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Privation   /praɪvˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Privation

noun
1.
A state of extreme poverty.  Synonyms: deprivation, neediness, want.
2.
Act of depriving someone of food or money or rights.  Synonym: deprivation.  "Deprivation of civil rights"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Privation" Quotes from Famous Books



... mischance, you meet with some one of sensitive temperament, with a bright intellect that matches your own, you lay yourself open to be the mournful sharer of her griefs, doubts, and regrets, and her depression reacts upon you; her sorrow makes your melancholy return. Privation conjures up countless illusions and every chimera imaginable, so that the peaceful retreat of virgins of the Lord becomes a veritable hell, peopled by phantoms ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... it had been hewn from the solid rock, and is called St. Keven's Bed. The legend about it is, that when St. Keven was a handsome young man of twenty, he made up his mind to be a priest, and a saint—so, gave up all thoughts of love and marriage, and devoted himself to a life of loneliness, privation, and penance. It unluckily happened that a certain noble young lady, named Kathleen, (the last name has not come down to us—perhaps it was O'Toole,) took a great fancy to him, and offered him her hand, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... easy thing to do, for the duke was not at all the type of the gay lady's man—very much the reverse. He looked a soldier (like all the princes of the house of Savoy) and at the same time a monk. One could easily imagine him a crusader in plumed helmet and breastplate, supporting any privation or fatigue without a murmur. He was very shy (one saw it was an effort for him every time that any one was brought up to him and he had to make polite phrases), not in the least mondain, but simple, charming when one ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... enough. Word leaked out that they had not found any treasure. Kie did not want the claims. He was not a mining man by temperament and hated the toil and privation that went into the working of claims ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... of this volume which found sympathy in his thrifty Scotch nature. From the moment he finished this life of Franklin he determined to come to America, and after a short stay in Halifax, and Boston, his stay in each place being attended with great privation, we find him in the year 1822 in the city of New York, and still later he is employed on the Charleston Courier, of Charleston, South Carolina. There his knowledge of Spanish was a benefit, enabling him to translate the Cuban exchanges, and to decipher the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... caused. Fresh from home, full of quick sensibility, feeling ridicule with great keenness, Kenrick was too much pained by these words even for anger. He had hung his head and slunk away. For days after, until, at his most earnest entreaty, his mother had incurred much privation to afford him a new and better suit, he had hardly dared to lift up his face. He had fancied himself a mark for ridicule, and the sense of shabbiness and poverty had gone far to crush his spirit. After a time he recovered, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... asked you to dinner on the day that you came on board, Mr. Blagrove," Sir Sidney said kindly, as the two midshipmen entered, "but I thought that you might prefer my not doing so until you got your uniform. It has been some privation for myself, for I am anxious to hear from you some details as to what has been doing in Egypt, of which, of course, we know ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... wish, to carry with him to a life hereafter. Falsehood, sin, is the efficient agent of death. As Bishop Hall says: "There is a kind of not-being in sin; for sin is not an existence of somewhat that is, but a deficiency of that rectitude which should be; it is a privation, as blindness ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... dead bodies; yet so effectual were the precautions of the Roman general, that the waters of the Tyber still continued to give motion to the mills and drink to the inhabitants: the more distant quarters were supplied from domestic wells; and a besieged city might support, without impatience, the privation of her public baths. A large portion of Rome, from the Praenestine gate to the church of St. Paul, was never invested by the Goths; their excursions were restrained by the activity of the Moorish troops: the navigation of the Tyber, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... work a few pages further on. "Aristotle decides that there is no void on such arguments as this. In a void there could be no difference of up and down; for as in nothing there are no differences, so there are none in a privation or negation; but a void is merely a privation or negation of matter; therefore, in a void, bodies could not move up and down, which it is in their nature to do. It is easily seen" (Dr. Whewell very justly ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... the most honoured and the most successful since the time of the Apostles, has closed his long and influential career. Indeed his spirit, his life, and his labours, were truly apostolic...The Spirit of God which was in him led him forward from strength to strength, supported him under privation, enabled him to overcome in a fight that seemed without hope. Like the beloved disciple, whom he resembled in simplicity of mind, and in seeking to draw sinners to Christ altogether by the cords of love, he outlived his trials to enjoy a peaceful and ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... blaze of excited passion and triumphant hatred, Catiline cross-questioned him concerning the unhappy girl. Had she been brought thus far safely and with unblemished honor? Had she suffered from hunger or fatigue? Had her beauty been impaired by privation? ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... our settlers face a long purgatory of peril and privation, Captain Parish," came the sober response. "Without powder, lead, and salt, they cannot live. The ways must be held open. Communication must remain intact. Forts must be maintained—and the two paths are ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... are shorter and stouter, and have a more delicate exterior than the North American Savages. Their hands and feet are small, and the outlines of their figures are graceful. They are capable of enduring great fatigue, and the privation of food and drink, and bear exposure to the tropical sun for hours with no covering for the head, without being in the least affected. Their bearing evinces entire subjection and abasement, and they shun and distrust the whites. They do not manifest the cheerfulness ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... convict in prison is a sensitive being; others that he is put in there for punishment. Some grudge him every gleam of comfort or alleviation of misery, to which his situation is susceptible; to others every little privation, every little unpleasant feeling, every unaccustomed circumstance, every necessary point of coercive discipline, presents matter ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... feels the puncture of a pin; throw him into battle, and he is almost insensible to vital gashes. So in war. Impelled alternately by hope and fear, stimulated by revenge, depressed by shame, or elevated by victory, the people become invincible. No privation can shake their fortitude; no calamity break their spirit. Even when equally successful, the contrast between the two systems is striking. War and restriction may leave the country equally exhausted; but the latter not only leaves you poor, but, even when successful, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... in their humbleness and roughness reminding her anew of the labour and self-denial it had cost to rear them, and then to furnish them, and that was now expended in keeping the inside warm. Every brown beam and little window-sash could witness the story of privation and struggle, if she would let her mind go back to it; the associations were on every hand; neither was the struggle over. She turned her back upon the room, and sitting down in Winthrop's chair bent her look as he had done into the decaying ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... to which it has never been accustomed. Madame's motherly care, and Alfred's unvarying tenderness, sufficed her cravings for affection; and for amusement, she took refuge in books, flowers, birds, and those changes of natural scenery for which her lover had such quickness of eye. It was a privation to give up her solitary rambles in the grounds, her inspection of birds' nests, and her readings in that pleasant alcove of pines. But she more than acquiesced in Alfred's prohibition. She said at once, that she would rather be a prisoner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... their lives in terrible misery and constant privation. Hunger and despair are their constant companions, and they will see in Socialism their only salvation even if Socialism should destroy individual liberty, for to them individual liberty is a word without meaning. One of the most prominent British ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him! 30 No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure, Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure, By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all, Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral. A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation, 35 Yet that is but a Purgatory curse; Hell knows a fear far worse, A fear—a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... cackling laugh ceased, and his wrinkled face grew sad and thoughtful as he sighed: "I'm the only Dimmerly who was ever 'stopped,'—fool that I was. His mother, sister Celia, would marry a poor man; and her life, in spite of all her toil and privation, has been happier than mine"; and he shook his head pathetically ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... broken visions of perturbed rest I wake, and start, and fear to sleep again. How total a privation of all sounds, Sights, and familiar objects, man, bird, beast, Herb, tree, or flower, and prodigal light of heaven. 'Twere some relief to catch the drowsy cry Of the mechanic watchman, or the noise Of revel reeling home ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot! — and fear, which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too, privation, — the bitter rigour of black winters; scorching days; bodily squalor; ills that such as he endured in a wilderness where, like other creatures of the wild, men stricken died ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... "good" have no objective reality, but are merely relative to our feelings, and that "evil" in particular is nothing positive, but a privation only, or non-existence. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... formidable problems to the first explorers a century or two ago. We must not fall into the foolish error of thinking that the first explorers need not suffer terrible hardships, merely because the ordinary travellers, and even the settlers who come after them, do not have to endure such danger, privation, and wearing fatigue—although the first among the genuine settlers also have to undergo exceedingly trying experiences. The early explorers and adventurers make fairly well-beaten trails; but it is incumbent on them neither ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... evidence of his superiority can he bring from nature or revelation? All men necessarily have a common interest in the promulgation and maintenance of these principles, because it is equally in the nature of men to be content with the enjoyment of their just rights, and to be discontented under the privation of them. Just so far as these principles practically prevail, the stringency of government is safely relaxed, and peace and harmony obtain. But men cannot maintain these principles, or even comprehend them, without ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... in the French, and almost unknown in our masculine tongue. An only child, and an invalid, poor Bleuet was of course a spoiled child, his mother's darling and pet. His wishes, his sick-child's caprices were her law, and she gratified them at the cost of many a secret privation. She seemed to know—maternal love hath often the faculty of second-sight—that her poor boy, though only the child of the humblest parentage, was destined to rise one day far above the station in which he was born. She attired him better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... see," he resumed nervously, "it was very absurd, but I did believe the girl's story—the old story, you know, of privation and suffering, and just thought I'd go home with the brat and see if what she said was all true. And then I remembered that all the shops were closed, and not a purchase could be made. I went back and persuaded the steward to put ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... His much-worn suit of tweed was well cut and had evidently been carefully kept, in spite of its undoubtedly threadbare condition. It, and the worn and haggard look of the man's face, denoted poverty, if not recent actual privation, and the thought was present in more than one mind there in possession of certain facts: if this man had really owned the ring which he had offered to the pawnbroker, why had he delayed so long in placing himself in funds through ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher

... one of loneliness, but of grim privation. People rarely came my way, save for a few faithful women from Casi or Fiori who solicited my prayers in return for the oil and maize-cakes which they left me, and sometimes whole days would pass without the sight of a ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... doing more harm than good. Others are without doubt earnest and sincere ascetics, who believe that they are promoting the welfare and happiness of their fellow men by depriving themselves of everything that is necessary to happiness, purifying their souls by privation and hardship and obtaining spiritual inspiration and light by continuous meditation and prayer. Many of these are fanatics, some are epileptics, some are insane. They undergo self-torture of the most horrible kinds and frequently prove their sincerity by causing themselves to ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... describe snow-houses and snow-walls covered with sail-cloth, under "Huts." Here I will speak of more simple arrangements. Dr. Kane says:—"We afterwards learnt to modify and reduce our travelling-gear, and found that in direct proportion to its simplicity and to our apparent privation of articles of supposed necessity, were our actual comfort and practical efficiency. Step by step, as long as our Arctic service continued, we went on reducing our sledging outfit, until we at last came to the Esquimaux ultimatum of simplicity—raw meat and a fur bag." Lieut. Cresswell, R.N., ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... ungrateful despondency. For (thinks I) if she, a woman accustomed to ease and comfort, may thus front our desperate fortunes undismayed and with faith unshaken, how much more should I, a man inured to suffering and hardened by privation? Thus, checking my gloomy foreboding, I too breathed a prayer to God for His infinite mercies, and thereafter fell to pondering how I might supply our more pressing needs with such small means as I possessed; and so in a while, dozed ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... signal with his arms and that red rag as though he were demented. It would not greatly surprise me to find, when we get him on board, that his brain has given way with the horror of solitude, suffering, and privation." ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... come to this decision, Pompeius pursued Caesar, resolved to avoid a battle, but by following close up to hem him in and wear him out by privation. He had other reasons for thinking this to be the best plan, and it also reached his ears that it was a subject of common conversation among the cavalry that they ought to defeat Caesar as soon as they could and then put down ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... after you left us, but corresponded with you frequently, and gave us news of you from time to time. Surely, Mrs. Stillwater, had he known your straits, he would have found some way of setting you up in some business. He never would have allowed you to suffer privation and anxiety ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... on the general condition of the patient. The majority of those who attempt to take their own lives are in a low state of health from alcoholic excess, mental worry, privation or other causes, and many succumb even when the wound in the neck is comparatively slight. Shock, loss of blood, asphyxia from blood entering the air-passages, and oedema of the glottis are the most frequent causes of death soon after the injury. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... son, at last, after these many years of most rigid economy, even of privation, I have saved enough from my meager income, together with what little you have been able to send me from time to time, and a recent generous contribution from your dear uncle, to enable me to visit you. I shall sail for ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... grandmother—my mother's mother. Among all the women whom I remember in my early life, she was the kindest and most lovely. She had been brought as a young girl, by her parents, from Old Guilford in Connecticut; and in her later life she often told me cheerily of the days of privation and toil, of wolves howling about the cottages of the little New York settlement in winter, of journeys twenty miles to church, of riding on horseback from early morning until late in the evening, through the forests, to bring flour from the mill. She ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... chimney-sweeps rather than the warriors they were, were invited to a fine "square meal." It is difficult to imagine the condition of those battered braves after their week of hardship, fighting, and privation, and sticklers for etiquette would have been shocked at the manners and customs enforced by warlike conditions. One who dined with the Dundee column gave the following graphic description of the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... discovered that the ship had struck on a low rocky islet on which there was little or no vegetation. Here for three weeks the two shipwrecked sailors lived in great privation, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and subsisting chiefly on shell-fish. They had almost given way to despair, when a passing vessel observed them, took them off, and conveyed them in ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... emotions rather than by logic; yet she was the least conscious of her physical existence of any one I ever knew, with the exception of Susan B. Anthony. Like "Aunt Susan," Miss Willard paid no heed to cold or heat or hunger, to privation or fatigue. In their relations to such trifles both ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... thinking, to adopt the manner of acting, with which society is willing to inspire him. All the individuals of the human species are susceptible of fear, from whence it flows as a natural consequence, that the fear of punishment, or the privation of the happiness he desires, are motives that must necessarily more or less influence his will, and regulate his actions. If the man is to be found who is so badly constituted as to resist, whose organization is so vicious as to be insensible to those motives which operate upon ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... teach the blind to read, or to attempt to teach them to work, was to fly in the face of Providence; and her whole life was given to the endeavour to overcome this prejudice and superstition; to show that blindness, though a great privation, is not necessarily a disqualification; and that blind men and women can learn, labour, and fulfil all the duties of life. Before her day all that the blind were taught was to commit texts from the Bible to memory. She saw that they could learn handicrafts, and be made industrious and self-supporting. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... the new party platform from which the attention of the generous and just was diverted by the charm of a social program of great attractiveness to all concerned for the amelioration of the lot of those who suffer wrong and privation, and the further fact that, even so, the platform was repudiated by the majority of the nation, render it no less necessary to reflect on the significance of the confession made for the first time by any party in the country's history. It may be useful, in order to the relief of the minds of many ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... satisfaction that I should become the wife of a pagan king and live for ever after among heathen folk, so on a certain dark and stormy night I fled away. A poor fisherman brought me over into Norway, where I knew that the people were all of the Christian faith, and so, after much trouble and privation, I have ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... a white cockade in his head-gear and every device that referred to the Empire had been carefully eliminated. Still he was the same soldier, and Marteau recognized him at once as one of the veterans of the regiment. The recognition was not mutual. Captivity, illness, privation had wrought many changes in the officer's face. The man looked at him curiously and wonderingly, however, ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... raised him somewhat in the estimation of our jailers, and in spite of the opprobrious epithets he applied to them (which to be sure they did not understand) he was soon as popular with them as Vetch was the reverse. Joe was blessed with a great fund of good humor, which withstood all privation and restraint. He growled and groaned at being compelled to take his turn in scouring the floors and other menial tasks, but after emitting a stream of hot language, which ever appears to flow very freely from the lips of sailor men, he ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... to the kidneys, as are also various cryptogams, whether in musty hay or oats. The kidneys may be irritated by feeding green vegetables covered with hoar frost or by furnishing an excess of feed rich in phosphates (wheat bran, beans, peas, vetches, lentils, rape cake, cottonseed cake) or by a privation of water, which entails a concentrated condition and high density of the urine. Exposure in cold rain or snow storms, cold drafts of air, and damp beds are liable to further disorder an already overworked or irritable kidney. Finally, sprains of the back ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... of a stranger rather than his father's son; he would live on swine's food, if it had power to sustain a human life, rather than sit at his father's table. It was not till death stared him in the face that he consented to return. He encountered all extremities of privation rather than come home; no thanks to him, then, for coming at last. Yet he was received with an ardent welcome, and without upbraiding. The son's sullen, obdurate, desperate resistance becomes a measure and a monument of the father's ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... of all these poor men and women; and now he was going to abuse his power of capital, his power to take the bread out of their mouths entirely, by taking it out in part. He was going to reduce their wages, he was deliberately going to cause privation, and even suffering where there were large families. She felt the most unqualified dissent and indignation, and all the love which she had for the man only intensified it. Love, with a girl like this, tended to clearness of vision instead of blindness. She judged him ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the delighted trapper, on placing a drop of the water on his tongue. No wonder it caused a sudden excitement and great joy; for it was months that they had been without it, and it was a privation under which they had suffered greatly, as its loss made many a dish unpalatable that otherwise would ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... all the time I need to enable me to reach the decision to rescue my child from peril, and save my brother and his family from privation and trouble in the enemy's country. But I have only decided what to do, and I have yet to mature the details ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic

... them from such subjugating snares, and enables them to fly the ingratitude they abhor! Without the contrast of vice, virtue unloved may be lovely; without the experience of misery, happiness is simply a dull privation of evil." ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... comparatively a mere trifle; but I really could never answer the question to my own satisfaction. I have all my life hated those treacherous expedients called MEZZO-TERMINI, and it is possible with this disposition I might have endured more patiently an absolute privation of liberty than the more modified restrictions to which my residence in the Sanctuary at this period subjected me. If, however, the feelings I then experienced were to increase in intensity according to the difference between a jail and my actual condition, I must have hanged myself, or pined ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... was out of work. John Sargent had fixed his own price, and it was an unheard-of one for such simple fare as he had. His weekly dollars kept the whole poor family in food. But John Sargent was a bachelor, and earning remarkably good wages, and Joseph Atkins's ailing wife, whom illness and privation had made unnaturally grasping and ungrateful, told her cronies that it wasn't as if he couldn't ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... dozen—the loss of one thousand men or twenty thousand, or one hundred million or five hundred millions of dollars? In a year's peace—in ten years, at most, of peaceful progress—we can restore them all. There will be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There will be some privation; there will be some loss of luxury; there will be somewhat more need for labor to procure the necessaries of life. When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Union, the Constitution—free government— with these ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... soldiers of the Continent who had sneered so long at our little Army, since long years of peace have caused them to forget its exploits. On the plains of South Africa, in common danger and in common privation, the blood brotherhood of the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... any corporall thing, or thicke substance, that it can cloud the Moones brightnesse, or take it away from our sight, but it is a meere privation of the Suns light, by reason of the interposition of the earths ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins

... school hypothesis and the deductions therefrom would seem therefore, to be this: That a super-malignant contagium imported from some foreign source falls upon organisms predisposed to infection by mental stress or physical privation and over-strain or both combined; and the contagion thus generated through the medium of some unsuspected "carrier" seizes upon and sweeps through that portion of the community so predisposed, in the form of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... retaining a few servants who had more courage than those that had stampeded at the first alarm, and while the hotel service for the next few days was very inadequate, no one was liable to suffer any great privation. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... day call things by the wrong names.[83] Sacrifice does not merely mean suffering, though there may be much suffering included in it. But there may be suffering where there is no sacrifice. It does not mean privation, though there may be real painful privation in it. But again there may be much privation and pain without any element ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... the storm and the absence of a road, it had been impossible to move the artillery from the open ground about the Landing. The privation was much greater in a moral than in a material sense. The infantry soldier feels a confidence in this cumbrous arm quite unwarranted by its actual achievements in thinning out the opposition. There is something ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... of secret privation, to the misery of that fourth-floor apartment in which she and her mother lived as though they were camping out, keeping all their show for the street, admired the coquettish charm, the smart daintiness of the house in the Via Margutta. Mariano's friend, who had charge of the furnishing ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Revelation the justification of the sinner is not a mere change, with a privation for its terminus a quo(902) and an indifferent form for its terminus ad quem, but involves a movement from extreme to extreme, and hence the genesis of the one extreme must coincide with the destruction of the other. Sin, being in contrary opposition to righteousness, ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... affecting incident of private life brought master and man to Mr. Perker's chambers. Lowten, holding the door half open, was in conversation with a rustily-clad, miserable-looking man, in boots without toes and gloves without fingers. There were traces of privation and suffering—almost of despair—in his lank and care-worn countenance; he felt his poverty, for he shrank to the dark side of the staircase as Mr. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... Lincoln Island had still one privation. There was no want of meat, nor of vegetable products; those ligneous roots which they had found, when subjected to fermentation, gave them an acid drink, which was preferable to cold water; they also made sugar, without canes or beet-roots, by collecting the liquor ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... 1757-58 is still spoken of by us old people as a season of great severity and consequent privation. The snow was drifted over the roads up to the first branches of the trees, yet rarely formed a good crust upon which one could move with snow-shoes. Hence the outlying settlements, like Cherry Valley and Tribes Hill, had hard work to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... such as occur in early life, and not ascribable to bad conduct, reflect no discredit on men of genius. Many of them, subsequently, surmounted their first embarrassments by meritorious exertion; and some of our first men (like travellers, after having successfully passed through regions of privation and peril) delight even to recall their former discouragements, and, without the shame that luxuriates alone in little minds, undisguisedly to tell of seasons, indelible in their memories, when, in the prostration of hope, the wide world appeared ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... full confession. Volodya heroically remains silent. Finally, Tibertius himself pleads the child's cause so eloquently that Volodya is not scolded and the father allows him to go and say good-bye to his little friend, who has meanwhile died of privation. The day after the little girl's funeral the whole band disappears without leaving a trace behind them. "Later on," says Korolenko, "when we were about to leave our home, it was on the grave of our poor little friend that my sister and I, both of us full of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... as if he had issued from the ground, the laird stood before them. The men started back with astonishment —soon changed into pity, for there was light enough to see how miserable the poor fellow looked. Neither exposure nor privation had thus wrought upon him: he was simply dying of fear. Having greeted Joseph with embarrassment, he kept glancing doubtfully at Malcolm, as if ready to run on his least movement. In a few words Joseph explained their quest, with trembling voice and tears that would not be denied enforcing the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... humanity. An Indian woman may suffer from hunger or sickness, because her looks are repulsive and her garments unwashed: some will say they can bear the want of warm clothing, because they have been used to privation. ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman

... invasion the Confederate soldiers had endured every privation; one-half were in rags, and thousands barefooted had marked their path with crimson. Yet shoeless, hatless, and ragged, they had marched and fought with a heroism like that of the Revolutionary times. But they met their equals at Antietam. Jackson's ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... Indians was made by JAMES CORMACK, Esq., in 1822, and for that purpose he crossed the whole interior of the Island—starting from Random Bar on the Eastward on the 6th September, and finding his way out at St. George's Bay, on the 2nd November following. During this excursion he suffered great privation,—which few men could have endured, and which few men indeed, would have undertaken with only one companion. Mr. Cormack did not succeed in the main object he had in view, yet was his trouble anything but profitless. We now possess ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad

... seemed to grow more and more gloomy. All the morning she had suffered from a steady pain in her breast, and from a lassitude that she could not overcome. Her pale, thin, care-worn face, told a sad tale of suffering, privation, confinement, and want of exercise. What was to become of her children she knew not. Under such feelings of hopelessness, to have one sitting by her side, who could take much of her burdens from her, were he but to will it—who could call back the light to her heart, if ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... it his permanent home. When he left Independence, Mo., with the train, his parents and one sister were his companions, but all of them were buried on the prairie, and their loss robbed him of the desire ever to return to the East. Hostile Indians, storm, cold, heat, privation, and suffering were the causes of their taking off, as they have been of hundreds who undertook the long journey to the Pacific ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... moment we review a whole night of darkness. A luxury brings with it the memory of a privation. The first glimpse of those drawing-rooms, gleaming with white and warm with gold, were seen against a black cloud, and that cloud was the past. The wanderer was startled; there was nothing now to turn aside the full ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... with no light but that of the fire. Arthur seemed to gather courage, and confessed the hopeless monotony of his life. He complained of no privation, only of want of ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... suffer considerable hardship and privation, while those that spend the cold weather in India ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... but the cold was too great, striking up as it were from the ground. The camels marched through without halting, and we suffered only one loss amongst them next day. The occurrence of this peculiar desert is unaccountable, especially its almost absolute privation of vegetation; for many other places, equally dry, have their peculiar plants, such as Salsola, Chenopodium, Furas, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... who was angry with you and was egged on by the others, took command of the ship; I tried to resist, but in vain. After that, every one acted as he saw fit; Shandon did not try to control them; he wanted to let the crew see that the time of suffering and privation had gone by. Hence there was no economy; a huge fire was lighted in the stove; they began to burn the brig. The men had the provisions given them freely, and the spirits too, and you can easily imagine the abuse they made of them after their long abstinence. Things went on in ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... and has no prospect of being filled—a want of necessities. Four battalions of men in want, and how many children and women does that represent? God's hooligans, God's scamps, and God's wrecks! 'His wrecks,' how can I write such words. How pitiable are their physical conditions, their privation and distress of body! But what of their souls, the starvation of their minds? Why, I doubt if they could subscribe a respectable soul ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... America were very abundant, and there is reason to believe, blessed to very many. During the five years she spent on that Continent, she visited the greater part of the meetings of Friends, and in doing so, shrank from no hardship or privation consequent upon travelling in ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous

... with its chief magistrate living in a house surrounded by grounds almost as naked as a cornfield, while it proves nothing in favour of its economy, goes to show either that we want the taste and habits necessary to appreciate the privation, (as is probably the case), or the generosity to do a liberal act, since it is notorious that ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... we have said, not to defend Clifford, but to redeem Lucy in the opinion of our readers for loving so unwisely; and when they remember her youth, her education, her privation of a mother, of all female friendship, even of the vigilant and unrelaxing care of some protector of the opposite sex, we do not think that what was so natural will be ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Mongols were hard riding, hard living warriors, accustomed to privation and fatigue. The poison of luxury ate into the very fibers of their being and gradually they lost the characteristics which had made them great. The ruin of the race was completed by the introduction of Lamaism, a religion which ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... Gamelin, "pray admire the virtues of the people, more hungry for justice than for bread; consider how everyone here is ready to lose his place to chastise the thief. These men and women, victims of such poverty and privation, are of so stern a probity they ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... "Suffering, privation, contempt, all kinds of misery and degradation, seize on her in the cradle, and accompany her to the tomb. Her birth is commonly regarded as a humiliation and a disgrace to the family—an evident ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... be wild with privation and trouble,' I said to myself; 'they will want the sight of their little children, ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant

... face. His eyes, too, were blue—of the deep, honest blue that one remembers, and most frequently trusts. He did not look like a criminal. There was something almost boyish in his face, a little hollowed by long privation. He was the sort of man that other men liked. Even Brokaw, who had a heart like flint in the face of crime, ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... rumour that Isabel was writing a book—Mrs. Varian having a reverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish herself in print. Mrs. Varian thought highly of literature, for which she entertained that esteem that is connected with a sense of privation. Her own large house, remarkable for its assortment of mosaic tables and decorated ceilings, was unfurnished with a library, and in the way of printed volumes contained nothing but half a dozen novels in paper on a shelf in the apartment of one ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... world? Not starry night, III Nor wealth, nor tribulation; but is gone All suddenly, while to another soul The joy or the privation passeth on. These hopes I bid thee also, O my Queen! Hold fast continually, for who hath seen Zeus so forgetful of his own? How can his providence forsake ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... young woman, who rose to throw up the sash, "you don't know how I pine for fresh air. How long do you intend to continue this life of constant toil and privation?" ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... their lives and everything that was dear to them, that their country might be free. We must also think of those who in times of peril have given themselves for their nation's good; of those who found the land a wilderness, and suffered pain and privation while they made the beginning of a nation. We must think of those who, ever since that time, when ever the liberty or the unity of the nation has been in peril, have sprung ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... China. All those turbulent and restless spirits who could not settle down to peaceful crafts or the dull life of the desk, longed to be on board ship sailing Westward Ho. Fortune was waiting for them there: fortune with fighting, privation, endurance—perhaps death by fever or by battle: yet a glorious life. Or they might sail southwards and so round the Cape of Good Hope—called at first the Cape of Storms—and across the Indian Ocean to the port of Calicut, there to trade. There were dangers enough even on ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... have industriously placed on record a copious mass of documentary evidence which will be of the utmost value when the time arrives to sum up the final results. When this era comes, you will be foremost among the band of heroic pioneers who have endured discomfort, obloquy and privation of much that is dear to women for the sake of those who will profit by your labors while failing to recognize them. Posterity will do you this justice, whether your contemporaries do or not; but indeed, it is universally known to those with any knowledge ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... the last, but he had not been quite incapacitated till she had gained a little strength, so as to be able to nurse him. But how she had done it—how then and for many months past she had contrived to keep body and soul together, to endure fatigue, privation, mental anguish, and physical weakness, was, according to good Mrs. Campbell, who heard and guessed a great deal more than she chose to tell, "just wonderful'." It could only be accounted for by Helen's natural vigor of constitution, and by that ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... for a cause which is vitally near the heart of every man and every woman, and the soul of every nation—human freedom; "to forge the weapon of victory by fanning the flame of cheerfulness," and to be the means of lifting the burden of anxiety from those who go, lest their loved ones should suffer privation, bereft of their protecting care. So truly is this an Age of Service, that the response to the scope and spirit of our work was immediate and within four months from the day we sent our first request for co-operation in carrying out our plans, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... was a personal independent thing. The dingier people one saw in the back streets and lower quarters of Bromstead and Penge, the drift of dirty children, ragged old women, street loafers, grimy workers that made the social background of London, the stories one heard of privation and sweating, only joined up very slowly with the general propositions I was making about life. We could become splendidly eloquent about the social revolution and the triumph of the Proletariat after the Class war, and it was only by a sort of inspiration that it came to me that my bedder, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... odoriferum). People are fond of drinking out of these vessels on account of the smell of the clay. The women of the province of Alentejo acquire a habit of masticating the bucaro earth; and feel a great privation when they cannot indulge this vitiated taste.) Brown relates in his History of Jamaica that the crocodiles of South America swallow small stones and pieces of very hard wood, when the lakes which they inhabit are dry, or when they are in want of food. M. Bonpland and I observed ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... had just received the promise of a district church, in course of building under Colonel Bury's auspices, about four miles from Fairmead. To work his way through the University and take Holy Orders had been Ulick's ambition; he would gladly have endured privation for such an object, and it did seem hard that such aspirations should be so absolutely frustrated, and himself forced into the stream of uncongenial, unintellectual toil, in so obscure and uninviting a sphere. The resignation of all lingering hope ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as fast as they could be seized. For several nights in succession, similar flocks came in; and by multiplying their fires a considerable supply was secured. These visits, however, ceased at length, and the wretched party were exposed again to the most severe privation. When their stock of wild fowl had been exhausted for more than two days, each began to fear they were now approaching that sad point of necessity, when, between death and casting lots who should be ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... Dick), the captain shaking down where he could. And here, for the first time for nearly a week, she was able to wash and dress herself properly. And oh, the luxury of it! Nobody knows what the delights of clean linen really mean till he or she has had to dispense with it under circumstances of privation; nor have they the slightest idea of what a difference to one's well-being and comfort is made by the possession or non-possession of an article so common as a comb. Whilst Augusta was still combing out her hair with sighs of delight, Mrs. Thomas knocked at the door ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard

... This explorer has personally supervised the examination of many thousands of graves and has forwarded the bulk of his collections to the United States. His explorations have occupied a number of years, during which time he has undergone much privation and displayed great enthusiasm in pursuing the rather thorny pathways of scientific research. In the preparation of this paper his notes have been used as freely as their rather disconnected character ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... a sleep of which you are the dream. You have transformed my nature. I suffer? Oh, would that I could sometimes suffer, that I might have somewhat to offer unto God, were it but the consciousness of a privation, the bitterness of a tear, in return for all he has given me in you! To suffer for you, might, perchance, be the only thing which could add one drop to that cup of happiness which it is given me to quaff. To suffer thus, is it to suffer, or to enjoy? No; ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine



Words linked to "Privation" :   starving, pauperisation, poverty, want, social control, pauperization, neediness, starvation, poorness, impoverishment, deprivation



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