"Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Means the State of the Church in North Carolina is very miserable; which is of greatest Moment, and requires the most charitable Direction and Christian Assistance; not only for the Conversion of the Indians and Baptism of Negroes there, but for the Christening and Recovery ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... He's always tied to a stake on a rope just long enough to go across the river. His only friends are the crocodiles, who say 'Hello' to him once a week if they don't forget. Really, he's the most miserable animal I've ever come across. When I left I promised I'd try to help him someday, although I couldn't see how. The rope around his neck is about the biggest, toughest rope you can imagine, with so many knots it would take days ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... in this country, and, with scarce an exception, the deadliest opponents to the very indepindence that we have benn jist spakin about. For the most part, they are filled chock full of a pack of miserable toadies to the governmint, which manages to gather into them a pack of rottin, ladin Irishmin who can make speeches, dhrink 'the day and all who honor it,' sing 'God save the Queen,' and talk English blatherskite about the glory of the impire, the army and navy, and everythin else ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... am not able," exclaimed Marianne, with a loud burst of anguish, "I have but six francs; if I give them, nothing is left me, and my pension is not paid until six weeks. But even were I to give all I have, my miserable six francs would not ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... Prince Geoffrey, another of the king's sons, came to a miserable end. He was killed in a tournament. He was riding furiously in the tournament in the midst of a great number of other horsemen, when he was unfortunately thrown from his steed, and trodden to death on the ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... out of fashion. The same woman had taken a contract to supply a large firm with wrappers, and employed many in the neighborhood, paying them the smallest possible prices. This woman was a usurer on a scale so pitiful and petty that it almost condoned usury. Sometimes a man on discovering the miserable pittance for which his wife toiled during every minute which she could snatch from her household duties and the care of her children, would inveigh against it. "That woman is cheating you," he would say, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... at Lord Dreever enlightened her. That miserable creature was wearing the air of a timid child about to pull a large cracker. He seemed to be bracing himself up for ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... himself. It is as if a man should use a ladder to reach a lofty crag, and then kick it over contemptuously, and aver that he could just as well have flown up, and ask the crowd below to break up that miserable ladder and try their wings. Doubtless they have wings, if they only knew it. But seriously, I am not inclined to join in the hue-and-cry against even the ultra-transcendentalist. He has truth mixed up with what I esteem objectionable, and some truth ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Till Nature's pale-faced sergeant them surprise, And as the tree then falls, just so it lies. Now look at home, thou who these lines dost read, See which of all these paths thyself dost tread, And ere it be too late that path forsake, Which, followed, will thee miserable make. ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... think about and be miserable about all the time he was in prison. For anything he knew they might have been sent to prison, too. They did those things in Russia. But while he was in the mines some friends managed to get a message to him that his wife and children had escaped and come to England. ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... that shall be consulted," cried the Contessa. "Lucy, my little angel! if it is really so that you will give my Bice the advantage of your protection for her debut—— But that is to be an angel indeed, superior to all our little, petty, miserable—— Is it possible, then," cried the Contessa, "that there is some one so good, so noble in ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... a heartless, as she was a vicious and a miserable woman. Instead of the yearnings of maternal love, she regarded her innocent child merely as the offspring of that monster, whom she execrated and feared with a preternatural hate. If she looked upon him with any feeling more lively than that of indifference, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... in me to laugh at the whole miserable hocus-pocus, had I been less indignant. The situation was, besides, sufficiently grave; and as I listened to this silly and profane juggling, and observed the wildness of my grandfather's bearing, it became plain to me that he could not long endure such an influence. I guessed from his talk that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... mind, I repeat, was at this point still a blank as to what explanation he would give to the Comte de Cambray of his own miserable failure. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... story told of Voltaire," says Dr. Arthur Leared, "well illustrates both the evil effects of constipation and the advantage of using the enema. The great philosopher was one day so miserable and dejected that he told a friend he had resolved to hang himself. His friend called the next morning to ascertain whether the resolve had been or was intended to be carried out. But Voltaire only replied, with a smile, 'I have ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... never-to-be-forgotten nine days' journey. Generally we slept in cities or towns, where we were made more or less comfortable; but on one occasion, owing to an accident, we were belated and had to stop overnight at a miserable hamlet, where no accommodation could be procured save such as a native adobe house could afford. This consisted of one large room approached by a shed. In this room the man, his wife, his children, his ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... presented altogether a dismal picture of neglected dilapidation. Nothing daunted, Viushin tore down another section of the ruined side to make a fire, hung over teakettles, and brought our provision boxes under such shelter as the miserable hut afforded. I never could ascertain where Viushin obtained the water that night for our tea, as there was no available stream within ten miles, and the drippings of the roof were thick and discoloured ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... exist in those wretched chilly damp cloisters I can't imagine," she said, as she squatted by the stove warming her hands. "Were they allowed to take hot bricks to bed with them in their cells? Think of turning out for midnight services into an unwarmed church! It sounds absolutely miserable!" ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... am the last person to call any restoration whatever, judicious. Of all destructive manias, that of restoration is the frightfullest and foolishest. Nevertheless, what good, in its miserable way, it can bring, the poor art scholar must now apply his common sense to take; there is no use, because a great work has been restored, in now passing it by altogether, not even looking for what instruction we still may find in its design, which will be more intelligible, if ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... offender, this happened in Lent, the season in which the rules of the rigid Chartreuse oblige the prior and procurator to flagellate all the frati, or lay brothers of the convent. They were, therefore, armed for their wonted pious discipline, when the miserable Salvatoriello fell in their way; whether he was honored by the consecrated hand of the prior, or writhed under the scourge of the procurator, does not appear; but that he was chastised with great severity more than proportioned to his crime, is attested ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... that bundle of tatters, was like nothing else in the world! She was not on speaking terms with more than three of the ladies. Some of them had, what she called, "taken precedence" of her—in getting into, or out of, that miserable little shelter!—and others had not called to pay their respects, or something of that kind. So, there she sat, in her own state and ceremony, while her husband sat on the same log of wood, ordering us one and all to let the raft go to the bottom, ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... the coach he had hoped to go by, but there was another that left at night, and which reached Newcastle in the forenoon, so that, by the loss of a night's sleep, he might overtake his lost time. But, restless and miserable, he could not stop in Hartlepool longer than to get some hasty food at the inn from which the coach started. He acquainted himself with the names of the towns through which it would pass, and the inns at which it would stop, and left word that the coachman was to be on ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... conditions is shown in a private letter to his chief, Lord John Russell. The picture he draws is lively, unflattering, but instructive. 'I am satisfied that the mass of the people are sound—moderate in their demands and attached to British institutions; but they have been oppressed by a miserable little oligarchy on the one hand and excited by a few factious demagogues on the other. I can make a middle reforming party, I am sure, that will put down both.' The record of seventy-five years and of two wars shows the attachment of the Canadians to British institutions, ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... the affirmation of its existence; but then the conception in your minds is identical with the thing itself, or you have supposed the existence of a thing to be possible, and then inferred its existence from its internal possibility—which is but a miserable tautology. The word reality in the conception of the thing, and the word existence in the conception of the predicate, will not help you out of the difficulty. For, supposing you were to term all positing ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... return my thankful acknowledgments, for your free communication of a medicine, by which means, through the blessing of providence, I have been enabled to restore health and happiness to many miserable objects. ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... the very best means of supply. So Mr. Grabguy makes a purchase of three prime men, whom he intends to transform into first-rate mechanics. He declares he will not be troubled hereafter with those very miserable white workmen he is constrained to import from the north. They are foolish enough to think they are just as good as any body, and can be gentlemen in their profession. They, poor fools! mistake the south in their love of happy New England ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... spiritual need. The Roman Catholic Church has been a miserable failure. "Nearly 7,000,000 of people in South America still adhere, more or less openly, to the fetishisms of their ancestors, while perhaps double that number live altogether beyond the reach of Christian influence, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... but continued to climb the stairs, thinking to myself: "Well, if you understand the whole thing, it is strange that you should put the widow of ex-President Abraham Lincoln in a three-cornered room in the attic of this miserable hotel." ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... "You can't imagine (gravely I write and speak) how exhausted I am to-day with yesterday's labors. I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and done up. All night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable. I do not know ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... Blasius date from 1560). Well, he was put under glass in a museum that shall be nameless, and he found himself set next to his own imitation born and baked yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you the miserable creature said to him, with a grin? 'Old Pipeclay,'—that is what he called my friend,—'the fellow that bought ME got just as much commission on me as the fellow that bought YOU, and that was all that HE thought ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... you some more." Her other wants were regularly seen to on a certain day every week. Ours was an accidental visit. We now turned up to another nook of the court, where my companion told me there was a very bad case. He found the door fast. We looked through the window into that miserable man- nest. It was cold, gloomy, and bare. As Corrigan says, in the "Colleen Bawn," "There was nobody in—but the fire—and that was gone out." As we came away, a stalwart Irishman met us at a turn of the court, and said to my companion, "Sure, ye didn't visit this house." " Not to-day;" ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... details of the matter; the text is what interests us here. I shall only remind the reader that Swift was fifty-seven when the 'Drapier' wrote, that Gulliver appeared about three years later, and that Swift himself expired—lunatic and miserable beyond utterance—on the 19th October 1745, twenty-one years after all Dublin and half England had rung with the boldness and the triumph of ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... people elect the legislators and the people are responsible for the character of men they elect and send to Nashville to make and unmake laws. We know the Legislature was bad, even miserable, but the members got their commissions ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... damp and mildew—all was rotting in ruin and decay. Tim led the way up-stairs. The same appearances were still manifest. The dark shadow of death seemed to brood there—an interminable silence. They entered a small closet, nearly dark; and here, on a miserable pallet, lay the form of Grace Ashton, now, alas! pale and haggard. She seemed altogether unconscious of their presence. The horrible events of the preceding night had brought on mental as well as bodily disease. It was the practice of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... shall get no credit that you rush it into print and make a fizzle of it. I know who the traitors to the party are—you are one. Doc Weaver with his elegant style and his Shakespeare is another. And that miserable intermeddling little book agent is ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... raged on, and many more were killed, vengeance threatened the miserable Trader. Miaki attacked him thus, "You led us into this war. You deceived us, and we began it. Rarip is dead, and many others. Your life ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... she gritted, in a swift surge of anger. "I am afraid to face this country alone. I admit my helplessness. But so help me Heaven, I'll make you pay for this dirty trick! You're not a man! You're a cur—a miserable, contemptible scoundrel!" ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... each other,' said Cadurcis; 'for, after all, it is a miserable craft. What is poetry but a lie, and what are poets ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... would have much preferred making them drunk with his vile whisky to preparing them any pretence for a dinner. But they firmly declined his liquor, so muttering unintelligibly to himself he shambled off to obey their behests. After some delay they succeeded in getting a miserable meal of some kind; and then, the horses being sufficiently rested, they set off once more at a good pace, not halting again until, just before sundown, they arrived at the depot, where the first stage ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... the whole wretched business began. At a cost which the conquest of a whole continent would hardly justify, these terrible armaments and the heroic hosts which wield them push one another a few miles back and forward in a month, and take and retake some miserable village three times over in less than a week. Can you doubt that though we have lost all fear of being beaten, (our darkened towns, and the panics of our papers, with their endless scares and silly inventions, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... No more miserable place could be found outside the jail, and it could only be surpassed in horror by one within. It might have been, and probably was, an anteroom to hell, but of that I say nothing. I leave my description, for I can do no more justice to it. The only cheerful thing about ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... he saw the mean, ferrety face of a well-known low-class dealer thrust forward from among the crowd. This dealer was notorious for keeping a large number of big Danes and Newfoundlands in the miserable backyard of a cobbler's shop in the East End of London. He had been ordered out of show rings before that day for malpractices. He had never owned a Wolfhound, but he was a shrewd business judge of the values of dogs. He nodded to the auctioneer, and that gentleman nodded responsively ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... bay, opening into it, is a lagoon of considerable extent. On one side is the town, a great part of which is built on piles at the water's edge. The place has but little to recommend it; indeed, there are scarcely a dozen houses of any size, while the rest of the buildings have a miserable appearance both without and within. Above the town stands the church,—a building of no architectural pretensions, and greatly resembling a barn. Buenaventura is the port of a considerable district, embracing the valley of the Cauca. The climate, however, owing ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... Maybe other folks can't get it right. I once had to do with a case in which a feller shot up his mother, and was made out 'bug,' and was put away. It worried me some. Later I found his ma made his life miserable. He lived in terror of her. She'd broken bottles over his head. She'd soused him with boiling water. She'd raised the devil generally, till—well, till he reached the limit. Then I found she acted that way because her dandy boy ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... The miserable condition of our troops, the season of the year, the almost total lack of means of transportation for supplies and of a pontoon bridge to cross the river, rendered any considerable movement on our part impossible. But to relieve the existing apprehension, I determined to assume the offensive ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... darkened, to multitudes of tender and highsouled persons, by the loathsome insincerity and treachery, the frivolous fickleness, the petty suspicions and envies, and the incompetent judgments, which they are constantly meeting. These superficial and miserable vices of common society disenchant the soul, and dry up the springs of love and hope. They are fatal to that magnanimous wisdom and that trustful sympathy which compose at once the brightest ornaments of our nature, and the costliest treasures of experience. Ah, if, in place of them, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... by the least inviting road. On one side were rows of miserable houses with broken windows and grimy walls and doors, that looked as if all their brightness had gone into the smart public-houses ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... within one or two, both in "Waverley" and "Guy Mannering") that marks the peculiar tone of the modern novel. It is the fact that all these deaths, but one, are of inoffensive, or at least in the world's estimate, respectable persons; and that they are all grotesquely either violent or miserable, purporting thus to illustrate the modern theology that the appointed destiny of a large average of our population is to die like rats in a drain, either by trap or poison. Not, indeed, that a lawyer in full practice can be usually ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the silken blades bend in gentle undulations, and they are dappled into lighter and darker shades, like the shadows of summer clouds flitting across the sun. It was a scene of pure enjoyment, and I only realized, on being awakened from my day dreams how miserable ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... have now said, and farther to show the miserable effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage which will hardly obtain belief. In hopes to ingratiate myself farther into his majesty's favor, I told him of an invention discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder into a heap, on which the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... overcoat. "But upon my word!" he added, surveying me from head to foot, "I didn't expect to find such a big, strapping fellow as you are. Your surroundings are quite as I had supposed they would be. Cramped quarters in a miserable tumble-down back street! I suppose your guardian provided this place ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... hills, the flowing river, and the tangled wildwood, could still soothe a soul that, but for its susceptibility to these beneficent charms, might have said in its sadness of everything earthly, "miserable comforters are ye all." Continuing to reside at Forge while her children were young, she devoted herself to the direction of their education, the cultivation of her own pure tastes, and the peaceful enjoyments of a country life; and when ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... some one had set loose a dog that Cox owned. It was a miserable cur, but was long-winded, like its master, and possessed of good barking qualities. Rivers got well concealed, but the dog was after him—bark, bark, bark; he tried all he could to quiet him, but could not. Soon a neighboring dog commenced ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... 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 see "Jean, of the Lazy A," but she was not ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... the real reason that Miss Henderson hated her was that she was a decent married girl; and she knew that the talebearers and the toadies hated her for the same reason, and were doing their best to make her life miserable. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to judge the Hawtry scenes at all until the opening night," Mr. Vandeford answered, positively quaking in his boots for fear that Miss Adair would force him to an elucidation of the scene, which was mostly of the cleverest innuendo. "She is a miserable study, and she and Height rehearse the big scenes alone. She just walks through with the company. Truly, you can hardly judge anything of what a play will be from just a reading or from any rehearsal. Please trust me and help me as you ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Vous etes mon parent, malheureusement; mais je ne m'en vanterai point. N'avez-vous pas de honte? Vous parlez de votre fortune. je la connois; elle vous met fort en etat de supporter le retranchement d'une aussi miserable somme que celle dont il s'agit, et qui ne peut jamais etre que mal acquise. Ah! Ciel! Moi qui vous estimois! Quelle avarice sordide! quel coeur sans sentiment! Et de pareils gens disent qu'ils aiment! Ah! le ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... was satisfied with everything she saw there, except her complexion, and that she resolved should improve. She was almost painfully happy. Out there was the Widdiehill, dark and dismal and cold, through which she had come, sad and shivering and haunted with miserable thoughts, into warmth and splendour and luxury and bliss! Wee Sir Gibbie had made a lady of her! If only poor Sir George were alive to see and share!—There was but one thing wanted to make it Paradise indeed—a good tumbler of toddy by the fire ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... truth. I saw enough the last day I lunched here to show me Kilgobbin was not what it used to be. You were all of you what my poor father—who was always thinking of the dogs—used to call "on your hind-legs," walking about very stately and very miserable. There were three or four covered dishes on the table that nobody tasted; and an old man in red breeches ran about in half-distraction, and said, "Sherry, my lord, or Madeira?" Many's the time I laughed ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... case, even if I saw any advantage for Riette in the plan, which I do not, I am too selfish to consent to it. Well, well, I have other reasons; I will tell them to your mother one of these days. I am sorry Madame de Sainfoy should have thought of it, as it seems ungracious to refuse. But I was miserable enough without Riette last year, when she spent those weeks at the Convent at Sonnay. By the by, the good nuns did not find her so ignorant. She knows her religion, she can dance and sing, she can ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... free from pain. No, the serfs of the Middle Ages were in no sense happy. Stifled moans of misery, a sense of their unutterable agonies, steal up from proverb and by-corners of history—we feel that they were more miserable than jail prisoners at the present day—for then, as now, man groaned at being an inferior, and he had much more than that to groan over in those days of strifes and dirt. And yet every one of those serfs was God's child, as well as the baron ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... exclaimed Constance, coming forward with tears in her eyes. "Do you think that the mere fact of suspicion being cast upon him, publicly though it was made, could have rendered us as cowardly miserable as it did? Hamish, how shall we atone ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that some pleasures are "false." Protarchus hits the nail on the head by replying, "No one would call pleasures bad because they are 'false,' but BY RASON OF SOME OTHER GREAT EVIL TO WHICH THEY ARE LIABLE," i.e, because of their after-effects.] Who would wish, however miserable, to exchange places with it! Are there not other things to be considered besides happiness? "It is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." And why? In the first place, we suspect that the oyster's, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... him for several minutes, at the imminent risk of his own life, vainly entreating aid from the passers-by. He was at length joined by Sergeant Deane of the sappers, with whose assistance he dragged his friend on a quilt through the remainder of the pass, when he succeeded in mounting him on a miserable pony, and conducted him in safety to the camp, where the unfortunate officer lingered till the next morning, and was the only man of the whole force who received Christian burial. Lieutenant Mein was ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... he bade Miss Higham good evening in a curt way, and Madame accompanied him to the front door. There they had a spirited discussion. Madame considered an allowance of half a crown would be ample; he said, in going, that his wife was a mean, miserable cat. ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... smith, a plowman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed on labors so necessary that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood, and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... continue that the old seals have no time to eat, and during the three or four months they stay with their families on the beaches they never take a mouthful of food. At the end of the time, when they leave the rookeries, they are thin and miserable, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the child as the property of its immediate physical parents, and to allow them to do what they like with it as far as it will let them. It has no rights and no liberties: in short, its condition is that which adults recognize as the most miserable and dangerous politically possible for themselves: namely, the condition of slavery. For its alleviation we trust to the natural affection of the parties, and to public opinion. A father cannot for his own credit let his son go in rags. Also, in a very large section of the population, parents ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... they been allowed, they would have torn him in pieces. Many of these were women, who mocked at and reviled the unfortunate Englishman, screaming like so many furies, spitting at him, and gloating over his miserable plight, as is the custom of a certain grade of womankind all over the world. Inspired by the example of their elders, a swarm of impish children added their shrill cries to the tumult, let fly an occasional ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... were dug by the order of Moses to quiet the clamours of the thirsty Israelites. Suez lies in the bottom of the Gulf, three leagues from Toro, once a place of note, now reduced, under the Turks, to an inconsiderable village, where the miserable inhabitants are forced to fetch water at three leagues' distance. The ancient Kings of Egypt conveyed the waters of the Nile to this place by an artificial canal, now so choked with sand, that there are scarce any marks remaining of so noble and beneficial ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... of his contemporaries and the passage in which this assertion is made is fairly representative of the general expression of this sort of mysticism. "One must keep one's faith in the People—the Plain People, the Burgesses, the Grocers—else of all men the artists are most miserable and their teachings vain. Let us admit and concede that this belief is ever so sorely tried at times.... But in the end, and at last, they will listen to the true note and discriminate between it and the false." And then he resorts ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... her is the only thing to explain the harshness of his behaviour to her. Had he not loved her and not been miserable about her, he would have been as polite to her as well bred people would ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... Oh bridal chamber! Oh deep-delved And strongly-guarded mansion! I descend To meet in your dread chambers all my kindred, Who in dark multitudes have crowded down Where Proserpine received the dead. But I, The last, and oh how few more miserable, Go down, or ere my sands ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... happened. Miss Quincey was neither brilliant nor efficient, but she had made the most of herself; at least she had lived a life of grinding intellectual toil; the whole woman had seemed absorbed in her miserable arithmetical function. And yet at fifty (she looked fifty) she had contrived to develop that particular form of foolishness which it was Miss Cursiter's business to exterminate. There were some of them who talked as if the thing was done; as if competitive examinations had ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... to Bassompierre, who vainly attempted to console him, "I am lost; Signore, I am ruined; Signore, I am miserable. I regret my daughter, and shall do so while I live; but I could support this affliction did I not see before me the utter ruin of myself, my wife, my son, and my whole house, in the obstinacy of Leonora. Were you not aware of my whole history I should perhaps be less frank, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... so confined to business that it had been impossible for him to slip away and visit Blanche as he had done formerly. Occasionally, he had written her a note and sent it by his friend the dwarf, making such errands the occasion of a round remuneration to the miserable cripple. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... of our tenderest love of flowers comes from association, and many are lovingly recalled solely by their odors. Balmier breath than was ever borne by blossom is to me the pure pungent perfume of ambrosia, rightly named, as fit for the gods. Not the miserable weed ambrosia of the botany, but a lowly herb that grew throughout the entire summer everywhere in "our garden"; sowing its seeds broadcast from year to year; springing up unchecked in every unoccupied corner, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... which I fear is incurable. If I yield to my penchant for her, and become her husband, instead of being a tender lover, of which she is so worthy, I should be a tyrant, whose frenzy would render her more miserable than myself. They press me to bring our union to a conclusion, they threaten me also with a rival, who without doubt deserves her more than I. How can I, miserable wretch that I am, how can I ward off the blow which threatens me? I flatter myself, at least, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... Herbipolis one day, While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray, Alone with God, as was his pious choice, Heard from beneath a miserable voice,— A sound that seemed of all sad things to tell, As of a lost soul crying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... suggestion. It is the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men who have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life—especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... Then [the Seven Scorpions] took counsel concerning her, and they all at one time shot out their venom on the tail of the scorpion Tefen; as for me, the woman Taha[FN212] opened her door, and I entered into the house of the miserable lady. ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... miserable little cry, and an Italian woman who reminded Rose-Ellen of Mrs. Albi peered out of a patched tent and said, "Iss a bambina! Oooh, the little so-white bambina! Look you here, quick! The people next door have leave these tent. You move in before ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... miserable subterfuge—a treacherous attempt to return to the old order of things! A conspiracy to re-shackle, re-enslave American womanhood with the sordid chains of domestic cares! To drive her back into the kitchen, the laundry, the nursery—back into the dark ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... beach off the town, where all my watchmates were sitting in a row, like lost sheep, waiting to be taken on board again. They had had enough of liberty; indeed, such liberty as that was hardly worth having. It seems hardly credible, but we were actually glad to get on board again, it was so miserable ashore, The natives were most unsociable at the port, and we could not make ourselves understood, so there was not much fun to be had. Even those who were inclined to drink had too little for a spree, which I ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... and the danger of suffocation precluded the building of an adequate fire, and the miserable night wore interminably upon the nerves of the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... grow bright at his approach, and the scowl of discontent and envious repining dissolve into equanimity, or mould itself in smiles. I had yet to see him the kind and patient companion of the friendless and the slighted—slighted, because poor; the untired listener to long tales of misery—so miserable, that they who told them could not track their dim beginnings, or fix the time in distant childhood when wretchedness was not. I had yet to find him standing at the beggar's pallet, giving encouragement, inciting hope, and adding to the counsel of a guide the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... caliph, does not seem to be rich; let us go to him, and inquire into his circumstances. Honest man, said the vizier, who art thou? The old man replied, Sir, I am a fisher, but one of the poorest and most miserable of the trade; I went from my house about noon to go a-fishing, and from that time to this I have not been able to catch one fish; at the same time I have a wife and small children, and nothing to maintain them. The ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... "The miserable ninny never even observed that the foils were buttoned, but, throwing down his, rushed out of the room ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... his white linen suit, bowed acknowledgement. "My compliments, Mr. Haljan. I hope you have no strong religious convictions, else we will make your table here very miserable!" ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... read, how hard to do! Mrs. Gary's image was very ugly yet to Daisy. Could she speak pleasantly to her aunt? could she even look pleasantly at her? could she "forbear" all unkindness, even in thought? Not yet! Daisy felt very miserable and very much ashamed of herself, even while her anger was in abiding ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... it is possible to confuse and torment children by stories of the exquisite delicacy of the consciences of the saints, as St. Aloysius, setting before them a standard that is beyond their comprehension or their degree of grace, and making them miserable because they cannot ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... said Clarendon; "and I had almost as lief, as to be cooped up in a dirty fishing-smack with vulgar sailors, half-starved with their miserable fare." ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... troops for self-defense. Yet throughout Europe Spanish victories have been obtained by Italian generals; the bravest soldiers in foreign armies are Italian exiles. Perhaps it may be argued that the empty titles which abound in every petty city, the fulsome promises on which those miserable vassals found their hopes, are makeweights for such miseries. Call them rather chains to bind the nation, lures and birdlime such as snarers use. There is but one quarter to which the widowed and discrowned Queen of Nations can appeal for succor. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... state of affairs indeed. David Dubbs, aroused from the joyful celebration of his Christmas dinner and from the midst of this cosey party and sent off across the river to his master's house with a miserable letter and by a miserable young man (and if delivering letters when every other well-intentioned man is eating his turkey isn't miserable, why what is it?). Sent off on a graceless errand for nothing, perhaps. But his kind employer, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... water-noises waked me early; but then, I hadn't slept very soundly, because I couldn't help thinking a good deal about Mr. van Buren, who found a telegram waiting for him at Sneek, and went away from us by the first train he could catch. I don't know what was in the telegram, but he looked rather miserable as he read it, and I wondered a good deal in the night if his mother had called him back because Freule Menela van der Windt was not pleased at having him stay so ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... side streets, squalid alleys, and tumble-down tenements. He saw forlorn little children scud away like rats into their holes as he drew near, and wretched, vicious-looking men and women fighting with each other for places in the crowd. Sharp, miserable faces peered round corners at him, and nobody smiled because every one hated or distrusted his neighbor, and they dreaded and disliked the young King because all the King Mordreths had been evil and selfish, and he ...
— The Land of the Blue Flower • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of this miserable creature, once a gentleman, to all advocates of imprisonment for debt. First rendered reckless by imprisonment—then hopeless—then sottish—and, last of all, from utter despair of freedom, insane! Round his withered temples is a blue ribbon, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... different tale—governesses and nurses, sister and brothers, it was the same story with all—Hoodie's temper was the strangest and the worst that ever a child had made herself and other people miserable by. ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... his hands and let them drop to his sides. Then he muttered something—a long sentence—in dialect. His voice sounded like a miserable old man's. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... exhibitions as were made throughout the larger cities of the United States. In America regret for him was wide-spread and personal, for he stood for something definite in American eyes—rather unfortunately, perhaps, in one way, because Verestschagin, too, had painted those miserable sepoys being eternally ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... 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 ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... had received Holy Orders has ever swerved from the faith, though the "Hau- Haus" have led away many hundreds of Christians. Still, a good number remain loyal and faithful, and hold to the English in the miserable war which is still raging, provoked by disputes over ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... secret was still locked within her own heart, weighing heavily upon her conscience, but still unconfessed, still unsuspected by others. Ever since that miserable afternoon she had shrunk from meeting her classmates, and although she had been obliged to do so at school, she had avoided all other opportunities of seeing them, and on one excuse and another had refused to attend the meetings of the club which came together every Friday afternoon, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... Macbeth was subject. His queen and he had their sleeps afflicted with terrible dreams, and the blood of Banquo troubled them not more than the escape of Fleance, whom now they looked upon as father to a line of kings who should keep their posterity out of the throne. With these miserable thoughts they found no peace, and Macbeth determined once more to seek out the weird sisters, and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Newark, now Niagara. The seat of Government, according to the Duke de la Rochefoucault Liancourt, who visited it in 1795, consisted of about a hundred houses, "mostly very fine structures." Governor Simcoe apparently did not occupy one of them, but a "miserable wooden house,"—formerly occupied by the Commissaries, who resided there on account of the navigation of the lake,—his guard consisting of four soldiers, who every morning came from the fort, to which they returned in the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... turn to stone," said Robert, breaking a long miserable silence, "because the Sand-fairy said he'd give us another wish to-morrow, and he couldn't if ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... memories, I will repeat it. Ladies and gentlemen, in this Station we have the honor of being protected from the malice of the aborigine by two noble regiments. We count, moreover, at least thirty of the fair sex and forty miscellaneous persons, such as miserable civilians like myself, and children. Hitherto, we have been content to meet at odd times and odd places. When hospitality has run dry, we have resorted to a shed-like structure dignified with the name ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... suddenly, "they have turned sharp to the right. Oh, I hope they won't kill! I feel miserable when they kill, especially when the fox has shown us such ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... gray—her handbag, her whole demeanor—all bespoke affluence. She had probably been visiting at some little town, and had come down on the accommodation; but no one had been there to meet her. Anyway, Spike found himself too miserable and too cold to ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Ulysses is religious in the truest sense—'Father Zeus, thou who rulest over gods and men, surely thou hast just thundered in the starry sky, and there is no cloud anywhere. Thou showest this as a sign to some one. Fulfill now, even to me, miserable wretch, the prayer which I now offer'" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... amazing love! Christ visited this poor beggar, yea, was formed in him the hope of glory; his body, so miserable in the sight of man, was a temple of the Holy Ghost, and the angels carry his soul to heaven. O the riches ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... farm instructor, and those who had left comfortable homes in the east in order to carry civilization into the remote places of the west. The work that they were performing was calculated to elevate the Indian and make him a better man; taking him from his miserable mode of living and leading him into a more happy and prosperous life for this and the next. It is unaccountable, and there is yet a something that will come to the surface that was the real cause for this dreadful act. At this point a ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... of being with you I am miserable, upon seeing you take so little care of a health which is so precious to every honest man, but more so to me in particular, because I know you, and therefore can't help loving, honouring, and esteeming you; but alass! what service can my zeal and attachment be to my dear master, unless ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... detectives, swilling beer in public-houses, gave their opinions about the crime, and the more beer they drank, the wilder and more impossible became their theories. Some suggested that the gipsies camped on Southberry Heath, who were continually fighting amongst themselves, had killed the miserable creature; others, asserting that the scamp was desperately poor, hinted at suicide induced by sheer despair; but the most generally accepted opinion was that Jentham had been killed in some drunken frolic ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Chimes, one note bespeaking disregard, or stern regard, of any hope, or joy, or pain, or sorrow, of the many-sorrowed throng; who hears us make response to any creed that gauges human passions and affections, as it gauges the amount of miserable food on which humanity may pine and wither; does us wrong. That wrong you have done ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... "Oh, how miserable I was during all this time! I was suspicious of everybody and trembled at common noises. Any unexpected look of stranger caused a start. It was in vain that I reasoned against this foolish fear. My misery was so great that I contemplated suicide. It ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... overthrow of which they are all the time more ardently longing. If, on the other hand, we go into the electoral struggle arm in arm with the Freethinkers (Radicals) or even with the National Liberals, if we make ourselves their accomplices, if we declare ourselves ready for the same miserable behavior which the Freethinkers made themselves guilty of by entering into an alliance with von Buelow, we may disillusion the masses; we may push them from us and kill political life. If the Social Democracy ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Hamburg congratulates itself that "the British campaign of pin-pricks is fast coming to a miserable end." If the reference is to bayonets, our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... that, having now punished the wicked, he would of his goodness spare the remainder, and such as he had hitherto judged fit to be delivered from so severe a calamity; for that otherwise these last must be more miserable than the first, and that they must be condemned to a worse condition than the others, unless they be suffered to escape entirely; that is, if they be reserved for another deluge; while they must be afflicted with the terror and sight of the first ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... reflect that even what we find good ought to be still better, and how distant we are still from perfection, we are discouraged and dissatisfied. Besides all this, although the approbation I have received has been very flattering, the least adverse criticism, even miserable as it might be, has always occasioned me more vexation than all the praise I received could give me pleasure." And, again, he endeavours to impress on him that the favour he received from the world he owed not to his verses. "Do not imagine that they are my verses ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... in climbing into the boat to "study her lessons," she had sprained her ankle, and she had been very miserable all by herself, and cried and called for him until ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... hour later Anthony Cardew entered his house. He had spent a miserable evening. Some young whipper snapper who employed a handful of men had undertaken to show him where he, Anthony Cardew, was a clog in the wheel of progress. Not in so many words, but he had said: "Tempora mutantur, Mr. Cardew. And the wise employer ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... handsome figures; and their places were progressively supplied with the work of local artists. These last it was one of my first duties to review and criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all were saleable. I said so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream widen that divided ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... signs to the old woman, but she took up a stick and struck him, and beat his horse and drove him away; but as he was leaving he caught a glimpse of Finola at the door of the hut, and saw that she was crying. This sight made him so very miserable that he could think of nothing else but her sad face that he had always seen so bright, and he allowed the old horse to go on without minding where he was going. Suddenly he heard a voice saying: "It is time for you ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... system excuse, if not justify, infidelity on the part of the wife? An old, drivelling dotard takes to his home and bed a virgin in her teens, whom he has purchased, but as he has gone through a formal ceremony, law and the world pronounce her wife. His miserable physical incapacity provokes without satisfying the passions of his victim; and in the arms of a lover she secretly enjoys the solace which she cannot derive from her legal owner. Then, if she is detected, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... rained so heavily that Mr. Evringham was obliged to forego his ride. Wet weather was an unmixed ill to him. It not only made riding and golf miserable, but it reminded him that rheumatism was getting a grip on one ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... "What's this? A drunkard?" He shook his head and opened the dead man's shirt to feel for any possible flutter of life in the heart. There was none. And he thought: "If this were only Grimshaw! If the whole miserable business ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather confine ourselves to studying ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... thwarts, I passed miserable hours, unable to move more than a few inches in the narrow space. At noon, with the vertical eye of the evil sun staring down upon us, my clothes were so hot that I had to hold them off my body. I meditated leaping into the ocean and swimming awhile. Ghost Girl saw my intention ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and has been nothing less than a racking spectacle to my sight. Each mournful emptied shape stands ever after like the nest of some beautiful bird from which the inhabitant has departed and left it to fill with snow. I have been absolutely miserable when I have looked in a face for her I used to see there, and could see her ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... you have no right, as an honorable attorney, to make him do. A just judge ought to stop you if you try it. To confuse a witness whom you know to be telling the truth is not skill; it is a trick, and a very miserable trick, whose performance requires ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... unlimited time, can give rise. If we knew these, and found none competent to originate species, we should have good ground for denying their origin by natural causation. Till we know them, any hypothesis is better than one which involves us in such miserable presumption. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... up—not her own only, but all the blood of all the De Beaurepaires—pale as ashes with great wrath, her purple eyes on fire, and her whole panther-like body full of spring. "Wretch! you dare to insult her, and before me! Arriere miserable! or I soil my hand with your face." And her hand was up with the word, up, up, higher it seemed than ever a hand was raised before. And if he had hesitated one moment, I really believe it would have come down; not heavily, perhaps—the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... very indigent, but I am not at all miserable. If we are to be made miserable by that, what is the use of all ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... enjoyed nearly half a century of entire independence and self-rule. And with what issues? As respects moral and intellectual culture, stagnation: in all that concerns material development, a fatal retrogression. He beholds there, at this day, a miserable parody of European and American institutions, without the spirit that animates either: the tinsel of French sentiment on the ground of negro ignorance: even the 'sacred right of 'insurrection' burlesqued: a people which has for its only living belief an ill-defined apprehension of the superiority ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Providence which has uniformly protected them, will advance with alacrity to the attack of works incapable of being defended by the wretched Garrison posted behind them, consisting of Sailors unacquainted with the use of arms, of Citizens incapable of Soldiers' duty, & of a few miserable Emigrants. The General is confident that a vigorous & spirited attack must be attended with success. The Troops shall have the effects of the Governor, Garrison, & of such as have been active in misleading the ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... preservation of mankind. Now, does it not follow, from what has been said, that for a man to receive the news of his son's death with dry eyes, and to weep at the same time for the calamities of his country, is a wretched affectation and a miserable inconsistency? Is not that, in plain English, to receive with dry eyes the news of the deaths of those for whose sake our country is a name so dear to us, and at the same time to shed tears for those for whose sakes our country is not a name so dear ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... is truly miserable, his misery reaching its keenest whenever he either looks into his mirror or stands before a portrait that hangs against the wall of the sala. It is a likeness of Adela Miranda; for he has taken possession of the house of his predecessor, with all its furniture and pictures, left ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... plan; but her mind, quieted down somewhat by the very effort to preserve outward composure for his sake, perceived that her behaviour had secured, at any rate, a short period of safety. Perhaps because of the similarity of their miserable origin in the dregs of mankind, she had understood Ricardo perfectly. He would keep quiet for a time now. In this momentarily soothing certitude her bodily fatigue asserted itself, the more overpoweringly since its cause was not so much the demand on her strength as the awful suddenness ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... of things. They have no meaning apart from the soul. The world says that health and wealth are good, and that sickness and poverty are evil. If that were true the line that separates the healthy from the sick, the rich from the poor, would also separate the happy from the miserable. But we find joy and sorrow on both sides of that line. We are drawn to look deeper than this for our definition of good and evil. We have to make the soul the final arbiter amid these conflicting voices. Here ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... the window. He nodded and his nod was returned. Hannah's experience was as gloomy as his own. She did not look happy and somehow the idea that she was not happy pleased him; Abbie Larkin had been altogether too happy; it grated on him. He was miserable and he wanted company of his own kind. He stopped, hesitated, and then turned in at the ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... own order; to have figured through the struggle as nominally the superior House, but really the mere ciphers of the Commons; to have had to throw all their aristocratic dignity and all their permissible conservatism at last into the miserable form of partisanship with a despotic Presbyterianism and zeal for the suppression of Sects, Heresies, and Independency:—here was a retrospect for men of rank, men of ambition, men of pride in their pedigrees! And now to have an Army of these Independents, Sectaries, and Heretics, holding ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... smoke, mingled with the suggestion of some masculine soap or essence, were so poignant in their effect that she trembled and water rose in her eyes. In fact—and despite her terrified effort to control it, a miserable tear fell on her cheek and stood there because she ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with cushions, trumpets of carved ivory, a sunshade of crimson satin, a sword in a silver scabbard, and no end of such gear.[599] An old civilization had been found and a route of commerce discovered, and a factory was to be set up at once on that Indian coast. What a contrast to the miserable performance of Columbus, who had started with the flower of Spain's chivalry for rich Cipango, and had only led them to a land where they must either starve or do work fit for peasants, while he spent his time in cruising among wild islands! The king ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... a dismal character; for, hearing the noise of a horse's hoofs in the silent streets at that hour of the night, the people opened their doors as he passed by, thinking it the pest-cart, and brought forth many a miserable victim of the pestilence. Averting his head from the revolting spectacles, Sir Norman held the bottle of vinegar to his nostrils, and rode rapidly till he reached Newgate. There he was stopped until his bill of health was examined, and that small manuscript being found ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... bowed and retired; and his trusty band was diminished to two thousand, and at last to five hundred, volunteers. The cral, [28] or despot of the Servians received him with general hospitality; but the ally was insensibly degraded to a suppliant, a hostage, a captive; and in this miserable dependence, he waited at the door of the Barbarian, who could dispose of the life and liberty of a Roman emperor. The most tempting offers could not persuade the cral to violate his trust; but he soon inclined to the stronger side; and his friend was dismissed without injury to a new vicissitude ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon |
