might admire her beauty, but was playing on her simplicity, and trying to make her betray the destitution of her home and her purpose ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back into the house she went up into the old lady's room with the intention of breaking to her the news of Katherine Fanning's widowhood and destitution, and of her own desire to invite her to come and live at ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... articles on "Scientific Destitution in New York" and "The Scientific Value of the Central Park," have called forth numerous letters from correspondents, and have been extensively noticed by the press. We now learn that the legislature of the State has taken the matter in hand, and there is some prospect, with an honest administration ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... informed of my intention to buy a man out of the Turkish Army had pronounced it madness. I did not know the people of the land as they did. I should be pillaged, brought to destitution, perhaps murdered. They, who had lived in the country twenty, thirty years, were better qualified to judge than I was. For peace and quiet I pretended acquiescence, and my purpose thus acquired a taste of stealth. It was with the feelings of a kind of truant that I had set out at length without ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... of the brood were not involved in this graceless agitation. The complaints stopped with Guinivere. Harold, Rosemary and Rutherford were too young to realise the state of destitution into which the family had fallen. They were quite happy, contented and, so far, unaware of the gravity of a situation which was more or less apparent to their elders. Frederick, Marie Louise and Wilberforce formed the higher ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... found in the Endymion (a circular walled plain) in company with a small kind of reindeer, the elk, the moose, and the horned bear, and is described as the biped beaver. It 'resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect than in its destitution of a tail, and its invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in its arms like a human being, and moves with an easy gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages, and, from the appearance of smoke in nearly ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... them by the hand to the Sabbath-school teacher's humble seat, on the tract distributor's patient circuit, or on errands of mercy into the homes of sickness and destitution,—into the busy sewing-circle, or the little group gathered for social prayer. It is well too that they should have such a guide, for the offense of the Cross has not yet ceased, and the example of an accomplished and highly educated young female will not fail of its influence ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... had not the excuse of destitution which the South had, and it could not bring itself to make reprisals in kind. To draft again, as evinced in the terrible riots of July, 1863, would have been extremely unpopular and perhaps overthrown the administration ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... itself as a small mud-covered box, with four bare walls and a narrow doorway facing toward the south. Herein lived and suffered a family of human beings—freedmen and women without the stigma of slavery, but with all the misery of destitution and often of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... work appeared, he was condemned to death by the Inquisition as a magician. He escaped this fate by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem only to be shipwrecked on the Island of Zante when he attempted to return, and there died in misery and destitution. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... gave three raps at the door. Lucien came to open it. The room was forlorn in its bareness. A bowl of milk and a penny roll stood on the table. The destitution of genius made ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... looks like nothing but destitution! When a poor man dies, leaving a houseful of beggarly orphans, the State ought to require the undertaker who buries him to shoot or hang the whole brood, and lay them all in the Potter's Field out ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... rebuilt by Cortez, was but an humble affair. The small amount of plunder realized from the city destroyed; the necessity for large remittances to secure peace at the Spanish court; the general poverty and destitution of the Indians inhabiting the surrounding villages, and the narrow limits of the Aztec empire, were great impediments in the way of erecting a magnificent city. On a small scale, he resembled Santa Anna in the activity ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... damned Covenant in all their discourses," wrote Hyde. The dispute between Montrose, on the side of honour, and that of Lanark, Lauderdale, and other Scottish envoys, ended as—given the character of Charles II. and his destitution—it must end. Charles (January 22, 1650) despatched Montrose to fight for him in Scotland, and sent him the Garter. Montrose knew his doom: he replied, "With the more alacrity shall I abandon still my life to search my death for the interests of your Majesty's honour and service." ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... in which I find this account: He received 368.50; traveling expenses, $72.55, leaving for his year's work, $295.95. That was the year of the "drouth," and he apprised the brethren where he preached of the destitution in Kansas. Dr. S. G. Moore and my uncle, Prof. N. Dunshee, of Pardee, had been appointed to receive contributions for destitute brethren; and they reported the receipt and distribution of $670.96, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... distinction, the word "homeless" has implications of aimless drifting, of destitution and misery, and of the indifference of a "homeless" man to "his" country. Certain advocates of cosmopolitanism in their agitation against patriotism often take advantage of the importance of home in the relation of a man to his country ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... returned from his superintendence of the wood-cutting in the mountains. At the dinner-table be remarked: "I have heard to-day that the Lumley family are in great destitution, as usual. It is useless to help them, and yet one cannot sit down to a dinner like this in comfort while ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... go on for ages to come. And while he thus communed with himself he, too, held in his hands a weapon calculated to carry not only death to a valiant foe, but also sorrow and anguish to that foeman's wife and mother, and perhaps destitution ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... have come under our attention at the door of the police station, what we grasp in that moment of pure observation on which we pride ourselves, is not alien to the principle of classification, but deeper. We could, if we liked, make excellent comment upon the nature of provincial Spaniards, or of destitution (as misery is called by the philanthropists), or on homes for working girls. But such is not our intention. We aim at experience in the particular centres in which alone it is evil. We avoid classification. We do not deny it. But when a man is classified something is lost. The majority ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... of this office, and nearly all my time was occupied in refusing passes outside of our lines. In a majority of instances, the applicants for the privilege of going into the Confederacy—many of them women—told the most sorrowful tales of destitution that could be relieved only by reaching their friends in the enemy's country; others urged, that a husband, a father, or a brother was enjoined by the physician to seek the country as the sole means of securing a return ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... throughout his campaign in Spain, she continued to live in the same luxury that had surrounded her during her days of splendour; and as the Bourbon Government refused to help her, she was soon reduced to a state of destitution, and turned to her pen to pay off her creditors. She wrote several novels, which at this time are completely forgotten; but in 1831 she began to bring out her Memoirs, and these give a graphic account of the social life under the Empire, and have become a classic. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... upon the next few days. I would rather forget the atmosphere of squalor and destitution that pervaded our household when the carpets had been stripped up and we were stumbling about among half-packed barrels upon bare, resounding floors. I do not seek to retrace in detail the process of packing, which began with some buoyancy and system, to degenerate at last in its endlessness ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... devotion of all to the Southern cause was wonderful. Jackson, a Valley man by reason of his residence at Lexington, south of Staunton, was their hero and idol. The women sent husbands, sons, lovers, to battle as cheerfully as to marriage feasts. No oppression, no destitution could abate their zeal. Upon a march I was accosted by two elderly sisters, who told me they had secreted a large quantity of bacon in a well on their estate, hard by. Federals had been in possession of the country, and, fearing the indiscretion of ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... that it is very much the same in all the Presidencies. I must say that it is my belief that if a country be found possessing a most fertile soil, and capable of bearing every variety of production, and that, notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme destitution and suffering, the chances are that there is some fundamental error in the government of that country. The people of India have been subjected by us, and how to govern them in an efficient and beneficial manner is one of the most important points for the ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... sit in parliament, and make a heavy incubus on all real progress, obstructing the measures which might uplift into comfort, decency, and intelligence, England's three millions of submerged classes who live in destitution and misery.[12] ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... intercourse between all classes, and a general look of ease and contentment. Of course, there are poor in Turin, as everywhere else,—except Japan, if we may credit travellers; but nowhere are my eyes saddened by the spectacle of that abject destitution which blunts, nay, destroys, the sense of self-respect. The operatives, especially,—what are here called the braccianti,—this salt of all cities, this nursery of the army and navy, this inexhaustible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... of the miscreants, who hated her for her virtues. The expedient was resorted to of casting suspicion upon the correspondence which Her Highness kept up with the exterior of the prison, for the purpose of obtaining such necessaries as were required, in consequence of the utter destitution in which the Royal Family retired from the Tuileries. Two men, of the names of Devine and Priquet, were bribed to create a suspicion, by their informations against the Queen's female attendant. The first declared that on the 18th of August, while he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had been introduced by General Fremont. When General Halleck came, he found and continued the system, and added an order, applicable to some parts of the State, to levy and collect contributions from noted rebels to compensate losses and relieve destitution caused by the rebellion. The action of General Fremont and General Halleck, as stated, constituted a sort of system which General Curtis found in full operation when he took command of the department. That there was a necessity for ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... prayer-book. We visited the poor creature several times again, and once Mrs. Wilson accompanied me and brought with her some blanc-mange or jelly which she had made. She was much touched at the sight of the poor creature's utter destitution. We were amused as we went along to see a pair of babies' boots hanging on the branch of a tree, evidently placed there by some honest Indian who had chanced to find them on the road. This is what the Indians generally do if they find ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... indeed, to hear that. But you were premature. I was deploring your destitution, not of cash, but of confidence. You think the Natural Bone-setter can't help you. Well, suppose he can't, have you any objection to telling him your story? You, my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced adversity. Tell me, then, for my private ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... wife, "how is she to be told? It is heart-rending to look at her and to think,—nothing but luxury all her life, and now, in a moment, destitution. I am very glad to have her with me: she is a dear little thing, and so nice with the children. And if some good man would only ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... announcement of the engagement, after which the royal conqueror had come back in a panic, and sent embassies of his male friends to plead with Claire, alternately promising her wealth and threatening her with destitution, appealing to her fear, her cupidity, and even to her love. To all of which I listened, thinking of the wide-open, innocent eyes of the picture, and shedding tears within my soul. So must the gods feel as they look down upon the affairs ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... cleverness is concerned. Vimpany suggested the thing. He found me well-nigh as desperately hard up as he is himself. He suggested it. At first, I confess, I did not like it. I refused to listen to any more talk about it. But, you see, when one meets destitution face to face, one will do anything—everything. Besides, as I will show you, this is not really a fraud. It is only an anticipation of a few years. However, there was ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... intelligence pervaded the company; for the speaker, one of the most substantial householders in the settlement, was always taken with distressing symptoms of poverty and destitution when any allusion to public or religious ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... intoxicated with prosperity and success. At other times, through his insane and reckless folly, he would involve himself in the most desperate difficulties, and was frequently compelled to give up every thing, and to fly alone in absolute destitution from the field of his attempted ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... life," he said eagerly, as soon as he was within convenient distance. "That poor fellow was at death's door yesterday, and when I saw his wife and little children, and thought his life was all that stood between them and miserable destitution, it seemed to me that I must save it! This morning he is as bright as a dollar, but I have been dreading to go into that house ever since I left it yesterday noon. They didn't in the least know how narrow a chance he had. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... else knew how crushing was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three years of labor and privation a useless struggle. Yet though no longer a pupil she could still teach; her master had found her a small patronage that saved her from destitution. That night she circled up quite cheerfully in her usual swallow flight to her nest under the eaves, and even twittered on the landing a little over the condolences of the concierge—who knew, mon Dieu! what a beast ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... cutlass, and prepared them for use. Johnny and Eiulo dragged them to the site of the building, where Browne and I assisted Arthur in setting the posts into the ground, and putting together the frame of the house. Of course, our destitution of proper tools and implements rendered all this exceedingly laborious, and, but for Arthur's perseverance and ingenuity, we should more than once have given up in despair. Instead of spades, we were obliged to use sharp bivalve shells ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... carried out in England. One or two Templars died in prison, but none were executed; and the majority were dismissed with pensions or secluded in monasteries. Edward and his nobles took good care to make a large profit out of the transaction. The resources of the Temple alone kept the king from destitution during the period between the death of Gaveston and his reconciliation with the earls. Many barons laid violent hands on estates belonging to the order, and long held on to them despite papal expostulation. The Hospitallers ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... useless as herself. She supposed it was wicked—but she did not care! She ought to be resigned to the mysterious dispensations of Providence—that was the prescribed phraseology of pious people. She had heard the cant times without number. What more would they have than her utter destitution of love and bliss? Was she not miserable enough to satisfy the sternest believer in purgatorial purification? to appease the wrath even of Him who had wrought her desolation? It must be the judgment of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... gone, Jackson was in a difficult position. His novel chiaroscuro experiments had consumed valuable time and had lost him his standing as a steady worker for printers. Near destitution and scouting around for fresh applications of the woodcut, he decided to make prints for wallpaper on his new press. It was a logical step for Jackson, not only because he knew something of the process but also because he could ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... received and were grudgingly supplied with miserable food. Poetry and sentiment have not exaggerated the sorrow and misery of these hapless exiles, so ill-fitted to go out into the bitter world of hardship and destitution. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Bertha's, though hers too was desperate enough. The difference was that Bertha was in earnest only about herself, while he was in earnest about her. But now, at the actual crisis, this difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution on Bertha's side, since at least he had her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any rate, viewed less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were for the woman; and it was to Bertha that Lily's sympathies now went out. She was not fond of Bertha Dorset, but neither ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... of these objections, checking them with the thought that Clive, on his first arrival at Boulogne, entirely ignorant of the practice of economy, might have imprudently engaged in expenses which had reduced him to this present destitution. (I did not know at the time that Mrs. Mackenzie had taken entire superintendence of the family treasury—and that this exemplary woman was putting away, as she had done previously, sundry little ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... past we have had our attention turned to the terrible destitution of the people in the mountain region of Kentucky and places adjacent. Two years ago we sent a special missionary to labor among these people. He made his headquarters at Williamsburg, the county seat of Whitley County, Kentucky. The town was sixty-seven years old, yet it never had a church edifice; ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... would place his image on earth, and willingly leave them to perish from destitution. Many have been known to die of starvation, and the tales of wretchedness and woe with which the public ear is often filled attest the fact. Squalid forms and threadbare garments are seen, alas! too often in this civilised world, and ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... a record of advances in material prosperity, and scarce anything more. The only lumps of pure ore are the Idea which the Pilgrims were possessed with and its gradual incarnation in events and institutions. Beyond this all is barren. There is a fearful destitution of the picturesque elements. It is true that our local historians commonly avoid all romance as if it were of the Enemy; but if we compare their labors with "The Beauties of England and Wales," for example, the work certainly of uninspired men, we shall be convinced that the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... they were shipwrecked. The young girl was lashed to a spar, and the last thing she remembered was, being washed overboard by a mountain wave. She was picked up by a merchant vessel bound for Havana. There she arrived in a state of utter destitution, and she who was once the companion of princesses, was obliged to sing in the street ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... not say that the seamen did much to relieve the destitution which three times every day was presented to their view. Perhaps habit had made them callous; but the truth might have been that very few of them had much money to give. Yet the beggars must have had some inducement to infest the dock ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... stratagem. Christianity fell before the old heathenism, and in 1814 we find the King of Congo, D. Garcia V., complaining to His Most Faithful Majesty that missioners were sadly wanted. Captain Tuckey's "Expedition" (A.D. 1816) well sets forth the spiritual destitution of the land. He tells us that three years before his arrival some missionaries had been murdered by the Sohnese; the only specimen he met was an ignorant half-caste with a diploma from the Capuchins of Loanda, and a wife plus five concubines. In 1863 ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... then gave one quick dive and the ice closed over her for ever. It gave one a sickening sensation to see it, for, mastless and useless as she was, she seemed to be a link with the outer world. Without her our destitution seems more emphasized, our desolation more complete. The loss of the ship sent a slight wave of depression over the camp. No one said much, but we cannot be blamed for feeling it in a sentimental way. It ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... could only count on a perpetuity of labour, and when sickness or infirmity arrived, when old age surprised them, after fifty or sixty years of a narrow and precarious existence, it was not merely poverty that awaited them; for many there was nothing but the blackest destitution. A little later, when they began to entertain a vague hope of deliverance, the retiring pension which was held up to their gaze, in the distant future, was at first no more than forty francs, and they had to await the advent of Duruy, the great minister and liberator, before primary instruction ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... to her? Would she perhaps be turned out of the house? ... into the streets?—and Laura had a lively vision of the guilty creature, in rags and tatters, slinking along walls and sleeping under bridges, eternally moved on by a ruthless London policeman (her only knowledge of extreme destitution being derived from the woeful tale of "Little Jo").—And to think that the beginning of it all had been the want of a trumpery tram-fare. How safe the other girls were! No wonder they could allow themselves to feel shocked and outraged; none ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... year 1665 began, the French colony on the shores of the St Lawrence, founded by the valour and devotion of Champlain, had been in existence for more than half a century. Yet it was still in a pitiable state of weakness and destitution. The care and maintenance of the settlement had devolved upon trading companies, and their narrow-minded mercantile selfishness had stifled its progress. From other causes, also, there had been but little growth. Cardinal Richelieu, the ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... thrillin' editorial about the war between Russia and Japan; the editor commented on the wickedness of men plungin' two great empires into warfare, slaughterin' thousands and thousands of men, bringin' ontold wretchedness, distress, pestilence and destitution just to gratify ambition or angry passion. For it wuz this, he said, in the first place, whatever ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... written at a time, remember, when the invention of machinery, the rapid growth of industrialism, and the increasing mobility of the population of the world, had broken down the old order of things, had created large fortunes and reduced thousands to destitution; when men poured into cities and lived crowded and unhealthy in slums, when the opening phase of the grim battle between employer and employed was fought, when trade-unionism was wrested from an unwilling Government, when housing regulations, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... the woman, still feeling persuaded that I had acted under a delusion in going to her house. How was it possible to associate the charming object of my heart's worship with the miserable story of destitution which I had just heard? I stopped the boy on the first landing, and told him to announce me simply as a doctor, who had been informed of Mrs. Brand's illness, and who had ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... matter, papa. There will be great destitution and suffering in the village with every mill closed; and they are all going to close, Bridget says. Thank Heaven that this did not happen in ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... were also "utterly at a loss to understand why considerations of a purely political kind should have had such enervating influence on the English bishops as to render them passive spectators of the destitution of their American children." Brave men, men ready to run needful risks and meet unavoidable dangers, are not the men who are willing to be made cat's-paws. How the doubt was resolved I am unable to say. That it was resolved is certain; since on the 8th of December, ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed their horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the thatched roofs in place of fodder, and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... industrialism is so new that we have been slow to connect it with the poverty and vice all about us? The socialists talk constantly of the relation of economic law to destitution and point out the connection between industrial maladjustment and individual wrongdoing, but certainly the study of social conditions, the obligation to eradicate vice, cannot belong to one political ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... of the troops, and at once set about devising measures of relief. After Shiloh, that Golgotha of our brave boys, the Governor organized a large corps of surgeons and nurses, and went himself to Pittsburg Landing to find such suffering and such destitution as ought never to exist on the soil of our bounteous land, under any possible conjuncture of circumstances, however untoward and unprecedented. Without surgeons or surgical appliances, without hospital supplies, and, above all, worse than all, without ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be so like dwelling under the oak of Mamre, in the tents of Abraham. From what he remembered of Partan Jeannie's reputation as a being only tolerated and assisted by his mother, on account of her extreme misery and destitution, he could believe that the ne'er-do-weel son, who must have forsaken her before he himself was born, might have really been raised in morality by association with the grave, faithful, and temperate followers of Mohammed, rather than the scum ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of France marched the Black Prince, with a small but valiant army. Into the heart of that fair kingdom had he come, ravaging the land as he went, leaving misery and destitution at every step, when suddenly across his line of march there appeared an unlooked-for obstacle. The plundering marches of the English had roused the French. In hosts they had gathered round their king, marched in haste to confront the advancing foe, and on the night ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... been left to the oblivion which inevitably awaits it, nor should my pen have been employed in its detection and exposure, had it not been characterized by the lowest attempts at concealment and treachery, falsehood and detraction.—Like Iago in the play, a wretched abandonment of character, a destitution of principle, and a fiend-like thirst for revenge, accompany the author thro' the whole of his progress, and appear to acquire additional force, as he approaches the period of his downfall. That ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... that the lower classes suffered for want of food. Banks suspended specie payment, manufactories were forced to stop work, and paralysis fell on the whole industry of the nation. It was estimated that ten thousand persons were thrown out of employment. These soon used up their earnings, and destitution and suffering of course followed. Their condition grew worse as cold weather came on, and many actually died of starvation. At length they became goaded to desperation, and determined to help themselves to food. Gaunt men and women, clad in tatters, gathered in the Park, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... the same professors of wisdom in Greece did pretend to teach an universal SAPIENCE and knowledge both of matter and words, Socrates divorced them and withdrew philosophy and left rhetoric to itself, which by that destitution became but a barren and unnoble science. And in particular sciences we see that if men fall to subdivide their labours, as to be an oculist in physic, or to be perfect in some one title of the law, or the like, they may prove ready ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... condition of destitution and debility was reached the besiegers found their hands so occupied by the British relieving forces that the besieged had little more to do than to hold on. When the danger to Ladysmith had decided the British authorities to depart from the original plan, of a single forward movement ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... mother's hand. His heart often sank as she received his earnings with smiles and tears. "Poor child," she would say, "your help comes just in time." Thus the bitter thought of poverty and the evidences of destitution were always near ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... to Scotland, taking with him my half-brother, and leaving me with my grandfather. And all communication gradually ceased between us. Within this week, however, I have received letters from Edinburgh, informing me of the death of my stepfather, and the perfect destitution of my half-brother, now a lad of twelve years of age. He is at present staying with the clergyman who attended his father in his last illness, and who has written me the letters giving me the information that I now give you. Thus, you see, my dearest love, how urgent the duty is that takes ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... in its crumbled frame, And thro' its many gaps of destitution Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came, Like those ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... very broken English that "Mees Alice" was the pupil of her deceased sister, who had come from France some years before and had undertaken the vocal instruction of haut ton young ladies, in order to save their aged mother from a destitution which threatened her, owing to some heavy reverses which had befallen them ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... them it was also extended to them. This characteristic of barbarous society, wherein food was the principal concern of life, is a remarkable fact. The law of hospitality, as administered by the American aborigines, tended to the final equalization of subsistence. Hunger and destitution could not exist at one end of an Indian village or in one section of an encampment while plenty prevailed elsewhere in the same village or encampment. It reveals a plan of life among them at the period of European discovery which has not been ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... something different from the hap-hazard way of doing things that we have. Mr. Roberts says, that in New York, their church is perfectly organized to look after certain localities, and that no such thing as utter destitution can prevail in their section. Don't you think Dr. Dennis would be interested ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... of the priests who remained in the villages was not much better. Those of them who were fortunate enough to find places were raised at least above the fear of absolute destitution, but their position was by no means enviable. They received little consideration or respect from the peasantry, and still less from the nobles. When the church was situated not on the State Domains, but on a private estate, they were practically ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... soldiers were as good as captains, but who never reaped the benefit of their victories: that was handed over for your consolation, while all the crushing burden of defeat they had to bear themselves.... This is to be our reward for braving destitution, fire, sword and pestilence, for fleshing our swords in the enemy's blood and going ourselves starved into battle. This is the famous peace we dreamed of, when we tore the grass from the crannies in the walls to eat.... ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... spite, practised on the poor exile on the way to his wilderness home. There are chapters that might be written of bullyism and brutality—thousands of chapters—that would touch the chords of sympathy to the very core of the heart. Many a poor child of destitution—prostrated by the sickness of the sea—has submitted to the direst tyranny and most fiendish abuse on the part of those who should have cheered and protected him, and many a one has carried to his far forest home a breast filled with resentment against the mariner ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Headquarters; she heard their stories, she entered into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early days of the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the most part investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution to suffer for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were resigned; some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the task of picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. In this work of dealing with the operatives Janet ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... man; from a half-crazy creature to one who knew fully what he was about. This gift Agapita [and Basilius] now seek to annul. Provinus is exhorted at once to throw up a possession which cannot possibly bring him any credit, and the loss of which has brought the poor woman to destitution. Alienation of property should be the act of a person having 'solidum judicium,' which this poor creature evidently had not, or she would not have left her ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... woman, who had always religiously abstained from seeing her lord's face, and from knowing his name, was now reduced to destitution. There was no one to grub up pig-nuts for her, nor to extract insects of an edible sort from beneath the bark of trees. As she could not identify her invisible husband, she was unable to denounce him to the wizards, who would, for a consideration, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... destitution felt by people whose pride prevents them from asking for supplies from the relief committees. I saw a sad little procession wending up the hill to the camp of the Americus Club. There was a father, an honest, simple German, who had been employed ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... ratepayers. These are principally small shopkeepers, who are beggared by the rates. The district is in a complete state of insolvency and hopeless poverty, yet they multiply, and while the people look squalid and dejected, as if borne down by their wretchedness and destitution, the children thrive and are healthy. Government is ready to interpose with assistance, but what can Government do? We asked the man who came what could be done for them. He said 'employment,' ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... quarter—it was in a disreputable cabaret on the south side of the river that he had first come across John Locke—he had mixed there with all and sundry, rubbing shoulders with the riff-raff of nations; he had seen its vice and destitution, had mingled with its feverish surface gaiety and known its underlying squalor and ugliness, but always as a disinterested spectator, a transient passer by. Always he had had money in his pocket. He had never ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... sorrowing ones of the world in tears and despair. Not in the brilliant salon, not in the tapestried library, not in ease and competence, is genius usually born and nurtured; but often in adversity and destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a straitened household, in bare and fireless garrets, with the noise of squalid children, in the turbulence of domestic contentions, and in the deep gloom of uncheered despair. This is its most frequent birthplace, and amid scenes ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... you have no trace of human feeling left! He has a wife, children. . . . If he is condemned and sent into exile we shall starve, the children and I. . . . Understand that! And yet there is a chance of saving him and us from destitution and disgrace. If I take them nine hundred roubles to-day they will let him alone. Only ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... lieutenant, of wealthy New York people, just arrived from West Point, who was sent by another commandant to report upon the condition of the natives at the village and who came back and reported the whole population in utter destitution and recommended the issue of free rations to them all! As a matter of fact, during the administration of this commanding officer, some sixteen or eighteen persons were put upon the list for gratuitous grub, and it took a written protest to get them off. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... considered by spiritual persons as so worthless a thing, that it is not fit to be given to God—a notion which might seem to explain how a really pious and universally respected archbishop, living within a quarter of a mile of one of the worst infernos of destitution, disease, filth, and profligacy—can yet find it in his heart to save L120,000 out of church revenues, and leave it to his family; though it will not explain how Irish bishops can reconcile it to their consciences to leave behind them, one and all, large fortunes—for ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... "what the dickens do you mean by it? I'm in an awful hole down here; I have to go on tick, and the parties on the spot don't cotton to the idea; they couldn't, because it is so plain I'm in a stait of Destitution. I've got no bed-clothes, think of that, I must have coins, the hole thing's a Mockry, I wont stand it, nobody would. I would have come away before, only I have no money for the railway fare. Don't be a lunatic, Morris, you don't seem to understand my dredful situation. I have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... problems which are now so insoluble, destitution, disease, the difficulty of maintaining international peace, the scarcely faced possibility of making life generally ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Ward alone, of New York, only about one-fourth attend any place of worship. These facts and figures are startling, but they are, nevertheless, true. These precious souls, for whom Christ died, must be made the object of our affection. Our knowledge of the spiritual destitution of the down-town masses is strictly based upon our experience and observation. And hence we say that a house to house visitation, systematically arranged, constitutes one of the essential characteristics of Christ-like ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... worked as little as possible, and grumbled at the fortune that made him a laborer. But these halcyon days were few, and soon passed away, to be followed by decreasing allowances of the commonest food, fierce pangs of hunger, and miserable destitution. A bad harvest inflicted untold wretchedness on the poor. Ill lodged, ill fed, and scantily clothed, disease cut them down like grass before the scythe. A deadly pestilence swept over the land in 1348, carrying off about two thirds of the people; and nearly all the victims were from among the poorest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... an English translation of the first part of this charming tale appeared; and few books have obtained such deserved popularity. The gradual progress of the family from utter destitution and misery, to happiness and abundance, arising from their own labour, perseverance, and obedience, together with the effect produced on the different characters of the sons by the stirring adventures ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... been for my inseparable friend Anna, a noble-hearted English girl, who landed on our shores in destitution and sorrow, and clave to me as Ruth to Naomi, I had never lived through all the trials which this uncertainty and want of domestic service imposed on both: you may imagine, therefore, how glad I was when, our seminary property ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... hear poor Francis Trent, with his broken-down, cringing, crafty look, thus sueing for a sovereign. For he had the air of a ruined gentleman, not of an ordinary beggar, and the signs of refinement in his face and bearing made his state of abasement and destitution more apparent. But Oliver was not touched by any such sentimental considerations. He looked at first as if he were about to refuse his brother's request; but policy dictated another course. He must not drive to desperation the man in whose hands lay his character and perhaps his future ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... degree. I closed with an appeal in favor of that erring nature, which, even in our own cases, led us hourly to the commission of sins and errors; and which, where the individual was poor, wretched, and a stranger, under the evil influences of destitution, vicious associations, and a lot in life, which, of necessity, must be low, might well persuade us to look with an eye of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... daughters; the old Lear, who out of a foolish tenderness has given away every thing, is driven out to the world a wandering beggar; the childish imbecility to which he was fast advancing changes into the wildest insanity, and when he is rescued from the disgraceful destitution to which he was abandoned, it is too late: the kind consolations of filial care and attention and of true friendship are now lost on him; his bodily and mental powers are destroyed beyond all hope of recovery, and all ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Mr Simon Tappertit, being removed from a hospital to prison, and thence to his place of trial, was discharged by proclamation, on two wooden legs. Shorn of his graceful limbs, and brought down from his high estate to circumstances of utter destitution, and the deepest misery, he made shift to stump back to his old master, and beg for some relief. By the locksmith's advice and aid, he was established in business as a shoeblack, and opened shop under an archway near the Horse Guards. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... a great mass of discontented feeling in the country arising from the actual state of society. It arises from the distress and destitution which will fall at times upon a great manufacturing population, and from the wild and extravagant opinions which are naturally generated in an advanced and speculative state ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... laughed to scorn the pretensions of the young Pope; the nobles were in arms, the city was his, and in the second year of his Pontificate, Gregory the Fifth was driven ignominiously from the gates in a state of absolute destitution. He was the third Pope whom Crescenzio had driven out. Gregory made his way to Pavia, summoned a council of Bishops, and launched the Major Excommunication at his adversary. But the Consul, secure in Sant' Angelo, laughed again, more grimly, and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... consequences of exposing himself to the operation of the penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point. They show how warm and deep were his human affections, and what a tender and loving ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... can succeed in being creative rather than possessive in a world which is wholly built on competition, where the great majority would fall into utter destitution if they became careless as to the acquisition of material goods, where honor and power and respect are given to wealth rather than to wisdom, where the law embodies and consecrates the injustice of those who have toward those who have not. In such an environment even those whom nature ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... of provisions at Gallarate, and of occasional meals taken gratis from the fields, complete destitution seemed to be only a matter of days, and just at this crisis, to add to his embarrassments—though he longed earnestly for the event—Lucia was brought to bed with her first-born living child on May 14, 1534. The child's birth was accompanied by divers omens, one of which the father ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... it."—(Mill, Polit. Econ.) In whatever point of view, therefore, we regard this subject—whether as one of duty by providing the means of healthy and legitimate employment to our numerous artificers and labourers now in a state of destitution—a domestic calamity likely to be often inflicted upon us—unless new fields, easy of access, are made permanently open to our continually increasing population—and "it would be difficult to show that it is not as much the duty of rulers to provide, ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth
... for her plan,—not merely on the strength of her own deep, prophetic conviction of her fitness for a dramatic career, but on the ground of an urgent and bitter necessity for exertion on her part, to ward off actual destitution and suffering,—he exclaimed, somewhat impatiently,—"Why, Zelma, it is an impossibility, almost an absurdity, you urge! You could never make an actress. You are too hopelessly natural, erratic, and impulsive. You would follow no teaching implicitly, but, when you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... brethren late in 1870 was set forth by James Leithead as something like destitution. He wrote that, "many are nearly naked for want of clothing. We can sell nothing we have for money, and the cotton, what little there is, appears to be of little help in that direction. There are many articles we are more ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... of reflections of this sort. The destitution of the Campagna of Rome demonstrates triumphantly what an aversion mankind has to arbitrary government, while the well-populated mountain of St Marino shows what a natural love they have for liberty. Whigs abroad were well caricatured by Smollett in ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... expectation of his appetite. Any artificial appetite begun is the beginning of distemper, disease, and a general disturbance of natural proportion. Nine tenths of the intemperate drinking begins, not in grief and destitution, as we so often hear, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... learned in all the mysteries of occult chemistry, an adept of the great Albert, the master of masters in empirical art. Like all sorcerers, and all savants of the eighteenth century, this abbe was represented as being in a state of frightful misery and destitution. He who possessed the secrets of plants and minerals, of fire and light, of the generation of beings, had not the wherewithal to procure himself a decent soutane, nor even a morsel of bread. Though, by the efforts of his magic, he had reached a dizzy height on the paths of knowledge, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... complacency in his complete hoodwinking of all concerned at home, almost thanking Edward for the facilities his absence had given him. After this, he went abroad, taking Maria lest she should betray him on being cast off; and they lived in such style at German gambling places that destitution brought them back again to England, where he could better play the lecturer, and the artist in search of subscriptions. Edward could not help smiling over some of his good stories, rather as 'the lord' may have 'commended the wisdom of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into small enclosures by stone walls, and subdivided by rows of a tall stout reed (Arundo donax) resembling sugarcane. Although taxes and other burdens are heavy, and wages very low, yet to a mere visitor like myself there appeared none of those occasional signs of destitution which strike one in walking through a town at home, nor did ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... to the forsaken spouse.—Left in this abrupt destitution and distress, Mrs. Lester had only the resource of applying to her brother-in-law, whom indeed the fugitive had before seized many opportunities of not leaving wholly unprepared for such an application. Rowland promptly and generously obeyed the summons: he took the child and the wife to his own ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pursued my weary way over the prostrate trunks. It was noon when I reached the spot where my notices were posted. No one had been there. My disappointment was almost overwhelming. For the first time, I realized that I was lost. Then came a crushing sense of destitution. No food, no fire; no means to procure either; alone in an unexplored wilderness, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human abode, surrounded by wild beasts, and famishing with hunger. It was no time for despondency. A moment afterwards I felt ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... much liberality. In this connection I submit an appeal which has been made by the Swiss Republic, whose Government and institutions are kindred to our own, in behalf of its inhabitants, who are suffering extreme destitution, produced by recent ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... come at last when my ill-starred life has to reveal its destitution in a long-drawn series of exposures. This penury, all unexpected, has taken its seat in the heart where plenitude seemed to reign. The fees which I paid to delusion for just nine years of my youth have now to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... lived here long. We only found them three weeks ago; they will look better by and by," Anna whispered, feeling that some apology was necessary for the destitution ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... home, the scene of our enjoyments, our labours, and our rest, now a prey to the destroying element; the suddenness with which we had been hurried from circumstances of comfort and comparative security, to those of destitution and peril, and with which the most exhilarating hopes had been exchanged for disappointment as unexpected as it was afflictive; the sudden death of the two seamen, our own narrow escape, and lonely situation on the face of the deep, and the great probability even yet, although we had succeeded ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... may not appreciate what is done for him, may not be particularly grateful, may have disagreeable faults, and continue to have them after much pains on your part to eradicate them,—and yet it is a fact, that to redeem one human being from destitution and ruin, even in some homely every-day course of ministrations, is one of the best possible tonics and alteratives to a sick and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a precarious subsistence by his pen; although from the little we can glean of his history, the inference is, he was improvident, and easily led away by gay, dissipated companions. One of his biographers gives a melancholy account of the destitution of his latter days, and states, that he was reduced to the necessity of borrowing a shilling, to satisfy the cravings of hunger, from a gentleman, who, shocked at the distress of the author of "Venice Preserved," put a guinea into his hands; that Otway was choked with a piece of bread, which he ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... cover it over with earth, the birds picked it up from the surface of the ground, and Nahor called his son Terah, because the ravens and the other birds plagued men, devoured their seed, and reduced them to destitution.[6] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... in them at the same time a longing that amounted to a passion, to get nearer the great physical poverty and spiritual destitution of the mighty city that throbbed around them. How could they do this except as they became a part of it as nearly as one man can become a part of another's misery? Where was the suffering to come in unless there was an actual self-denial of some sort? And ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... want you mean the destitution that prevails in a Koom-Posh, THAT is impossible with us, unless an An has, by some extraordinary process, got rid of all his means, cannot or will not emigrate, and has either tired out the affectionate aid of this relations or personal friends, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... reads. A specimen or two will amply suggest the rest. In one tale the hero is held up to the unqualified admiration of posterity for having starved to death his son, in an extreme case of family destitution, for the sake of providing food enough for his aged father. In another he unhesitatingly divorces his wife for having dared to poke fun, in the shape of bodkins, at some wooden effigies of his parents which he had had set up in ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... disorder prevailed among the canons and vicars of the cathedral. One of the canons, besides stealing money from the treasury, appropriated for his private use some materials which had been intended for the repair of the church. Rectors of parishes allowed their cures to fall into a state of destitution, and left them to the care of poorly paid vicars while they themselves resided elsewhere. The see was not filled for two years after the death of Rede. Then followed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... contemptuous accents, "not to express any hypocritical sorrow for the occurrence which has just taken place, but to point out to you the obvious lesson which is to be learned from it—a lesson which I fear your dense ignorance, your utter destitution of discernment and common- sense, would prevent your ever discovering for yourselves. Within the last half-hour two men have come to their deaths. How? Why, by a sneaking, cowardly attempt to evade the punishment justly due to the lazy, skulking, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... situation. I saw Tanner myself at the lower end of Lake Superior; he seemed to me to be more like a savage than a civilized being. His book is written without either taste or order; but he gives, even unconsciously, a lively picture of the prejudices, the passions, the vices, and, above all, of the destitution in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... discouragements, so frequent with the husband. How often do we see the father abandon the children, waste his earnings and leave his situation under some futile pretext, while his courageous wife, although suffering from hunger and destitution, holds firm and manages to save the debris which has escaped the excesses and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... naval warfare with sharp counter-measures. If Great Britain in her fight against Germany summons hunger as an ally, for the purpose of imposing upon a civilized people of 70,000,000 the choice between destitution and starvation or submission to Great Britain's commercial will, then Germany today is determined to take up the gauntlet and appeal to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Eve's equally guileless ears in Paradise Lost. But the most remarkable feature of the piece is its close resemblance to the new type of drama which Euripides had popularised. The miserable life of Philoctetes, his rags, destitution and sickness are a parallel to the Euripidean Telephus; most of all, the appearance of a god at the end to untie the knot is genuine Euripides. But there is a great difference; of the disjointed actions which disfigure ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the Chattertons of their day with not being patterns of self-devotion, instead of physical or moral suicides; without ever asking themselves whether they had, during their lifetime, endeavored to place aught within the reach of such but doubt and destitution. I feel the necessity of protesting earnestly against the reaction set on foot by certain thinkers against the mighty-souled, which serves as a cloak for the cavilling spirit of mediocrity. There is something hard, repulsive, and ungrateful in the destructive instinct ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... claims, and to "render homage where homage is due." Many are the shifts, and crude the inventions in the bush, when emergencies call forth the application of the old proverb respecting the relationship that exists between destitution and genius; and when to be minus the support of the Virginian weed, is considered a greater misfortune than to be wanting of the necessaries of life. Hence, when requested by John Ferguson to go up to the hut, the draymen had not the ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... the table, her features dimly lighted by a tallow candle, sat a woman advanced in life, clad in faded but cleanly garments, whose hollow cheeks and sunken eye told a painful tale of sorrow and destitution. Those sad eyes were fixed anxiously and imploringly upon the stern, grim face of a hard-featured old man, who, with hat pulled over his shaggy gray eyebrows, was standing, resting on a stout staff, in the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Joan growing steadily darker and darker all the time. And then we naturally contrasted our circumstances with hers: this freedom and sunshine, with her darkness and chains; our comradeship, with her lonely estate; our alleviations of one sort and another, with her destitution in all. She was used to liberty, but now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature by nature and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an animal; she was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom where all objects about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was sensible of the debt of gratitude I owed to him, but would rather submit to the scourge, or to destitution, than listen to these attacks on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Napoleon's career, it seemed to him the will of the Lord, that he should use his very considerable property to furnish these poor weavers with work, in order to save them from the greatest state of destitution, though in doing this there was not only no prospect of gain, but the certain prospect of immense loss. He therefore found employment for about six thousand weavers. But he was not content with this. Whilst he gave the bread which perishes, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... affected humility; but the all-pervading principle, PRIDE OF BIRTH, implanted within her breast, imperiously restrained her from bestowing the favors of her patrician person upon 'vulgar plebeians;' and, in consequence, she had sunk lower and lower in want, destitution and misery, until driven, on that terrible winter's night, to supplicate for a slight and temporary relief at the door of one whom she had formerly so much despised, but on whom she ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... destitution, for a farmer can always raise enough produce to feed his family, and in a wooded country he can get fuel, even if he has to lift it between the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... men is disappointed terribly when any crisis happens. They are forced to eat their savings, to turn their clothing and their tools into food, and, by the revolution of eighteen hundred and forty-eight, were reduced to such great destitution, that in some of the houses occupied by them one dress was all that remained to all the lodgers. They wore it in turn, one going out in it to seek for work while all the rest remained at home in bed. The poor fellows thanked the want of exercise for helping them to want of appetite—the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... seen an aged rifted tower, Meet habitation for the Ghost of Time, Where fearful ravage makes decay sublime, And destitution wears the face of power? Yet is the fabric deck'd with many a flower Of fragrance wild, and many-dappled hues, Gold streak'd with iron-brown and nodding blue, Making each ruinous chink a fairy bower. E'en such a thing methinks I ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... remote from the poor creature she had seen lowered into her hastily dug grave as if the height of the heavens divided them. She had seen poverty and misfortune in her life; but in a community where poor thrifty Mrs. Hawes and the industrious Ally represented the nearest approach to destitution there was nothing to suggest the savage misery ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... considered the great destitution of schools of any kind, in which the moiety of the children that attend school at all receive instruction, and the fact that very many of these are kept open but three months during the year.[64] The inadequacy of existing provisions for the proper education ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... case of destitution,that's one thing!' was Dr. Arthur's comment, as his friend sprang past him into the cabin. Then however, like a wise man, postponing other things to business, Rollo only demanded calmly what the matter ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... must be reopened and reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the Church of England were to cease to carry moral authority with it; another dealt with the more purely social subject of middle class destitution; another with the authenticity or rather the unauthenticity of the fourth gospel—another was headed "Irrational Rationalism," and there were ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... religious state of France in 1799: her clergy were rent by a formidable schism; the orthodox priests clung where possible to their parishioners, or lived in destitution abroad; the constitutional priests, though still frowned on by the Directory, were gaining ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose expiring efforts excited ridicule. In fine, a nation weary of religious experiments and groping ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... The entire destitution of religious privileges which Mills had witnessed in the West and South, and the great desire of the people for the word of God, with their inability to supply themselves, made him eager for the formation of a National Bible ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... this very trip in the south of England produced another good work. She, with her husband and daughter, returned home by way of North Devon, Somerset, and Wiltshire. At Amesbury she tarried long enough to learn something of the mental destitution of the shepherds employed on Salisbury Plain, and set her fertile brain to contrive a scheme for the supply of the necessary books. She communicated her desires and intentions to the clergyman of the parish, and Sir Edward and Lady Antrobus, who unitedly undertook to furnish a librarian. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... One writer asserts that any man with honesty and determination can make his living at any time; another speaks of the numbers of skilled artisans who cannot get employment. But if some of these latter have the fastidious tastes above mentioned, it will be seen that the destitution is to a certain extent artificial. But reasoning on these subjects speedily merges in the ocean of Free Trade v. Protection, upon which I will not further touch. Sydney is the oldest town in the Colonies, having been founded in 1788. It has quite the air of an old established ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... death. She extinguished the brazier; the door was open, the air rushed in, and the exile was saved. Then, when Lisbeth had put him to bed like a patient, and he was asleep, she could detect the motives of his suicide in the destitution of the rooms, where there was nothing whatever but a wretched table, the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the wealthiest men of Quebec. As his daughter grew to womanhood, he used these riches to beautify his home and make existence more enjoyable to her. He was also a generous friend to the poor, especially those French families whom the war of 1759 and 1760, had reduced to destitution. Those who could not abide the altered forms of British rule and who desired to emigrate to France, he assisted by every means in his power, while those whom circumstances forced to remain in the vanquished ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... of Destitution in the Parks Where the Homeless Were Gathered—Rich and Poor Share Food and Bed Alike—All Distinctions of Wealth and Social Position Wiped Out by the Great ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... me;" and Katy told without reserve the pitiful story of want and destitution which compelled Mrs. Redburn to part with the cherished memento of ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... therefore, the Spartan government endured, the more cruel became the condition of the Helots. Not in Sparta were those fine distinctions of rank which exist where slavery is unknown, binding class with class by ties of mutual sympathy and dependance—so that Poverty itself may be a benefactor to Destitution. Even among the poor the Helot had no brotherhood! he was as necessary to the meanest as to the highest Spartan—his wrongs gave its very existence to the commonwealth. We cannot, then, wonder at the extreme barbarity with which the Spartans treated ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distracted victims of Edward's hostile march; and many little acts of protective kindness had been shown by both the brothers (generally at Raymond's instigation) towards some feeble or miserable person who might otherwise have been left in absolute destitution. These small acts of kindness won them goodwill wherever they went, and also assisted them to understand the words and ways of the people as they ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... father of seven children, he saw his small patrimony and even his earlier savings swallowed up by one of those hazardous investments with which promoters impose on the credulity of the public. His small endowment as professor alone protected him from destitution. Men of science whom his reputation as a botanist and zoologist had attracted near him, wondered at the manner ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler |
