"Misery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never will,' he said, in a tone of alarm. 'You can have no conception of the misery the whole thing causes me. I cannot understand it. What possible affinity there can be between myself and that disgusting little snob passes my comprehension. I assure you, my dear Mac, the knowledge that ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... on, for feelings of delicacy prevented him from gazing any longer at the men with the golden girdles; but as he went he pondered on the misery he had seen, and thought to himself that this golden sand did more mischief than all the poisons of the apothecary; for it dazzled the eyes of some, it strained the hearts of others, it bowed down the heads of many to the earth with its ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... time, Johnnie completed the climb alone, meditating upon the boy's words. "The spirit to try!" Where had his spirit gone, he wondered. Perhaps it had been crushed beneath the weight of misery he had beheld; surely he had seen enough. Hourly contact with sickness and misfortune on such a gigantic scale was enough to chill any one's hopes, and although his sensibilities had been dulled, his apprehensions had been quickened hour by hour. Now ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... the worthy tyrant, who was in an ecstasy of delight over the riches pouring into the treasury, prevented his carrying out this design. And, indeed, as he reminded himself, were not these honest comedians, who had rescued him from his misery and despair, entitled in all fairness to profit, so far as they could, by this unexpected and overwhelming favour which he had all unwittingly gained? So, resigning himself as philosophically as he could ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Jack throughout that week that Adrien's heart went out in compassionate pity, for in his face there dwelt a misery so complete, so voiceless that no comfort of hers appeared to be able to bring relief. Often through those days did Annette ask to see him, but the old doctor was relentless. There must be absolute quiet ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... princely wealth and homage for Sabbatai had passed. In response to the joyous inspiration of Melisselda, he had abandoned all his ascetic habits, and lived the life of a king, ruling a world never again to be darkened with sin and misery. The wine sparkled and flowed, the choicest dishes adorned the banqueting-table, flowers and delicate odors made grateful the air, and the beautiful maidens of Israel danced voluptuously before him, shooting out passionate glances from under their long eyelashes. The fast of the seventeenth ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... not use an old Friend so scurvily; consider the Misery thou'lt indure to have the Heart and Mind of a jilting Whore possess thee: What a Fit of the Devil must he suffer who acts her Part from fourteen to fourscore! No,'tis resolv'd thou remain Nicholas Fetherfool still, shalt marry the Monster, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... all that back again? Could his own harmless-looking Converter plunge millions back into that kind of misery? It seemed hardly possible, but Sam couldn't banish the specter of the Great Depression ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... not speak of that. There I am firm. Although the misery of the past months were to be multiplied ten hundred times in the future, I ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... you may defend her, if you choose; but you must allow me to tell you plainly that it is Mathilde's advice that has guided me from the days of my innocent childhood, and has led me into all the misery I am suffering now! If it were not for her I should not be married to-day and separated from my parents. She came here with me—not to help me, as she pretended—but to be able still to spy on me, quietly and secretly, in her usual way, and afterwards to make use of what she had discovered. ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... where prisoners are kept pending examination in the procurator's court. The floor and walls were of stone. It was bitterly cold. There was no window, no light, no firebox, and no chair. Alone, in the petrifying darkness, her teeth chattering, her limbs trembling, poor Asako huddled her misery into a corner of the dirty cell, to await the further tender mercies of the Japanese criminal code. She could hear the scuttering of rats. Had she been ten times guilty, she felt that she could not have ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... did not know. He couldn't carry back tales of success, for his salary was only four hundred dollars a year. He couldn't go back well dressed, because he was fifty dollars in debt to the bank, and owed a tailor's bill in Banfield.... Invariably thoughts of the girl he knew he loved brought him misery and despondency. Thoughts of home brought him little less. He might have known, from that, that either he or the bank was a failure; but a fellow of nineteen looks through a smoked glass. To say that Evan did not think is scarcely the fact. He did think, but spasmodically. The mind is a dual ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his cordial wine Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,— If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Reigate. In the wars of the Parliament, Farnham west of the Way saw the siege of an hour; Lord Holland led his little band from Dorking to Reigate and fled back again. Last of the echoes of Stuart battles, Monmouth, after Sedgmoor, was driven through Farnham to lodge for one night of misery and fear at ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... might, without any special invitation, go to see him dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably well, about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which he had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the canting meddling preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom His Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father or ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... appointment; but he had a small independent income, and on that he and Saidie could still live together. They would go to Ceylon or to Malabar. Perhaps also he could make money otherwise than officially. Wherever he went his wife would probably pursue him, intent on making his life a misery. Still, Fortune might favour him; he and Saidie might in time reach some corner of the world where their remorseless tracker would lose trace of them. Perhaps to go to England at once and obtain a legal separation would be the best plan, but then it was winter ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... attended most of their sicknesses, used to tell fearful things of the misery, vice, and hardness, and did acts of almost heroic kindness among them, which did not seem consistent with what, to my grief and dismay, was reported of this chosen companion of Harold—that physical science had conducted him into materialism. The chief comfort I had was that ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... girls grieved and shut themselves away from their neighbors, and refused to go out, or to be in any measure comforted. A month in the ordinary reckoning is really a very short period of time, but to these girls, in their grief and misery, it seemed almost endless. One night Jasmine lay awake from the time she laid her head on the pillow till the first sun had dawned; then Primrose took fright, and began to resume her old gentle, but still ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... to moderate, and the last four days of our ice-cutting were much more comfortable. It had been a severe ordeal, however; the eighty-one dollars that we collected for it were but scanty recompense for the misery ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... meeting with no evidence of life anywhere. Still the travelling was good, with here and there little streams of icy water trickling over the rocks. They made most excellent progress, Hampton ever grasping the bit of Murphy's horse, his anxious thought more upon his helpless companion in misery than upon the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... insensible beings is commonly founded on that pleasure and pain which we receive from their use and application any way to our senses though with their destruction. But hatred or love, to beings capable of happiness or misery, is often the uneasiness of delight which we find in ourselves, arising from their very being or happiness. Thus the being and welfare of a man's children or friends, producing constant delight in him, he is said constantly to love them. But it suffices ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... instruments of the world, that known as the Juruparis, used by the Indians of the Rio Negro, seems to involve most misery to humanity in general. To women and girls the very sight of it means death in some form or other, usually by poison, and boys are strictly forbidden to see it until grown to manhood, and then only after a most severe ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... upset; to be succeeded by day labour, pauperism, government relief, subscriptions, starvation. Europe, gainful, insatiate Europe would reap the harvest; but to the now happy, contented, satiate Philippine Archipelago, what would remain but the stubble, but leanness, want, unrest, misery?" [123] ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... life that, whether up or down, white or black, ain't been nothin' but luck. Which nacherally, bein' a kyard sharp that a-way, I studies luck the same as Peets yere studies drugs; an' my discov'ries teaches that luck is plumb gregar'ous. Like misery in that proverb, luck loves company; it shore ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.' But we do not see the wretched misery, how the young people, in the midst of Christendom, now also languish and perish miserably for lack of the Gospel, in which they should always be instructed and drilled." (W. 6, 461; E. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... were enjoying in advance the rumpus they expected. I am afraid schoolboys do not always sympathize with the weaker side. In the present instance, there was hardly a boy who had not at some time or other felt the weight of Jim's fist, and, as there is an old saying that "misery loves company," it was not, perhaps, a matter of wonder that they looked forward with interest to seeing another suffer the same ill-treatment which they had on former ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, while awaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paper and steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fields and groves. On this particular March afternoon the weather ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... him into the tent, where presently were brought the wretched king and the grey-haired Reginald de Chatillon, and with them a few other great knights who, even in the midst of their misery, stared at Godwin and Wulf in wonderment. Saladin read the look, and explained lest ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... discovered by a compassionate visitor dissolved in tears over her wash-tub. Such misery could not be permitted; and we transferred half the task at once ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... said, "God forbid that thou and all my friends should mock my misery. What could I be to a man that hath known the heart's love ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... having never given anything to the people and having taken all from them. Czarism took from the miserable peasant his last penny under form of taxes; it took his children from him for war; for the least act of disobedience to authority he was whipped. He wallowed in misery and in ignorance, deprived of every right, human or legal. How could he, this wretched and oppressed peasant develop civic sentiments, a consciousness of his personal dignity? On the other hand, we must take into account the immense weariness caused by the war and by the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... of some earlier Oriental nation. Rosenmuller, Von Bohlen, and others, say it bears unmistakable relationship to the Zendavesta which tells how Ahriman, the old Serpent, beguiled the first pair into sin and misery. These correspondences, and also that between the tree of life and the Zoroastrian plant hom, which gives life and will produce the resurrection, are certainly striking. Buttmann sees in God's declaration to Adam, "Behold, I have ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... ruined anyhow," Mr. Simmonds said. "Poor lad! poor lad! Another fortnight and I was going to apply for a commission for him. I wish to heavens I had done so at Christmas, and then all this misery ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... that section at least, had given up hope of being able to score the big victory that was in every mind when the war started. What the outcome would be did not seem to be clear to them. All they knew was that the work meant misery for them, and that, as far as they could see, this misery would continue on and on indefinitely. They had lost confidence in the newspapers. It was plain to be seen that the stereotyped rubber-stamped kind of official news that got into the papers did ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... After knocking three or four times, I tried kicking, and the second kick raised, from somewheres inside, a groan that was as lonesome a sound as ever I heard. No human noise in my experience come within a mile of it for dead, downright misery—unless, maybe, it's Cap'n Jonadab trying to sing ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... despise me! thou whom experience has not taught that it is misery to lose that which it is not happiness ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Jim don't know what misery I have been in for three months, and now—will to-morrow never come, so I may get into the whirl and clean up this deal and send that girl back to her father with the money! I wanted her to telegraph the judge that things looked like she would win out and bring back the relief, but she would ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... officers shall take advantage of favorable opportunities to point out the misery and disaster that follow upon moral uncleanliness; and the fact that venereal disease ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... speechless misery of the first days Mrs. Waldeaux was conscious that George was hanging over her, tender as a mother with a baby. She commanded him to stay on deck, for each day she saw that he, too, grew more haggard. "Let me fight it out alone," she would beg of him. ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... order were visible everywhere. A pleasant sight; but the pleasantest sight of all was to see the little bright-eyed brown darlings clustering round him who was indeed their father in God; who had delivered them from misery and loneliness, and—in the case of the girls—too probably vice likewise; and drawn them, by love, to civilisation and Christianity. The children, as fast as they grow up, are put out to domestic ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... his clay pipe. When asked why he did not call for assistance, he replied: "Oh, no; I thought my turn would come after awhile to be cared for, so I just concluded to quietly wait and try and smoke away some of my misery." Before morning he was dead. One might ask the question. What did such men of the South have to fight for—no negroes, no property, not even a home that they could call their own? What was it that caused them to make such sacrifices—to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of her husband's death. Like many widows, she came to the unwise decision of remarrying. She sold the house and land to her step-daughter, Madame Rogron, and married a young physician named Neraud, who wasted her whole fortune. She died of grief and misery two years later. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... selfish to dwell on her own sufferings, when in the midst of wretches, who had not only lost all that endears life, but their very selves, her imagination was occupied with melancholy earnestness to trace the mazes of misery, through which so many wretches must have passed to this gloomy receptacle of disjointed souls, to the grand source of human corruption. Often at midnight was she waked by the dismal shrieks of demoniac rage, or of excruciating despair, uttered in such wild tones of indescribable ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is very well only for his pain, so that he is not able to stir; but is in great pain. I would to God that he were in town that I might have what help can be got for him, for it troubles me to have him live in that condition of misery ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... very much, and your face has not yet learned the great feminine art of masking misery in smiles, and burying it in dimples. Mind, dear, I do not ask, I do not wish to know what your hidden fox is, preying so ravenously upon your vitals. Sooner or later the punishment of the Spartan ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... ruined; if I marry he will find me out, if I don't they will lead me such a life; oh! what shall I do!" We fucked twice in the rain against a wall, putting down the umbrella to do it. Afterwards we met at the dressmaker's, talked over our misery and cried, and fucked, and cried again. Then it was nothing but worry, she crying at her future, I wondering if I should be found out; still with all our misery, we never failed to fuck if there was a clear five minutes before us. Then her mother wrote to say that old Brown was dead, and her father ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Pottinger, thus described the condition of the emigrant Boers:—"They were exposed to a state of misery which he had never before seen equalled, except in Massena's invasion of Portugal. The ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... whole countenance lighted with the recollections the name revived. "They called her Alice! Elsie or Alice; 'tis all the same. A laughing, playful child she was, when happy; and tender and weeping in her misery! Her hair was shining and yellow, as the coat of the young fawn, and her skin clearer than the purest water that drips from the rock. Well do I remember her! I ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... she heard this flew off to the young tailor. Had misery so great as this overtaken ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... unawares, The sense of pity stole away My loneliness and misery,— When lo, a light ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... he cried. "If she'll have me!—if the rest of my life's service can atone in any way for all the misery I've caused her—it's hers for ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... careless daughters, give ear unto my speech; many days shall ye be troubled, ye careless women, etc." It is just because we fold our hands and sit at ease that so many of our less fortunate fellow creatures are leading lives of misery, want, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... fell. Who dies in youth and vigour, dies the best, Struck through with wounds, all honest on the breast. But when the fates, in fulness of their rage, Spurn the hoar head of unresisting age, In dust the reverend lineaments deform, And pour to dogs the life-blood scarcely warm: This, this is misery! the last, the worse, That man can feel! ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... desires. Weary of a struggle without an adversary, she had reached in her despair to the point of preferring good to evil, if it came in the form of enjoyment; evil to good, if it offered her some poetic emotion; misery to mediocrity, as something nobler and higher; the gloomy and mysterious future of present death to a life without hopes or even without sufferings. Never in any heart was so much powder heaped ready for the spark, never were ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... moment of his spare hours that day, and he had postponed until his evening round of visits a number of calls that were not pressing. When he came out to his buggy, Harry Aldis stood at the horse's head, at the carriage steps beside the driveway, his chin sunk on his breast, in an attitude of hopeless misery. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... glorious far and wide, Whom penance-rites have sanctified? And did my glorious mother—she, Heiress of noble destiny— Serve her great guest with woodland store, Whom all should honour evermore? Didst thou the tale to Rama tell Of what in ancient days befell, The sin, the misery, and the shame Of guilty God and faithless dame? And, O thou best of hermits, say, Did Rama's healing presence stay Her trial? was the wife restored Again to him, my sire and lord? Say, Hermit, did that sire of mine Receive her with a soul benign, When long austerities in time Had cleansed ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... 'Life' gave this extraordinary fact. He said that Dr. Bentley, who so ably replied to Collins's 'Discourse,' when many years after he discovered him fallen into great distress, conceiving that by having ruined Collins's character as a writer for ever, he had been the occasion of his personal misery, he liberally contributed to his maintenance. In vain I mentioned to that elegant writer, who was not curious about facts, that this person could never have been Anthony Collins, who had always a plentiful fortune; and when it was suggested to him that this 'A. Collins' as he printed ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... 351, note. [293] Ironically: 'I am of opinion that you should have mercy, and dismiss the criminals.' The subjunctive without ut depends upon the verb censeo; it is not a subjunctive for an imperative. [294] 'Assuredly this clemency of yours will end in misery.' Respecting nae, see Zumpt, S 360; and on the transitive sense of vertere, S 145. [295] The sentence beginning with scilicet is again ironical. The sense, without the irony, is: 'Nor can it be supposed that you consider ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... now Peter's turn to be silent; and as the two, with their little knot of district-visitors behind them, walk moodily along the great esplanade which overlooked the harbour, and then vanish suddenly up some dingy alley into the crowded misery of the sailors' quarter, we will leave them to go about their errand of mercy, and, like fashionable people, keep to the grand parade, and listen again to our two fashionable friends in the carved and gilded ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... memory. And though, in time, rebellion and suffering had died away, he had never really forgotten. Even to the cricket-playing, larking boy at Eton there had now and then returned, with queer suddenness, recollections which gave him odd moments of resurrected misery. They passed away, but at long intervals they came back and always with absolute reality. At Oxford the intervals had been longer but a certain picture was one whose haunting never lost its clearness. It was a vision ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... did the Vandals, having come from Africa with Genseric, their King, who, not content with his booty and prey and all the cruelties that he wrought there, carried away her people into slavery, to their exceeding great misery, and among them Eudoxia, once the wife of the Emperor Valentinian, who had been slaughtered no long time before by his own soldiers. For these, having fallen away in very great measure from the ancient Roman valour, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich to-day and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... when I was a boy, walking round the yard, pushing their noses through the rails, trying for a likely place to jump, stamping and pawing and roaring and knocking their heads against the heavy close rails, with misery and rage in their eyes, till their time was up. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... themselves; for, did it do so, a band of pagans might ravage all the Christian countries in the world. I fight not because I love it. I hate bloodshed, and would rather die than plunder and slay peaceful and unoffending people. You have been in England and have seen the misery which war has caused there. Such misery assuredly I would inflict on none. I fight only to defend myself and my country men and women. Did your people leave our land I would gladly never ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... hands were placed, backs up, upon the handle of his goose, and his chin rested upon the backs of his hands. To judge from his sorrowful complexion, one would suppose that he sat rather to be sketched as a picture of misery or of heroism in distress than for the industrious purpose of pressing the seams of a garment. There was a great deal of New Burlington Street pathos in his countenance; his face, like the times, was rather out of joint; "the sun was just setting, and his golden beams fell, with a saddened splendor, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... not merely that she would have to part with Eric, "but that bright boy," thought Fanny, "what will become of him? I have heard strange things of schools; oh, if he should be spoilt and ruined, what misery it would be. Those baby lips, that pure young heart, a year may work sad change in their words and thoughts!" She sighed again, and her eyes glistened as she raised them upwards, and breathed a ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... of the Djezin can be likened to those spiders who lose their life while in the act of copulation,—the female making a dinner from off the male,—only the spider is said to die a happy death, while that of the Arab is one of misery. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... prelude. The "Grail" subject distorted, the "Spear" motive thrust in discordant, the "Faith and Love" theme fluttering like a wounded dove in pain, fierce bursts of passion, wild shocks of uncontrolled misery, mingling with the "carnal joy" music of Klingsor's magic garden and the shuddering might ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... unerringly the rocky road, stepping through splashing dark fords. If there was a repetition of the past visit he would have something to say. Hannah was his, she was promised to him. He felt the coolness of her cheeks, her bright mouth against his. A tyranny of misery and desire flooded him at the sudden danger—it was as much as that—threatening his happiness ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... nature; and when she called to mind that there had once been a probability that this individual might have become the husband of her Venetia, her child whom it had been the sole purpose of her life to save from the misery of which she herself had been the victim; that she had even dwelt on the idea with complacency, encouraged its progress, regretted its abrupt termination, but consoled herself by the flattering hope that time, with even more ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... you have, child, and how little you know of the realities of life." But gazing into the pure face, with a vague dread for that future, and knowing that One alone knew whether it might contain happiness or misery for her darling, she said, with visible emotion, "You are a good girl, Clemence, and whatever may be in the future, remember that I always sought your welfare as the one great object of my existence. Always ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... so discouraged at the idea of having all this misery in this life that I mingled tears with the beads of perspiration that rolled down my cheeks, and she snatched me out of those steaming wrappings in less time than it takes to tell it, soused me in a tub of cold water, fed me with a chicken wing and mashed potatoes, and the information ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... scape-goat of nations and faiths in their strife So cruel,—and thou so fair! Poor girl!—so, best, in her misery named,— Discrown'd of two kingdoms, and bare; Not first nor last on this one was cast The burden that others should share. Visions of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she is going away; the gentleman spoke the truth when he said it always comes to misery. There may be a fine appearance for a time, and everything seem grand and gay; but it always comes ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... complications of her resolve—how much her child would suffer for want of a father's name; memories of lapsed dairymaids had stressed in her experience the necessity of a marriage no matter how close to the birth. But she did not rate these difficulties higher than the misery of such a home as hers and Albert's would be. Better anything than that. Joanna had no illusions about Albert now—he'd have led her a dog's life if she had married him in the first course of things; now it would be even worse, and her child should ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... black man as the "ward of the nation"—a sort of pauper, dependent upon the charity of a generous and humane people for sustenance, and even tolerance to dwell among them, to enjoy the blessing of a civilization which I pronounce to be reared upon quicksand, a civilization more fruitful of poverty, misery and crime than of competence, happiness and virtue. Those who regard the black man in the light of a "ward of the nation," are too narrow-minded, ignorant or ungenerous to deserve my contempt. The people of this country have been made fabulously affluent by legalized ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... extremity, 'to occupy myself with Latin and to abstain entirely from Greek.' And yet he knew that 'if the men of our age advance one step further in their neglect of Greek, doom and destruction are impending over all sound arts and sciences.' 'It is my misery,' he groans, 'to behold the gradual extinction and total decay of Greek letters, in whose train I see the whole body of refined learning on the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... into bed, another man approached Miles and asked for a particular kind of tobacco. The boy sought for it in the place where it was usually kept, but, failing to find it, turned to Katherine, who stood in impatient misery by the stove, waiting to go to her father when the men had ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... sense of the beautiful always awakens within us; and this became manifest in Mary Fuller. For the first time the squalid misery of her home became a subject of self-reproach, and with a thoughtful cloud upon her brow, she set herself patiently to work drawing out all the scant elements of comfort that the place afforded. Out of this grew a longing for the presence of her father, that he too ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... industry, the new Governor imposed heavy penal marks if the tasks set them were not done to time, and what these tasks were may be gathered from the fact that in sixteen months no less than fifteen prisoners were driven to make an attempt on their lives, through the misery and torture to which they were exposed, three unfortunates being only too successful. Of course such things could not be altogether hushed up, and after one or two unsatisfactory "inquiries" had been held, a Royal Commission was sent down ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all directions the Northern and the Southern Mediterranean; one effort more, and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the magic changes accomplished ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... education began again to exert themselves, and by leading him to a thorough confidence in the mercies of Christ weaned him from that affection which hitherto he had for this sinful and miserable world, in which, as he had felt nothing but misery and affliction, the change seemed the easier, so that he at last began not only to shake off the fear of death, bur even to desire it. Nor was this calmness short and transitory, but he continued in it till ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... holy Tanofir, who doubtless allows these things to happen to you to try your faith by direct order of the gods. Be sure that I will not leave you to perish, or if there should be no escape, that I will find a way to put you out of your misery and to avenge you. Yes, yes, I will yet see that accursed swine, Houman, take your place in this boat. Now I go to the Court to which it seems that this gold chain gives me a right of entry, or so the eunuch says, but soon I will ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his regiment, ran up to him. To his misery he felt that he was whole and unhurt. The mare had broken her back, and it was decided to shoot her. Vronsky could not answer questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and without picking up his cap that had ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... into the region where Doctor Fernald, Doctor Goddard and many others have prepared material for convincing the public mind that no one thing so increases social degeneracy and so adds to the sum of human misery as the unprotected freedom of defectives to procreate and pollute the family currents.[14] This is not a treatise on social pathology and elsewhere must be found the details of investigation and information that justify this ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the sad fate of Newport for years following the Revolution—the misery and dilapidation that succeeded its former prosperity. We turn from the picture which a later French traveller, Brissot de Warville, draws of its poverty and desolation in 1788 to look at the renaissance, the rejuvenation that rescued this historic spot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... my gloomy picture from your mind—forget me quietly; let not a thought of my misery mar your ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... slightly, and, weary of her own thoughts, which bad been anything but agreeable, and bored by the society of her companions in misery, she wrapped her rug warmly about her and ventured out on deck. The air, laden with salt spray, seemed invigorating, and without much difficulty she found her way to her sheltered corner of the preceding evening. She had been seated but a few moments, however, when the young Englishman ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Wolf of Whitegarth, 'and great thanks we owe to this man that he biddeth us this: for great will be the gain to us if we become so like the Gods that we may deliver the poor from misery. Now must I needs think how they shall wonder when they come to Burgdale and find out how happy it ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... the old peddlers now own and inhabit the palaces where their ancestors once begged at the back doors for secondhand clothes; while the posterity of the former lords have been, in many cases, forced down into the swarming misery of the lower classes. This is a sad world, and to contemplate it is enough to make a man a philosopher; but he will scarcely know whether to belong to the laughing or the weeping school—whether to follow the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... dull misery of his convict life at Port Arthur one bright memory shone upon him like a star. In the depth of his degradation, at the height of his despair, he cherished one pure and ennobling thought—the thought of the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Spaniards; but this scanty supply was quite insufficient for their necessities. Soto now ordered some of the swine which accompanied the army to be slaughtered, and distributed eight ounces of their flesh daily to every one of his men. Even this was only protracting their misery, yet all shewed wonderful patience, as their commander gave them ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... given you pain?" Max went on, noting the traces of tears on her face and the misery in ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... stood beside sick-beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In alms-house, hospital, and jail, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts. Suddenly, as they stood together in an open place, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... slipper she held in her hand, "is not that they are as helpless as babies the moment anything goes wrong with their poor little heads or their poor little tummies, but that they work so hard, in spite of that, to increase the general discomfort of living. Women have a great deal of misery to bear, they are brave or cowardly about it as the case may be, but at least they endure and renounce and diet and keep early hours—or whatever's to be done—they TRY to lessen the sum of physical misery. But men go cheerily on—they smoke too much, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... their sides, either uprooted or cut through as with a knife: many in falling had broken through the masonry of the boundary walls of the compounds in which they were growing, greatly intensifying the look of misery and desolation. There were also to be seen myriads of branches of trees stripped off and flung about in all directions in the wildest confusion, and in some parts the ground was so thickly strewn with fallen leaves as to form a ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... marked than in the demeanour of these enfeebled and unbelieving Apostles, as contrasted with the rapture of devotion of the other three, and with the lowly submission and faith of Moses and Elias. Perhaps, too, the difference between the calm serenity of the mountain, and the hell-tortured misery of the plain—between the converse with the sainted perfected dead, and the converse with their unworthy successors—made Christ feel more sharply and poignantly than He ordinarily did His disciples' slowness of apprehension and want of faith. At ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... assure her there was no such thing, he actually swallowed one of the bags. 'Twas no easy matter, and he grew very red, and stared frightfully, and swallowed a draught of water precipitately. His misery was indeed so great that at the conclusion of a polite little farewell speech of the major's, he uttered an involuntary groan, and lively Miss Mag, with ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... at the sight of his rigid misery. "If you'll say you're sorry. Jerome," she said, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... trying moment. Companions in misery. This is my busy day. "I didn't know it was loaded." His proudest moment. The unhappy experimenter. The best of friends. A great scare. Fine weather for ducks. "Won't you have some?" "Don't we make a pretty picture?" Too busy to stop. No harm done. "I didn't mean to do it." ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... ills deride, Had best against his own provide. An eagle pouncing on a hare, With piercing cries puss rends the air; When a pert sparrow from a tree, Insulted thus her misery: "Ho, ho! poor puss, thy boasted speed Has failed thee, then, in time of need!" Scarce had she spoke, when, like an arrow, A vulture darted on the sparrow. Ere the poor hare resign'd her breath, "This sight," she cried, "consoles ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... choked off the rest of the sentence. Jed rubbed his eyes and sat up in his chair. For the first time since the captain's entrance he realized a little of what the latter said. Before that he had been conscious only of his own dull, aching, hopeless misery. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... remained standing, but at a motion from the queen they seated themselves. Athos was calm and grave, but Aramis was furious; the sight of such royal misery exasperated him and his eyes examined every new trace of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and which many thought would be brought to a speedy close by the irresistible arms of Great Britain being added to those of the Allies, I was assured in my own mind would be of long continuance, and productive of distress and misery beyond all possible calculation. This conviction was pressed upon me by having been a witness, during a long residence in revolutionary France, of the spirit which prevailed in that country. After leaving the Isle of Wight, I spent two days in wandering ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to see ruin and misery, and the destruction of all prospects for his friend; and, in spite of the indignation he felt against him for his deceit, his heart softened, and he muttered, as he turned to go once more ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn |
