"Parlous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three ex-Emperors into the Southern lines in 1352 fell into two cliques, each advocating the nomination of a different successor. This discord exercised a debilitating influence, and when Go-Murakami died (1368), the Southerners found themselves in a parlous condition. For his son and successor, Chokei, failing to appreciate the situation, immediately planned an extensive campaign against Kyoto from the east and the south simultaneously. Then Kusunoki Masanori passed into the Northern camp. Few events have ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... dead to windward that for a great while we had all our work cut out to keep her free by baling. The sea had risen a little, and as we leapt from one wave to another the spray flew over us in an almost continuous cloud. Clearly our situation was a parlous one. We could not get near him; we were becoming dangerously enfeebled, and he appeared to be gaining strength instead of losing it. Besides all this, none of us could have the least idea of how the ship now bore from us, our only comfort ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... four hours in the water, found me in a parlous condition in the tide-rips off Mare Island light, where the swift ebbs from Vallejo Straits and Carquinez Straits were fighting with each other, and where, at that particular moment, they were fighting the flood tide setting up against them from San Pablo Bay. A stiff ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the beginning of those parlous times when the Democrats, having come into power upon a wave of impassioned idiocy and jealousy, were beginning to make us poor at home and despised abroad. A schoolmaster president, with three cabinet officers plucked by the hair ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... was a parlous one for the vixen, and as she pulled herself together for flight along the side of the slope she doubtless regretted bitterly the curiosity which had impelled her to visit the den of her ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... sight. This news caused much commotion among us, still more when our own lookout cried that the vessel bearing towards us under press of sail out of the west was beyond doubt a frigate, and in all likelihood a Frenchman. I knew our case would be parlous if indeed it was so, for neither the privateer nor the merchant barque we had captured was armed in any wise to match a line-of-battle ship. Moreover 'twas unlikely that in our partly crippled condition we could out-sail the vessel: ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... there's sprung up now a new devotion? Good Gentlewoman, no. Do you see this fellow? He is a Scholler and a parlous Scholler, Or whether he be a Scholler or no 'tis not a doy't matter: He's a fine talker and a zealous talker; We can make him thinck what we list, say what we list, Print what we list and whom ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... voluptuary surveys the elegancies of his well-furnished mansion in comparative ignorance of the means employed for their perfection; and, as regards his stock of knowledge conducive to happiness, he is in a more "parlous state" than the poor shepherd who had not been at court. How many of the prodigals that cross in the steam-boat from Dover to Calais are acquainted with the first principles of the mighty power by which they are impelled, or have any feeling beyond vulgar wonder at its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... out of a human mouth had a human meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmothers told a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls (though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it did correspond to a certain ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Johnson's term the currency grew stable; We bought Alaska and we laid the great Atlantic cable; And then there came eight years of Grant; thereafter four of Hayes; And in his time the parties fell on fierce and parlous days; And Garfield came, and Arthur too, and Congress shoes were worn, And Brooklyn Bridge was built, and I, your gifted bard, ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... now in a rather parlous state. The country was disgusted with their mismanagement of the Irish Council Bill. Branches of the United Irish League had ceased to subscribe to the Party funds and it was evident that a temper distinctly hostile to the Party ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... was greatly complicated by the hundreds of thousands of civil refugees who all, more or less, looked to Wrangel as their leader, and grouped themselves around him—all of them, however, in an equally parlous plight. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... parlous ill turn, Cousin Reuben," he said sadly to his cousin, "by bidding me hide this matter from my wife. A few more such secrets, and I should be a ruined man. Never before have I known her seized with a desire for such prodigality of vesture. I have looked upon her, all these years, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... witching goes muffled rumour mine dark silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted parlous ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... what he had feared, he had shown them the inside of this scheme as instinct had revealed it to him, and he had begged for aid. One man alone, surrounded by enemies, and in a country where all things were possible, was in a parlous position if once the extent of his knowledge were surmised. So far, the plot had not yet matured. So far, though the clouds had gathered and the thunder was muttering, the storm had not broken. The reason for that he ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Finally, to workmen who have been influenced or persuaded to do anything by anybody except another workman, is given a suit for damages against the person so persuading them. The lot of the employer in Oklahoma is indeed a parlous one! ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... and the forest a parlous passage wherein dwells the fiend, the which I have much discomfit of. But with ye aside me, fair knight, there ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... early death looking out of his eyes," Jane Marks would say. "Such blue eyes belong to the sky, Minnie, and there's more to it than his angel face, because the child's so parlous good that it ain't straining truth to say the Old Adam be left out of him. And granted that, this vale of tears is no place for such a boy. Heaven's his home," Mrs. Marks would say, "and so you must fortify ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... else should a critic, who believes that he has diagnosed the disease, convince a modern patient of his parlous state? To just hint a fault and hesitate dislike (not Pope, but I split that infinitive) is regarded nowadays merely as a sign of a base, compromising spirit; or not regarded at all. Artists, especially in England, cannot away with qualified praise or blame: and if they insist on all or nothing ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... had enormously increased; the struggle for life and food was keener; the old patriarchal appetite for ritual was disappearing; the people were beginning to assert themselves against the land-owners; the land-owners were encroaching upon the power of the ruling princes; and China was in a parlous state. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker |
