"Ill-starred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, only the background of his work. He is no idyllic posture-monger. The march of events as they drive forward the primitive earth-born men and women of Wessex, thrills one with the same weight of accumulated fatality, as—the comparison is tedious and pedantic—the fortunes of the ill-starred houses of Argos and Thebes. One peculiarity of Mr. Hardy's method must finally be mentioned, as giving their most characteristic quality to these formidable scenes—I mean his preference for form over color. Who can forget those desolately emphatic human protagonists ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... has painted for us a romantic picture of the poet in a shepherd's hut.[32] It recalls Erminia among the pastoral people. Indeed, the interest of that episode in the Gerusalemme is heightened by the fact that its ill-starred author tested the reality of his creation ofttimes in the course of this pathetic pilgrimage. Artists of the Bolognese Academy have placed Erminia on their canvases. But, up to the present time, I know of no great painter ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... But the ill-starred folk of Troy could not have shown more enthusiasm in haling within their walls the fatal wooden horse, than did the men and boys of Uppingham, who harnessed themselves, some four-score of them, to that guileless structure, which, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... there came into my head the ill-starred thought of leading them off the road and through the fields close alongside of it on our left hand. The road itself I knew pretty well, and that it bore gradually to the left, all the way to Alton. Carey, whom I consulted, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... you tell me all that last night?" cried the ill-starred Lancaster. He dared not tell Bullard that the Green Box was safe in his house. Bullard would never, however great the compensation, forgive trickery against himself; and Bullard's theory remained to be proved. Lancaster's soul now seized on its last hope: that Doris would be able ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... storm that raged savagely above them, if they felt not the sand that pressed heavily upon them, what was there to warn, what to arouse them from that ill-starred slumber? ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... springing from his seat, "and what profit did the immortal and ill-starred Torquato Tasso win from all his genius? A few stolen kisses on the steps of a palace. And he died of famine in a madhouse. I say it: the world's opinion, that empress of humankind, I will tear from her her crown and ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... being revealed; and the enemies of the Church in Italy learn with an astonishment, which is perhaps feigned, that in that glorious army of martyrs of 1799 more than one ecclesiastic of high rank suffered in the ill-starred and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... thoroughly ashamed of my first unjust suspicions that Henrietta might not be strictly truthful, and I inquired with sincere interest as to the fate of her ill-starred family. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... little brothers; and she told all this with a simple grace and innocent frankness not a little alluring. Yet I was pretty near the truth; for, without being aware of it, she uniformly concluded with the one favourite theme: her ill-starred love. Still I went on acting the part of the UNAMIABLE, in the hope that she would take a spite against me. But whether from inadvertency or design, she would not take the hint, and I was at last fairly compelled to give up by sitting down contented to ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... upon religion are those parents who say of their pallid, puny, sedentary, lifeless, joyless little offspring, "He is born for a minister," while the ruddy, the brave, and the strong are as promptly assigned to a secular career! Never yet did an ill-starred young saint waste his Saturday afternoons in preaching sermons in the garret to his deluded little sisters and their dolls, without living to repent it in maturity. These precocious little sentimentalists wither away ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... which that fabric, if designed for permanence, should be built—nor with the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of the warrior empire—nor with the dull and arrogant bigots who connected all ideas of order and government with the ill-starred and worn-out dynasty of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was with him the principium et fons of all theories and all practice. And it was this quality that attached him to the English. His philosophy on this head was ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... any note occurred in the family until the return of that ill-starred man, the Master. But I have to place here a second extract from the memoirs of Chevalier Burke, interesting in itself, and highly necessary for my purpose. It is our only sight of the Master on his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wounds were almost green at his death, sought to chase away the recollections of his ill-starred splendour, by rides and walks in the island, and conversation with his suite in his garden; and Louis XVIII. after his restoration to the throne of France, passed few such happy days as his exile at Hartwell, which though only a pleasant seat enough, had more comfort than the gilded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... and after the downfall of the Regency in 1333, sanguinary battles were fought between the Imperialists and the rebels. The former, brave and faithful as they were, being outnumbered by the latter, perished in the field one after another for the sake of the ill-starred Emperor Go-dai-go (1319-1338), whose eventful life ended in anxiety ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the ground. But these great sculptures, among other things, escaped destruction, and at once hidden and preserved by the accumulating debris of the centuries, they stood there age after age, their very existence quite forgotten. When Xenophon marched past their site with the ill-starred expedition of the ten thousand, in the year 400 B.C., he saw only a mound which seemed to mark the site of some ancient ruin; but the Greek did not suspect that he looked upon the site of that city which only two centuries before had been ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... command of the fleet, though the Sailors' Council at first declined to accept him. He was at heart a patriot, but had taken no active part in Yugoslav propaganda and, unluckily for himself, he had been compelled to accompany Count Tisza in his recent ill-starred tour of Bosnia, when the Magyar leader made a last attempt to browbeat the local Slavs. Yet, as no other high officer was available, Koch told the Sailors' Council that they simply must acknowledge Vukovi['c], and at 4 p.m. he took ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... surnamed Lope. This fellow had taken advantage of the passing of Polish refugees, who had at that time already been driven over the frontier and were making their way through Germany to France, to disguise himself as an ill-starred champion of freedom, and he subsequently found his way to the Foreign Legion in Algeria. On the way home from the gathering, Degelow, whom I was to meet in a few weeks, proposed a 'truce.' This was a device ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... pass above them through the air, where the darkness was gathering intensity. Other sounds rose in the distance, like the hollow muttering of the rising storm: were they the "March! march!"—that terrible order from Paris which had driven that ill-starred man onward day by day, dragging behind him along the roads of his defeat the irony of his imperial escort, until now he was brought face to face with the ruin he had foreseen and come forth to meet? What multitudes ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... after a few idle commonplace stories from a gentleman in black ... no one durst say black was his eye; while I ... only wanting that ceremony, am made a Sunday's laughing-stock, and abused like a pickpocket. I was well aware, though, that if my ill-starred fortune got the least hint of my connubial wish, my scheme would go to nothing. To prevent this I determined to take my measures with such thought and fore-thought, such cautions and precautions, that all the malignant planets in the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... where King Louis XIV was wont to play with his hounds before retiring, became the bed-room of his heir. After the year 1738, Louis XV occupied this chamber, and here he died thirty-six years later. It then became the sleeping-room of the ill-starred Louis XVI—who died in no bed. Locks, door-knobs, chimney ornaments—each detail in gilded bronze reflected rare taste and workmanship. The bed stood in an alcove enclosed between two columns, railed in by a balustrade ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... to you!" roared Black Dan, with an oath. Whereupon, dragged over the chests, the ill-starred ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... ere the gods began to find their way to Prometheus's earthly paradise, and who came once came again. The first was Epimetheus, who had probably suffered least of all from the general upset, having in truth little to lose since his ill-starred union with Pandora. He had indeed reason for thankfulness in his practical divorce from his spouse, who had settled in Caucasia, and gave Greek lessons to the Princess Miriam. Would Prometheus lend him half a talent? a quarter? a tenth? a hundredth? Thanks, thanks. Prometheus might ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... descendant of the superstitious old Norsemen, was full of old Norse conceits, and all manner of Valhalla marvels concerning the land of goblins and goblets. No wonder then, that with this catastrophe in prospect, he again entreated me to quit the ill-starred craft, carrying off nothing from her ghostly hull. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a word of Preface as to the Author: an Irish Gentleman, of Estate and Fortune (which of course went the Irish way), who was Scholar, Artist, Newspaper Correspondent, etc. A dozen lines would tell all that is wanted, naming no names. It might be called 'Fragments of Letters by an "Ill-starred" or "Unlucky" Man of Genius,' etc. as S. M. was: 'Unlucky' being still used in Suffolk, with something of Ancient Greek meaning. See if you cannot get this done, will you? For I think many of S. M.'s friends would be glad of it: and the general Public assuredly not the worse. Some of the names would ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... O Torquato, heaven to us The rich gift of thy genius gave, to thee Nought else but misery. Ill-starred Torquato, whom thy song, So sweet, could not console, Nor melt the ice, to which The genial current of thy soul Was turned, by private envy, princely hate; And then, by Love abandoned, life's last dream! To thee, nought real seemed but nothingness, The world a dreary wilderness. Too late ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... which he could conceive of no better name than CLICKMITOAD. After recovering from their surprise and terror, this 'bold peasant' and his neighbours, all armed with pokers and other formidable weapons, crept up to the ill-starred ticker, and smashed it ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... Albert; Albert by his son William. William, who had married Margaret of Burgundy, daughter of Philip the Bold, dies in 1417. The goodly heritage of these three Netherland provinces descends to his daughter Jacqueline, a damsel of seventeen. Little need to trace the career of the fair and ill-starred Jacqueline. Few chapters of historical romance have drawn more frequent tears. The favorite heroine of ballad and drama, to Netherlanders she is endued with the palpable form and perpetual existence of the Iphigenias, Mary Stuarts, Joans of Arc, or other ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... but, in the 18th century, of a society named after the "tutelar saint" of Pennsylvania. The original Tammany was an Indian chief with whom William Penn negotiated for grants of land about the end of the 17th century. Littoral first became familiar in connection with Italy's ill-starred Abyssinian adventure, and hinterland marked the appearance of Germany ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... counted so securely on the effect of experience and the pressure of events to teach Hadria the desirable lesson, and they were dismayed to find that, unlike other women, she had failed to learn it. Henriette was in despair. It was she who had brought about the ill-starred union. How could she ever forgive herself? How repair the error she had made? Only by devoting herself to her brother, and trying patiently to bring his wife to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was elected president of the Freedmans Bank. This ill-starred venture was then apparently in the full tide of prosperity, and promised to be a great lever in the uplifting of the submerged race. Douglass, soon after his election as president, discovered the ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... thought, perhaps, if I waited a few hours where I was, he would be sure to rejoin me, and we could then return to Port Jervis without Sarah's son to be sure; but, otherwise, no worse off than we were when we set out on this ill-starred ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... his nights with unsuspected grief, and disturbed his day-dreams while he puzzled, anxiously, over known facts that had become too inconsistent with his beliefs for comfort. That scene enacted in his mother's rooms, at supper, on the evening after the ill-starred ball, when, at his mother's bidding, he had left her, knowing that she wished to keep him from questions that must not be asked, was neither the first such affair that he had seen, nor yet the tenth. He had left the room with hands clinched and his heart burning with anger: ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... stood the ill-starred hero. Then, just as his team was turning, he let loose the left rein unawares, and struck the farthest pillar, breaking the spokes right at his axles' center. Slipping out of his chariot, he was dragged along, with reins ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Halifax, where her gallant, gentlemanly, and ill-starred commander died and was buried, with full military honors, in the presence of all the British officers on the station, who uncovered themselves as they laid into the grave all that was earthly ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... An ill-starred wretch, a fiend of wicked heart, Gave answer then, and to his father said:— "We shall not quickly work him any harm, Nor slay him by our wiles; go thou to him; There wilt thou surely find a bitter ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... delightful specimens of rural dialogue, culled chiefly from the labouring classes of Cheshire. And, rising in the social scale from the labourer to the farmer, what could be more lifelike than this tale of an ill-starred wooing? "My son Tom has met with a disappointment about getting married. You know he's got that nice farm at H——; so he met a young lady at a dance, and he was very much took up, and she seemed quite ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... this ill-starred concurrence of circumstances, which might have palliated any excesses either of temper or conduct into which they drove him, it was, after all, I am persuaded, to no such serious causes that the unfortunate alienation, which so soon ended in ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... unpleasantly reminded Mrs Quantock of the Guru, but nothing could have been less like that ill-starred curry-cook than this majestic creature. Eventually she gave a great sigh and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... would not agree to the impulsive proposals of the Athenians, and he opposed them when, elated by their power and good fortune, they talked of recovering Egypt and attacking the seaboard of the Persian empire. Many, too, were inflamed with that ill-starred notion of an attempt on Sicily, which was afterwards blown into a flame by Alkibiades and other orators. Some even dreamed of the conquest of Etruria and Carthage, in consequence of the greatness which the Athenian empire had already reached, and the full tide of success which ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scotland. Her suit of apartments, tradition informs us, was on the west side of the north court. This, in the memory of persons living but a few years since, was the most beautiful part of the building: it communicated with the great tower, whence it is said the ill-starred captive had sometimes an opportunity of seeing the friends approach with whom she held a secret correspondence; and "this tradition appears to have been founded upon good authority."[2] It is inferred that her captivity at Wingfield commenced in 1569, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... associations was still keen and vivid. She described its old-world garden by the side of the Thames, where the little King Edward VI. must often have roamed with his pretty cousin Jane: the two wonderful ill-starred children, playing for a brief hour in happy unconsciousness of the fate that faced them. What did they talk about, she asked, as they stood on the paved terrace and watched the river hurrying by? Plato, perchance, and his philosophy, ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... having acted over in my imagination all the dangers and privations of The Desert, and seen all the wonders of the mysterious regions of Nigritia, I set about my departure from Mourzuk with a heavy heart, lamenting my ill-starred luck and failure, seeing my mission abruptly cut off midway in its accomplishment. Mr. Gagliuffi arranged for my returning to Tripoli with the slave-caravan of Haj Essnousee, whom the reader will be pleased not to confound with my friend ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... asleep. His cares for the present were over, and as Mrs. Royal watched the little curly head lying upon the pillow, she gave a deep sigh as she bent over and kissed him. Must he go through life handicapped? she asked herself, for no fault of his own? Would he always be looked upon as a waif, an ill-starred child, and in the eyes of the world, ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... and impossible stories, which convulsed us until I felt sure that the irritated Mr. Frost must cherish a secret but lively desire to punch his head. Possibly Brian was the only one who thoroughly enjoyed himself at that ill-starred dinner, for he is keen on the scent of a precarious situation which is liable to involve everybody in total collapse. In this instance he seemed to snuff the battle from afar and stirred up all the slumbering ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... extraordinary refinements of cruelty were reserved. The aventuriers, when so ill-starred as to fall into the hands of justice, were customarily burned alive at the stake.[76] The same fate overtook those who were detected in frauds against the public treasury. More frightful than all the rest was the vengeance taken by the law upon the counterfeiter of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... battle in far Parthia, and Pompey steals a march by getting a long term in Spain. Caesar demands as much and is refused by Pompey's friends. Then the storm breaks and Caesar comes back from Gaul to cross the Rubicon, and take all Italy in sixty days. Pompey, ambitious, ill-starred, fights losing battles everywhere. Murdered at last in Egypt, he, too, is dead, and Caesar stands alone, master of Rome and of the world. One year he ruled, and then they slew him; but no one of them that struck him died ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... aside her veil in turning to my wife, and showed a face which had all the ill-starred beauty of poor Tedham, with something more in it that she never got from that handsome reprobate—conscience, soul—whatever we choose to call a certain effluence of heaven which blesses us with rest and faith whenever we behold it in any human ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... gravitation,—or rather of specific gravity,—and sink below the surface,—down, down into the fathomless and unknown abysm of the ocean. Along with them, sharing their sad fate, Lilly Lalee,—that pretty, uncomplaining child, the innocent victim of an ill-starred destiny, must disappear forever from a world of which she had as yet seen so little, and that little of ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... back. But there came upon me then a compassion for these innocent passengers, fated to have embarked upon this ill-starred voyage. Herded here in this cabin, with brigands like pirates of old guarding them. Waiting now to be marooned on an uninhabited asteroid roaming in space. A sense of responsibility swept me. I swung upon Miko. He stood with a nonchalant grace, lounging against ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... in a letter of July 6, 1781, contained in the Haldimand Papers, in the British Museum, gives what he calls "a brief account" of his ill-starred expedition. See Roosevelt's Winning of the West, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... he was astonished at the "exquisite distinction" displayed by the players in eating them. The "perfect elegance" which one actress exhibited in consuming an egg had fascinated him and he stated with conviction that he could have spent a happy evening simply watching her eat these ill-starred hopes of chickens. It was pointed out that the management could hardly afford to pay her a sufficient salary for the strain on her digestive faculties, and also that the eggs—real Boat Race eggs, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... "'I gave the ill-starred prince such an education as I should have liked to receive myself, and no acknowledged son of a king ever had a better. The only thing for which I have to reproach myself is that, without intending it, I caused him great unhappiness; for when he was ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... varying fortunes of the lovers in the books she read aloud during the winter evenings; her heart understood that love, which brings the highest joy, may also cause the deepest sorrow. But apart from the sorrows of ill-starred love, she caught glimpses of something else—a terrible something which she did not understand. Dark forms would now and then appear to her, gliding through the paradise of love, disgraced and abject. The sacred name of love was linked with the direst shame and the deepest misery. Among people ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Hoppner's miniature of that lovely and ill-starred girl, with her soft dark eyes, and her curls all astray from beneath her little blue turban. And the Duke was telling Mr. Oover her story—how she had left her home for Humphrey Greddon when she was but sixteen, and he an undergraduate at Christ Church; ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... and brave blood, is perhaps one of her characteristics, as is many another well born woman's. She had a long list of worthy ancestors in colonial and revolutionary days, and the McNeils, and General Knox, figure largely in her genealogy, as well as the hero who killed the ill-starred Paugus. ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... Canterbury Tales, or Edmund Spenser's immortal Faerie Queene, or Shakespeare's tender women, the Juliet we love, the Rosalind who is ever in our hearts, the Beatrice, the Imogen, gentle Ophelia, or kindly but ill-starred Desdemona, or the great heroes of tragedy, Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet or Othello, or I might ask you to hear a word about Ben Jonson, "rare Ben," or poor Philip Massinger who died a stranger, of the Puritan Milton, the great Catholic Dryden, or Swift, or Bunyan, Defoe, Addison, Pope and Burke and grim ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... pathetic, striking, to my eyes with her life-time proof of the reality of her passion, than my untried young lovers who up to that time had seemed to me, in the full fatuous flush of invention as I was, as ill-starred, innocent and touching lovers as anybody ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... of our ill-starred hero" says Jemmy, copying as it seemed to me the style of some of his story-books, "was a worldly man who entertained ambitious views for his only son and who firmly set his face against the contemplated alliance with a virtuous but penniless ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy • Charles Dickens
... lead the last revolt against the Martian government, an ill-starred revolt that ended almost before it started when the troopers turned loose the heavy heaters and swept the streets with washing waves ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... resting-place of the unfortunate traveller and his companions, was placed under McIntyre's command. About sixty horses and sixteen camels were obtained for this attempt. The less said about this splendid but ill-starred effort the better. Indignation is a mild term to apply to our feelings towards the man who caused the ruin of so generous an undertaking. Everything that its promoters could do to ensure its success they did, and it deserved a better ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... a statue of Marsyas, Apollo's ill-starred rival. It probably bore an expression of pain, which Horace humorously ascribes to dislike of the looks of the Younger Novius, who is conjectured to have been of the profession and nature of Shylock. A naked figure carrying ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the fiery sea is quenched That flamed around thy castle. BRUNHILDA. Yet the knight Still lingers who should wield the magic sword And on his war-horse gallop through the flames, When he had won proud Fafner's ill-starred hoard. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... included Mozambique and Zambesi boys, Shangaans and others from among the blackest races of South Africa. The greatest disaster sustained by this company was when a party of thirty-three of them dashed into the Boer lines on an ill-starred attempt to loot cattle from the enemy's herds. After their night's dash out of the garrison they got to a hiding place for the day, but they were followed there and were surrounded by a Boer commando, which peppered them ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... at this dismal epoch, was the ruin of the Louisbourg expedition. The greater part of La Motte's fleet reached its destination a full month before that of Holbourne. Had the reverse taken place, the fortress must have fallen. As it was, the ill-starred attempt, drawing off the British forces from the frontier, where they were needed most, did for France more than she could have done for herself, and gave Montcalm and Vaudreuil the opportunity to execute a scheme which they had nursed ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... eyes for the sight of it, the sight of the simple name "Agnes Bibby" at the head of her first signed story—the story that was to take away the reproach from the name that the ill-starred interview had brought! ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... the least. I speak that which I soberly believe. Just as some ill-starred human creatures are born physically or mentally defective—deformed or idiots—so may they be born spiritually defective. Why not? My reason offers no scientific or moral objection to such a belief. In other respects she is conspicuously perfect. But, verily, she has no soul; and the qualities ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... he once more entered the French service; was sent with a party who vainly attempted to relieve Chandarnagar, and was one of the small party who followed Law when that officer took command of those, who refused to share in the surrender of the place to the British. After the capture of his ill-starred chief, Reinhardt (whom we shall in future designate by his Indian sobriquet of " Sumroo," or Sombre) took service under Gregory, or Gurjin Khan, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... you will have nothing of the sort, but will produce your card with this addition: "Restant a Boulogne, chez M. Charles Dickens, Chateau des Moulineaux." That you will then be passed out at a little door, like one of the ill-starred prisoners on the bloody September night, into a yelling and shrieking crowd, cleaving the air with the names of the different hotels, exactly seven thousand six hundred and fifty-four in number. And that your heart will be on the point of sinking with dread, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... fates were against us, as always in this ill-starred voyage. I, watching from my sand dune, saw a second figure emerge from the arroyo's mouth. It appeared to stagger as though hurt; and every eight or ten paces it stopped and rested in a bent-over position. The murky light was too dim for me to make out details; but after a moment a rift ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fair lady, I have the misfortune to bear that ill-starred title, and I beg you to be seated and ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... the Stuarts long before Colonel Francis Townley raised a troop for the Chevalier. The grandfather of this unfortunate man, had been tried for rebellion, in 1715, but acquitted; it was therefore very unlikely that when his accomplished descendant espoused the same ill-starred cause, there would be any mercy shown to a family so deeply implicated in Jacobitism. Francis Townley was afterwards taken prisoner, and tried with other persons, chiefly captains in the Manchester regiment. Of these the greater number ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... belief we still use the expression "born under a lucky star" to describe a person who seems always to be fortunate. But the same metaphor is contained in single words. We speak of an unfortunate enterprise as "ill-starred," and the metaphor is clear. But when the newspapers speak of a railway "disaster," very few people realize that they are speaking the language of the mediaeval astrologers, men who studied the fortunes ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... the funeral, Dr. Merrick called in for the last time at her lodgings. He brought in his hand a legal-looking paper, which he had found in searching among Alan's effects, for he had carried them off to his hotel, leaving not even a memento of her ill-starred love to Herminia. "This may interest you," he said dryly. "You will see at once it is ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... brought over from France, some mementoes of her unwise marriage, the little room in which she sat at supper with Rizzio and three or four friends when the assassins rushed in through a secret door, stabbed her ill-starred favorite, and dragged him bleeding through her bed-room into an outer audience chamber, and there left him to die, his life-blood oozing out from fifty-six wounds. The partition still stands which ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Senechal d'Anjou) upon the subject of the loves of Troilus and Cressida and to be in this instance used by him as a synonym for an unhappy lover, whom no rebuffs, no treachery can divert from his ill-starred passion. Such a lover may well be said to be in love with strife, and that the Filostrato of the Decameron sufficiently answers to this description we learn later on ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... might and its omniscience, Lanyard doubted if the Pack had as yet identified Michael Lanyard with that ill-starred Marcel who once had been as intimate with this forgotten way as any skulking ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... and the strength of Juliet's passion. And, even as it is, perhaps there are few of our rational and sober-minded islanders who would not honestly confess, if fairly questioned, that they deem the romance and fervour of those ill-starred lovers of Verona exaggerated and over-drawn. Yet, in Italy, the picture of that affection born of a night—but "strong as death"—is one to which the veriest commonplaces of life would afford parallels without number. As in different ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... are passing upon the ocean, others of equally exciting character occur upon that desert isle, where, by ill-starred chance for themselves, the pirate crew of the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... He had not felt his age since he had bought his nephew Soames' ill-starred house and settled into it here at Robin Hill over three years ago. It was as if he had been getting younger every spring, living in the country with his son and his grandchildren—June, and the little ones of the second marriage, Jolly and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wishes to make himself a master of our law. In private they had perpetual squabbles, and they quarrelled with equal virulence and indecency before the world. The matrimonial settlement of their only and ill-starred daughter was the occasion of an outbreak on the part of husband and wife, that not only furnished diversion for courtiers but agitated the council table. Of all the comic scenes connected with that unseemly ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... ill-starred commercial speculation, however, Lincoln derived one incidental benefit, and it may be said it became the determining factor in his career. It is evident from his own language that he underwent a ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... evil and tyranny. He gave them food and sent them safe to the Pearl Island [Cubagua], where some Christians dwelt, whom he could have slain, without any one knowing it, and did not: all the Christians finally called Nigoroto's town the mansion and home of everybody. 23. An ill-starred tyrant deliberated within himself to attack this place, as the people felt so safe: so he went there with a ship and invited many people to come on board, as they were used to, trusting the Spaniards. When many men, women, and children were gathered in the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... us out of the neighbourhood of the ill-starred City of Calcutta held good, and, gradually freshening and working round more from the southward, eventually resolved itself into the south-east trade, under the beneficent influence of which, with our larboard tacks on board and our yards braced flat up against the starboard rigging, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... has been employed with no small success in the treatment of scrofulous affections, and in combating the ravages of a disease for whose frightful inroads the ill-starred inhabitants of that group are indebted to their foreign benefactors. But the tenants of the Typee valley, as yet exempt from these inflictions, generally employ the 'arva' as a minister to social enjoyment, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... starting push, rolls on of itself.... Is this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?... I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man. For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face.... The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over this boy began when it ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... was now victorious and corrupt. The rites of the Pantheon had passed into her worship, the subtilties of the Academy into her creed. In an evil day, though with great pomp and solemnity,—we quote the language of Bacon,—was the ill-starred alliance stricken between the old philosophy and the new faith. [Cogitata et visa.] Questions widely different from those which had employed the ingenuity of Pyrrho and Carneades, but just as subtle, just as interminable, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ill-starred victims who were the subject of these deliberations were, happily for themselves, still ignorant of the horrid fate with which they were threatened. A few of them, whose gaunt faces looked up through the grating, may have noticed that something was ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... will take the field ourself,' she said; 'warn the city—warn Lothian and Fife—saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French Paris see our petronel be charged. Better to die at the head of our brave Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, than of a broken heart like our ill-starred father.' 'Be patient—be composed, dearest sovereign,' said Catherine; and then addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she added, 'How could you say aught that reminded her of her husband?' The word reached the ear of the unhappy princess ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... of noble ladies. Kabbalistic passion glows in the mysterious love of the Jew. The German minstrel sings of love's sweetness and pain, of summer and its delights, of winter and its woes, now of joy and happiness, again of ill-starred fortunes. And what is the burden of the exiled Hebrew's song? Mysterious allusions, hidden in a tangle of highly polished, artificial, slow-moving rhymes, glorify, not a sweet womanly presence, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... History? Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches,—for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written."—Has Teufelsdrockh, to be put in mind that, nearly related ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... scandal, no violence," cried Philometor anxiously. "The best way would be for me to write to Asclepiodorus, and beg him in a friendly manner to entrust this girl—Ismene or Irene, or whatever the ill-starred child's name is—for a few days to you, Cleopatra, for your pleasure. I can offer him a prospect of an addition to the gift of land I made today, and which fell far ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... word I was fearful after this (said the Genoese courier) of our coming to the old palazzo, lest some such ill-starred picture should happen to be there. I knew there were many there; and, as we got nearer and nearer to the place, I wished the whole gallery in the crater of Vesuvius. To mend the matter, it was a stormy dismal evening when ...
— To be Read at Dusk • Charles Dickens
... and were drowned. Among them was Sir John of Orleans, a valiant knight, who bore the French banner. But this was a slight misfortune compared with that which the folly and presumption of one man was preparing for that ill-starred host. ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... Burnet, who was then minister of Saltoun. Being firmly opposed to the arbitrary measures of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., he went to Holland, where he joined Monmouth, whom he accompanied on his ill-starred expedition. Happening to kill, in a quarrel, one Dare, another of the Duke's followers, he fled to the Continent, travelled in Spain and Hungary, and fought against the Turks. After the Revolution he returned ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... "demi-devil," and himself "an honourable murderer"; and Iago calls him a "credulous fool." Othello, too, cries for punishment; instead of "torturers ingenious," he will have "devils" to "whip" him, and "roast him in sulphur." He praises Desdemona as chaste, "ill-starred wench," "my girl," and so forth; then curses himself lustily and ends his ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... hunting; tried to regain a moment of his lost youth that he might be a comrade as well as a father. At times a strange mood took him, when he, Eudemius the proud, became humbly grateful that Marius should be willing to mate with the ill-starred daughter of his house. In general they accepted each other on terms of complete equality. Each was receiving and conferring a favor; there was no debt ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... me! often enough (replied Socrates). In the event, for instance, of some ill-starred expedition or of some disastrous voyage or other incident of the sort, of which veritably there are enough to spare—when those who owing to their health and strength take a part in the affair are lost; whilst those who were left behind—as hors de combat, on account of ill-health of other ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... to the process, too; and romance—it is not an insipid chain of flowerbeds we have to follow, but the holy warriors of Saint Louis, the roistering braves of Henry the Great, the gallant Bourbons, the ill-starred Bonapartes. These as they passed have left their monuments; it may be only in a crumbling old chapel or ruined tower, but there they are, eloquent of days that are dead, of a spirit that lives forever staunch in the heart of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Antoinette; the Rohans, through the influence of whose great name an unworthy member of the family was to rise to high dignity in the church and the state, and then to cast a deep shadow on the darkening popularity of that ill-starred princess. Such families as these formed an upper class among nobles, and the members firmly believed in their own prescriptive right to the best places. The poorer nobility, on the other hand, saw with great jealousy ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the female soakers, whom doctors find to be the most troublesome of all their patients. There is not a medical man in large practice who has not a shocking percentage of lady inebriates on his list, and the cases are hard to manage. An ill-starred woman, whose well-to-do husband is engaged in business all day, finds that a dull life-weariness overtakes her. If she has many children, her enforced activity preserves her from danger; but, if she is childless, the subtle temptation is apt to overcome her. She seeks unnatural exaltation, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... This ill-starred people played a most important part in the economic development of Europe, but they were terribly maltreated by the Christians, who held them guilty of the supreme crime of putting Christ to death. The active persecution of the Jews did not, however, become common ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... estates confiscated, and themselves dependent upon the niggard bounty of a cold and selfish relative. Slowly recovering from a severe wound which he had received in the wars of Lombardy, and disgusted with the ingratitude of the prince he served, the ill-starred Francesco was at first rejoiced to obtain any refuge from the storms of a tempestuous world; and the unceasing efforts of his young and affectionate sister to reconcile him to a bitter lot were not wholly unavailing. Summer had spread her richest treasures upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... Douay saw the exhausted condition of the troops, and was convinced that it would be useless to attempt to reach la Besace that day. What particularly influenced his determination, however, was the arrival of the train, that ill-starred train that had been trailing in his rear since they left Rheims, and of which the nine long miles of vehicles and animals had so terribly impeded his movements. He had given instructions from Quatre-Champs to direct it straight on Saint-Pierremont, and it was not until Osches that the teams came ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... about a slight resuscitation of warlike operations. The Scots won a victory at Piperden, near Berwick, in 1435 or 1436, and in the summer of 1436, when the Princess Margaret was on her way to France to enter into her ill-starred union with the dauphin, the English made an attempt to take her captive. James replied by an attempt upon Roxburgh, but gave it up without having accomplished anything, and returned to spend his last Christmas at Perth. His twelve years in Scotland had been mainly occupied in attempts ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... evil and from the ill-starred Guelph sympathies of Florence for a foreign prince, which familiarized it with foreign intervention, came all the disasters which followed. But who does not admire the people which was wrought up by its venerated preacher to a mood of such sustained loftiness ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... that your majesty is laughing at me; nevertheless, I deem it incumbent on me to raise my warning voice. Etiquette is something sublime and holy—it is the sacred wall separating the sovereign from his people. If that ill-starred queen, Marie Antoinette, had not torn down this wall, she would probably have met with a less ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the stricken man poured forth his tale, and the Red Cross Knight learned that once he was happy and free, like other men, till on an ill-starred day he and a friend had fallen in with a cursed wight who called himself 'Despair,' who had plucked all hope from their breasts, and bade them seek death, the one with a rope, the other with a knife. His friend, whose love had been disdained by a proud lady, fell an easy ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... about the affair; only he was more than usually tender to her in his rough way, and thought, morning, noon, and night, on what he could do to give her pleasure, and drive away all recollection of her ill-starred love. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the place; for by nearly starving there, years before, with the others of Governor la Barre's ill-starred expedition, he had contributed to giving ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... unmolested, were accustomed to fit out for their voyages, and, having disposed of their cargoes, to return. A vessel of this description had arrived at the port of London. The subject of the traffic having become invested with interest, a portion of the members of the House paid a visit to the ill-starred craft. The deplorably narrow quarters where hundreds of human beings were to be stowed away during the weeks that might be necessary to make their passage produced upon the minds of these gentlemen a most unfavorable impression. The various insignia of the trade did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... suffered a great persecution. But God knows the truth; and it is not permitted, nor do I wish, to interpret the events of His holy will and providence. But it has not seemed proper to me to omit a circumstance which I positively know concerning that ill-starred youth; namely, that after his death, there was found among his papers a letter from his father, Don Basilio de San Miguel (who is said to have been much given to astrology and soothsaying), who told and ordered him not to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... dispersed Ciconians rallied, gathered together their allies, and attacking the revellers, defeated them with great slaughter, so that less than half of them escaped in their ships. Yet this was only the first of the many mishaps which befell the ill-starred Ulysses. So persistently did misfortune pursue him that the superstitious Greeks declared that he must have incurred the hatred of the sea-god, Neptune, who would not let him ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... that the latest act of the duke on the scaffold, before submitting to the stroke of the executioner, was to call his servant, and put into the man's hand a toothpick-case, the last token of ill-starred love. "Give it," he said, "to that person!" After the description of Monmouth's burial ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various |
