"Bane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... class distinctions would be fostered; and here, in France, popular legislation would promote the spirit of frivolity, the sudden craze for an idea, and the readiness to split into factions which has always been our bane. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... degenerative soil giving rise to these psychoses. As we have stated, the great majority of them are full-fledged habitual criminals and can be easily recognized by their "degenerative habitus." They are that indolent, obstinate, querulent, unapproachable, and irritable class of prisoners who form the bane of prison officials. Constantly in trouble of some sort, they are subject to frequent disciplinary measures, which, however, serve not in the least to improve their conduct. Their extremely fluctuating mood and emotional instability calls forth ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... king at last implored the god to take back the fatal gift, and Dionysus, pitying his unhappy plight, desired him to bathe in the river Pactolus, a small stream in Lydia, in order to lose the power which had become the bane of his life. Midas joyfully obeying the injunction, was at once freed from the consequences of his avaricious demand, and from this time forth the sands of the river Pactolus have ever ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... more: He was the bane and ruin of my peace. This anguish, and these tears, these are the legacies His fatal love has left me. Thou wilt see me, Believe me, my Alicia, thou wilt see me, Ere yet a few short days pass o'er my head, Abandon'd to the very utmost ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... there should be a constant defence and battle, but I am not fit for it. I argue for my own triumph, and, in heat and harassing, devotion is lost. Besides, the comparison of intellectual power has been my bane all my life." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... its will, Sped thus on Troy its destined ill, Well named, at once, the Bride and Bane; And loud rang out the bridal strain; But they to whom that song befel Did turn anon to tears again; Zeus tarries, but avenges still The husband's wrong, the household's stain! He, the hearth's lord, brooks not to see Its ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... constantly reinforced by those who are ever and anon being born. Let no one of you think that I am ignorant of the many disagreeable and painful features that belong to marriage and child-rearing. But bear in mind that we possess nothing at all good with which some bane is not mingled, and that in our most abundant and greatest blessings there reside the most abundant and greatest woes. If you decline to accept the latter, do not strive to obtain the former. Practically ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... With red beer and brown beer. An old man plays the bagpipes In a golden and silver wood, Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, Are dancing in a crowd. The little fox he murmured, 'O what is the world's bane?' The sun was laughing sweetly, The moon plucked at my rein; But the little red fox murmured, 'O do not pluck at his rein, He is riding to the townland ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... their own evidence of the eloquence of his sermon. I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race, so strenuously laboring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought among them by enlightened Christians. It is quite certain that his exemplary endeavors have completely abolished the practice of drinking whisky in his tribe."—Catlin, vol. ii., ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... them in the country, and when the House of Lords is accused of stopping legislation, people will not fail to ask, What else is the House of Commons doing, or rather how much more? They assert that tithes are the great bane of Ireland, and the cause of the disorder which prevail, and they propose a Tithe Bill as the remedy, but they clog it with a condition which they know, with as much certainty as human knowledge can attain, will prevent its passing into a law, and in this shape they persist in producing it. Lord ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... women!' muttered Grimsby: 'they're the very bane of the world! They bring trouble and discomfort wherever they come, with their false, fair ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... in time and be gone, yet I must say, when all that will fly are gone, those that are left and must stand it should stand stock-still where they are, and not shift from one end of the town or one part of the town to the other; for that is the bane and mischief of the whole, and they carry the plague from house to house in ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... and here at my girdle hangs a dagger; are not the two of them enough to make an end of one frail life? Should they dare to touch me, I shall tell them through the bars that most certainly I shall drink the bane, or use the knife; and when they know it, they will leave me unharmed, hoping to starve me out, or trusting to ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... damsels rescued, dragons disembowelled, and giants, in every corner of the orchard, deprived of their already superfluous number of heads; while Palamides the Saracen waited for us by the well, and Sir Breuse Saunce Pite vanished in craven flight before the skilled spear that was his terror and his bane. Once more the lists were dight in Camelot, and all was gay with shimmer of silk and gold; the earth shook with thunder of horses, ash-staves flew in splinters; and the firmament rang to the clash of sword on helm. The varying fortune ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... are stupid, homes are dreary, homes are insufferable. If one can be pardoned for the Irishism of such a saying, homes are their own worst "banes." If homes were what they should be, nothing under heaven could be invented which could be bane to them, which would do more than serve as useful foil to set off their better cheer, their pleasanter ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of change, in a portion of our people, this craving for universal equality, by the blind victims of popular fanaticism, finds its parallel in the destructive element of European radicalism, (that bane of European democracy,) which mistakes freedom for the right of plunder, and Democracy for the right of popular despotism. It is that blind spirit of rage which adapts not the means to the end, but overreaches itself, and falls a prey to its own ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... were the joint proprietors. That is to say, Charteris was talking and playing the banjo alternately, while Welch was deep in a book and refused to be drawn out of it under any pretext. Charteris' banjo was the joy of his fellows and the bane of his House-master. Being of a musical turn and owning a good deal of pocket-money, he had, at the end of the summer holidays, introduced the delights of a phonograph into the House. This being vetoed by the House-master, he had returned at the beginning of the following term with a penny ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... adolescent grace, might have suggested to the imagination a reminiscence of Orpheus in Hades. They all listened in languid pleasure, without the effort to appraise the music or to compare it with other performances—the bane of more cultured audiences; only the ardent amateur, seated close at hand on a bowlder, watched the bowing with a scrutiny which betokened earnest anxiety that no mechanical trick might elude him. The miller's half-grown son, whose ear ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... antagonism in which they dwell. But can men, whose interests are diverse, ever hope to live together in a harmony uncoerced? Can the brotherhood of the race of mankind ever hope to prevail in a man-of-war, where one man's bane is almost another's blessing? By abolishing the scourge, shall we do away tyranny; that tyranny which must ever prevail, where of two essentially antagonistic classes in perpetual contact, one is immeasurably the stronger? Surely it seems all but impossible. And as the very object of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... moral strength, contrary to the impressive experience of his real weakness. His virtues were many, and his foibles few; yet few as they were, our readers perceive that, in consequence of his indulging them, they proved the bane of his life and happiness. They need not be surprised, then, to hear that from the want of any self-sustaining power in himself he fell into the use of liquor again; he said he could not live without it, but ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... destroy; 7. a time to rend and a time to repair; a time to be silent and a time to speak; 8. a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. VIII. 6. For every thing hath its season and its destiny,[270] for the bane of man presses heavily upon him. 7. Because he knoweth not what shall be; for who can tell him how it will ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... desired to know The ways of sin, seductive, The hellish tempter, to our woe, Became a power destructive; He cursed our earth and ruin brought on all, Yea, very nature felt the bane - Its blighted walls now totter to their fall, And soon disorder rules again. This earthly palace then at last, Unroofed, dismantled and decayed, A hideous, barren waste is laid ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... for it was the folk amongst the mountains—should have found out a shrub whose bark would kill the fever poison and make a man himself again. They say—put the cup away, Poole—that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out here, and quinine acts as a cure. But there's one thing I want ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... time, though one has escaped me," said the Dark Master, looking up suddenly at his sightless harper, who seemed to fall atrembling beneath the look. "The one who has escaped matters not, for his bane comes not at my hands. It is the other whom I shall slay—Brian Buidh of the hard eyes. Then the Bird Daughter. But it seems to me that one stands in my path of ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... have been the bane of humanity. They have given us the stiletto, the Morgue, the bowie-knife. Our race must inevitably in the end outlive them. The test of man's plane in the scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They are surviving relics ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... palaces She raises under glasses, But souls like these, heav'n's hostages, Spring shelterless as grasses: 140 They share Earth's blessing and her bane, The common sun and shower; What makes your pain to them is gain, Your weakness is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... my only comfort; Oh, tell me not of danger, death, and Burleigh; Let every star shed down its mortal bane On my unshelter'd head: whilst thus I fold Thee in my raptured arms, I'll brave them all, Defy my fate, and ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... thy gilded veil to wear, Soft Simulation!—wisely to abstain From fostering Envy's asps;—to dash the bane Far from our hearts, which Hate, with frown severe, Extends for those who wrong us;—to revere With soul, or grateful, or resign'd, the train Of mercies, and of trials, is to gain A quiet Conscience, best of blessings here!— Calm Conscience ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... worry, for the occasion of it was gone. She was pained, she was grieved, she was ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. Sally was taking candles; he was robbing the store. It is ever thus. Vast wealth, to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and bone of his morals. When the Fosters were poor, they could have been trusted with untold candles. But now they—but let us not dwell upon it. From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; then soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at present—a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between that we are ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... ever I think, What warning voice should call, Or show me bane from food, with tedious art, When love—the perfect instinct, flower of all Divinest potencies of choice, whose part Was set 'mid stars and flame To keep the inner place of God—became A blind and ravening fever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... those of Religion and Equity, they are the greatest Depravations of human Nature, by giving wrong Ambitions and false Ideas of what is good and laudable; and should therefore be exploded by all Governments, and driven out as the Bane and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... comprehended in the fortunes of two confederacies, or leagues, one of which was called the Achaean, and the other the AEtolian League. United, these two confederacies might have maintained the political independence of Greece; but that spirit of dissension which we have seen to be the bane of the Hellenic peoples caused them to become, in the hands of intriguing Rome, weapons first for crushing Macedonia, and then for grinding each other to pieces. Finally, in the year 146 B.C., the splendid city of Corinth was taken by the Roman army and laid in ashes. This was ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he wamblet to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster.—Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound, the senior officer, was in the practice, when Robin was in that state, of reading the proclamations ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... kinges dere sone, The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free, Which alwey for to do wel is his wone, The noble Troilus, so loveth thee, That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be. 320 Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye? Doth what yow list, to make ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... circumstances, to a solitary stranger the risk would be serious; though generally, and in the case of cavalcades, the dogs fasten chiefly upon the horses. But endless are the compensations which we find in the distributions of nature. Is there a bane? Near it lies an antidote. Is there a disease? Look for a specific in that same neighborhood. Here, also, the universal rule prevails. As it was destined that Greece in all ages should be scourged by this intestine enemy, it was provided that a twofold specific should ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... concern. This was in connection with the fact that the easterly breeze seemed to have bobbed around to the southwest. Now, from all that he had heard this was a quarter that nearly always brings one of those howling "northers" that prove such a bane to Florida cruisers. ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Thackeray's greeting as they met at Evans's—"Ah, here comes Colonel Newcome!" "From his aristocratic mien and premature baldness," says Vizetelly, "Wiltshire Austin christened him 'the wicked old Marquis.' The keeping of late hours was Ponny Mayhew's bane. For a quarter of a century—save an annual fortnight devoted to recruiting himself at Scarborough or elsewhere—he scorned to seek repose before the milkman started on his rounds, and during the greater portion of the year never ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... raise up the Shield of Peace, and the battle was stayed; and therewith he cried to King Halfdan: "Two choices are in thine hands now, either that thou give up all to my will, or else gettest thou thy bane like thy brother; for now may men see that mine ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... of conscience, under the French Crown. In due time they got their answer. The King replied, through the minister, Ponchartrain, that he had not expelled heretics from France in order that they should set up a republic in America.[295] Thus, by the bigotry that had been the bane of Canada and of France herself, Louis XIV. threw away the opportunity of establishing a firm and healthy colony at the mouth of ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... gorse, or furze. Just in the widest part of the valley, a sort of platform of rock jutted out from the hill-side, and afforded a station for one of those tall, narrow, grim-looking fastnesses that were the strength of Scotland, as well as her bane. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fruit-tree's bane; the brook's, a summer hot and dry; The stag's a woven net, a gin the dove's; Mankind's, a soft sweet maiden. Others have pined ere I: Zeus! Father! hadst not thou ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... that the Chart was complicated beyond all need. There was one who said, "The multiplication of non-essentials has become the bane of the forest." Even a little meadow which he had found, and which he called the "Saints' Rest," was so entangled in paths and counterpaths that once out of sight of it one could never ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... essential than the mosquito net under which I slept every night for nearly four months. Insects are the bane of Africa. The mosquito carries malaria, and the tsetse fly is the harbinger of that most terrible of diseases, sleeping sickness. Judging from personal experience nearly every conceivable kind of biting bug infests the Congo. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... never hear of her again. I do. She's been the bane of my Roger, that's what she has. I have not slept half the night, and it's all her fault. Why, there's my boy saying now that he has no heart for ever marrying, poor lad! I wish it had been you, Molly, my lads had taken a fancy for. I told ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... (lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them as humanity's common bane. (17) Immense pains have therefore been taken to counteract this evil by investing religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and ceremony, that it may, rise superior to every shock, and be always observed with studious reverence by the whole people - a system which has been ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... he dismiss'd them; they with speed Their course through thickest constellation held, Spreading their bane; the blasted stars look'd wan, And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse, Then suffer'd." —Paradise Lost, Bk. ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... when a person believed himself bewitched, a shot at the image of the witch with a bullet melted out of a half-dollar was the favorite curative agency. Luck was an active divinity in their apprehension, powerful for blessing or bane, announced by homely signs, to be placated by quaint ceremonies. A dog crossing the hunter's path spoiled his day, unless he instantly hooked his little fingers together, and pulled till the animal disappeared. They were familiar with the ever- recurring mystification of the witch-hazel, or divining-rod; ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... faint sigh of assent. She was disappointed by her sister's tone; for in the time past she had more than once suspected that Geraldine Challoner loved George Fairfax with a passionate half-despairing love, which, if unrequited, might make the bane of her life. And, lo! here was the same Geraldine discussing her engagement as coolly as if the match had been the veriest marriage of convenience ever planned by a designing dowager. She did not understand how much pride had to do with this reticence, or what ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... groped her way to a place where there was a carven chest of olive-wood and ivory, and drawing a key from her girdle she opened the chest. Within were jewels, mirrors, and unguents in jars of alabaster—ay, and poisons of deadly bane; but she touched none of these. Thrusting her hand deep into the chest, she drew forth a casket of dark metal that the people deemed unholy, a casket made of "Typhon's Bone," for so they call grey iron. She pressed a secret spring. It opened, and feeling within she found a smaller casket. Lifting ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... ingredients which make up "a love of a man." Added to this, he really did possess a good share of common sense, and with the right kind of influence would have made a far different man from what he was. Self-love was the bane of his life, and as he liked dearly to be flattered, so he in turn became a most consummate flatterer; always, however, adapting his remarks to the nature of the person with whom he was conversing. Thus to Nellie Kennedy he said a thousand foolish things, just because he knew he gratified her vanity ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... am I doubly arm'd: my Death and Life, My Bane and Antidote are both before me. This in a Moment brings me to an End; But This informs me I shall never die. The Soul, secur'd in her Existence, smiles At the drawn Dagger, and defies its Point. The Stars shall fade away, the Sun himself Grow dim with Age, and Nature sink in Years; But thou ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for many a changeful year, Studious or sensual, gay or wild, or sad, An earnest votary of Evening. She Had something wondrous winning to my eye, So soft she was, and quiet. Often too, Absorbed in books, which were perchance a bane, Perchance a blessing; or in glittering crowds, Gazing all rapt on woman's eloquent face, Nature's most witching and most treacherous page; Or high in mirth with those whose senseful wit Outflashed the rosy wines that warmed its flow, I've held my vigils till the brow of Night Grew ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... soul, incarnating, must take many risks; and before it has found itself and tamed the new personality, may have sown griefs for itself to be reaped through many lives. The descendants of Augustus and Scribonia were the bane of Augustus and of Rome. But Livia was his good star, and always added ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... intend thei bot only thy death and destructioun? as thow may easilie perceave, suppoise thei cullour thair false intent and mynd, with the persute of heresye. For when thy baronis ar putt doun, what arte thow bot the King of Bane?[110] and then of necessitie man be guydit be thame: and thare, (no doubt,) whare ane blynd man is guyd, mon be ane fall in the myre. Thairfoir lett thy Grace tack hardiment and authoritie, quhilk thow hes of God, and suffer nott thair crewell persecutioun to procead, without ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... and a Whig, I must have Charity for those that differ from me in religious Opinions, whether Pagans, Turks, Jews, Papists, Quakers, Socinians, Presbyterians, or others. I look upon Bigotry to have always been the very Bane of human Society, and the Offspring of Interest and Ignorance, which has occasion'd most of the great Mischiefs that have afflicted Mankind. We ought no more to expect to be all of one Opinion, as to ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... irrespective of any considerations as to what may be right or just; hence the stubborn tenacity with which Nihilism maintains its grip upon the middle and lower classes. If the 'Little Father' wishes to stamp out that terrible scourge of secret and deadly conspiracy which is the bane and menace of his existence, he must purge the Russian nobles of their present lust of cruelty and oppression, and must render it possible for every one of his subjects, from the highest to the lowest, to obtain absolute justice. When ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... quite uncomfortable, and four had snored beneath his bunk all night; but then it had added appreciable weight to the sack in which he kept his gold dust. That sack, with its glittering yellow treasure, was at once the chief delight and the chief bane of his existence. Heaven and hell lay within its slender mouth. In the nature of things, there being no privacy to his one-roomed dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft. It would be very easy for these bearded, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... "Ay bane work any time skol be," spoke the Norwegian, and a puzzled expression flitted over his face as both Cassells broke into what was to him an inexplicable fit of laughter at ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... she cried; 'has not that light already proved your bane? Do you wish to fight a second time ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... curls, another too much paint, A third—where did she buy that frightful turban? A fourth's so pale she fears she's going to faint, A fifth's look's vulgar, dowdyish, and suburban, A sixth's white silk has got a yellow taint, A seventh's thin muslin surely will be her bane, And lo! an eighth appears,—"I'll see no more!" For fear, like Banquo's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to avoid shattering or tarnishing. This is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of Hellenic and Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves to the dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and their source ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... self-aggrandizement. Others are mere parasites, that well know the tenure on which they hold their offices, and will ever pay implicit obedience to those who administer to their wants. Many of your followers are among the most profligate of the community. They are the bane of social and domestic ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... at this point that the history of 'Wuthering Heights' commences, that violent and bitter history of the "little dark thing harboured by a good man to his bane," carried over the threshold, as Christabel lifted Geraldine, out of pity for the weakness which, having grown strong, shall crush the hand that helped it; carried over the threshold, as evil spirits are carried, powerless to enter of themselves, and yet no evil demon, only ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... to all sorts of inflammatory discourse, that he durst not presume upon the footing he had gained in her affection, to explain the baseness of his desire; he therefore applied to another of her passions, that proved the bane of her virtue. This was her timidity, which at first being constitutional, was afterwards increased by the circumstances of her education, and now aggravated by the artful conversation of Fathom, which he chequered with dismal stories ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... him civilly enough that, with "freedom" for a watchword, the fashion of my chin was a matter of mere private concern. But as that did not satisfy him, and as he seemed to be one of those quarrelsome fellows that are the bane of every community, I took him suddenly by the throat and the shoulder, and bent his neck with the old, quick turn till I heard it crack, and had unhanded him before any of his neighbours had seen what had befallen. The fierce press ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... frequently impossible; and in cases when the people cannot be permitted to land, the different men-of-war in company are sure to send boat-loads of visitors, or what are called "liberty men," on board one another's ships, to pass the afternoon of Sunday. This practice is the very bane of good discipline, and ought at all times to be discouraged in every way; for it almost inevitably leads to drunkenness, rioting, and bitter heart-burnings. It has, moreover, the effect of making the men ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... book to the careful attention of teachers and others interested in instruction. In the hands of an able teacher, the book should help to relieve parsing from the reproach of being the bane of the school-room. The Etymological Glossary of Grammatical Terms will also supply a ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... which Plato there mentions as the bonds and ligaments of the commonwealth, the pillars and the sustainers of every written statute; these they be which will bear chief sway in such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissness, for certain, are the bane of a commonwealth; but here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... republic, and dream of the successes of the First Revolution. The politicians hardly know what they want. Their main idea is to keep up for their own purposes that centralization which has so long been the bane of this country. If they agree to terms before Paris has given France an example of heroism, they fear that her supremacy will be compromised; if they allow the insulation to continue, they fear that the Provinces will accustom ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... return demanded that he be court-martialled for murder. [Footnote: Virginia State Papers, vol. iv., p. 212.] Logan, to his discredit, refused the court-martial, for fear of creating further trouble. The bane of the frontier military organization was the helplessness of the elected commanders, their dependence on their followers, and the inability of the decent men to punish the atrocious misdeeds ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... value me and what I said accordingly. At dinner we had a great deal of good discourse about Parliament; their number being uncertain, and always at the will of the King to encrease as he saw reason to erect a new borough. But all concluded that the bane of the Parliament hath been the leaving off the old custom of the places allowing wages to those that served them in Parliament, by which they chose men that understood their business and would attend it, and they could expect an account from; which now they cannot: ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... they exclaimed with astonishment, "but Lamh Laudher's afeard of him!—the garran bane's in him, now that he finds he ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the tale never flagged; ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... countenance was open, and his spirit was clear. He was a man of passions, my lord. He acted in every momentous concern, more from the dictates of his heart, than his head. But this is the key to his conduct; He kept a watchful eye upon that bane of every patriot minister, secret influence. If there were one feature in his political history more conspicuous than the rest, if I were called to point out the line of discrimination between his character and that of his contemporaries upon the public stage, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... spreading disappointment, weeping, lamentation, and broken hearts through the habitations of the children of men. "He is," as an old writer quaintly observes, "the moth of liberal men's coats, the ear-wig of the mighty, the bane of courts, a friend and slave to the trencher, and good for nothing but to be a factor ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... love has been my bane! My cunning fails, and all my arts are vain. Have mercy, fair one, lest my pupils all Mock me, who point a path in which ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... communicative letter on your return from Scotland, where you spent, I find, some considerable time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry; because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do: but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... victims escaped to the British colonies, and became a part of them. The Huguenots would have hailed as a boon the permission to emigrate under the fleur-de-lis, and build up a Protestant France in the valleys of the West. It would have been a bane of absolutism, but a national glory; would have set bounds to English colonization, and changed the face of the continent. The opportunity was spurned. The dominant Church clung to its policy of rule and ruin. France built its best ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... inhabitants was too great for the city; the shepherds also were included among that population, and all these readily inspired hopes that Alba and Lavinium would be insignificant in comparison with that city, which was intended to be built. But desire of rule, the bane of their grandfather, interrupted these designs, and thence arose a shameful quarrel from a sufficiently amicable beginning. For as they were twins, and consequently the respect for seniority could not settle the point, they agreed ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... regulated that which we should have left to regulate itself. We have left unregulated that which we were bound to regulate. We have given to some branches of industry a protection which has proved their bane. We have withheld from public health and public morals the protection which was their due. We have prevented the labourer from buying his loaf where he could get it cheapest; but we have not prevented ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... only things worth living for in this world, and I am determined to have my revenge. While we remain together on earth, I will pursue you—whatever your course in life may be, I will find you out; I will balk you in your dearest wishes—I will prove your bane in whatever you undertake—I will destroy your happiness—I will stand like a lion in your path, and bar your progress. I will not injure you in life or limb—I might kill you, but I will not do that—as ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... instance of the capriciousness of the human mind that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old; and which is, in itself, evidently incompatible with the idea of a government; a principle, in short, which, if it is to be executed at all, must substitute the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword to the mild influence ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... that did not contribute to support the family of Mahtoree. But the policy of the chief seldom permitted more to remain than sufficed for the wants of the day, perfectly assured that all must suffer before hunger, the bane of savage life, could lay its fell fangs ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Shall grasp you not as prey, nor we ourselves Betray you thus embracing sacred shrines, Nor make the avenging all-destroying god, Who not in hell itself sets dead men free, A grievous inmate, an abiding bane.— Spake I not right, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... the physical, intellectual and moral man, work is the essential factor in procuring health and happiness. Idleness is the bane of both. Man and woman were born to work either by hand or brain. Man in the outer world, woman in the home. The man who lives without an object in life is not only not doing his duty to God, but he is a curse to himself and others. But work, like everything else, should be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... "I have long wished to spend a few days in New York, but that bane of my life, poverty, has always prevented. Now, however, as old Uncle Nat has kindly furnished us with the means, I propose that Alice and I start day after to- morrow, and return on Saturday. That will give us ample time to ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... the doctor, getting out his clinical thermometer. "It has been her bane, poor lady, that difficult temper. Years have ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... not for that which cannot be recall'd. Is it your servant's carelessness you 'plain? Tully by one of his own slaves was slain. The husbandman close in his bosom nurs'd A subtle snake, that after wrought his bane. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... another's loss, Nor grudge not at another's gain; No worldly waves my mind can toss; I brook that is another's bane; I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend; I loathe not life, nor ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... prescriptive rights at all: all her privileges and property being held on sufferance of the State, which could withdraw its toleration when it chose. Illustrious Italians, from Dante downwards, denounced the love of power and money of the Church as the bane of Italy. Had not Machiavelli said, "If Italy has fallen a prey not only to powerful barbarians but to whatsoever attack, we Italians are indebted for it to the Church and to nothing else"? Respect ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Gettysburg. General George Gordon Meade succeeded Hooker in command of the Army of the Potomac. Meade was not a brilliant man, but he was a thorough soldier, and eminently free from that spirit of envy which was the bane of our armies, which had nearly driven Grant from the service, and which was responsible for the loss of more than one battle. Elated by Chancellorsville, Lee determined to invade the North. The South made an extreme effort to replenish its armies, and ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... sword and a dagger he wore by his side, Of manye a man the bane; And he was clad in his capull hyde Topp and ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... rent-roll is sixty thousand per annum, does not go to ruin in a day. There sat the earl, in his library now, in his nine-and-fortieth year, and ruin had not come yet—that is, it had not overwhelmed him. But the embarrassments which had clung to him, and been the destruction of his tranquility, the bane of his existence, who shall describe them? The public knew them pretty well, his private friends knew better, his creditors best; but none, save himself knew, or could ever know, the worrying torment that was his portion, wellnigh ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... watchful for our good, guard me from men, From their deceitful tongues, their vows and flatteries; Still let me pass neglected by their eyes: Let my bloom wither and my form decay, That none may think it worth their while to ruin me, And fatal love may never be my bane." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... man at the table laughed suddenly. "Ay bane laik to know how yuh feel now, Yorky?" ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... frescoes we have, it is true, many a quaint bit of genre (superior to Teniers only because of superior associations), but never again the fairy tale. And as the better recedes, it is replaced by the worse, by the bane of all genre painting, non-significant detail, and positive bad taste. Have London or New York or Berlin worse to show us than the jumble of buildings in his ideal of a great city, his picture of Babylon? It may ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... injustice of maintaining protection for protection's sake enjoins upon the people's servants the duty of exposing and destroying the brood of kindred evils which are the unwholesome progeny of paternalism. This is the bane of republican institutions and the constant peril of our government by the people. It degrades to the purposes of wily craft the plan of rule our fathers established and bequeathed to us as an object of our love and veneration. It perverts the patriotic sentiments ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... which, if he could but be taught to believe it, is of all earthly anticipations the most remote and uncertain. A passion for unnecessary expense is, under different circumstances, frequently repressed by an inability to procure credit; but it is the curse and bane of Mr. Omnium's nephew, and Miss Saveall's niece, that so far from any obstacle being opposed to their prodigality, almost unlimited indulgence is offered, nay, actually pressed upon them, by the trades-people of their wealthy relations; who take especial care that their charges shall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... with a sunny smile. "As well ask me how much my living expenses must be in order to cover my earnings. Whatever one is, the other will be approximately ditto—or perhaps slightly in excess thereof. Anyhow, nothing but rigid economy—bane of my life—will make the one fit into the other. But I have a thought. Something tells me these boys need white flannels, so get out your stock, Kurtz. If they can't play tennis they must learn, for my sake." Bob's remarkable stroke of fortune called for a celebration, and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... rainbow—syne to the Tolbooth, which is a terror to evil-doers, and from which the Lord preserve us all!—syne to the Market, where ye'll see lamb, beef, mutton, and veal, hanging up on cleeks, in roasting and boiling pieces—spar-rib, jigget, shoulder, and heuk-bane, in the greatest prodigality of abundance;—and syne down to the Duke's gate, by looking through the bonny white-painted iron-stanchels of which, ye'll see the deer running beneath the green trees; and the palace itself, in the inside of which dwells one that needs not be proud to call ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... go home immediately. He had a commission to execute in the town, and went to do it. It took him about an hour, which brought it to five o'clock. In returning through the Boundaries he encountered Roland Yorke, just released from that bane of his life, the office, for the day. Arthur told him how near he had been ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... San Francisco the earthquake has been its bane. During the past fifty years fully 250 shocks have been recorded, while all California has been subject to them. But frequency rather than violence of shocks has been the characteristic of the seismic history of the State, there having ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... children. All the members of such a family commonly live in the greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village held in farm under Government, was considered as a principality, and subject ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... gold and silver be not a drug, where they do not promote industry? Whether they be not even the bane and undoing of ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... Norman and Dane, With the Northman's sinew and heart and brain, And the Northman's courage for blessing or bane, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Dory's hand, but he appeared to be very sad. His son's trouble caused him a great deal of sorrow: in fact, the bad conduct of Pearl was the bane of his life. He told Dory that he had sold his farm in order to get his son away from his evil associates near Plattsburgh. He had come to the conclusion that Pearl was worse than his companions. He had done all he could to save him, and had failed. He was going into ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... as often a symbol of malevolence and enmity. It appears among the emblems of Siva-Roudra, the power of desolation and death: it is the bane of Aëpytus, Idom, Archemorus, and Philoctetes: it gnaws the roots of the tree of life in the Eddas, and bites the heel of unfortunate Eurydice. In Hebrew writers it is generally a type of evil; and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the one thing that I try with all my might to impress on boys; that the essence of all style is to say what you mean as forcibly as possible; the bane of classical teaching is that the essence of successful composition is held to be to "get in" words and phrases; it is not a bad training, so long as it is realised to be only a training, in obtaining a rich and flexible vocabulary, so that the writer ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... (4) Muchomor [fly-bane]. Amanita muscaria, or Agaricus muscarius (fly-agaric). This is the Siberian fungus, with remarkable ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... his irreversible relations towards his creatures, that his united justice and love shall follow both holiness and iniquity now and ever, pouring his beneficence upon them to be converted by them into their food and bliss or into their bane and misery. There is, then, no essential need of adventitious accompaniments or results to justify and pay the good, or to condemn and torture the bad, here or hereafter. To be wise, and pure, and strong, and noble, is glory and blessedness enough in itself. To be ignorant, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... it should be so; but it is the direful truth. We bear the same name, we had the same father; and yet I have been the curse and bane ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... distant relation of the true Border breed, named Margaret Elliot—a lass whose ideas of hussyskep were so peculiar, that she thought Gilnockie and its laird were going to ruin when she saw in the kail-pot a "heugh bane" of their own cattle, a symptom of waste, extravagance, and laziness, on the part of her husband, that boded less good than the offer made by "the Laird's Jock," (Johnny Armstrong's henchman,) to give "Dick o' the Cow" a piece ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Don't I know that type?" said the magnate, who confounded all scientists with inventors, the capital-seeking inventor being the bane and torment of ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
