"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon Temporaries that ever was written. Temporaries never once saw their true vileness, he keeps on saying. Temporaries are, no doubt, wounded for sin sometimes, but never in the right place nor to the right depth. And again, sin, and especially heart-sin, is never really bitter to Temporaries. In an "exhortation to all new beginners, and so to all others," "Be sure," Shepard says, "your wound for sin at first is deep enough. For all the error in a man's faith and sanctification springs from his first error in his humiliation. If a man's humiliation be false, or even ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Russia, has made them presumptuous and over-bearing, hating alike all sects and creeds which differ from their own. Their ignorance is only equalled by the fanaticism which often results therefrom; and so bitter is their detestation of the Roman Catholics, that more than one instance has been known of its leading to foul acts of murder. Unoffending peasants have been taken in the revolted districts, and ordered to kneel and make the sign of the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... the unpleasant entanglement; for, Mr. Gammon, though ingenious at a pinch, had no natural bent towards falsehood. To be rid at almost the same moment of Mr. Clover and Polly Sparkes seemed to him marvellous good luck; and in these bitter, sodden days of the early year he was lighter hearted than ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... that Susan, much against her own will, submissively took the spoon and drank the soup. It tasted poor and thin, like hot water with something bitter in it; but she finished it all, and Mademoiselle received the empty basin with a nod of satisfaction. Then she busied herself in examining the condition of Susan's wet clothes, and presently hung them all ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... of Christians expressed their admiration of his religious sympathies and his moral worth; and in the most bitter outburst of party spirit, his domestic character was never assailed. The testimony of Messrs. Backhouse and Walker, members of the Society of Friends, would generally be adopted by most persons of their class:—"Our first interview with Colonel ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... systematically thus:—Suppose that you, in your boyhood, had wronged some woman, and suppose that woman had died. You might imagine you had got rid of that woman. But if her love was very strong and her sense of outrage very bitter, I must tell you that you have not got rid of her by any means, moreover, you never will get rid of her. And why? Because her Soul, like all Souls, is imperishable. Now, putting it as a mere supposition, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... our kinship is thy bane? It is so sweet to me to whisper to myself, 'Harold is of thy kith, though distant; and it is natural to thee to have pride in his fame, and joy in his presence!' Why is that sweetness to me, to thee so bitter?" ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... away the tables, they crept into a corner and stayed there, fearing even to go forward and replenish the sinking fire, though gusts of bitter cold came through the broken window ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... as Valerius the dictator became a private citizen, began a most bitter contest, going so far even as to overturn the government. The well-to-do classes insisted, in the case of debts, upon the very letter of the agreement, refusing to abate one iota of it, and so they both failed to secure ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... and Queen I write to assure you that the hearts of their Majesties go out to you in your bitter sorrow, and to express their horror at the appalling deed which has robbed you of your child. Men and women throughout the civilized world, while sympathizing with you, are moved with admiration and awe at her ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... preceding day, only two or three shrubs were seen. The leaf and seed of one (called by the natives Torromedo) were not much unlike those of the common vetch; but the pod was more like that of a tamarind in its size and shape. The seeds have a disagreeable bitter taste; and the natives, when they saw our people chew them, made signs to spit them out; from whence it was concluded that they think them poisonous. The wood is of a reddish colour, and pretty hard ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... camping-ground was reached ten miles farther on. On the morning of the 8th the thermometer marked forty-four degrees below freezing point; but in this weather and through deep snow the men made eighteen miles, and the following day nineteen miles, to the next camping-grounds on Bitter Creek, and in the valley of Sweetwater. On the 10th matters were still worse. Herders left to bring up the rear with stray mules could not force them from the valley, and there three-fourths of them were left to perish. Nine ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... figure reclining in a wicker chair, her face ivory-white against the cushions. She was waving her fan to and fro, and listening with apparent attention to the conversation of her companions. I guessed how little she would hear; how bitter must be the dread at her heart; how endlessly, interminably long the ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... always bury the dead and observe mourning only for three days. On returning from a burial they all get drunk, and then go to the house of the deceased and chew the bitter leaves of the nim tree (Melia indica). These they then spit out of their mouths to indicate their complete ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... should be related in detail. So bitter was Charlie Sands, so uneasy about the license, and so on, that I feel in fairness to Tish that I should relate ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have emptied a cup of bitter suffering and already won martyrdom in art through the kindness of art's disciples ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... their "reason" speak, their life seems to them bitter and terrible. They are not deceived. But they play round life with lies: Simonides advises them to treat life as they would a play; earnestness was only too well known to them in the form of pain. The misery of men is a pleasure ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... iniquities and abuses, attacked those who are desperately engaged in fighting these, For this reason he probably failed to absorb from Godkin's criticism some of the benefit which it might have brought him. The pills were bitter, but salutary. While he was Police Commissioner one of Joseph Choate's epigrams passed current and is still worth recalling. When some one remarked that New York was a very wicked city, Choate replied, "How can you ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... this terrible war, the more I deplore it and the more I see the necessity of continuing it. Our cause is even more desperate than theirs—we are fighting for liberty and against ignorance. These people are being taught to hate with a bitter hate three quarters of the people ...
— Ball's Bluff - An Episode and its Consequences to some of us • Charles Lawrence Peirson
... them were arraigned, I must tell you," went on the Princess, "and both were to be racked. But they did not put it too hardly upon Master Roger, as I have reason to know, wherefore he was able to maintain his innocence; whilst the other, in his bitter anguish, made confession of a crime ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... are to garden spinach and chicory what the wild duck is to the tame, or the hare to the rabbit. And it is a fact that garden plants are generally poor and tasteless, while those that grow wild have a certain astringency and pleasant bitter flavour. It is the venison of vegetables that you have given us, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and trusty old man, who sealed his patriotism, if not with his blood,—for the very Normans had not the heart to take that,—still with long and bitter sorrows, lifted up his head, and said, like a valiant Dane, as his name bespoke him: "Against the ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the medicine-men dispute among themselves, but their followers engage even more vehemently in bitter strife. For instance, there is a national belief that the juby-juby nut, which grows in the forests in profusion, possesses some supernatural virtue that will make a man who chews it impervious to the weapons of his enemies. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... sodden rags on the beaten earth floor. The people without, staring, open-mouthed and silent, saw the Friar look up; his hand hastily outstretched touched the dank, muddy hair; then he knew all, and fell on his face with an exceeding bitter cry. It was answered by another cry—the glad cry of a lost ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... truth, Lizaveta Ivanovna was a very unfortunate creature. "The bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess A—— had by no means a bad heart, bat she was capricious, like a woman who had been ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... could not, a second time, see him without a new order. The Governor sent a note to Mr Manning, that he had received such an order from the Secretaries of State, and he, with young Laurens, went accordingly last Saturday morning. They found him very ill, much emaciated, but not low spirited, and bitter against the people of England for their harsh treatment of him. He spoke very handsomely of Captain Keppel, who took him and the Lieutenant to London; but from the period of putting his foot on shore, he was treated with a brutality, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... he, although he felt deeply hurt that they had not thought first of him, accepted the position eagerly; but the recollection that Grandier had been preferred before himself kept awake in, him one of those bitter hatreds which time, instead of soothing, intensifies. From the foregoing narrative the reader can see ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... than to Miltoun and Barbara, last night had been bitter and restless. The sight of that pale swaying figure, with the parted lips, whirling round in Courtier's arms, had clung to his vision ever since, the Ball. During his own last dance with her he had been ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to his own reflections, he lay perfectly peaceful and content staring up into the sky. For months he had been fated to lead an entirely new life, and now it had actually begun. His entrance upon it was not bitter. He had flowers growing by his path, and books that he loved, and one or two friends who loved him. It was all right! And that was how he spent his first ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Taught by bitter experience at home, Anglo-Saxons struck out fresh lines, in the fresh lands where, thanks to the discoveries of adventurous rovers, they could find asylum. The humanities in them got scope; they carried tolerance and liberty ever with them. Take the Puritans who founded New England! Was there ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... his name; and he permitted his own bull-dog, Strafford, to be executed by his own enemies, though the only crime of Strafford was, that he had barked furiously at those enemies, and had worried two or three of them, when Charles shouted, "Fetch 'em." He was a bitter, but yet a despicable enemy, and the coldest and most worthless of friends; for though he always hoped to be able, some time or other, to hang his enemies, he was always ready to curry favour with them, more ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... been a lot more bitter if I had known what was in store for me at the Cape. COMCORP flew me down in one of our private prop-jets, with only Paul Cleary for company. He introduced me to the brass, and we sat through a couple conferences while the idea was spelled out to a group of sure-enough spacemen. ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... be a barrier between us for ever. If I could give her up fully and altogether, then I might tell her the truth which was to preserve her from marrying such a man as my rival. And I must do so, sooner than that she, my very dream of purity and gentle truth, should wed defilement. But how bitter to cast away my CHANCE! as I said, in the gathering despair of that black night. And although every time I said it—for the same words would come over and over as in a delirious dream—I repeated yet again to myself that wonderful ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... here, or them hell-hounds of Harrison's who've sold him out will swarm round this barn to git possesshun. Ef this yer"—she again pointed contemptuously to the objects just indicated—"means that you've cast your lot with US and kalkilate to take our bitter with our sweet, ye'll lift up that stack of hay and bring out a gun to help defend it. Ef you're meanin' anythin' else, Ford, you'll hide yourself in that hay till Hiram comes and has time enough to attend ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... in the expression. The father's look was habitually restless, eager, and suspicious. Not a trace was to be seen in it of the truthfulness and gentleness which made the charm of the daughter's expression. A man whose bitter experience of the world had soured his temper and shaken his faith in his fellow-creatures—such was Mr. Bowmore as he presented himself on the surface. He received Percy politely—but with a preoccupied air. Every now and then, his restless eyes wandered from the visitor to an open ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the young man such bitter pain that he wrote a veiled poem, explaining the actual facts. These facts were that out of his great love for Beatrice, in order to protect her good name, he had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... she raise that bitter cry? Why hangs her head with shame, As now the auctioneer's rough voice So rudely ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... wherein dwelt fifteen aged "holy men," who attracted the whole neighbourhood. Many men in the prime of life followed the example of the aged ones, and retired to live in the forest, while women went in even greater numbers and for longer periods. Husbands grew uneasy, and bitter disputes took place, in which one side upheld the moral superiority of the holy men, while the other went so far as to forbid the women to go and confess to them. One peasant claimed to be inspired by the "Holy ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... room. She was short, and old, and fat, and painted, and a widow. Students of character, as revealed in the face, would have discovered malice and cunning in her bright black eyes, and a bitter vindictive temper in the lines about her thin red lips. Incapable of such subtleties of analysis as these, the two young officers differed widely, nevertheless, in their opinions of Mrs. Pounce. Cosway's reckless sense of humor delighted in ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... were proud of your name," she was saying, with bitter emphasis; "and I thought you belonged to a race of gentlemen, to whom lying was unknown. And you were no longer murderous and revengeful; but you can take your revenge on a woman, for all that! And you ask me to come and see you, because you are ill! And you have ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... figure at the door. The deeply earnest, pondering face, visible albeit the red light from the forge-fire was so dull, was keenly watched. For the inquiry was fraught with peculiar meaning to those cognizant of the long and bitter feud. ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... can well imagine the secret intrigues formed both by mothers and sons to curry favour with the father and bias his choice; we can picture the jealousy with which they mutually watched each other, and the bitter hatred which any preference shown to one would arouse in the breasts of all the others. Often brothers who had been disappointed in their expectations would combine secretly against the chosen or supposed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... much violence, in a great spirit of innovation, and a general disorder in all the functions of government. I keep my eye solely on this system; if I speak of those measures which have arisen from it, it will be so far only as they illustrate the general scheme. This is the fountain of all those bitter waters, of which, through an hundred different conduits, we have drunk until we are ready to burst. The discretionary power of the Crown in the formation of ministry, abused by bad or weak men, has given rise to a system which, without directly violating the letter ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... occurred. Two young men, distantly related, sons of respectable and wealthy parents, lived in the settlement. They were both paying attention to a very wealthy young lady. Soon a rivalship for her hand sprang up between them, which created a bitter jealousy in the heart of each. After quarreling and fighting they both armed themselves, and each bound himself by a solemn oath to kill the other. Armed with pistols and dirks they attended the camp meeting. Brother ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... scum of society should be kept in its place," observed another, scarcely less bitter than young Richmond in his jealousy of the lad who claimed so much of the attention of the ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... to and every scheme and plan for delay was brought into play. A fierce and bitter legal battle was fought between the attorneys for the prisoners and those for the state, before Judge M. L. Buchwalter of the Hamilton County, ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... early in the morning a bitter letter to the wretch, which I left for him obvious enough; and I suppose he has it by this time. I kept no copy of it. I shall recollect the contents, and give you the particulars of all, at ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... understanding have themselves for their greatest enemies, for they do evil deeds which must bear bitter fruits. ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... to Englishmen, and consequently most writers, and especially those who frankly adopt the sporting view of the mountains, adopt the opposite scheme: they affect something like cynicism; they mix descriptions of scenery with allusions to fleas or to bitter beer; they shrink with the prevailing dread of Englishmen from the danger of overstepping the limits of the sublime into its proverbial opposite; and they humbly try to amuse us because they can't strike us with awe. This, too, if I may venture ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the repulse of the great attack upon the wagon train, continuing their chosen duties as keepers of the trail, that is, they were continually on guard in the vast forest and canebrake against the Northwestern Indians who were making such a bitter war upon the young ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the dignity and the frailty of man; he should wholly forgive, and almost wholly forget; but, nevertheless, should retain such serviceable hints as almost any criticism, however harsh or reckless, can afford, and go on his way with no bitter broodings, but yet (to use Wordsworth's expression in another context) "with a melancholy in the soul, a sinking inward into ourselves from thought to thought, a steady remonstrance, and a ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... middle ages) lead to the conviction that there must be a great change, if only as a question of health. Travellers who have been in Spain, notice with surprise that the men are wrapt literally 'up to their eyes,' in their cloaks, whilst the women walk abroad in the bitter wind with only a lace veil over their heads and shoulders; but the disproportionate amount of clothing that modern society compels men and women to wear in the same room ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... indifference was a bitter torment for the artist, who considered that his kiss was a sign ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... years, perhaps, but oh, ever so much in suffering, and in the bitter knowledge of the world it brings! And thus, for this reason, I was no proper wife for a happy young man like you. No young man should ever marry a widow, and no young girl should ever marry a widower. Our fancied love for each other was a mistake, dear Alden, and I ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... dear! In spite of the velvet cloak of courtesy, our Peruvian is a born tyrant, and you—forgive me—but you know you're the very child of caprice. I am most thankful, however, that you are not impressionable. Otherwise this experience might leave a bitter taste in your mouth." ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... process of travelling in Germany, the tiresome business of getting from the city to the forest village, for instance, you at once remember both the many complaints you have heard Germans make of our system, or rather want of system, and the bitter scorn poured on German fussiness by travelling Britons. The ways of one nation are certainly not the ways of another in this respect. Directly I cross the German frontier I know that I am safe from muddle ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... of human thought, the fallacy of assuming that to be true, which we desire to be true. What our complex vision reveals as to the nature of the gods does not satisfy in any obvious or facile manner this bitter need of humanity. If it did so satisfy it, then for some profound and mysterious reason man's own aesthetic sense would revolt against it, would indignantly reject it, as too smooth an answer ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... imagination or life in her. She is just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time. But I feel so depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now. I'm going round by the road. I couldn't bear to go by the Birch Path all alone. I should weep bitter tears if ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... placed next to some one with whom you have had a bitter quarrel, consideration for your hostess, who would be distressed if she knew you had been put in a disagreeable place, and further consideration for the rest of the table which is otherwise "blocked," exacts that you give no outward sign of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the various peoples of Central America and Mexico. Las Casas speaks of hives of bees and Gomara states that the bees were small and the honey rather bitter. Clavigero (Vol. 1, p. 68)[300-*] mentions six varieties of bees which were found in Mexico;—the first is the same as the common bee of Europe, the second differs from the first only in having no sting and is the bee of Yucatan and Chiapas which makes the fine clear honey of aromatic flavor. The ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... that Brandon had been in that dungeon all that long month, I felt that it would surely kill him, and my self-accusation was so strong and bitter, and my mental pain so great, that I resolved if my friend died, either by disease contracted in the dungeon or by execution of his sentence, that I would kill myself. But that is a matter much easier sincerely to resolve upon than to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... wants of nature is, that the man who can, by labouring two days in the week, maintain himself and family, will devote the remaining five to idleness or dissipation. The same regions that produce the banana, also yield the two species of manioc, the bitter and the sweet: both of which appear to have been cultivated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... son, if she's too bitter toward thee now, But give her time! The clamor of the crows And ravens that she heard could never make Her heart grow softer, but 'twill soften now With the lark's song ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the Babylonian character. Despite their love of luxury, they were at all times brave and skilful in war; and, during the period of their greatest strength, they were one of the most formidable of all the nations of the East. Habakkuk describes them, drawing evidently from the life, as "bitter and hasty," and again as "terrible and dreadful—their horses' hoofs swifter than the leopard's, and more fierce than the evening wolves." Hence they "smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke"—they "made the earth to tremble, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... with towering sahuaros, and in the dip of the pass ahead a mighty forest of their misshapen stalks was thrust up like giant fingers against the horizon. The trail wound in among them, where they rose like fluted columns above the lesser cactus—great skin-covered tanks, gorged fat with water too bitter to quench the fieriest thirst, yet guarded jealously by poison-barbed spines. Gilded woodpeckers, with hearts red as blood painted upon their breasts, dipped in uneven flight from sahuaro to sahuaro, dodged into holes of their own making, dug deep into ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... were they served that are mentioned in the 13th of Luke, 'for staying till the door was shut?' Also the foolish virgins; a heavy after-groan will they give that have thus staid too long. It turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt (Gen 19:26). It made Esau weep with an exceeding loud and bitter cry (Heb 12:17). It made Judas hang himself: yea, and it will make thee curse the day in which thou wast born, if thou miss of the kingdom, as thou wilt certainly do, if ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... month came within only a fine hair's breadth of the grand coup and caused us proportionately bitter disappointment at the moment. Yet, looking back over the whole affair in a more calm and philosophical spirit, any General, I think, would now be bound to admit that in some respects at least fortune had ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Caracci; and we may add, in our own country, of Thomas Cole and Durand. The emulation between the Caracci, though it tended to the improvement of both, was more unfortunate in its result, as it finally engendered such a bitter rivalry as to drive Agostino from the field, and it is said by some that both the Caracci ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... alarm. A great agitation ensued among the far-dispersed bands of the Ojibway name. Occasional meetings between hunting-parties of the younger warriors of the two peoples,—the Iroquois arrogant in the consciousness of their recent conquests, the Ojibways sullen and suspicious,—led to bitter words, and sometimes to actual strife. On two occasions several Ojibway warriors were slain, under what provocation is uncertain. But the reparation demanded by the Ojibway chiefs was promptly conceded by the Iroquois Council. ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... in body. He did not conceal his wish that they would be expeditious with my cure; but one was forced to be specially on one's guard in his presence against hypochondriacal expressions, because he could then become passionate and bitter. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... or deliver them, away in Africa, or maybe lying dead somewhere? Joe and Moll might ill-treat them as they chose before father should be able to interfere. And mother! Father in Africa or killed, mother in heaven! and with one bitter, thrilling cry the boy's brave spirit gave way, and he sank unconscious at Joe ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... very nicely, he was quite happy, until he chanced to see the greedy twinkle in Mr. Lord's eye, and then he knew that all this success and all this praise were only binding him faster to the show which he was so anxious to escape from; his pleasure vanished very quickly, and in its stead came a bitter, homesick feeling which no amount of ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... appeared in any way, except as representative host to do the honours, which, I find, did themselves easily, I am a little bitter. Nobody knew exactly who I was, nor seemed to take any interest in me at all, except old Mrs. Frampton, who thought I was a waiter, and asked me to order her ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... where the Ice is pretty thick; for, where 'tis thin, they dye not so easily. Lastly, that those Fishes that lie in slimy or clayie ground, dye not so soon as others. But, he adds, that even in great Lakes, when 'tis a very bitter Frost, Ice is wont to be broken, either by the force of the Waves, or of the Imprisoned Vapors, raised by the agitation of the Water, and then bursting out with an impetuosity; witness the noise made ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... connections with the events of the past two years, that after all perhaps she had been entirely unreasonable throughout it all; these were the thoughts which excited, both in the truth of their reality and in the knowledge of the hopes they had alternately raised and blasted in Stephen, the bitter sorrow which was the cause of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Desargues's time.* It is not necessary to suppose that this effacement of Desargues's work for two centuries was due to the savage attacks of his critics. All this was in accordance with the fashion of the time, and no man escaped bitter denunciation who attempted to improve on the methods of the ancients. Those were days when men refused to believe that a heavy body falls at the same rate as a lighter one, even when Galileo made them see it with their own eyes at the foot of the tower of Pisa. Could ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... chief, though; he was a very good warrior in his day, and the French were very partial to him, as he served them well; but he is no chief, although he was considered as a sort of one from the consequence he obtained with the French. He is an old man now, and a very bitter one. Many's the Englishman that he has tied to the stake, and tortured during the war. He hates us, and is always stirring up the Injuns to make war with us; but his day is gone by, and they do not heed ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... helplessness and humiliation I was rescued by Miss Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the unexpected truth; her hearty kindness sustained me under the shock of hearing it; her sense and courage turned to its right use an event which threatened the worst that could happen, to me and to ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... fire—only at night he was wheeled out into his dreary bedroom by the cook who, now, washed and tidied him with a vigour that called forth shrill screams and oaths from her victim. He hated this woman with the most bitter loathing and sometimes frightened her with the violence of ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... he pleaded. "Please don't! You cannot know how I have suffered since for the cruelty of that act, or how I suffered then, first in jealous rage, and then in bitter resentment against the fate that I had not deserved. I went back to the apes after that, Jane, intending never again to see a human being." He told her then of his life since he had returned to the jungle—of how he had dropped like a plummet ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rest, as I should have to work hard every day. I forgot that it was but justice, and that I was only earning my share of the years' provisions, which I had not assisted to collect. My heart was still more bitter against your father, and I vowed vengeance if ever I had an opportunity, but there was no help for it. Every day I went up with a piece of cord and an axe, cut a large faggot of wood, and brought it down to the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... was very clear. Billy had come now to the conclusion that it would be wrong to give herself where she could not give her heart. And in this he agreed with her—bitter as it was for him. Certainly he did not want Billy, if Billy did not want him, he told himself. He would now, of course, accede to her request. He would not write to her—and make her suffer more. But to Bertram, at that moment, it seemed ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... and civility inquired after his health. He had indeed fallen asleep in very ill-humour; but his night's rest had much composed his mind, and the effect of this was increased by the extreme politeness of the doctor, so that he answered with tolerable temper, only making bitter complaints of ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... to do. Surely there are still disputed places in the world, where justice lies on both sides, where only 'face-saving' prevents a settlement. And surely it is better to resort to this coin than to force and war and bitter arguments that drag on ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... I can imagine that at times subdued but bitter revilings are heaped upon the head of ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... this is a doomed place for you, and that if we could only save money enough to go to California, you might take the position you merit; for there none would know of the blight which fell upon you; none could look on your brow and dream it seemed sullied. Here you have such bitter prejudice to combat; such ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... must have suffered some illumination upon Allan. There was a look of bitter comprehension in his face as he broke off. She turned away ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... villain. I thought his anger honest, though unjust, and I was as ignorant as a child. I had no mother nor matronly friend to instruct me. I knew that I had broken no command of God or man; that I had been a faithful wife, but when Gabriel Le Noir accused me with such bitter earnestness I feared that some strange departure from the usual course of nature had occurred for my destruction. And I was overwhelmed by mortification, terror ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... cried the young man, joyfully. "I have learned a bitter lesson, and henceforth I will ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... fit of ambition on Polly's behalf he had never made himself ridiculous, and had been a prosperous tradesman, well thought of by his customers. Suddenly he had become mad, but not so mad as to be unconscious of his own madness. The failure of his hopes, joined to the inexpressibly bitter feeling that in their joint transactions young Newton had received all that had been necessary to him, whereas he, Neefit, had got none of that for which he had bargained,—these together had so upset him that he had lost his balance, had travelled out of his ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... career," replied he, those powerful, hewn features of his sad and bitter. "In your own—in a career in which I'd become as contemptible as the rest of the men you know—a poor thing like Grant Arkwright. Worse, for I'd do very badly what he ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... to mother—feel decent if you can, behave decent in any case," was the way she had put it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences and helped her out of scrapes in childhood, schoolgirlhood and ever since. This was very bitter to Mrs. Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that so much of Neville's love should go elsewhere than to her, jealous that Nan, who gave her nothing except generous and extravagant gifts and occasional, spasmodic, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... it than I ever did on anything else in all me life, and I don't understand. Does it seem to you that anyone would take a newborn baby and row over it, until it was bruised black, cut off its hand, and leave it out in a bitter night on the steps of a charity home, to the care of strangers? That's what somebody ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sigh, and returned home to your lodgings (which I have hired till your return) to resign myself to misery. Fanny had prepared me a supper—she is all attention to me—but I sat over it with tears; a bitter sauce, my L., but I could eat it with no other; for the moment she began to spread my little table, my heart fainted within me. One solitary plate, one knife, one fork, one glass! I gave a thousand pensive, penetrating looks at the chair thou hadst so often graced, in those quiet and sentimental ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the Lyapinsky house in the dusk, when a thousand persons, naked and hungry, are waiting in the bitter cold for admission, and let that one man attempt to help, and his heart will ache till it bleeds, and he will flee thence with despair and anger against men; but let a thousand men approach that other thousand with a desire to help, and the task will prove easy and delightful. Let the mechanicians ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... around, has a significance of its own which gives it a peculiar claim to consideration. Inscribed on it, appear the names of ten fishermen of the parish who went out to sea to pursue their calling, on one wintry night in 1846. It was unusually cold on land—on the sea, the frosty bitter wind cut through to the bones. The men were badly provided against the weather; and hardy as they were, the weather killed them that night. In the morning, the boat drifted on shore, manned like a spectre bark, by the ghastly figures of the dead—freighted horribly with the corpses of ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs, on which the warm beams of a western sun gaily poured through two sash windows! Catherine had expected to have her feelings worked, and worked they were. Astonishment and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame. She could not be mistaken as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in everything else!—in Miss Tilney's meaning, in her own calculation! This apartment, to which she had given a date so ancient, a position so awful, proved to be one end of what ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of yesterday with his nay of today. Nine months passed and we never heard the whistle of bullet or shell. Dick called himself a "cherry-blossom correspondent," and when our ship left those shores each knew that the other went to his state-room and in bitter chagrin and disappointment ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... I'm a beggar: Undone by fortune, and in debt to thee. Want, worldly want, that hungry, meagre fiend, Is at my heels, and chases me in view. Canst thou bear cold and hunger? Can these limbs, Fram'd for the tender offices of love, Endure the bitter gripes of smarting poverty? When banish'd by our miseries abroad (As suddenly we shall be) to seek out In some far climate, where our names are strangers, For charitable succour; wilt thou then, When in a bed of ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... Mercy! to the gates of Heaven This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven, Effaced ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... indoors, no doubt to wait upon and take good care of her lover. On Sundays, when all the rest set out gaily, and Master Martin, who had recovered to some extent of his wound, invited him to walk with him and Rose to the Allerwiese, he refused the invitation; but, burdened with trouble and the bitter pain of disappointed love, he hastened off alone to the village and the hill where he had first met with Reinhold. He threw himself down in the tall grass where the flowers grew, and as he thought how that the beautiful star of hope which ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... think, by noticing the way in which, both in the arts and with our senses, we examine opposites. Judgment once obtained, the use to which we put it differs in the two cases. Our senses are not meant to pick out black rather than white, to prefer sweet to bitter, or soft and yielding to hard and resisting objects; all they have to do is to receive impressions as they occur, and report to the understanding the impressions as received. The arts, on the other hand, which reason institutes ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... first trouble had come to them in all the appalling and exaggerated proportions that such troubles assume, but she smiled gently to herself, for she, too, had been young, and the ways of lovers had been her ways, and the paths of love she had trodden, and she had drained love's cup at bitter springs. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... the finale of the duet, "O suesse Nacht! Ew'ge Nacht! Hehr erhabne Liebes-Nacht." The treachery of Sir Melot, Tristan's pretended friend, betrays the lovers to the King. Tristan offers no explanations, but touched by the King's bitter reproaches provokes Sir Melot to combat and allows himself ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... without thee have I seen, My brother sweet, and yet, as tribute sad, The bitter tears have poured adown my cheek, And sadly mindful of thy absence now I chisel here this ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... of reproach or one word of bitter feeling. We have one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the arrival of the day ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... displayed such utter confusion of thought regarding the inductive method. The same confusion is apparent in his recent utterance in which he observes that Fleischmann's whole aim is to accumulate observational data, meanwhile avoiding speculation as far as possible. His criticism is replete with bitter personal epithets, e.g., "reactionary," "mental incompetency," "dishonest mask of hypercritical exactness," which manifest the writer's inability to enter upon an objective ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... forge, where he says he was "brought up in a very mean condition among a company of poor countrymen." Here, with but little to elevate or refine his character, the boy contracted many bad habits, and grew up what Coleridge somewhat too strongly calls "a bitter blackguard." According to his own remorseful confession, he was "filled with all unrighteousness," having "from a child" in his "tender years," "but few equals both for cursing, swearing, lying and blaspheming the holy name of God." Sins of this kind he declares ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Tomas steal into the prince's tent. I wish Don Juan well through the lecture. The monk's advice is like the algarroba;—[The algarroba is a sort of leguminous plant common in Spain]—when it is laid up to dry it may be reasonably wholesome, but it is harsh and bitter enough when ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery.... He cometh up and is cut down... he fleeth as it were a shadow.... Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death...." ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... is soe profitable to my Reputation, but to be Candid, Gentlemenn, I have no certain recollection of the Affaire. My Brother Lawrence was wont to say that the Tree or Shrubb in question was no Cherrye but a Bitter Persimmon; moreover he told me that I stoutly denyed any Attacke upon it; but being caught with the Goods (as Tully saith) I was soundly Flogged, and walked stiffly ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... promptness. His administration was vigorous, and his support of the Union cause was in the highest degree efficient, patriotic, and successful. He attained an exceptional popularity with the soldiers, and against the most bitter attacks never lost his hold on the confidence and personal regard of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... or the man with the face of clay, The grey, grey walker who used to pass Over the rock-arch nightly to his prey. But here at the dumb, slow stream where the willows hang, With never a wind to blow the mists apart, Bitter and bitter it is for thee. O my heart, Looking upon this land, where poets sang, Thus with the dreary shroud Unwholesome, over it spread, And knowing the fog and the cloud In her people's heart and head ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... scarcely heard the kindly words. Left alone he turned his face to the wall. He was descending the valley of bitter humiliation and regret. Donald Neil, the young man he had almost hated, had saved his life at the risk of his own, and had then gone off apparently to escape his thanks. Did the young man despise him so much then? His conscience ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... many bitter tears for her daughter—she shed many more when she heard of Raphael's misfortune. When the unknown gentlemen told her of it, anguish prevented her speaking; but looking about the room she at last found the handle of an old ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... very hopeful tone though), 'I won't have any pepper in my kitchen AT ALL. Soup does very well without—Maybe it's always pepper that makes people hot-tempered,' she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, 'and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn't be so ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... the heart-stricken wanderer asks thee for bread, In suffering he bows to necessity's laws; When the wife moans in sickness, the children unfed, The cup must be bitter, O ask ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... if it can, and after having examined one, it will put it aside to observe another. On its being able to move about, it seeks objects within its reach, and wishing to gratify the sense of taste, applies every thing to the mouth; by this it distinguishes the bitter from the sweet, and on seeing what is sweet a second time, will point to it and wish to obtain it, whilst what is bitter ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... returning I found him dead in the snow with his head on the sill of the door—the door of his puppyhood's days; my dog to the last in his heart of hearts—it was my help he sought, and vainly sought, in the hour of his bitter extremity. ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... A bitter smile, almost ghastly, passed over her face, as she muttered these words. She took up a splendid bouquet of greenhouse flowers that had been prepared for her, and were placed on the table, almost mechanically, and looking like one in a dream, left ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... rather a piquant titillation of my bitter humour, when I disentangled from Wetter's confident and eloquent description of the Ideal Ambassador a tolerably accurate, if somewhat partial, portrait of himself. I was rather surprised at his desire for the position. Subsequently ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... doughboy or medic or engineer who stood there at bay those three invincible days, Bolsheozerki means deep snow, bitter cold, cheerless tents, whiz-bangs, high explosive, shrap, rat-tat-tat interminable, roar and crash, and zipp and pop of explosive bullet, with catch-as-catch-can at eats, arms lugged off with cases of ammunition, ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... lord's travelling carriage, and cried, "Down with the persecutor! down with Hanging Hermiston!" and mamma covered her eyes and wept, and papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised demanding an explanation: ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with shame of herself to remark it—a little slower in speech, a little more pertinacious and insistent, not perhaps perceiving with such quick sympathy the changes and fluctuations of other minds, and whether it was advisable or not to follow a subject to the bitter end. She said, looking up from her knitting, with a little rhetorical movement of her hand which Elinor feared, and which showed that she felt herself on assured ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Corps and Wood's division of the Fourth Corps crossed the Holstein River by a bridge that had been constructed at Strawberry Plains. My division being higher up the stream, forded it, the water very deep and bitter cold, being filled with slushy ice. Marching by way of New Market, I reached Dandridge on the 17th, and here on my arrival met General Sturgis, then commanding our cavalry. He was on the eve of setting out to, "whip the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... Desiree in Paris. The Duke of Bellarmine, then her protector, had one evening entered her splendid apartment on the Rue Jonteur—furnished, of course, by himself—and had found his divinity entertaining one Jules Chavot, a young and beautiful poet. Whereupon he had launched forth into the most bitter reproaches and ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... government has been yet more striking from the moral point of view. Politics have tended to become more corrupt, more debased, and to soil the hands of those who take part in them and the men who get their living by them. Political battles have become too bitter and too vulgar not to have inspired aversion in the noblest and most upright natures by their violence and their intrigues. The elite of the nation in more than one country are showing a tendency to have nothing to do with ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... much admire both. But it will require a long time to suck in all the facts. Your case of the largest Australian orders having none, or very few, species in New Zealand, is truly marvellous. Anyhow, you have now DEMONSTRATED (together with no mammals in New Zealand) (bitter sneer No. 3), that New Zealand has never been continuously, or even nearly continuously, united by land to Australia!! At page lxxxix, is the only sentence (on this subject) in the whole essay at which I am much ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... how easily family quarrels arise, how bitter they may be while they last, and how readily, withal, they may be accommodated by tactful handling. The sister had done wrong; the brother had lost his temper; in what family has not such an outbreak occurred? But ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... surcease. The white, feathery stuff piled up and piled up, hour upon hour and day after day, as if the deluge had come again. It stood at the cabin eaves before the break came, six feet on the level. With the end of the storm came a bright, cold sky and frost,—not the bitter frost of the high latitudes, but a nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a thin scum of ice on ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... setting and keeping at variance two families already predisposed to quarrel by every instigation of hereditary jealousy? The prophecy seemed to imply—if it implied anything—a final triumph on the part of the already more powerful house; and was of course remembered with the more bitter animosity by ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... gloom from Macedon, The cry of myriads as of one; The voiceful silence of despair Is eloquent in awful prayer: The soul's exceeding bitter cry, "Come o'er and ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... was only through the delays of the Allies that the Neapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in an attack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged upon the Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first had shown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge over the sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House of Naples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was immediately carried into execution. Ferdinand fled, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... circumstances would weep, but he did not feel like shedding tears, and he was ashamed of himself for what seemed lack of something within himself. What he felt then, what he had felt ever since that young doctor had passed sentence of death was surly, bitter rancor—the anger of a man who ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... was not to discuss these things that I put myself in jeopardy; and to assert my innocence can do no good; it cannot set aside the coroner's verdict of 'Wilful murder against Richard Hare, the younger.' Is my father as bitter against me as ever?" ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... fidelity to the Greek church, and also the dignity of an independent prince. He promised, in consideration of the support of the pope, to recognize not only the spiritual power of Rome, but also the temporal authority of the pontiff. He also entered bitter complaints against the King of Poland. Ysiaslaf did not visit Rome in person, but sent his son to confer with the pope. Gregory, rejoiced to acquire spiritual dominion over Russia, received the application in the most ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... round on her knees to Tom, with a look expressive of anguish and love, "to you, Tom, must be my last appeal. I know you will forgive me—I know you have—and this knowledge of your fervent love makes the thought more bitter that I have caused your death. But hear me, Tom, and all of you hear me. I never loved but you; I have liked others much; I liked Jacob; but you only ever did make me feel I had a heart; and alas, you only have I sacrificed. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to support him. He was clapped on the back, until his bones were nearly dislocated in his body; and his hand shaken, until his arm lost its cunning at the needle for half a week afterwards. This, to be sure, was a bitter business—a state of being past endurance. Every man was his friend—no man was his enemy. A desperate position for any person to find himself in, but doubly calamitous to a ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... deep distress because of the sin against God of which her darling had been guilty, had so convinced the child of the heinousness of her conduct that she was sorely distressed because of it, and on being left alone, knelt down again and pleaded for pardon with many bitter tears and sobs. ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... getting anything was a bitter thought. Would he have to go personally and ask; wait outside an office door, and, then, distinguished and affluent looking, announce that he was looking for something to do? He strained painfully at the thought. No, he ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Lord of Glouster, I haue too long borne Your blunt vpbraidings, and your bitter scoffes: By heauen, I will acquaint his Maiestie Of those grosse taunts that oft I haue endur'd. I had rather be a Countrie seruant maide Then a great Queene, with this condition, To be so baited, scorn'd, and stormed at, Small ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... army had already passed and saw swarms of stragglers ahead of them. Journalists and public men met them, and Dick now learned how the truth about Bull Run had come to the capital. The news of defeat had been the more bitter, because already they had been rejoicing there over success. As late as five o'clock in the afternoon the telegraph had informed Washington of victory. Then, after a long wait, had come the bitter despatch telling of defeat, and flying ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of folk in Hightown to satisfy his curiosity. There were the Bearsarks, who would spin tales of the rich Frankish lands and the green isles of the Gael. From the Skridfinns he heard of the bitter country in the north where the Jotuns dwelt, and the sun was not and the frost split the rocks to dust, while far underground before great fires the dwarves were hammering gold. But these were only old wives' tales, and he liked better the talk of the sea-going franklins, who would ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... "How bitter to friends is a parting, * And a meeting how sweet to the lover! Allah join all the lovers He parteth, * And save me ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... so brutally cruel that it required all my strength of will to restrain myself from action. My fingers closed upon the pistol in my pocket, and every impulse urged me to hurl myself on the fellows, trusting everything to swift, bitter fight. I fairly trembled in eagerness to grapple with Kirby, hand to hand, and crush him helpless to the earth. I heard his voice, hateful and snarling, as he cursed Rale for his slowness, and the hot blood boiled in my veins, when he jerked the girl ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... disastrous occasion. There were artists present who then for the first time were to get their impression of a great singer, prepared of course to believe that that reputation had been exaggerated. Among these was Rachel, who sat enjoying the humiliation of decayed grandeur with a cynical and bitter sneer on her face, drawing the attention of the theatre by ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... you take your happiness in little bits, in snatches, and then lose it, as I have done, you gradually get coarser, more bitter. [Points to her bosom] I'm boiling in here.... [Looks at ANDREY with the perambulator] There's our brother Andrey.... All our hopes in him have gone. There was once a great bell, a thousand persons were ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... I imagine He must allow Satan to have the control of some of our lives," was the evasive and bitter retort. "Virgie, Mr. Heath's cup ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... whispered that they had arisen out of things said by Mrs. Deacon Adams, in her wrath, because Bridget had left her service to enter mine; and I now ascertained that this Mrs. Adams was a woman of bitter tongue, and enduring, hot, and unscrupulous in anger and in revengefulness. I have inquired sufficiently; I know it is true. The vulgar malice of a hard woman has murdered a fair and good maiden with the invisible arrows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... were not always free and happy as they are to-day. Many years ago a proud tyrant, whose name was Gessler, ruled over them, and made their lot a bitter one indeed. ...
— Fifty Famous Stories Retold • James Baldwin
... than had Bibby. O'Brien, catching the judge's eye, made a wry face and imperceptibly lowered his left lid—on the side away from the jury, thus officially indicating that, of course, the case was a lemon but that there was nothing that could be done except to try it out to the bitter end. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... all these shocks and changes, the "notion" would not leave me. I went at it again, I suppose in 1904; consumed with a bitter determination to finish what I had begun. Everything now had become difficult. I tried this way and that way and the other way. They all failed and I broke down on every one of them; and I tried and tried again. At last I cobbled up some ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... am not unwell. I do not wish to have a scene. I will not, by useless words, embitter myself against you, or you against me. You know you do not love me. I know I do not love you. It is all a bitter, cursed mistake, and the sooner we say so and rectify ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... is in the centre of a country of surpassing richness and beauty, but from the day of its foundation, between seven and eight hundred years ago, it has been the theatre of constant revolutions and bitter warfare, where hecatombs of human beings have been sacrificed upon idolatrous altars, where a foreign religion has been established at the spear's point, through torture by fire and the rack, and where rivers of blood have been ruthlessly spilled ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... politeness form a complex system of legislation, which it is difficult to be perfectly master of, but from which it is dangerous for anyone to deviate; so that men are constantly exposed involuntarily to inflict or to receive bitter affronts. But as the distinctions of rank are obliterated, as men differing in education and in birth meet and mingle in the same places of resort, it is almost impossible to agree upon the rules of good breeding. As its laws are uncertain, to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the wide world. But tell me, ere we journey farther, which Rose you and your house favour; for I would not bring trouble upon any, and my roving life has taught me that the House of Lancaster has many bitter foes." ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... lived. He held all the people that lived upon his vast estates in a condition of abject slavery, compelling them to toil continually in his mines, in destitution and wretchedness, in order to add more and more to his treasures. The people came to his wife with their bitter complaints. She pitied them, but could not relieve them. One day, it is said that, in order to show her husband the vanity and folly of living only to amass silver and gold, and to convince him how little real power such treasures ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... transparent, and colourless liquid, with a peculiar smell, which greatly resembles that of bitter almonds).—Symptoms produced in those who have swallowed it. These come on immediately after the poison has been taken, and may be produced by merely smelling it. The patient becomes perfectly insensible, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... in preliminaries. "Sit down," he said imperiously, and his face, when he turned to the light, was knotted with trouble. He sat for a moment with bent head while he strengthened his heart to a bitter and humiliating task. He ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... to cover the brown stones of which it was built, and having an open ditch in front of it with a stone slab over it for a bridge. Did I say there was nothing on the walls? This morning there was the loveliest sunshine, and that I was going to leave behind. It was very bitter, especially as I had expected to go with my elder brother to spend the ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald |
