"Miserably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... noise of his pursuit she fled over the low stone wall, and without a look behind, dipped into the hollow on her homeward way. Milton swore miserably and drove on. He saw Mrs. Withington gathering cowslip greens in a marsh sufficiently removed from home, and that heartened him to draw rein before the still white house. Ellen would be alone. When he strode into the sitting-room she sprang up from the lounge ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... South Carolina, I witnessed a similar case of suffering—an aged woman suffering under an incurable disease in the same miserably neglected situation. The "owner" of this slave was proverbially kind to her negroes; so much so, that the planters in the neighborhood said she spoiled them, and set a bad example, which might produce ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fatigue. Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil—she had no notion of drawing, not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover's profile, that she might be detected in the design. There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height...Not one started with rapturous wonder on beholding her...nor was she once called a divinity ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... work in honour of his patron saint; he began it in 1506, and finished it in 1519. Thirteen years of labour were thus devoted to its completion, for which he received seven hundred and seventy florins. "According to tradition, Vischer was miserably paid for this great work of labour and art; and he has himself recorded in an inscription upon the monument, that 'he completed it for the praise of God Almighty alone, and the honour of St. Sebald, Prince of Heaven, by the aid of pious persons, paid by their ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and abandoned as such, altogether; though I am solemnly convinced that I never, for one hour, was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy. I felt keenly, however, the being so cut off from my parents, my brothers and sisters, and, when my day's work was done, going home to such a miserable blank; and that, I thought, might ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Shakespeare; but, certainly, of all the tides that ever interfered in a man's prospects, that which swept away Newton Forster appeared to be the least likely to "lead to fortune." Such, however, was the case. Had Newton gained the islet which he coveted, he would have perished miserably; whereas it will soon appear that, although his sufferings are not yet ended, his being carried away was the most fortunate circumstance which could have occurred, and proved the means ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... not rashly judge of matters of which Heaven alone can judge. I am Diana de Meridor, the mistress of Monsieur de Bussy, whom the Duc d'Anjou miserably allowed to perish when he could have saved him. Eight days since Remy slew Aurilly, the duke's accomplice, and the prince himself I have just poisoned with a peach, a bouquet, and a torch. Move aside, monsieur—move aside, I say, for ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... I had creditably performed it to the satisfaction of my patron. Yes, it is quite true I was speedily being transformed into a sailor; and yet I was far from being satisfied with my situation—or rather I should say—I was miserably ill-satisfied—perfectly wretched. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... eye-witnesses. The bards and historiographers should have been on the alert to do justice to their country on so great an occasion. They were on the spot, they were beside the victors, and they had no excuse whatever for ignorance. Yet here is the miserably cold, jejune, feeble, and imperfect record which we find in the Annals of the Four Masters:—'The Lord Justice of Ireland, namely Thomas Fitzwalter (Sussex), marched into Tyrone to take revenge for the capture of Caloach ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... once tried to blacken it. She said she wished to act towards me as a friend. I remember that I laughed in her face as I turned and left her. 'You thought to make me hate him,' I said. 'You have failed miserably. If it were possible to love him better—if I could honour his memory more than I do now, I would, because of the evil you have ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... entertainment in his cabin, the slaves playing loud and soft music. Then he showed us how he commanded their motions with a nod and his whistle, making them row out. The spectacle was to me new and strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, having their heads shaven close, and having only high red bonnets, a pair of coarse canvas drawers, their whole backs and legs naked, doubly chained about their middles and legs in couples, and made fast to their seats, and all commanded by a cruel seaman. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... surprised him—first, because of the perfect English in the mouth of a foreigner, and secondly, because of the breadth and tolerance of the thought. He wondered how he could ever have believed himself open-minded or fair when he had been so miserably narrow in all his ideas. Where was he headed? All his early days he had been taught to waste effort on scorning the ceremonials great and small of Jews, Catholics, yes, of Baptists even; and now the heathen—to whom he had once thought of going ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... state of great want, completely deserted by his powers, as a deity, and not able to procure the ordinary means of subsistence. He was at this time living with his wife and children, in a remote part of the country, where he could get no game. He was miserably poor. It was winter, and he had not ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the public manners, does your Lordship shudder at the prostitution which miserably deluges our streets? You may find the cause in our aristocratical prejudices. Are you disgusted with the hypocrisy and sycophancy of our intercourse in private life? You may find the cause in the necessity of dissimulation which we have ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to be everywhere vigilant. For not only did the cruelties of Gallus bring about his own destruction, but they also who, by their pernicious flattery and instigation, and charges supported by perjury, had led him to the perpetration of many murders, not long afterwards died miserably. Scudilo, being afflicted with a liver complaint which penetrated to his lungs, died vomiting; while Barbatio, who had long busied himself in inventing false accusations against Gallus, was accused by secret information of aiming at some post higher than his ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... quickest cure; which Cecil would certainly have thought hard-hearted in the extreme. However, nothing would have induced him to say that he had felt the riding, since Cecil belonged to that class of boy that hates to admit inferiority to others. So he suffered in silence, creaked miserably at his uprising and down-sitting, and was happily unaware that everyone in Billabong knew perfectly well what ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... him, and yet she used to ask his advice; when, after a sound sleep after dinner, he got up out of humour, and spoke disparagingly of our domestic arrangements, and said he was sorry he had ever bought Dubechnia which had cost him so much, and poor Masha looked miserably anxious and complained to him, he would yawn and say the peasants ought ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... came with difficulty to the land. Their treasure was nearly all lost, and some of his men also were taken by the French; but he himself and his best men returned again to Scotland, some roughly travelling on foot, and some miserably mounted. Then King Malcolm advised him to send to King William over sea, to request his friendship, which he did; and the king gave it him, and sent after him. Again, therefore, King Malcolm and his sister gave him and all his men numberless treasures, ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... could not still be mistaken. He turned appealingly to his friend. The eyes of the admiral were fixed upon the war-ship. Again a gun shattered the silence. Was it a jest? Were they laughing at him? Marshall flushed miserably. He gave a swift glance toward the others. They were smiling. Then it was a jest. Behind his back, something of which they all were cognizant was going forward. The face of Livingstone alone betrayed a like bewilderment to his own. ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... the severest kind was spared him by his removal from life. Eight years after that event, his sister, who was married to an opulent merchant retired from business, perished miserably, in consequence of ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... still see and hear him, as he went his way along the lamplit streets, LA CI DAREM LA MANO on his lips, a noble figure of a youth, but following vanity and incredulous of good; and sure enough, somewhere on the high seas of life, with his health, his hopes, his patrimony and his self- respect, miserably went down. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Once roused, however, I could not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of our horses. Ten years' experience had made my eye learned in the valuing of motion; and I saw that we were now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is that I am miserably and shamefully deficient in that quality as regards action. The palsy of doubt and distraction hangs like some guilty weight of dark unfathomed remembrances upon my energies when the signal is flying for action. But, on the other hand, this accursed gift I have, as regards thought, that in ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... and before seven o'clock the sky was cloudless; along the road were passing hundreds of people (though it was only five in the morning) in detachments of from two to nine, with cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats, picturesque enough but miserably lean and gaunt: we leave them to proceed to the fair, and after a three miles' level walk through a straight poplar avenue, commence ascending far above the Romanche; all day long we slowly ascend, stopping occasionally ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... squally, and the streets were miserably muddy, but no rain fell as they walked towards the Iron Bridge. The little creature seemed so young in his eyes, that there were moments when he found himself thinking of her, if not speaking to her, as if she were a child. Perhaps he seemed as ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Meadows, "O melancholy! the sink of all vice and depravity. Streets without light! Houses without air! Neighbourhood without society! Talkers without listeners!—'Tis astonishing any rational being can endure to be so miserably immured." ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... young in the platform nests in the forest island called in vain for their elders and for the food they brought, at first lustily, then feebly until they starved to death. Then the vultures came, making a loathsome feast on the bodies of the little creatures that had perished so miserably. The work of ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... value; he that hath them is no more concerned in them than he that hath them not. It is the heart, and skill to use affluence of things wisely and nobly, which makes it wealth, and constitutes him rich that hath it; otherwise the chests may be crammed, and the barns stuffed full, while the man is miserably poor and beggarly; 'tis in this sense true which the wise man says, 'There is that maketh himself ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... meant. Her an' me that was raised together an' went to school and picnics all our girlhood together! Never could see one 'thout the other when we was growin' up—Jim Bisbee knew that too! But"—her voice wavered miserably—"I didn't get no invite to her funeral. I don't count no more, Lukey. None of us, anywheres.... We're jest them poor ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... choke a guest with curds. I do NOT desire that any children of thine should know that the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much else to think of if they get their meat as miserably ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... yeere of our Lord 684, Ecfrid the king of Northumberland sent captaine Bert into Ireland with an armie, which Bert miserably wasted that innocent nation being alwayes most friendly vnto the people of England, insomuch that the fury of the enemy spared neither churches nor monasteries. Howbeit the Islanders to their power repelled armes with armes, and crauing ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... not fail," said the girl. Avoiding his eyes, she turned from him and, for a moment, stood gazing before her miserably. Her lips were trembling, her eyes moist with rising tears. Then she faced him, her ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he is called upon to be. Let him now declare it and hereafter for ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... mistook for love; and when he sneaked over to her a second and a third time, she thought more of his listless praise than ever she had thought of John Crumb's honest promises. But, though she was an utter fool, she was not a fool without a principle. She was miserably ignorant; but she did understand that there was a degradation which it behoved her to avoid. She thought, as the moths seem to think, that she might fly into the flame and not burn her wings. After her fashion she was pretty, with long glossy ringlets, which those about the farm on week days ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... considers it, one finds that Joe Nevison wasted his life most miserably. There was nothing to his credit to say in his obituary—no good deed to recount and there were many, many bad ones. Moreover, the sorrow and bitterness that he brought into his father's last days, and the shame that he put ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... scene with Sidney had made her tremulous. In thrusting open the windows, as soon as she entered, she broke a pane which was already cracked; the glass cut into her palm, and blood streamed forth. For a moment she watched the red drops falling to the floor, then began to sob miserably, almost as a child might have done. The exertion necessary for binding the wound seemed beyond her strength; sobbing and moaning, she stood in the same attitude until the blood began to congeal. The ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... hundred chances for him: he can get but a guinea, and he may lose a hundred. Goldsmith is in this state. When he contends, if he gets the better, it is a very little addition to a man of his literary reputation: if he does not get the better, he is miserably vexed.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... continents, how their name had passed into a hundred strange sayings and inspired a hundred traditions. And now he saw them ride round the stage on tricycles, with grotesque ruffles round their necks and clown caps on their heads, their eyes blinking miserably in the blaze of the footlights. In response to the applause of the house a stout, atrociously smiling man in evening dress came forward and bowed; he had had nothing to do either with the capture or the training of the animals, having bought them ready for use from a continental ...
— When William Came • Saki
... fopperies were petty brains troubled, said Luther, and were instructed neither in good arts nor in divinity. Antipho, Chusa, Bovillus, and others were likewise miserably molested and plagued about bringing a thing which was round into four square, and to compare a straight line with a crooked. But we, God be praised, have now happy times; and it were to be wished that the youth made good use thereof, ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... not intend to starve, and so she has called the baker and the little apprentices to Versailles, where are her storehouses, guarded by her paid soldiers. What does it concern her if the people of Paris are miserably perishing? She has an abundance of bread, for the baker must always keep his store open for her, and her son eats cake, while your children are starving! You must always keep demanding that the baker, the baker's wife, and the whole ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... to their friends on shore. "Mind an' write!" "Remember me to every one, will you!" "Tell Maggie I was askin' for her!" Then hats were waved and handkerchiefs were floated like flags.... A woman stood near to Henry and cried miserably to herself.... The ship swung into the middle of the Lagan and began to move down towards the sea. Henry could still see his father, standing under the yellow glare of a large lamp hanging from the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... going to see her even when permitted to do so, and no longer sent to inquire about her condition, as I wished to have her know that I did not believe in her illness. I did not know why she kept me at a distance; but I was so miserably unhappy that, at times, I thought seriously of putting an end to a life that had become insupportable. I was accustomed to spend entire days in the woods, and one day I happened to ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... days in the summer, when the streets are burning with heavy sun, whitish light falls from the dirty glazing overhead to drag miserably through the arcade. On nasty days in winter, on foggy mornings, the glass throws nothing but darkness on the sticky tiles—unclean ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... the Marshal had had many sad thoughts. He had guessed how miserably poor his sister-in-law was, and suspected her griefs without understanding their cause. The old man, so cheerful in his deafness, became taciturn; he could not help thinking that his house would one day be a refuge for the Baroness and her daughter; and it was for them that he kept the first ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... sea we wandered miserably inland, finding as we went various herbs and fruits which we ate, feeling that we might as well live as long as possible though we had no hope of escape. Presently we saw in the far distance what seemed to us to be a splendid palace, towards which we turned our ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... have braved the chevalier's accusations and the First Consul's suspicions (for, after all, neither had any evidence against me), but I could not bear her generous confidence in me, feeling that I had so miserably forfeited my right to it by indulging in a foolish boyish prank. I did not raise my head (where it had sunk in shame), but by reason of being so much taller I yet could see her turn toward me, see her look of implicit trust change slowly to doubt ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... are as much the condition of our life as our heart-beats. They say that life itself is an illusion—that this world is a shadow of which the reality is yet to come. Life is all of a piece then and there's no shame in being miserably human. As for my loneliness, it doesn't greatly matter; it is the fault in part of my obstinacy. There have been times when I've been frantically distressed and, to tell you the truth, wretchedly ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... I have paid. I thank God that I failed then to make another wretched as myself. It was only I who again was wretched. Ah! is there no little pity in your heart for me, after all?—who succeeded only to fail so miserably?" ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... The silver-leaf trees dripped, the hedges were shining with moisture. Through the stillness the distant surf along the "ocean side" of the Cape growled and moaned and the fog bell at the lighthouse clanged miserably. Along the walk opposite Didama's—the more popular side of the road—shadowy figures passed at long intervals, children going to and from school, people on errands to the store, and the like. It was three ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... whatever to me," muttered the Astronomer. He moved miserably to the other end of ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... eyes. It was a trance-like attitude, and the gesture with which she several times wiped her calico sleeve across the lips his kisses had defiled, seemed subconscious. At last, she spoke aloud, but in a far-away voice, shaking her head miserably. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... proud of her paper, proud of its typography which was far more readable than the average news sheets of the day with their miserably small print. The larger type and less crowded pages ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... peevishness, though the passages in question were not worth copying. On perspicuity and accuracy, about sixty pages were extracted from Blair; and it requires no great critical acumen to discover, that they are miserably deficient in both. On the law of language, there are fifteen pages from Campbell; which, with a few exceptions, are well written. The rules for spelling are the same as Walker's: the third one, however, is a gross blunder; and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... so well and end so miserably, I can't bear it—I can't stay here. You stay and let ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... to execute his fell purpose he found that in the order of nature it was appointed that he himself perish miserably in the encounter. ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... knows by sight and sound, and everybody except the miserably ignorant and silly despises. Yet there are to be found circles which thrill and weep in sympathetic unison with the ridiculous joys and sorrows, grotesque sentiments, and preposterous adventures of the heroes and heroines of the "Dime Novels" and novelettes, and the "Flags" and "Blades" ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... him, he ordered the town to be set on fire. The buildings were almost all of wood, and the fire raged among them with great fury. Multitudes of the inhabitants perished in the flames, and great numbers died miserably afterward from want and exposure. The citadel immediately afterward surrendered, and it would seem that Genghis Khan began to feel satisfied with the amount of misery which he had caused, for it is said that he spared the lives of the ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... he has not been to this village; when the moon comes again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased miserably before she opened her large mouth to ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... thought for me Walking so miserably, Wanting relief in the friendship of flower or tree; Do but remember, we Once could in love agree, Swallow your pride, let us be as ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... congratulate myself on being in your company, and I am glad to have been able to get rid of that little wretch unworthy of Madame, the more so as if you had gone near him, my lovely and amiable creature, you would have perished miserably through the deed ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... he carried them with him. Since all his life he had loved to play a deceiver's part and played it with varying luck, now he was condemned to play through to a desperately sad end with his harlequin-like manners. He played miserably and absurdly enough—but at least the role corresponded to himself, and the former poseur now for the first time came on the stage without his mask, not to his advantage. The realization of the infinite and the eternal, the longing for the inexpressible, innate in this soul ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... they carried rifles that slew at a range double that of those served to them at the British posts. It was a certainty that they were guided by the evil spirit, because every attempt to capture them failed miserably. No one could find where they slept, unless it was those who never came ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to whether he knew that she was a woman, at the time when he killed her—he may not know even yet. If he did it mistaking her for a man, I might be able to forgive him; anyhow, I can say so now, while you are with me. What I should do and think if I were left here miserably alone, I dare not tell. Yet, if what Strangeways said to me is true, that her body was found at Forty-Mile in a woman's dress, which would mean that Spurling killed her, well-knowing that she was a girl, why then I would go in search of him, and tell him what I thought about him, and ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... ambush, Tom called it—and for quite an hour Tom knelt on a sack waiting patiently, but there was not a sound, and he was beginning to think it a miserably tiresome task, when all at once, as they crouched there securely hidden, watching the wall, some eight feet away, it seemed to Tom that he could see a peculiar rounded black fungus growing ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... indecent enough to write it, and any one else unblushing enough to sing it. I am ashamed to say I had heard some compositions of a similar type at Snuffy's, and it filled me with no particular amazement to hear a good deal of sniggering in the circle round the spittoon, though I felt miserably uncomfortable, and wondered what Mr. O'Moore would think. I had ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... worker's family can live its lifetime without having to face such circumstances as the crisis described by the ribbon weaver, Joseph Gutteridge, in his autobiography.(18) And if all do not go to the ground in such cases, they owe it to mutual help. In Gutteridge's case it was an old nurse, miserably poor herself, who turned up at the moment when the family was slipping towards a final catastrophe, and brought in some bread, coal, and bedding, which she had obtained on credit. In other cases, it will be some one else, or the neighbours ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... Philip a great deal of trouble to keep order among his domestics. One day, while hoeing in the garden, he heard the Pup screaming miserably. He said, "There's that villain, Maggie, at him again," and he ran up to the hut to drive her away. But when he reached it there was neither Pup nor Maggie to be seen, only Joey in his cage, and he was ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... much confidence to be placed in the ancient proverb that the prodigal's purse is never empty, and although, on the contrary, it is very true that he who does not live a well-ordered life in his own degree lives at the last in want and dies miserably, it is seen, nevertheless, that fortune sometimes aids rather those who squander without restraint than those who are in all things careful and self-restrained; and when the favour of fortune ceases, there often comes death, to make up for her defection ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... of dame schools was so miserably low that it is a marvel that the widows and elderly spinsters who maintained these institutions could keep body and soul together on such fees. We know that Boston women sometimes taught for less than a shilling per day, while even those ladies who took children from the South and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... who are to be 'classified by the good sense of England with those luminaries of the age, Dan O'Connell, John Frost, and others of that ilk.' In the article there is a complaint that our majority are miserably unacquainted with Scottish ecclesiastical history; and there is special mention made of Mr. Cunningham as an individual not only ignorant of facts, but as even incapable of being made to feel their force. In the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... for me," he said, miserably. "And everything seemed to be going so well. We've been buying things for the house for the last six months, and I've just got a ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... thinking, she began to pray to what dim distorted reflection of God there was in her mind. They alone pray to the real God, the maker of the heart that prays, who know his son Jesus. If our prayers were heard only in accordance with the idea of God to which we seem to ourselves to pray, how miserably would our infinite wants be met! But every honest cry, even if sent into the deaf ear of an idol, passes on to the ears of the unknown God, the heart of ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... discomfort. I looked at the dim lamp, at the square patch beyond the windows, at Nikitin's long body, which seemed nevertheless so perfectly comfortable, and at Andrey Vassilievitch's short fat one, which was so obviously miserably uncomfortable; I smelt the cabbage, the dust, the sunflower seeds; first one bone then another ached, in the centre of my back there was an intolerable irritation; above all, there was in my brain some strange ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... n sort of gentle, involuntary servitude. From invisible beings were expected and demanded visible means of assistance—riches, health, friends, and long life. Thus the poor spirits were profanely maltreated, nay, sometimes severely punished, and even miserably flogged in effigy, when they betrayed symptoms of disaffection, or want of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... good and industrious workman, and there seemed to be little chance of any permanent improvement in his character or habits. For a time Rufus used to pay him over daily the most of his earnings as a newsboy, and with this he managed to live miserably enough without doing much himself. But after a while Rufus became tired of this arrangement, and withdrew himself and his sister to another part of the town, thus throwing Martin on his own resources. Out of spite Martin contrived to kidnap Rose, but, as we have seen, her brother had now succeeded ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... said the captain, with soldierly bluntness. "I think you must have known he wanted to escape, and that you helped him to get out of the window; and I consider it a miserably contemptible return for the kindness of your father's ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... took part in later expeditions. And so perished by base treachery one of the bravest and most brilliant sailors that the world has ever seen, for Hudson died either in the melancholy reaches of Hudson Bay or on some bleak shore where he was cast away. But though he died miserably he still lives, for his achievements ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Senate-House with its offices. Here is the meeting-place of the six hundred who nominally govern jointly with the emperor. If you visit Rome to-day you will find the greater part of the actual chamber, though miserably despoiled, bearing the name of the church of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... it seemed, had failed and failed miserably. Most of the leaders of the extreme factions in both provinces had been discredited, and the moderate men had been driven into the government camp. Yet in one sense the rising proved successful. It was not the first nor the last time that wild and misguided ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... repentance, and she told herself that if she could see him once more, she might still whisper to him the truth and soften his wrath. But something she must do. She had dismissed her maid for the last time, and sat miserably in her room till midnight. But still she could not go to bed till she had made some effort. She would at any rate write to him one word. She got up therefore and seated herself at the table with pen and ink before her. She would write the whole story, she thought, ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... and many prisoners! After the dance and sham fight had been duly gone through, they proceeded to land their cargo of spoil. First came a group of miserable creatures, women and children, torn by violence from their native homes, henceforth to be the slaves of their conquerors; some were miserably wounded and lacerated, others looked half-starved, but all seemed wretched ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... is too common, and especially in breeding horses, to the qualities of the dam, miserably old and inferior females being often employed, cannot be too strongly censured. In rearing valuable horses the dams are not of less consequence than the sires, although their influence upon the progeny be not the same. This is well understood and practiced upon by the Arab, who cultivates ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... of friends; since fear, as the proverb has it, makes a shrewd watchman. The proposal, therefore, to select from these a corps of observation will most likely prove true strategy. But what then of the residue not needed for outpost duty? If any one imagines he has got an armament, he will find it miserably small, and lacking in every qualification necessary to ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... contemplation. She had no notion how they did this. And, it must be added, that they might, had they felt so disposed, have stood as pressing concretions which chafe body and soul—a most disagreeable state of things, peculiar to the miserably passive existence of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... nothing to that either. Jerome thought miserably that she did not hear, or, hearing, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... business, and I had won. Laputa was dead and the treasure was mine, while Arcoll was crushing the Rising at his ease. I had only to be free again to be famous and rich. My hopes had returned, but with them came my fears. What if I could not escape? I must perish miserably by degrees, shut in the heart of a hill, though my friends were out for rescue. In place of my former lethargy I was now in a fever ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... is a very loyal boy, and was quite honest when he said he would be the Dauphin again if that would bring Hugues back, and as Dauphin he has been miserably unhappy." ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Wally's face. He made no reply, and there fell between them a silence that was like a shadow. Jill sipped her coffee miserably. She was regretting that little spurt of temper. She wished she could have recalled the words. Not that it was the actual words that had torn asunder this gossamer thing, the friendship which they had begun to weave like some fragile web: it was her manner, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... once asked him whether he would not call upon the bishop; but he answered rather tartly that he did not know—he did not think he should, but he could not say just at present. And so they parted. Each was miserably anxious for some show of affection, for some return of confidence, for some sign of the feeling that usually bound them together. But none was given. The father could not bring himself to question his daughter about her supposed lover; and the daughter would ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... debate gave applause, and showed marks of dislike, not only by smiles and winks (which have always been allowed in these cases), but by noisy laughs and apparent contempts; which is supposed the true reason why poor Lord Hervey spoke miserably. I beg your pardon, dear madam, for this long relation; but 'tis impossible to be short on so copious a subject; and you must own this action very well worthy of record, and I think not to be paralleled ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Some letters say that the kennels ran down with blood; Colonel Gray the governor, and Captain Hacker, were wounded and taken prisoners, and very many of the garrison were put to the sword, and the town miserably plundered. The king's forces killed divers who prayed quarter, and put divers women to the sword,[35] and other women and children they turned naked into the streets, and many they ravished. They hanged Mr. Reynor and Mr. Sawyer in cold blood; and at Wighton they smothered ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... concerned now with the centre of nervous or psychical force below the cavity of the throat, in the chest, in which is felt the sensation of fear; the centre, the disturbance of which sets the heart beating miserably with dread, or which produces that sense of terror through which the heart is ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... sound of distress, and looking back, saw the barn cat, that had been left behind to pick up her living. She was standing inside the hedge, her jet black fur ruffled against the wet flakes, one paw lifted, mewing miserably. Claude went ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... land on the low, muddy flats. No house was in sight, and it was not until long after dark that we two shivering masses of mud reached an isolated cabin in the middle of a patch of the redeemed ground right in the centre of a large bog. A miserably clad woman greeted us with a warm Irish welcome. The house had only one room and accommodated the live-stock as well as the family. A fine cow stood in one corner; a donkey tied to the foot of the bed was patiently looking ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... according to the guidance of reason will strive to repay the hatred of another, etc., with love, that is to say, with generosity. He who wishes to avenge injuries by hating in return does indeed live miserably. But he who, on the contrary, strives to drive out hatred by love, fights joyfully and confidently, with equal ease resisting one man or a number of men, and needing scarcely any assistance from fortune. ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... height. But—well, one is so used to nodding and smiling in the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself; to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the devil, that I nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper and hotter because he, if you please, stared straight at me ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... miserably for all that. He never would have Trina, he saw that clearly. She was too good for him; too delicate, too refined, too prettily made for him, who was so coarse, so enormous, so stupid. She was for someone else—Marcus, no doubt—or at least for ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... again when she departed, and coughed in his usual violent manner. His throat and lungs ached, and his brow was wet with perspiration. With his elbows on his knees and his face between his hands, he sat miserably thinking over his troubles. There was no chance of his living more than a few years, as the best doctors in Europe and England had given him up, and when he was placed below ground, the chances were that Agnes would marry his rival. He had made things as safe as was possible against such ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... towns might be able to obtain for it, in the common routine of business; the result generally being, the circulation of a few dozen copies in the course of the year; as the demand for literature of every kind in Spain was miserably small. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... this journal expressed, or rather so miserably abbreviated by Purchas, that there are no indications by which to guess even where this island lay, except that it was on the way between Cape ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... winter of the coffee men's discontent. Floundering about in a veritable slough of cereal slush, without secure foothold or a true sense of direction, coffee advertising went miserably astray when its writers began to assure the public that their brands were guiltless of the crimes charged in the cereal men's indictment. In this, of course, they unwittingly aided and abetted the cereal fakers. For example, one roaster-packer advertised, "The harmful ingredient in coffee ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, I hope, though,—it depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably;—they must have been grinding it at home.—Another morning walk will be good for me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... of tea standing, for I was determined not to go home and rest until I left for the night. I could not forget the poor fretful baby, and, indeed, all the children were miserably neglected. I made up my mind that Hope and I would wash the poor little creatures and put them comfortably to bed. My first day's work was certainly exceptionally hard, but it would ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... would it be for her? Tied to a tree, with no hope— no chance of getting loosed from it—she'd die of hunger or thirst— miserably perish. Wicked as Shebotha is, we'd be worse than she if we left her to such a fate as that, to say nothing of our bringing it upon her. Ay, and for doing so we'd deserve the same ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... are adequate or not, is at this moment the most important of all political questions—and it is beside my present purpose to discuss it. All I desire to point out is, that if the chance of the controversy being decided calmly and rationally, and not by passion and force, looks miserably small to an impartial bystander, the reason is that not one in ten thousand of those who constitute the ultimate court of appeal, by which questions of the utmost difficulty, as well as of the most momentous gravity, will have to be decided, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... were these Christians put and fast warded all the winter season. But ere it was long, the master and the owner, by means of friends, were redeemed, the rest abiding still in the misery, while that they were all, through reason of their ill-usage and worse fare, miserably starved, saving one John Fox, who (as some men can abide harder and more misery than other some can, so can some likewise make more shift, and work more duties to help their state and living, than other some can do) being somewhat skilful in the craft of a barber, ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... isn't in you to do it. You are not mean and petty enough. You can't hide your feelings, try as you will.—No, you couldn't deceive some one, by pretending to care for him, for months on end. You would be miserably unhappy; and then—then I know what would happen. You would be candid—candid about everything—when it ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... horrible in the ferocious energy of Berks's hitting, every blow fetching a grunt from him as he smashed it in, and after each I gazed at Jim, as I have gazed at a stranded vessel upon the Sussex beach when wave after wave has roared over it, fearing each time that I should find it miserably mangled. But still the lamplight shone upon the lad's clear, alert face, upon his well- opened eyes and his firm-set mouth, while the blows were taken upon his forearm or allowed, by a quick duck ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she stood there against her halo of black, the long regard of her white face fixed on him, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She didn't acquiesce for a moment, or, for a moment, imply him anything but miserably, pitiably wrong; but in a voice from which every trace of anger had faded she said: "Oh Jack, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Government has not, I think, attached sufficient weight to the very grave fact that in a British Colony large numbers of women should be held in practical slavery for the purposes of prostitution, and allowed in some cases to perish miserably of disease in the prosecution of their employment, and for the gain of those to whom they suppose themselves to belong. A class of persons who by no choice of their own are subjected to such treatment have an urgent claim on ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... famous in those weeks; and is still worth mention, as a trait of Friedrich's procedure in this crisis. Friedrich, not intoxicated with his swift triumph over Prince Karl, but calculating the perils and the chances still ahead,—miserably off for money too,—admits to himself that not revenge or triumph, that Peace is the one thing needful to him. November 29th, Old Leopold is entering Saxony; and in the same hours, Podewils at Berlin, by order of Friedrich, writes to Villiers who is in Dresden, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hooked a fish, but we were miserably disappointed by its being lost in trying to get ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh |
