"Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are—are no longer safe from violence in the streets of Rome. Although, Fausta, you believe not with us, you must, scarcely the less for that, pity us in our present straits. Can the mind picture to itself, in some aspects of the case, a more miserable lot! Were the times, even at the worst, so full of horror in Palmyra as now here in Rome? There, if the city were given up to pillage, the citizen had at least the satisfaction of dying in the excitement of a contest, and in the defence of himself and ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... do it,' she sobbed, 'I can't, it's no use; I'm not the right person to be—to be a hero's aunt. I don't want him to go, I shall die if he gets killed; I sha'n't be proud, I shall only be miserable; what am ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... I was a miserable letter-writer, and didn't expect anything of me. I don't think I have written twenty letters of pure friendship in my whole life; in America I conducted my correspondence altogether by telegrams. This is a letter of pure friendship; you have got hold of a curiosity, and ...
— The American • Henry James
... sounding, they found only twelve fathoms three leagues off the shore. Huge fires were observed, kindled by the inhabitants. The Portuguese had before this landed on the coast, and reduced the natives to a miserable stage of bondage, compelling them by their cruelty to fly from the fertile parts of the country into ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... discouragement and brave effort his power of painting grew with a slow but normal splendor of achievement. His fame began to spread. The "New Kano" and "The Dragon Painter of Kiu Shiu" the people of the city called him. Not only his work but his romantic, miserable story drew sympathy to him, and bade fair to make of him a popular idol. Older artists wished to paint his portrait. Print-makers hung about his house striving to catch at least a glimpse of him, which being elaborated, ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... of my own, dear! I don't know what she would not give to be staying here at Lord Cumnor's with me; but, instead of that, she has to spend her holidays at school; and yet you are looking as miserable as can be at the thought of stopping for just one night. I really have been as busy as can be with those tiresome—those good ladies, I mean, from Hollingford—and one can't think of everything at ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... aimlessly, feeling miserable enough. But, all at once, it occurred to him, "Would it not be cheaper for him to take board by the week in some boarding-house?" Reckoning up, he found that his hotel bill would be three dollars and a half a week, while his meals, even if he were quite abstemious, ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... but a miserable wretch! and I wish to Heaven I was in yonder dead-cart, with the rest of them—and she, too, if she never ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... you wish to be consistent, all that are already born, or ever shall be, are not only miserable, but always will be so; for should you maintain those only to be miserable, you would not except any one living, for all must die; but there should be an end of misery in death. But seeing that the dead are miserable, we are born to eternal misery, for they must of consequence be miserable ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Gabriel's service passed off much the same as the first, and so it went for almost a week; but the boy saw day by day that Brother Stephen's chain became more and more unbearable to him, and that he had long fits of brooding, when he looked so miserable and unhappy that Gabriel's ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... want to be rude to you. I have lived in total ignorance of you and your affairs for twenty-five years, and since by chance we meet on a steamer, you cannot make me feel that what I do or say is of the slightest importance to you. You made the young Tom Kinsella about as miserable as a man could be, but the old Tom is immune from misery, thank God, and there is no use in trying to get a flame from the dead ashes of the past. I am very glad to see you again and especially glad to make the acquaintance of the daughter of my old friend, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... comes hard to you, my dear Enrico, as your mother says: I do not yet see you set out for school with that resolute mind and that smiling face which I should like. You are still intractable. But listen; reflect a little! What a miserable, despicable thing your day would be if you did not go to school! At the end of a week you would beg with clasped hands that you might return there, for you would be eaten up with weariness and shame; disgusted with your sports and with your existence. Everybody, everybody studies now, my child. Think ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... these persistent crimes against grandchildren that the human race as a whole is still such a miserable rabble, and that recruiting offices and insurances companies tell such startling tales of degeneracy. Love would cure this, if there were more of the right kind. Until there is, much good may be done by accepting it as a guide, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the count is guilty, very guilty. He is the author of the infamous conspiracy, and yet I feel no hatred against him. He has committed a crime, but he has an excuse, his passion. Moreover, my father has not deceived me, like this miserable woman, every hour of my life, during thirty years. Besides, M. de Commarin has been so cruelly punished, that, at this present moment, I can only ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... soft arched neck, "eat away, old chap. You needn't be miserable if I am. I can't go and leave poor Leather ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... it despite all the official trammels that the post commander could devise. She was sick at heart, but next door lay a woman whose unrest was greater still, whose trouble seemed more than she could bear. Mrs. Truscott had arrived at the conclusion before ten o'clock that night that she was the most miserable woman on ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... came to Ruth's home, asking the little girl to visit Aunt Selina, the Blue Birds felt sorry for her, knowing what a miserable time Ruth would have. Then, too, Ruth's father was expected home that Saturday, and Ruth had not seen him ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... plain as Peter Pasley's pike-staff. I will allow that ilk parochine, on an average, employs fifty pleughs, whilk is a great proportion in sic miserable soil as thae creatures hae to labour, and that there may be pasture enough for pleugh-horses, and owsen, and forty or fifty cows; now, to take care o' the pleughs and cattle, we'se allow seventy-five families of six lives in ilk family, and we'se add ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... or has seen the migrating of the thrushes in autumn, watched how they float in flocks over the village on bright, cool days, he will never be a real townsman, and will have a yearning for freedom to the day of his death. My brother was miserable in the government office. Years passed by, and he went on sitting in the same place, went on writing the same papers and thinking of one and the same thing—how to get into the country. And this yearning by degrees passed into a definite desire, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 'He is a very miserable man,' said Miss Anne, sighing; 'I often hear him walking up and down his room, and crying aloud in the night-time for God to have mercy upon him; but he is a slave to the love of riches. Years ago he might have broken ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... evidently apologized with his forehead in the dust, and his victim had then evidently forgiven him, though with a severe admonition for the future. Imaginably, then, the bicyclist had remounted his wheel and attempted to ride off, when he was stopped and brought back to the miserable error of his confession. The whole ground was then gone over again, and again pardon with warning was given. Even a glad good-night was exchanged, the wheelman's voice rising in a quaver of grateful ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... for one poor graven steeple Whereon you shattered what you shall not know, How should I pay you, miserable people? How should I ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... speech amused the boy, but he did not in the least comprehend it. It was the description of an unimaginable experience in a region which was as yet known to him only as the seat of pleasure. He did not understand how any one could be miserable when he could catch trout from his ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... left, Mr. Hanbury-Green among them, the invalid was experiencing a sense of exasperating neglect. He felt extremely miserable. Life, and all he held good in it, seemed to be over for him, and his financial position was absolutely desperate—quite beyond any question of marriage it threatened to swamp his actual career. He felt impotent and beaten, lying there like a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... low, in her sleep, "Ah me! my body and my miserable flesh, you may take them to save my husband; but my heart, never. No one has ever had it, and I cannot ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... comfort-seeking caresses. She leaned her elbows on the corral gate and watched him awhile. She asked a bashful, gum-chewing youth if he could tell her where to find Lite Avery. But the youth seemed never to have heard of Lite Avery, and Jean was too miserable to explain and describe Lite, and insist upon seeing him. She walked over to the nearest car-line and caught the next street car for the city. Part of her chief's orders at least she would obey. She would go down to the Victoria and ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... to full consciousness, staggered out of the house to the woodshed, and shivered down into a miserable heap. There in the darkness he seemed to see things, for the first time in his life, quite as they were. His gaze, accustomed to the glittering promise of the future, peered fearfully into the past, and reviewed the long line of groundless hopes, of empty projects, of self-deceptions. ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... sea—in both senses of that term—with no knowledge of where he is going or of his chances of pulling through, and having been told of what will be expected of him personally at the target, still has no picture of the support which will be grouped around him, he is apt to be as thoroughly miserable and demoralized as were the sailors under Columbus, when sailing on and on, they came to fear that they would override the horizon ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... did well on sugar, but nobody dissected the whiskey section which bored gimlet holes into the bottom of every barrel of high wine to let it out without paying a cent of tax. The Democrats are therefore the real free whiskeyites. This ought to be shown up thoroughly in the Senate. Our miserable platform places us on the defensive. The Mills bill places the Democrats on the defensive if it is rightly handled. I do not mean attacking the free wool part of it, for that portion if enacted would do your constituents certainly ten or twenty times more good than harm, nor ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... not soon forget the long, dreary, dangerous hours they spent along this line. Here we find ourselves shivering around a miserable fire among the sighing pines (though in times of special danger we are not permitted to have even this slight comfort, for fear of detection), often compelled to sit or lie down in snow or mud, or ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... which your Majesty commands to be made. As this is discussed, however, in another letter, I will go to no greater length than to say that, if your Majesty were present here, no orders would be given to increase the tributes of these miserable people, but rather they would pay less. But he who informed your Majesty that more tribute can be paid has already accounted or will account to God also. I am affected in part by these hardships and dangers, as it is now two years since your ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... written in 1803 but published only in 1817, is gently satirical of Gothic fiction. The heroine is devoted to the "Mysteries of Udolpho," which she discusses with her bosom friend. "While I have 'Udolpho' to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable. O the dreadful black veil! My dear Isabella, I am sure there must be Laurentina's ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... She had told the queen that she was expecting her father, the Emperor of Austria, and that she feared the queen's presence might make him feel ill at ease. Moreover, the young empress, although dejected and grave, was by no means so sorrowful and miserable as Hortense expected. The fate of her husband had not wounded the heart of Marie Louise as deeply as ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... sword, make a furious charge upon the intruding canaille, and disperse them "vi et armis"—but a second thought stayed his hand, as he realized that the killing or wounding of two or three of these miserable actors would not further his suit; and besides, he could not stain his noble hands with such vile blood as theirs. So he put force upon himself and restrained his rage, and, bowing with icy politeness to ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the spot where his plot is laid; but because the eye of the critic has become familiar with such unworthy productions as these, it must scan with more eager justice any pages which are a happy exception to this miserable reality; it must not hesitate to discern whether the motive has been merely to arouse emotional tendencies, by clothing life's dangerous forms in unreal fascinations, or (where the author's hand, guided by his unsullied heart, has taken up the quill as a mighty ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... were close fastened. I entered boldly by a little entrance at the side, and found myself in the great naked hall of marble, empty and still and damp. There was a woman there, old and miserable, who called her master. Taddeo Marchioni came and saw the fish, and chaffered for them with long hesitation and shrewd greed, as misers love to do, and then at last refused them: they were too dear, he said. I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... governesses in a "finishing" school where three years of my girlhood were passed. Julia ——— was a great favourite among us; no one could have done otherwise than admire the ability and good-humour with which she fulfilled her many arduous duties. Perhaps, of all miserable positions for a well-educated and refined young person to be placed in, that of "little girls' teacher" in a lady's school ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... not been for his fearful struggle for me, he would not have been so ill," said Agatha miserably. Aleck, with one foot on the low step of the piazza, stopped and turned squarely toward her. His face was no less miserable than Agatha's, but behind his wretchedness and anxiety was some masculine reserve of power, and a longer view down the corridors of time. He held her eye with a look of ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Vivian really wished to keep her miserable secret, she had done wisely in removing the little packet from its shelter in the trunk of the old oak-tree; for of course Sibyl remembered it in the night, although Betty's wonderful story had carried her thoughts far away from such trivial ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... generous patriotism. We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. In such a case we are sure that we are right; and we leave to you the despairing reflection of being the tool of a miserable tyrant. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... once raised a much larger army, as in the course of the war we ultimately had to do. The answer is that in a time of peace we could not possibly have raised a large army on the Continental scale. If we had tried to we should have made a miserable and possibly disastrous failure. The utmost we could do toward it was to provide the organization in which the comparatively small force which was all we could create might be expanded ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... mid-air. Then with a wild plunge I found myself feet downward, and as I sunk my heart and all that appertained to it seemed to remain where they had been. Now I was rolling obliquely down the cabin on to the top of wretches as miserable as myself. Now I was rolling back, and they pouring on to the top of me. The one thought in my mind was—which way are we going next? and mixed up with it occasionally came the aspiration—would it were to the bottom! Above it all ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... man I am, I usurp the right. What damnable infatuation can bind you to that miserable poltroon, who skulks in safety, knowing that the penalty of his evil deeds falls on you? One explanation has suggested itself: it haunts me like a fiend, and only you can exorcise it. Are you married to that brute, and is ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... you beheld it with dreaming eyes," replied Miriam. "It was unreal; and, that you may feel it so, it is requisite that you see this face of mine no more. Once, you may have thought it beautiful; now, it has lost its charm. Yet it would still retain a miserable potency' to bring back the past illusion, and, in its train, the remorse and anguish that would darken all your life. Leave me, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dear young ladies, let us think no more about it. It was my fault; I should not have brought him with me; but he was always so miserable, whenever I left him. You will make allowance for my weakness. A good heart feels for animals as well as people; so I must trust to your sensibility ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... little ashamed of our position in the business, and explained to the Frenchman that our worthy countryman had but little experience in the usages of war, while we proceeded to unbind him and liberate him from his miserable bondage. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... admitted. "I enjoy myself as I go, but I have my eyes always fixed upon the future. I make many friends, and I do not lose them. I set my face towards the pleasant places, and I keep it in that direction. It is the cult of some to be miserable; it is mine to be happy. The person who does most good in the world is the person who reflects the greatest amount of happiness. Therefore, I am a philanthropist. You shall learn from me, my young friend, how to banish some of that gloom from your face. You shall ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... became sublime. Great furnaces gleamed red in the twilight, and their fires were reflected in horrible black canals; processions of heavy vapour drifted in all directions across the sky, over what acres of mean and miserable brown architecture! The air was alive with the most extraordinary, weird, gigantic sounds. I do not think the Five Towns will ever be described: Dante lived too soon. As for the erratic and exquisite genius, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... so heartless to his parents, so neglectful of his affianced, is not to be redeemed. I brought about this betrothal: tell Isaura that I release her from it. I have watched her closely since she was entrapped into it. I know how miserable the thought of it has made her, though, in her sublime devotion to her plighted word, she sought to conceal from me the real state of her heart. If the betrothal bring such sorrow, what would the union do! Tell her this from me. Come, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some Divisional baths at Bazentin-le-Petit, and I remember having a most cold and miserable bath there one night; but it was better than none at all. It was surprising how quickly the heavy railway had been brought along. It now reached High Wood, but of course did not cross the ridge, which would have been in view of the enemy. About January 15 we went back to the line in very ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... deep and the storms too fierce for the vacillating Erasmus. He did some excellent service in his way, but all his counsels and ideas failed, as they deserved. Once the idol of Europe, he died a defeated, crushed, and miserable man. "Hercules could not fight two monsters at once," said he, "while I, poor wretch! have lions, cerberuses, cancers, scorpions, every day at my sword's point.... There is no rest for me in my age, unless I join Luther; and that I cannot, for I cannot accept his doctrines. Sometimes I am stung ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... long-handled cricket-bat. Their spears and throwing sticks were of the same kind as those in use at Cape York, to be afterwards described. These people were wretched specimens of their race, lean and lanky, and one was suffering from ophthalmia, looking quite a miserable object; they had come here in search of turtle—as I understood. Each of the men had lost a front tooth, and one had the oval cicatrix on the right shoulder, characteristic of the northern natives, an imitation of that of the islanders. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... how the cold creeps will chase up and down the spinal column of that miserable sneak of a hobo when he glimpses this article," chuckled Thad. "I can imagine him starting, and his eyes nearly popping out of his head as he gets busy devouring the whole thing. And, then, Hugh, what d'ye reckon his next move will ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... upon him so fiercely that he started back. "How dare you!" she said, her voice choking with anger. "You miserable fraud! You bellwether for the plutocracy, to lead reform movements off on a false scent, off into the marshes where they'll be suffocated." She looked at him from head to foot with a withering glance. "No doubt, you'll ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... be of any use to her"—the argument of Raskolnikoff—"I resisted, but next day she began again, pointing out that one killed people in war, which was not considered a crime, and therefore one should not be afraid to kill a miserable old woman. I urged that the old woman had done us no harm, and that I did not see why one should kill her; she reproached me for my weakness and said that, had she been strong enough, she would soon have done this abominable deed herself. 'God,' she added, 'will forgive us because ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... can fabricate a falsehood so unblushingly as John did the foregoing is already on the road to ruin. The reader will not be surprised to learn, before the whole story is told, that he became a miserable, reckless sort of a man. This lie proved that he was destitute of moral principle and would do almost any thing ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... seven to fifteen miles a day being the progress lately made; but now the current seemed to favour her, for a change of forty miles a day was observed in the latitude, and the hearts of officer and men grew lighter, notwithstanding their miserable plight, always wet to the skin, and unable to change their clothes for days together. Two terrific storms were still to be encountered; and, at the commencement of the second, Mr Murray sent the men below, and remained alone on the deck, which he never expected to leave alive. The heat of ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... trade, we may then indulge a reasonable hope for the gradual improvement of Africa. The chief motive of war among the tribes will cease whenever there is no longer any demand for slaves. The resources of that fertile but miserable country might then be developed by the hand of industry and afford subjects for legitimate foreign and domestic commerce. In this manner Christianity and civilization may ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... work in the production of enuresis, or bed wetting, although the matter is here often complicated by the development later on of a sense of shame and unhappiness in the child. There comes a time when the child passionately desires to regain control and is miserable about her failure, until the concentration of her thoughts on the subject becomes a veritable obsession. Every night she goes to bed with this only in her mind. Every night she falls asleep, miserably aware ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... leapin' up and dancin' around. "Why, it took me two weeks to make that one miserable model I gave you!" he yells at Alex. "I couldn't make fifty thousand of them things ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... that all was lost unless he could obtain external aid. The smala was now reduced to his own deira, a bare thousand souls, wandering about in miserable fashion. After another desperate engagement with Lamoriciere during which the Arab women cheered on the warriors, and Abd-el-Kader and his men fighting in the presence of their wives and children performed new prodigies of valor, he succeeded in safely establishing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... lady, is detailed by all our historians: it seems almost incredible that the surrounding crowd were not urged by an unanimous impulse of horror and compassion to rush in and rescue from the murderous hands of the executioner the last miserable representative of such a line of princes. But the eyes of Henry's subjects were habituated to these scenes of blood; and they were viewed by some with indifference, and by the rest with emotions of terror which effectually repressed the generous ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... we must not hasten to conclude, with Professor Flournoy, that if there is a future life it is one of wretched degeneration, one more misery added to all the others which overwhelm us in this miserable universe. ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Feng in a low tone of voice. "I'll take you, you mean covetous creature, and ... ! All these mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law have come forward and raised money to celebrate your birthday, and are you yet not satisfied that you must also drag in those two miserable beings! But what do you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... not, as I believe, less certain. I have heard educated men speak with an ill-disguised contempt of the studies of the naturalist, and ask, not without a shrug, "What is the use of knowing all about these miserable animals—what bearing has ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... had shown her. Gravener declared this to be false; Lady Coxon, who didn't care for her, hadn't seen her three times. The only foundation for it was that Miss Anvoy, who used, poor girl, to chuck money about in a manner she must now regret, had for an hour seen in the miserable woman—you could never know what she'd see in people—an interesting pretext for the liberality with which her nature overflowed. But even Miss Anvoy was now quite tired of her. Gravener told me more ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... tell me, and I don't wonder," Doctor Hugh said crisply. "You'd let a miserable little thing like an apology you were forced to make her, interfere with your loyalty to service. I thought you were bigger than ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... with his books and the usual medley of playthings with which a boy's room is piled, he contrived to make the time pass without being very wretched. It was the disgrace of being punished, the lost position in school, and above all, the triumph which it would be to Sam, which made him the most miserable. The very injustice of the thing was its balm in this case. May it be so, my young readers, with any punishment which ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... "None. You are only that poor creature, a bashful youth." And he bravely calls on all his nerves, muscles, and brains to help him through this ordeal. He sees the pitying eyes of the woman to whom he is talking turn away from his countenance (on which he knows that all his miserable shyness has written itself in legible characters). "And this humiliation, too?" he asks of himself, as she brings him the usual refuge of the awkward—a portfolio of photographs to look at. Women are seldom ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... and pain, could not have told herself with what intention it was uttered. "But I've not been sitting long," Madame Merle continued; "that is I've not been long with Pansy. I came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon that she must be rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable. It may be good for a small girl; I know so little about small girls; I can't tell. At any rate it's a little dismal. Therefore I came—on the chance. I knew of course that you'd come, and her father as well; still, I had not been told other visitors were forbidden. The good woman—what's her name? ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... Danforth to the door. The poor boy looked quite embarrassed to behold pretty, neat Ellen Williams standing there on the miserable, dirty threshold. "Good day, Willie," said she, pleasantly; "is ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... reasons already given they despised, because they could not yet comprehend, the life of the civilian. They contented themselves with pulling down the walls, razing the fortifications, and destroying every mark which would make of the city anything but an aggregate of miserable dwellings. The inhabitants were for the most part spared, and left to enjoy, if the term can be used for such an existence, what the conquerors did not think worth the having. These felt the fruits of their victory to lie in the rich arable lands of the surrounding ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... lamb, you know nothing of the world; and I should be most wicked to disturb your lovely peace of soul with any sinful doubts. Oh, Agnes, Agnes, I am most miserable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the gods were of a public character, affecting the whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks and herds, and success in war. So long as the community flourished, the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence, but was rather taken to prove that the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."[9] Jehu and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... but gave them full leave to pass. Who were these? One was a man who, by disease, had become all over of a light flesh-colour, his black skin peeling off. It was a perfect phenomenon—a man with strong negro features, entirely white, or of a light dull-red colour. The other man was a miserable, filthy, blind fellow, whom the first invalid was leading. They were, in fact, a couple of mendicants going to Zinder on speculation, having come from Kuka, begging through all the towns and villages. The trade of begging is coextensive with man, civilised ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... feelings of this miserable wretch? Why say more of his terror, his misery, his remorse? He held himself in the seat until the middle of the last act of the play. At last, unable to restrain himself longer, he arose and almost ran from the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... theyr lyfe, whych haue gotten them by experience of thinges a sely small prudence & thinke whether y^u woldest wyshe so greate myschiues to thy sonne. Moreouer philosophye teacheth more in one yere, then dothe anye experience in thyrty, and it teacheth safely, wh[en] by experience mo men waxe miserable then prudent, in so much that the old fathers not without a cause sayde: aman to make a perill or be in ieopardy, whych assayed a thyng by experience. Go to, if a man wold haue hys sonne well seene in physycke, whether wolde he rather he shulde reade the ...
— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus
... got through that miserable evening he never could recall. He realized by her coldness on the return journey, and by the demonstrative encouragement shown to Aston, that he had ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... my chair and stood erect before him. This groveling wretch, forcing the words through his dry lips, was the thief who had made another of my father and had brought to miserable ends the lives of both my parents! Everything was clear. The creature went in fear of me, never imagining that I did not know him, and sought to buy me off—to buy me from the remembrance of my dead mother's ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... November evening, that the two women appointed for this melancholy purpose arrived at the miserable cottage which we have already described. Its wretched inmate lay stretched upon the bed, and seemed almost already a lifeless corpse, save for the wandering of the fierce dark eyes, which rolled in their sockets ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... the window he was sober. And so it was that he now stared up at the girl. At her breast she held a cloak together with one hand and the other hand touched the railing of the stairs. He saw one foot suspended for the next step, as though the sight of him kept her back in fear. To the miserable soul of Donnegan she seemed all that was lovely, young, and pure; and her hair, old gold in the shadow and pale gold where the lamp struck it, was to Donnegan like a miraculous ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... Bettina's second season in London was unlike the first in both its object and its results. From some unknown and unquestioned source she was becoming penetrated with the "scorn for miserable aims that end with self," and by the time that she was ready to return to Kingdon Hall her life had become so informed with its new purpose that she looked forward to the leisure which her removal there would ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... spake he seized on the miserable wretch in their presence, swinging him round by the waist like an infant, and bore him off, up the turret stairs, to the summit. Ere he disappeared he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the mother of El Mahdi. I remember how Ump cried when the colt was born, and how he sat out in the rain, a miserable drenched rat, because his dear Bay Eagle was in the mysterious troubles of maternity, and because she must be very unhappy at being on the north side of the hill among the black hawthorn bushes, for that was a bad sign—the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... eye. It hurt very much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark—only it seemed to have legs as well, and wings like a fly. Effie rubbed and cried—not real crying, but the kind your eye does all by itself without your being miserable inside your mind—and then she went to her father to have the thing in her eye taken out. Effie's father was a doctor, so of course he knew how to take things out of eyes—he did it very cleverly with a soft paintbrush ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... will make it worth your while to risk them. For the half-talent write a talent charged upon my estate, whether I live or die. And be swift, I pray you, for I have matters to speak of, of more importance than this miserable money. Whilst I was commissioner among the Essenes ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... Soubise and 30,000, who will reinforce the Reich's Armament, were it on foot, and be heard of by and by! So high runs French enthusiasm at present. A new sting of provocation to Most Christian Majesty, it seems, has been Friedrich's conduct in that Damiens matter (miserable attempt, by a poor mad creature, to assassinate; or at least draw blood upon the Most Christian Majesty ["Evening of 5th January, 1757" (exuberantly plentiful details of it, and of the horrible Law-procedures which followed on it: In ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Ploughman and his wife; but he could not help noticing that though everything was neat and comfortable in the cottage, they both seemed to be very unhappy. He therefore asked them why they were so melancholy, and learned that they were miserable because they had ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... "In fact, I feel rather bad about it. I woke up at eight o'clock, and pictured you and Bates and his wife lying about in No. 18 in very uncomfortable and ungainly attitudes. I was so worried and miserable that I telephoned your hall porter to learn the worst, and was quite astonished when he said that Bates had just been chatting with him. You don't understand, of course. I forgot to tell you about the lift. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... through the Broad Top Mountain district in northern Bedford County, Pennsylvania, last summer, came across a lad of sixteen cultivating a patch of miserable potatoes. He remarked upon their unpromising appearance and expressed pity for anyone who had to dig a ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... then her unbridled passions. Associate with a servant? No, that she would never, never do. Show Polly that she approved of her conduct? Not while her own name was Flower Dalrymple. She let all the other happy children go down to the banqueting-hall without her, and strode away, miserable at heart, choking with ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... I a beggar? Should I give my niece a miserable two thousand dollars? Ain't I got no pride? I got to make it five thousand!" He paused while his imagination dwelt on the magnitude of this colossal sum. "Five thousand dollars!" he shrieked again, "and business the way ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... full Ben's character. He agrees to do so, but says it will first be necessary to speak somewhat of Shakspeare and Fletcher; "his rivals in poesy, and one of them, in my opinion, at least his equal, perhaps his superior." Malone observes, that the caution observed in this decision, proves the miserable taste of the age; and Sir Walter, that Jonson, "by dint of learning and arrogance, fairly bullied the age into receiving his own character of his merits, and that he was not the only person of the name that has done ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... form this connection, or at least to enter on its preliminaries, at an early period of her life. We believe there are thousands, who never so much as ask themselves the question, "Is it certain that I must be married, or be miserable?" No, they assume that in one condition only can they be happy, and in that, therefore, let what may betide them, they must centre their ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... treasures, nor the consular lictor, can remove the miserable tumults of the mind, nor cares that fly about panelled ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out of countenance. Nothing was the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserable waste ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like many of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... never take a part. Twice a day a dole of food would be thrown on the ground before him to munch as well as he could without the use of his hands; and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day. Such was the only human being deemed fit to associate at arm's length with one who ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Miserable as the state of things happened to be, it gave him pleasure, for they were advancing in the direction of Communism. In the first place, the Administration led towards it of its own accord, since every day a greater number of ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... course it's going to be different. If there weren't something else in front, do you think one could live? Do you think one could be content to struggle through this miserable quagmire if one didn't believe that there was something else on the ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... looked up into his face with eyes which actually had tears in them. "I shall be so miserable if you are cross. I shall feel that I have spoiled your day. I wish now that I had gone in the little boat. I wish I had been upset and drowned. Then perhaps you would have been ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... out from the great world, certainly," wrote one of them, "but we have one within these walls, and a poor miserable, trivial, life-frittering, childish, querulous, useless, hopeless set of inhabitants it contains. This is not the house of Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus—this is not such an abode as Jesus would desire to lodge in. If He were to visit us, it would be to tell us ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... "No, my dear, instead of my resigning and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the next convention and try to reverse this miserable narrow action."[410] ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... come rushing up from the very bottom of my heart, tumbling everything out of the way, never listening to reason, never stopping for thought? How many times since that dreary afternoon in the great, big drawing-room at grandmamma's? And, oh dear me! what miserable heartache comes before that fearful want! Oh, grown-up people, don't you know how sour everything tastes, and how yellow everything looks, and how sick everything makes one, when one ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... his presence, I saw a gleam of hatred and jealousy in his eye. Great heavens! should he, on my return, suspect that my hand had rested in yours, he would expel me from his house like some guilty wretch! The door of our house must remain for ever closed to you. I am miserable indeed. Be a man; and if your heart still holds one atom of the love you once bore for me, prove it by never ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Somerset's footsteps had been so noiseless over the carpeting of the stairs and landing, that his father was unaware of his presence; he continued at his work as before, which he performed by the help of a complicated apparatus of lamps, candles, and reflectors, so arranged as to eke out the miserable daylight, to a power apparently sufficient for the neutral touches on which he was at that ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the forenoon; for in those days I was an excellent pedestrian, and the distance, as I think I have said, was little over seven miles; fine walking all the way upon the springy turf. The village is one of the bleakest on that coast, which is saying much: there is a church in the hollow; a miserable haven in the rocks, where many boats have been lost as they returned from fishing; two or three score of stone houses arranged along the beach and in two streets, one leading from the harbor, and another striking out from it at right angles; ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... in Madrid, "with empty pockets, but with a head full of treasures that were not, alas, to enrich him." Here he encountered an indifference that he had not dreamed of; and here he remained in the shadow of oblivion, eking out a miserable existence of physical as well as mental suffering, in utter loneliness of spirit, until he was joined in 1856 by one who came to be his lifelong friend and first biographer—Ramon Rodriguez Correa, who had come ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... excuse for introducing it entire. His extensive and flourishing estates south-east of Leipzig have been the bloody cradle of regenerated freedom. The short space of a few days has converted them into a frightful desert, reduced opulent villages into smoking ruins; and plunged his Miserable tenants as well as himself into a state of extreme Want, until means can be found again to cultivate the soil and to rebuild the dwellings. He writes ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... that they had absolutely forbidden him to admit anybody into their apartment who did not ask for them by name; but that, since the Ambassador desired it, he would show him their room. He then conducted them up to a dirty, miserable garret. He knocked at the door, and waited for some time; he then knocked again pretty, loudly, upon which the door was half-opened. At the sight of the Ambassador and his suite, the person who opened it immediately closed it again, exclaiming that they, had made a mistake. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... of the Revolution. The flamboyant style of his Messiah is to me detestable: nothing can be more unlike the simplicity of Christianity. All such, equally with those by whatever hand that would be religious by being miserable, I reject at once, along with all that are merely commonplace religious exercises. But this at least is very unlike the rest of Pope's compositions: it is as simple in utterance as it is large in scope and practical in bearing. The name Jove may be unpleasant to some ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... was filled with miserable variety. I had taken my dried clothes down from the galley the night before, and the first thing I did was to exchange the cook's garments for them. I looked for my purse. In addition to some small change (and I have a good ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... had a railway compartment to themselves. Bella declined to talk, and lay back in her corner with closed eyes and an expression of undeserved suffering, whilst the unfortunate Jauncy sat silent and miserable opposite. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... Committee. But the learned Serjeant left me no choice. He, in strong language, begged that nobody who was disposed to reduce the term of sixty years would divide with him. "Do not," he said, "give me your support, if all that you mean to grant to men of letters is a miserable addition of fourteen or fifteen years to the present term. I do not wish for such support. I despise it." Not wishing to obtrude on the learned Serjeant a support which he despised, I had no course left but to take the sense of the House on the second reading. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the most miserable wretches in the universe, having no houses or coverings but the heavens, and no garments except a piece of the bark of a tree tied round the waist. They have no sheep, poultry, or fruits, and subsist wretchedly on a few shell-fish, such as cockles, muscles, and periwinkles, living without ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... and that a single grain or particle of this sand should be annihilated every thousand years. Supposing then that you had it in your choice to be happy all the while this prodigious mass of sand was consuming by this slow method till there was not a grain of it left, on condition you were to be miserable for ever after; or, supposing that you might be happy for ever after, on condition you would be miserable till the whole mass of sand were thus annihilated at the rate of one sand in a thousand years: Which of these two cases would ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... unable to explain. Because of the reasons just mentioned, and because I dreaded that men should know how grave was the ill afflicting me, I shunned the society of women; and, on account of this habit, the same miserable public scandal which I desired so earnestly to avoid, arose concerning me, and brought upon me the suspicion of still more nefarious practices: in sooth it seemed that there was no further calamity left for me to endure."[49] After reading these words, it is hard to believe that a man, afflicted ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Zepplin, stepping forward frowning. "If I did what you deserve, I should send a bullet into your miserable carcass. Instead I'm going to tell you about a little paper I ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... be attended to! The good education I was at such pains to give them—it'll only make them miserable if they're to wear their lives out here. I'm getting old and selfish—that's the truth of the matter. I want to sit here, and have my girls take ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... in the doorway in some stupefying fashion represented the "Fight" and the "Puddle" of Northrup's adventure. If Kathryn thought at all, it was to the effect that she had known from start to finish the whole miserable business, and she acted upon this unconscious conclusion with never a doubt in her mind. The two women, in silence, stared at each other for one of those moments that can never be measured by rule. During the palpitating silence they were driven together, ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... "The miserable hound! Why I went to see him a year ago about crossing this strip with our road—we had to haul a lot of stuff in. He told me to go ahead and haul, and that he'd fix it up when the time came. Since then I've tackled him two or three times about it, but he's always told ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... be ye like these mockers and scorners, at the renewing of the Lord's covenant in Hezekiah's days, but rather like those whose hearts the Lord humbled and moved. Be not like those invited to the king's supper, who refused to come, and had miserable excuses, and therefore should not taste of it. We hope better things of you; God hath reserved and advanced you for a better time and use: but if ye draw back, keep silence, and hold your peace, God shall bring deliverance and enlargement ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... actually went to Gouda, and after hanging her head, and blushing, and crying, and saying she was miserable, told him his mother wished her to marry one of those two; and if he approved of her marrying at all, would he use his wisdom, and tell her which he thought would be the kindest to the little Gerard of those two; for herself, she did not care ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... grating of the lock he turned. The gaoler had left him with no light but the rays of the moon, which, shining through a barred window some eight or ten feet from the ground, shed a gleam upon a miserable truckle-bed and left the rest of the room in deep obscurity. The prisoner stood still for a moment and listened; then, when he had heard the steps die away in the distance and knew himself to be alone at last, he fell upon the bed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... been dead for some time. His step-father, James Martin, was a drunkard, and he had been compelled to take away his little sister Rose from the miserable home in which he had kept her, and had undertaken to support her, as well as himself. He had been fortunate enough to obtain a home for her with Miss Manning, a poor seamstress, whom he paid for her services in taking care ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... so miserable, though, as when you first came. Go and eat and drink a little more, and you will do very well. Another slice of cold meat, another draught of Madeira and water, will make you nearly on a par ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of further extending their empire. But, at least, they should keep silence, and before the horror of crimes to be judged especially by the tribunal of the elite they should not have shown their miserable enthusiasm. "You see," as a clear-sighted Dutch professor[5] has well written on this point, "if these intellectuals were not blinded they would rather have asked themselves if, in this war that stains Europe with blood, the Prussian military authorities were not losing for centuries the reputation ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... and damp of the night air, or the scorching rays of the sun by day. Those who have known what it is to watch beside dying loved ones, witnessing suffering that they were powerless to relieve, can imagine the anguish that Mrs. Boardman endured in seeing her husband so near his end in that miserable place, destitute of the little comforts so needful in sickness. But with heroic determination she repressed her own sorrow, lest it might incapacitate her for assisting him while rallying his expiring energies for one more effort in his Master's cause. The poor worn body, though, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... will be one unbroken line of hotels and villas. The process is proceeding at a rapid rate. When Arthur Young made this journey a century ago, he described the country around Toulon thus: "Nine-tenths are waste mountain, and a wretched country of pines, box, and miserable aromatics." At the present time, the brilliant red soil, emerald crops, and gold and purple leafage of stripped vine, make up a picture of wondrous fertility. At every point we see vineyards of recent creation; whilst not an inch of soil between the olive trees is ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... I start up the road, those who live below here breathe again, relieved. You cannot imagine the tricks I must resort to in order not to arouse false suspicions. Then, as soon as I open their door they know the reason of my coming, and what poor miserable creatures I often take in my arms and ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... Disposer[83] who have confused thy mind! Hast thou not worshipped with salutation and honored the priests, gods, and manes? Hast thou not made horse-sacrifices, the r[a]jas[u]ya-sacrifice, sacrifices of every sort (pu[n.][d.]arika,[84] gosava)? Yet art thou in this miserable plight! Verily is it an old story (itih[a]sa) that 'the worlds stand under the Lord's will.' Following the seed God gives good or ill in the case of all beings. Men are all moved by the divinity. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... despatch of English troupes of players to Germany, and his adoption of contemporary French subjects for English tragedy. But of certain knowledge of him we have very little. What is certain is that, like Drayton (also a friend of his), he seems to have lived remote and afar from the miserable quarrels and jealousies of his time; that, as has been already shown by dates, he was a kind of English Fontenelle in his overlapping of both ends of the great school of English poets; and that absolutely ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... this has lost nothing of the contour of health or the symmetry of youth. I am in possession of all the fame I ever hoped or ambitioned. I wear not the appearance of twenty years; I am now, as I generally am, sad and miserable.' ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston |
