Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bane   /beɪn/   Listen
Bane

noun
1.
Something causing misery or death.  Synonyms: curse, nemesis, scourge.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Bane" Quotes from Famous Books



... startled to find anger, derision, and bitterness in one, before distinguished for suavity and benevolence of manner. He transacted public business with distaste, and hastened from it to the solitude which was at once his bane and relief. He mounted a fiery horse, that which had borne him forward to victory in Greece; he fatigued himself with deadening exercise, losing the pangs of a ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... of unrestricted Executive patronage—the bane of American politics—early enlisted the efforts of the Thirty-ninth Congress to provide a remedy. A bill to regulate appointments to and removals from office was introduced by Mr. Henderson into the Senate near the close of the first session, and referred ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... have been plucking, plants among, Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue Night-shade, moon-wort, libbard's bane And twice, by the dogs, was ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... last greeting and good-night? My breasts are sere as sand, no flowers bloom, No grass, no forests hide my misery bare; The reaches of the tyrannous poles consume Those gardens of delight we made so fair, And men lie dark in caves, a sullen race, Framed of ray daughter's flesh but now my bane, Yet shall I not withdraw my patient face, Nor tomb them in my hollow caves of pain. Soon shall I creep no more about thee, orb Of Heaven, for all my thews grow stark and dry. When the years drag me to my end—absorb, Embrace, enfold, caress ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer

... of New England was the bane of Franklin West; for he was a kind-hearted man, a good husband and a good father, before he was deformed by the use of liquor. He made good wages, and supported his little family for several years; but the vile ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... and great beauty of person, and he returned only vanity and weakness for these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die a moral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vain of God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity is the bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because it is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... 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, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... will, Or that renown'd Ulysses were my sire, 120 Or that himself might wander home again. Whereof hope yet remains! then might I lose My head, that moment, by an alien's hand, If I would fail, ent'ring Ulysses' gate, To be the bane and mischief of them all. But if alone to multitudes opposed I should perchance be foiled; nobler it were With my own people, under my own roof To perish, than to witness evermore Their unexampled deeds, guests shoved aside, 130 Maidens dragg'd forcibly ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... thou bane of fear, And last deserter of the brave, Thou soothing ease of mortal care, Thou traveller beyond the grave; Thou soul of patience, airy food, Bold warrant of a distant good, Reviving cordial, kind decoy; Though fortune frowns and friends depart, Though Silvia flies me, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... or seventy years after date, is of the finest, whilst Sir Mungo Malagrowther[18] all but deserves the same description. But this most cantankerous knight is not touched off with the completeness of Dalgetty, or even of Claud Halcro. Lord Glenvarloch adds, to the insipidity which is the bane of Scott's good heroes, some rather disagreeable traits which none of them had hitherto shown. Dalgarno in the same way falls short of his best bad heroes. Dame Suddlechop suggests, for the first time unfavourably, a Shakespearean ancestress, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... of Normandy has won The battle, to our bane. On the field of Hastings, where he fought, The king ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... your wisdom the fruits of our joint councils, joint efforts, and common dangers; reverence religion, diffuse knowledge throughout your land, patronize the arts and sciences; let Liberty and Order be inseparable companions. Control party spirit, the bane of free governments; observe good faith to, and cultivate peace with all nations, shut up every avenue to foreign influence, contract rather than extend national connection, rely on yourselves only; be Americans in thought, word and deed;—thus will you give immortality to that ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... vineyards, but a humid air is fatal to success especially if the air is both warm and wet. Moist weather during the time of maturity is particularly disastrous to the grape, as are frequent fogs. Cold wet weather in blooming time is the grape-grower's vernal bane, since it most effectually prevents the setting of fruit. It may be laid down as a rule that the grape lives by sunlight, warmth and air—it often thrives on the desert's edge. These considerations make ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... poison in my breast, 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 chance to ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... bed room, is contained a very large collection of tracts and printed volumes relating to the FAIR SEX: being, in fact, nothing less than a prodigious heap of publications "FOR and AGAINST" the ladies. M. Chardin will not separate them—adding that the "bane and antidote must ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... again: "Cousin, forsooth of this opinion Thou hast a vain imagination. This prison caused me not for to cry; But I was hurt right now thorough mine eye Into mine heart; that will my bane* be. *destruction The fairness of the lady that I see Yond in the garden roaming to and fro, Is cause of all my crying and my woe. I *n'ot wher* she be woman or goddess, *know not whether* But Venus is it, soothly* as I guess, *truly And therewithal on knees ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... favorable opinion of the Jesuit missions than Protestants have usually allowed themselves to entertain, and felt both kindly and respectfully toward the padres, who in the earlier days of these settlements had done, he believed, a useful work. But the great bane of the Portuguese settlements was slavery. Slavery prevented a good example, it hindered justice, it kept down improvement. If a settler took a fancy to a good-looking girl, he had only to buy her, and make her his concubine. Instead of correcting the polygamous habits of the chiefs and others, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... no Dirzee? In the spirit of fair play, however, I must mention that my wife does not endorse all this. On the contrary, she tells me (she has a terse way of speaking) that it is "rank bosh." She declares that the Dirzee is the bane of her life, that he is worse than a fly, that she cannot sit down to the piano for five minutes but he comes buzzing round for black thread, or white thread, or mother-o-pearl buttons, or hooks and eyes, that every evening for ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... bane and admiration. He was presumed by the verdant patrons of the paper to be its owner and principal editor, its type-setter, pressman, and carrier. His hair was elaborately curled, and his ears were perfect racks of long and dandyfied pens; a broad, shovel-shaped ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... it were not for the incredulity and doubt and agnostico-schismatical hesitation, and very cumbersome air of questioning-and-peering-about, which is the bane of our moderns, very certainly I should now go on to tell of giants as big as cedars, living in mountains of precious stones, and drawn to battle by dragons in cars of gold; or of towns where the customs of men were remote and unexpected; of countries not yet visited, and of the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... of this series contains different varieties, no Stamp being included in two Packets, and purchasers will by this novel method be saved the inconvenience of acquiring duplicates, which is as a rule the bane of most ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell

... Almond along the vale are associated with much romance. Some time in the last century there lived at Corrivarlich a noted sheep-stealer named Alastair Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... decrease, So by degrees they leave the seas. Not merchants now, but companies, Remove whole manufactories. All arts and crafts neglected lie: Content, the bane of industry, Makes 'em admire their homely store, And neither seek nor covet more. So few in the vast hive remain, The hundredth part they can't maintain Against th' insults of numerous foes, Whom yet they ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... night I am sleepless * and by day in distress * consumed with increasing wasting and pain * and longing and love unfain * abounding in sighs * with tear flooded eyes * by passion captive ta'en * of Desire the slain * with heart seared by the parting of us twain * the debtor of longing bane, of sickness cup-companion * I am the sleepless one, who never closeth eye * the slave of love, whose tears run never dry * for the fire of my heart is still burning * and never hidden is the flame of my yearning." Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... meadows blooming with parsley and violet. Yea, if thither indeed had come e'en one of the Deathless, e'en he Had wondered and gladdened his heart with all that was there to see. And there in sooth stood wondering the Flitter, the Argus-bane. But when o'er all these matters in his soul he had marvelled amain, Then into the wide cave went he, and Calypso, Godhead's Grace, Failed nowise there to know him as she looked upon his face; For never unknown to each other are the Deathless Gods, though ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... bore himself with the honor of a soldier and the purity of a Christian,—triumphantly sustaining himself throughout a Congressional investigation set on foot by political malice, and confronting with equal credit a military inquiry which had its origin in the jealousy that is often the bane ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... whom thy brooding parents love For what thou art, and what they hope to see thee, Unhallow'd sprites, and earth-born phantoms flee thee; Thy soft simplicity, a hovering dove, That still keeps watch from blight and bane to free thee, With its weak wings, in peaceful care outspread, Fanning invisibly thy pillow'd head, Strikes evil powers with reverential dread, Beyond the sulphurous bolts of fabled Jove, Or whatsoe'er of amulet or charm ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... whereon to gaze, And sighing, shivering there around to stray; To give a penny would the niggard craze, And worse than bane ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... bane of life, Spring of tumult — source of strife: Could I but half thy curses tell, The wise would ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... court, rise and begin with "May it please the Court," "May it please your honor," or, before a court in bane, "May it please your honors." The term "you" would never be used to a judge on the bench; but that of "your Honor" would ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... what a stately pace Comes thine alabaster steed; Servant of heroic deed! O'er his loins, his trappings glow Like the northern lights on snow. Mount his back! thy sword unsheath! Sign of the enchanter's death; Bane of every wicked spell; Silencer of dragon's yell. Alas! thou this wilt never do: Thou art an enchantress too, And wilt surely never spill Blood of those ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats

... have collected. He is decidedly our beat conchologist in New York, and I would rather trust him than most men—for he is by no means afflicted with the mania of desiring to multiply new species, which, is, at present, the bane of natural history. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... gracefully as he paced along. His gait confounded all those who gazed upon him, as he shamed the branches with his shape and belittled the rose with the redness of his cheeks and his black eyes of Babili witchcraft: thou wouldst deem that whoso looked on him would surely be preserved from bane and bale;[FN288] for he was even as saith of him one of his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... toil in the rocky soil He dug a trench profound, That in the flood of serpent blood And bane ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... of Eleusis came to Theseus and wanted to make him their king. "You have slain the tyrant who was the bane of Eleusis," they said, "and we have heard how you have also rid the world of the giant robbers who were the terror of the land. Come now and be our king; for we know that you will rule ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... all!" exclaimed Vane, with a burst of righteous wrath, "they are the bane and curse of Christianity, and have been ever since Constantine made it official and fashionable. They are responsible for every corruption that has crept into the Church, for every blot that defiles the purity of the Creed. They are not Christians, and they never have been, for they cannot ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... how fierce a king is here The stayer of falling folks, the bane of fear! Fair life he liveth, ruling passing well, Disdaining praise of Heaven and hate of Hell; And yet how goodly to us Great in Heaven Are such as he, the waning world that leaven! How well it were that such should never die! ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure, By the cross are sanctified; Peace is there that knows no measure, Joys that through ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton

... ascended since we abandoned our canoes we have risen to no less than three thousand feet above sea-level. Hence there is a considerable change both in the temperature and in the vegetation. We have shaken off some of that horrible insect life which is the bane of tropical travel. A few palms still survive, and many tree-ferns, but the Amazonian trees have been all left behind. It was pleasant to see the convolvulus, the passion-flower, and the begonia, all reminding me ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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

... 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 discontented with ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... perhaps one should say a trench-hold word. Who is ever the worse for a laugh? Certainly not the soldier in trench or dug-out or shell-swept billet. Rather may it be said that the Bairnsfather laughter has acted in thousands of cases as an antidote to the bane of depression. It is the good fortune of the British Army to possess such an antidote, and the ill-fortune of the other belligerents that they do ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather

... evangelicals in Germany trembled at the onslaught of the new theologians. For these services the Brethren have been both blamed and praised. According to that eminent historian, Ritschl, such men as Spangenberg were the bane of the Lutheran Church. According to Dorner, the evangelical theologian, the Brethren helped to save the Protestant faith from ruin. "When other Churches," says Dorner, "were sunk in sleep, when darkness was almost everywhere, it ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... beheldest them. Thine ear Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen, In shattering the dark in evil's den, Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain Lost Paradise, or bane its atmosphere. ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... the world," she replied. "Men whose lives were the bane of their fellow creatures. Men who poisoned the air, which is the common breath of all, for their own selfish purposes. There was short work with such men in old Roman times. Just in the moment of their triumph, a hand, as of an avenging giant, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... doctor, getting out his clinical thermometer. "It has been her bane, poor lady, that difficult temper. Years have ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... man save when that bane of the woodsman, rheumatism, laid him by the heels. He had a bit of a farm in the tamarack swamp. Once, being laid up by his arch enemy, with his joints stiffened and muscles throbbing with pain, Toby had seen the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... rank, however, that seemed most busy for good or mischief in human affairs: such gods as Pele, the spirit of the volcanoes, with her five brothers and eight sisters who lived in the flaming caverns of Kilauea; or as Kalaipahoa, poison-goddess of Molokai, and her two sisters, who put a bane on the trees so deadly that they rivalled the fabled Upas of Java, and birds fell lifeless as they attempted to fly above them (a volcanic sulphur vent was probably the origin of this tale); or, as Kuahana, who slew men for sport; or, as Pohakaa, who rolled rocks down the mountains to scare ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... the tenth of the produce in kind. Curiously enough, the converse proposition has lately found favour in India in connection with the agrarian riots in the Dekkan, and what is there regarded as the bane of the Indian system is now proposed here as the antidote of the Turkish system. Like the Cypriote, but in a greater degree, the Dekkan peasant is poor, indebted, and indifferent to the improvement of his land, and both ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... drew on with rain, nor yet they ceased Within the hall to drink the gleaming wine, And late they pour'd the last cup of the feast, To Argus-bane, the Messenger divine; And last, 'neath torches tall that smoke and shine, The maidens strew'd the beds with purple o'er, That Diocles and Paris might recline All night, beneath the ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... yourself, there, there, my dear, there, poor dear man'! Ach, mercy on us! Calm yourself, will you?" she shouted frantically. "Oh, you bane of my life!" ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... "Well, Bane," and the officer eyed his trim appearance with manifest approval, "what did you succeed ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... You know perfectly well, Jack, that insincerity is the bane of domestic and social life; that hypocrisy is a child of the Evil One, and that vain and false pretensions are the fatal lures that lead us on to destruction. How can we respect ourselves or expect our friends to respect us if the most conspicuous ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... for the natives than the cold seasons; and the explorer is often urged to take advantage of them. He must, however, consult local experience. Whilst ascending rivers in November, for instance, he may find the many feet of flood a boon or a bane, and his marching journeys are nearly sure to end in ulcerated feet, as was the case with poor Dr. Livingstone. The rains drench the country till the latter end of December, when the Nanga or "little ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... 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

... of them to the poison of whiskey, which is desolating their houses. No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey. Fix but the duty at the rate of other merchandise, and we can drink wine here as cheap as we do grog: and who will not prefer it? Its extended use will carry health and comfort to a much enlarged circle. Every one in easy circumstances (as the bulk of our citizens are) will prefer it ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... thou ne'er gavest nane, Every nighte and alle; The whinnes shall pricke thee to the bare bane, And ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... incurable 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 a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... the wrist the other's hand, while among them sings one neither unlovely, nor of body contemptible, but divinely tall and fair, Artemis the Archer, nurtured with Apollo. Among them sport Ares, and the keen-eyed Bane of Argos, while Phoebus Apollo steps high and disposedly, playing the lyre, and the light issues round him from twinkling feet and fair-woven raiment. But all they are glad, seeing him so high of heart, Leto of the golden tresses, and Zeus the Counsellor, beholding their ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... remarked by an elegant historian,[**] that conquerors though usually the bane of bunian kind, proved often, in those feudal limes, the most indulgent of sovereigns: they stood most in need of supplies from their people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit to the necessary impositions, they were obliged to make ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... of the Muse, Which to divulge might shake profane belief, And tell the irreligion of my grief; Grief that excused the tribute of my knees, And shaped my passion in such words as these! Malignant goddess! bane to my repose, Thou universal cause of all my woes; Say whence it comes that thou art grown of late A poor amusement for my scorn and hate; The malice thou inspirest I never fail On thee to wreak the tribute when I rail; Fool's commonplace thou art, their weak ensconcing fort, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... first peopling of paradise the Almighty had never laid so strict a charge on our father Adam to refrain from eating of the tree of knowledge except he had thereby forewarned that the taste of knowledge would be the bane of all happiness. St. Paul says expressly, that knowledge puffeth up, i.e., it is fatal and poisonous. In pursuance whereunto St. Bernard interprets that exceeding high mountain whereon the devil had erected his seat to have been the mountain of knowledge. And perhaps this may be another ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... mingle. Corydon, You are a boor, nor heeds a whit your gifts Alexis; no, nor would Iollas yield, Should gifts decide the day. Alack! alack! What misery have I brought upon my head!- Loosed on the flowers Siroces to my bane, And the wild boar upon my crystal springs! Whom do you fly, infatuate? gods ere now, And Dardan Paris, have made the woods their home. Let Pallas keep the towers her hand hath built, Us before all things let the woods delight. The grim-eyed lioness ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... very few people know it, the most valuable of all metals has been discovered on the upper waters of the Pahang River and tributaries. The Chinese swarm in their thousands on the western slopes, and outnumber the Malays by more than three to one. They are surely the bane of the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... points upon which Mr. Hathorn had laid the greatest stress Mr. Porson was indifferent—dates, which had been the bane of many a boy's life and an unceasing source of punishment, he regarded but little, insisting only that the general period should be known, and his questions generally took the form of, "In the beginning or at the end of such and such a century, what was ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... Blind instruments of many-eyed Rapine And purposes they share not, and scarce know; And this fell hate that makes a gulf between The Lombard and the German, aids the foe Who tramples both divided, and whose bane Is in the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... school. The good city of Boston alone teems with transcendental schemes for the total and immediate regeneration of mankind. There we find Peace Societies, and New Moral World Societies, and Teetotal Societies, and Anti-Slavery Societies, all "in full blast," each opposing to its respective bane the most sweeping and exaggerated remedies. The Americans never do things by halves; their vices and their virtues are alike in extremes, and the principles of the second book of the Ethics of Aristotle[5] are altogether unknown ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... thy flocks to Cleitor's bounds thou'st hied, Take from this fount a draught, and grant a rest To all thy goats the water nymphs beside. But bathe not in't when full of drunken cheer, Lest the mere vapour may bring thee to bane; Shun my vine-hating spring—Melampus here From madness once washed Proetus' daughters sane, And all th' offscouring here did hide, when they From Argos came to ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... slave! Gold is my fear, my bane, my death! I hate Its yellow glare, its aspect hard and cold. I would be rid of ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

... quieted his doubts and fears when he was received into the Roman Church. To many of us Authority is the life-buoy which supports us "o'er crag and torrent till the night is gone"; but Francis Newman could not believe in it. "Authority is the bane," he would say, "of religion." He must see with his intellectual eyes, to be saved. He must see and touch Truth for himself; his intellectual self must be convinced, or he must stand outside the creeds he knew—a ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... universally installed First Physician and Man of Science, which last qualification he could apply to all purposes, from the boiling of an egg to the giving a lecture. He was, indeed, qualified, like many of his profession, to spread both the bane and antidote before a dyspeptic patient, being as knowing a gastronome as Dr. Redgill himself, or any other worthy physician who has written for the benefit of the cuisine, from Dr. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, to the late Dr. Hunter of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... this contretemps would have been avoided had I not been followed by one of those pests, a guide, the sight of whom caused me to make undue hurry over the frozen surface. Harpies of this ilk are the bane of sight-seeing ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... though we had been princesses. But everything we said was noted, and everything we did cautiously watched; therefore for a short time we tasted something of the horrors of that publicity which must be the bane ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... kings and queens And falling leaves and flying rain, With Time to mow, and Fate who gleans Their good and evil, boon and bane. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... its paying into the treasury above 900,000l. near a million of money annually. And thus, under the names of rum, brandy, gin, whisky, usquebaugh, wine, cyder, beer, and porter, alcohol is become the bane of the Christian world, as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... spurns What Wisdom did ordain: God's rest to Satan's use he turns,— A blessing to a bane. Flowers above and thorns below, Little pleasure, lasting woe,— Such is the ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown

... bane of Greece, from the beginning to the end of its history, was the suicidal spirit of disunion. Her power was splintered at many crises, when, if united, it might have saved the land from foreign tyranny. Her resources were drained, generation after generation, by needless local contests. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... to that restless desire for change which is the bane of so many persons of both sexes at the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... the throne of his father, was a shy, proud, delicate youth of twenty-four years, having only a superficial knowledge of public affairs, scarcely known to the Ministers, and endowed with a narrow pedantic nature which was to be the bane of his people. He lacked alike the sagacity, the foresight, and the suppleness of Leopold. Further, though his inexperience should have inspired him with a dread of war for his storm-tossed States, yet that same misfortune subjected ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... It reminds me of the first chapter of Genesis. But how should they know that it is good? That is the mystery to me. I am always agreeably disappointed; it is incredible that they should have found it out. Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane, and which the antidote. There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite. Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices both always in full blast. Yet you must take advice of the one school as if there was no other. In ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... hound both fleet and strong: He ate at my board, and he slept by my bed, And ran with me all the day long. But my wife took a priest, a shaveling priest, And 'such friendships are carnal,' quoth he. So my wife and her priest they drugged the poor beast, And the rat's bane is waiting for me. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... gratified by your 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

... and anxiety to exalt himself, came forward to the rescue, and, with a mixture of casuistical cunning and real ingenuity, tried, as some one has it, "to make Pope a Christian," although, even in Warburton's hands, like the dying Donald Bane in "Waverley," he "makes but a queer Christian after all;" and his system, essentially Pantheistic, contrives to ignore the grand Scripture principles of a Fall, of a Divine Redeemer, of a Future World, and the glorious light ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... Ulick, changing his note to eagerness. 'La grande nation herself finds that logic was her bane. Consistency was never made for man! Why where would this world be if it did not go two ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... our Mystical Chorus, O come to the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon's pride— On the lips of that foreigner base, of Athens the bane and disgrace, There is shrieking, his kinsman by race, The garrulous swallow of Thrace; From that perch of exotic descent, Rejoicing her sorrow to vent, She pours to her spirit's content, a nightingale's woeful lament, That e'en though ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... twice his back. But when his nut-brown sword was out, With stomach huge he laid about, Imprinting many a wound upon 800 His mortal foe, the truncheon. The trusty cudgel did oppose Itself against dead-doing blows, To guard its leader from fell bane, And then reveng'd itself again. 805 And though the sword (some understood) In force had much the odds of wood, 'Twas nothing so; both sides were ballanc't So equal, none knew which was valiant'st: For wood with Honour b'ing engag'd, 810 Is so implacably ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... to have the best Portland stone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury, it so happened that parliamentary interest, which is often the bane of fair pursuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never sunk either in its foundation or in its arches, which were so much the subject ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... league. Still from his cave the Seer Admonished, 'Set the foe against the foe; Slay last the conqueror!' and from rock and hill The Bard cried, 'Vengeance!' In the bardic clan That hatred of their country's ancient bane Lived like a faith. One night it chanced a tarn, Secreted high 'mid cold and moonless hills, Bursting its bank down burst. That valley's Bard Clomb to the church-roof from his buried house: Thence rang his song,—'twas 'Vengeance!—Vengeance' ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... look before we part, * Nerving my heart this severance to sustain: But, an this parting deal thee pain and bane, * Leave me to die of love and spare ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... his magic can invent an antidote to the bane," said he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into the wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, the secret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... replied Jadee, "have been the bane of the Malay race; no one knows the amount of villainy, the bloody cruelty of their system towards us. They drive us into our prahus to escape their taxes and laws, and then declare us pirates and put us to death. ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... 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 ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... botanist Karl recognised at a glance. It was a species of aconite, or wolf's-bane, and very similar to the kindred species, Aconitum napellus, or "monk's hood," of Europe, whose roots furnish the most potent ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... land in which I lived, by a fell bane Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side, 695 And stabled in our homes,—until the chain Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide That blasting curse men had no shame—all vied In evil, slave and despot; fear ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... beginning to cry (for the last letters received from Berenger had been those from Paris, while he still believed Eustacie to have perished at La Sablerie); 'and I do say it is very hard that just when he is rid of the French baggage, the bane of his life, and is coming home, maybe with a child upon his hands, and all wounded, scarred, and blurred, the only wench he would or should have married should throw herself away on a French vagabond beggar, and you aiding ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... public voice. They continue singular and alone, without making parties, or forming sects: the whole weight of the public authority falls upon them; a price is set upon their heads; whilst they are universally regarded as execrable persons, the bane of civil society, with whom it is criminal to have ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... 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

... woods; North and West. Mount. honeysuckle Yellowish Mountain woods and bogs; Mass., West. N. American papaw Lurid purple Banks of streams; Pa. and South. Pepper-root White Rich woods; Middle States. Rare. Puccoon Yellow Shady woods; N. Y. and West. Red bane-berry Rocky woods. Common Northward. Red sandwort Sandy fields; sea-coast. Common. Rheumatism-root White Low woods; Middle States, West. Rhodora Rose-color Damp, cold New England woods. Scarlet corydalis Dry woods and fields; Northeast ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... agreeable chum. What you've done to-night has given you a greater hold on my affection than you could ever have gained in any ordinary social way; but you're going to promise me that you won't drift into any of that silly love-making that has always been the bane of my existence." ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... fatal gift to her husband. In his ignorance, the hero receives it, and places upon his shoulders the venom of the Lernaean Echidna. He is placing frankincense on the rising flames, and {is offering} the words of prayer, and pouring wine from the bowl upon the marble altars. The virulence of the bane waxes warm, and, melted by the flames, it runs, widely diffused over the limbs of Hercules. So long as he is able, he suppresses his groans with his wonted fortitude. After his endurance is overcome by his anguish, he pushes down ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... utterances as that of Dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout Protestant Christendom; and in due time we see their working in New England. That same tendency to provincialism, which, save at rare intervals, has been the bane of Massachusetts thought from that day to this, appeared; and in 1664 we find Samuel Danforth arguing from the Bible that "comets are portentous signals of great and notable changes," and arguing from history that they "have ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... there are caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral nature of humanity; and I will say further—the art of these chemists is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the remedy and the bane to yearnings for love or desires ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... "Then is Leif's luck very much like the sword that becomes one man's bane in becoming ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... turn," she writes, "that I have not the faculty to frame easy, polished sentences. If I could but do this, I would finish up the History without asking aid of anyone." And again: "It has been the bane of my life that I am powerless to put on paper the glimpses of thoughts which come and go like flashes of lightning." As has been said before in these pages, she is a perfect critic and delightful letter-writer, but finds difficulty in doing what is called ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... of marshmallow, and white of egg, flea-bane seeds, and lime; powder them and mix juice of radish with the white of egg; mix all thoroughly and with this composition annoint your body or hand and allow it to dry and afterwards annoint it again, and after this you may boldly take up hot iron ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... That, as I proposed to board in a convent, a small sum would answer my occasions; but, if that should be denied, I would actually go to service, or take some other desperate step, to avoid the man who was my bane ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... of the father of him whose life he was fool enough to preserve. Yet, what but ingratitude of the grossest nature could a Morton expect at the hands of the false family of De Haldimar! They were destined to be our bane, and well have they fulfilled the end for which they ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... bane of life," she replied. "We don't understand each other. I can't understand why you don't marry Junia. You love her. You don't understand why I couldn't play as big a part as your father— I couldn't. He was always odd—masterful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 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 meet its ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... weight of bronze before Thy feet, And bought of God new child souls, as were meet For each man's sacrifice, and dwelt in homes Free, where nor Love nor Woman goes and comes How, is that daughter not a bane confessed, Whom her own sire sends forth—(He knows her best!)— And, will some man but take her, pays a dower! And he, poor fool, takes home the poison-flower; Laughs to hang jewels on the deadly thing He joys in; labours for her robe-wearing, Till wealth and ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... Henry the VIIth's Chapel lies in royal pomp she who so long was Britain's bane—'the daughter of debate, who discord still did sow'—poor Mary Queen of Scots. But English and Scots alike have forgotten the streams of noble blood she cost their nations; and look sadly and ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... my lower deep once more. My name is JEREMY BENTHAM; I am very unhappy in my mind; and, with your permission, will often escape this way from him who is the bane of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... the 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 him live ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... sensational story-writers. No intelligent person really trusted the army, although its ranks, such as they were, were filled with as gallant soldiers as ever carried a rifle, but it had been afflicted ever since men could remember with the bane and blight of politics and social influence. It had never been really a serious profession, and its upper ranks had been little better than the playground of the sons of the wealthy ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... when the cherished secret was to be divulged. Don Roderic, who had seized the throne by violence, and bore in his heart the fatal bane of curiosity, determined to learn what had lain for centuries behind those locks. The whole affair, he declared, was the jest of an ancient king, which did very well when superstition ruled the world, but which was far behind the age in which he lived. Two things ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... 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 ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck

... are the bane of modern methods of education in our country have not spared sanctuary ordinances and family religion. "The church which is in thy house" is an empty form of speech when applied to a majority of so-called Christian ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... 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 ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... wise, but feeble-hearted. Yet the Norns have spoken; and it must be that another hero shall arise of the Volsung blood, and he shall restore the name and the fame of his kin of the early days. And he shall be my bane; and in him shall the race ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... man," said Media, "that, bane or blessing, Bello will yield his birthright? Will a tri-crowned king resign his triple diadem? And even did Bello what you propose he would only breed still greater perplexities. For if granted, full soon would Verdanna be ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... had been to tell Florence of the resuscitated prospects of her son and heir, Florence was prepared for the meeting: so, a favourable moment presenting itself, they both hastened across, without any further contemplation of Mrs Richards's bane' That sporting character, unconscious of their approach, again whistled with his utmost might, and then yelled in a rapture of excitement, 'Strays! Whip! Strays!' which identification had such an effect upon the conscience-stricken pigeons, that instead of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... joy, and I * Strain to my breast the branch I saw upon the sand-hill[FN61] sway? O favour of full moon in sheen, never may sun o' thee * Surcease to rise from Eastern rim with all-enlightening ray! I'm well content with passion-pine and all its bane and bate * For luck in love is evermore the butt ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... he to none but her his lady fair. 10 Now must he wander o'er the darkling way Thither, whence life-return the Fates denay. But ah! beshrew you, evil Shadows low'ring In Orcus ever loveliest things devouring: Who bore so pretty a Sparrow fro' her ta'en. 15 (Oh hapless birdie and Oh deed of bane!) Now by your wanton work my girl appears With turgid eyelids tinted ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... patients. Cowper, after his recovery, speaks of that intercourse with the keenest pleasure and gratitude; so that in the opinion of the two persons best qualified to judge, religion in this case was not the bane. Cowper has given us a full account of his recovery. It was brought about, as we can plainly see, by medical treatment wisely applied; but it came in the form of a burst of religious faith and hope. He rises one ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... greater bane to friendship than adulation, fawning, and flattery. For this vice should be branded under as many names as possible, being that of worthless and designing men, who say everything with a view of pleasing, and nothing with regard to truth. Now while hypocrisy in ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... The bane of this science, as every one knows, has been its theorizing, and its want of careful inductive reasoning from facts. The classifications in it have been endless, varying almost with the fancies of each new student; while every prominent follower of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... young exquisite. "Why can we not rise from our couches like the beast of the field, give ourselves a shake, and be ready for the day's work? These levees are the bane of my life. But fashion, fashion, fashion! She is the goddess of the hour. Tom, sit over yonder, and watch the follies of thy kind. Keep a quiet tongue, and I'll see you are ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... like to be Smellie's bane. He is jealous of sharing any credit with the Preventive crews, and is keeping them without information. On the other hand he delights in ordering about a military force; which, in a civilian, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and suspicious, the Catholics cool and unstable allies; during these years the chronic quarrel between himself and Parliament broke out with renewed vigour. How bitterly did he deplore party spirit, the bane of German life, which seemed each year ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... my dear wife, you will forgive me, will you not? I torment you sometimes. Ah, great God, how canst Thou make use of me thus to prove these two angelic creatures! I, who should be their joy, am their bane!" ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... 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, ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... East India Hair Dye, colors the hair and not the skin Acoustic Oil, for deafness Vermifuge Bartholomew's Expectorant Syrup Carlton's Specific Cure for Ringbone, Spavin and Wind-galls Dr. Sphon's Head Ache Remedy Dr. Connol's Gonorrhea Mixture Mother's Relief Nipple Salve Roach and Bed Bug Bane Spread Plasters Judson's Cherry and Lungwort Azor's Turkish Balm, for the Toilet and Hair Carlton's Condition Powder, for Horses and Cattle Connel's Pain Extractor Western Indian Panaceas Hunter's Pulmonary Balsam Linn's Pills and Bitters Oil of Tannin, for Leather Nerve & ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... the constitution of human nature as he feels it in himself, or has observed it in others,—whether as shown in the private society with which he has mingled, or the public concerns of nations he has observed,—will at once admit that SELFISHNESS is its greatest bane. It is at once the source of individual degradation and of public ruin. He knew the human heart well who prescribed as the first of social duties, "to love our neighbour as ourself." Of what incalculable importance was ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... recommended to the thoughtless and indifferent by the beauty which generally accompanies it, that is the bane of modern art. Even our greatest painters have yielded to its fascination. Who has not gazed upon one of Turner's fading pictures with still more of sadness than enjoyment, that anything so grand, so beautiful, so true, should slowly ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... steadily worked their way north and west, and had crossed the Saskatchewan, and were approaching the Eagle Hill country. Preceding the construction army, and following it, were camp followers and attendants of various kinds. On the one hand the unlicensed trader and whiskey pedlar, the bane of the contractor and engineer; on the other hand the tourist, the capitalist, and the speculator, whom engineers and contractors received with welcome or with scant tolerance, according to the letters of introduction they brought from the great men ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... the same as you yourself saw, I wished no one ill; but these misfortunes were written in my destiny, and the lines of fate cannot be effaced. My eyes have been the cause of all these calamities: if I had not had a strong desire to behold beautiful persons, then that wretch would not have been my bane. [184] God so ordained that He made thee arrive there; and, He made thee the means of saving my life. After undergoing these disgraces, I am ashamed to reflect that I should yet live and show my face to any one. But what can I do? the choice of death ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write poetry in French now than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been licked and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... thinks it might be something simpler. I think Mr. 'Opkins very nice. He says you promised to lend him a book. What would help him to talk like a real country boy. So I have lent him a book about a window. By Mr. Bane. What came to see us last year. It has a lot of funny words in it. And he is going to learn them up. But he don't know what they mean. No more do I. I have written a lot of the book. It promises to be very interesting. It is all a dream. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... picture on the wall. Had it ever yet befallen any young woman in the world to wish with secret intensity that she might have been, for her convenience, a shade less inordinately pretty? She had come to that, to this view of the bane, the primal curse, of their lavish physical outfit, which had included everything and as to which she lumped herself resentfully with her mother. The only thing was that her mother was, thank goodness, still so ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... uniform system of pronunciation should be aimed at in every country of the British Isles. So long as clear and expressive enunciation of English is attained, intelligible differences of vocalisation, pitch, and even of vocabulary, are allowable, and at times positively charming. Monotony is the bane of life. ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... a twain of days, this of blessing that of bane * And holdeth Life a twain of halves, this of pleasure that of pain. See'st not when blows the hurricane, sweeping stark and striking strong * None save the forest giant feels the suffering of the strain? How many trees earth nourisheth of the dry ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... 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 of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... that bane a queer 'bus," said Mrs. McNally, puzzled. I think the excellent woman suspected ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley



Words linked to "Bane" :   curse, affliction



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com