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More "Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bedstead made, under Ned's weight in his new suit! It didn't break down though; and there Ned lay, like the anonymous vessel in the Bay of Biscay, till next day, drinking barley-water, and looking miserable: and every time he groaned, his good lady said it served him right, which was all the consolation Ned ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... disqualifications; and for the young females of a family I could mention, well may they excite parental solicitude; for I, a common acquaintance, or as my vanity will have it, an humble friend, have often trembled for a turn of mind which may render them eminently happy—or peculiarly miserable! ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... girl went on crying, not loudly or passionately, but with no sign of discontinuance, as she stood there, large and miserable, before him. He settled his shoulders obstinately against the wood pile, thinking to wait till she should speak or make some further sign. Nothing but strength of will kept him in his place, for he would gladly have fled from her. He had now less guidance than before to what was ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... might continue missing in the flesh, in the spirit he and his miserable affair seem to have been ever present and ubiquitous, and a ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... monuments of almost equal importance to the world which are in jeopardy of the same fate as the Cathedral of Rheims, viz., the Cathedrals of Noyon and Laon. That these will be respected is to be hoped, in spite of the ruthless and miserable attempt to reduce the glorious ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... French; and again she felt a sudden thrill of joy, and had a vague memory of some big hall in which she had once danced, or of which, perhaps, she had once dreamed. And something at the bottom of her soul dimly and obscurely whispered to her that she was a pretty, common, miserable, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the utmost tension. My mouth fell open, and my eyes felt as if they were straining to leap from my head. It was Laura—the loved, adored Laura—my Laura! My friends heard me repeat the name, and marked with surprise and concern my inexplicably miserable condition. They gathered round me, and endeavoured to divert my attention from the dead and now gory body. It was in vain. I heeded not their words, but gazed steadfastly at the sad features of Laura, with my hands still uplifted. I was speechless, deaf, and immovable. No ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... murdering the illegitimate offspring of her own daughter. Every thing about this devoted house melted away—sheep rotted, cattle died, 'and blighted was the corn.' Of several children none reached maturity, and the savage proprietor survived every thing he loved or cared for. He died blind and miserable. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... of God—brought into the same aspect image with that of the Saviour of the World! We are scarcely satisfied that even to quote such passages may not be criminal. The subject is too repulsive for us to proceed even in expressing our disgust for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is essentially ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... danger in crossing the Tagus at its broadest part, which is opposite Aldea Gallega, at any time, but especially at close of day in the winter season, or I should certainly not have ventured. The lad and his comrade, a miserable-looking object, whose only clothing, notwithstanding the season, was a tattered jerkin and trousers, rowed until we had advanced about half a mile from the land; they then set up a large sail, and the lad, who seemed to direct everything, and to be the principal, took the helm and steered. ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... this inquiry took the whole court by surprise, and made her solicitor, Houseman, very miserable. "None, my Lord," said she. "Half-justice is injustice; and I will lend it no color. I will not set able men to fight for me with their hands tied, against men as able whose hands be free. Counsel, on terms so partial, I will have none. My counsel shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... and fine linen shall know the state of their neighbours. They cannot at least plead ignorance for the nonfulfilment of their duty. Before St Lys's time, the family at Mowbray Castle might as well have not existed, as far as benefiting their miserable vicinage. It would be well perhaps for other districts not less wretched, and for other families as high and favoured as the Mowbrays, if there were a Mr St Lys on the spot ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... time after he again called on them to lower their sails. "I would sooner die first than surrender!" replied the French commander. The order was given to fire a second shot, which carried off five or six men; but, as these miserable devils are very good sailors, they maneuvered so well that we could not take one of them; and, notwithstanding all the guns we fired at them, we did not sink one of their ships. We only got possession of one of their large boats, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... or some miserable canaille of that sort. He will soon be out of your way." Our guard craned over to look at him. "Oui—da! He is a dying man! A priest must be sent to him soon. I remember he demanded one ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... "Miserable that you are, you throw yourself at Caesar's feet asking only permission to be his slave. You sought for yourself that state of slavery which it has ever been easy for you to endure. Had you any command from the Roman people to ask ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Russia, Italy, and Mexico, soaked through with men's blood, gloriously decomposed, torn, blackened with powder, and riddled with bullets. Now the strong arms of German non-commissioned officers carried them in the sultry heat of the midsummer afternoon, these miserable remnants hanging heavy and limp without a flutter, without a spark of trembling life in the silken folds; they looked like imprisoned kings, who with heads bowed down, and despair in their eyes, walked in chains behind the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... awful week it was after that! I was never so miserable in all my life. I cried till my eyes were quite red, and then I bathed them for an hour, and then I went to the pier, and you were there—and I mightn't ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... said Tam, following him and deftly strapping himself, "ye'll turn that propeller—pull it down so, d'ye hear me, ye miserable chauffeur!" ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... best for me to do what you told me—to buy my dress and go back with the vicar, and be a good girl, and not bother you, because you were so good to me, and it was wrong for me to worry you and make you miserable." ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... the sass-wood drink it is allowed to settle before administration, and in the bean that you get a very heavy dose, both arrangements tending to produce the immediate emetic effect indicative of innocence. If this effect does not come on quickly you die a miserable death from the effects of the poison interrupted by the means taken to kill you as soon as it is decided from the absence of violent sickness ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that night was a miserable affair, since in the first place provisions were running short and there was little to eat, and in the second no one spoke a word. Benita could swallow no food; she was weary of that sun-dried trek-ox, for since Meyer had blocked the wall they had little else. But by good fortune there remained ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... crevice that might be the mouth of a cave. Then, either in the rowboat or by scrambling down the cliffs, I visit the indicated point. It is bitterly hard labor, but it has its compensations. I am growing hale and strong, brown and muscular. Aunt Sarah won't offer me any more of her miserable decoctions when I go home. Heading first toward the north, I am systematically making the rounds of the island, for, after all, how do I know for certain that Captain Sampson buried his treasure near the east anchorage? For greater security he may have chosen the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... and crush him. Behold him blotted from the number of men, perhaps condemned to die of misery and of hunger! more securely imprisoned, more entirely forgotten by the world than the most hardened criminal plunged in the lowest depths of the Bastile! He at least, has a jailor! Miserable Stradling! ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... have rendered my life miserable by your treacheries, and now you have robbed me of her! This is no place to settle our quarrels; but I have sworn it once, and I swear it again now, some day I will ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... finding out how ignorant I am of the meaning of the New Testament, and how miserably I have read my own miserable notions and glosses into the words of St. Paul. I am sure that the solution of the greatest problems which concern humanity is to be found in his Epistles, if we could only approach them without bias and with more childishness. I feel certain that the Incarnation is the great fact ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... persecuting the Christians. It has goaded countless multitudes of various creeds to endless forms of self-torture. The cities of India are full of cripples it has made. The hill-sides of Syria are riddled with holes, where miserable hermits, whose lives it had palsied, lived and died like the vermin they harbored. Our libraries are crammed with books written by spiritual hypochondriacs, who inspected all their moral secretions a dozen times a day. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... without restraint and it would befit him better to carry the psalter in the church or to bear the lights with the great burning candles. Guiraut de Bornelh is like a sun-bleached cloth with his thin miserable song which might suit an old Norman water-carrier. Bernart de Ventadour is even smaller than Guiraut de Bornelh by a thumb's length; but he had a servant for his father who shot well with the long bow while his mother tended the furnace." The satiric sirventes soon found imitators: ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... harrowing occupation. With him came his aged wife and spinster daughter. Both appeared to be over fifty, and, like the head of their household, also deeply depressed by mathematics. These three, looking so learned, looking so miserable with learning, were surely the best evidence that could be advanced in support of the truth of the Inner Light; for they were all convinced adherents of the Order. Sir Joseph arrived punctually at three, the hour appointed for the meeting. With him came Malster, and one of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... resumed the duchesse, without taking notice of the irony, "that you really draw back from a miserable sum of five hundred thousand francs, when it is a question of sparing you—I mean your friend—I beg your pardon, I ought rather to say your protector—the disagreeable consequences which a party ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... bondage certain to affect both health and temper? Their first feeling is one of pain and suffering; they find every necessary movement hampered; more miserable than a galley slave, in vain they struggle, they become angry, they cry. Their first words you say are tears. That is so. From birth you are always checking them, your first gifts are fetters, your first treatment, torture. Their voice alone is free; why should ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... question "When are you going to the Front?" assuming that was a question he could settle himself, and that he would be anything but in the way and a nuisance at the Front, owing to his lack of discipline and training. The public in this way made the men's and officers' lives very miserable. It was almost impossible to settle down to a hard course of training. Lord Kitchener had placed the period necessary for getting a man into shape as a soldier at six months. By great effort that period might be shortened, but from the experience we gained ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... vanity was hungry and miserable. Surely, though she would not be his wife, she had been John's best friend!—his good angel. Her heart clamored for some warmer, gratefuller word—that might justify her to herself. And, instead, she realized for the first time ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dropped his eyes. Then the prosecutor, realizing the danger of letting the old hypnotic power return, even for an instant, quickly stepped between them. Miller raised his eyes and smiled, and those who heard knew that this miserable creature had been through the fire and come forth to speak ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... which these lonely fugitives among the mountains are sometimes reduced. Having received wherewithal to allay his hunger, he disappeared, but in the course of a day or two returned to the camp, bringing with him his son, a miserable boy, still more naked and forlorn than himself. Food was given to both; they skulked about the camp like hungry hounds, seeking what they might devour, and having gathered up the feet and entrails of ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the side of one whom I so much loved, and from whom I had such hope. Oh! dear Mrs. Egerton, you are surely not going to treat me as a mere master. You would render me miserable if you did so. How can I help admiring one whom I so fondly loved, and with whom I hoped ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... idleness; in this, the hundredth case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound—and (which is worse) bleaching them unevenly. I have tried (let the miserable truth be confessed) turning the book daily, as one turns a piece of toast—But this is not ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he makes appear to me to refute each other. He says, that to the continental European protesting against the abstract iniquity of slavery, his answer would be, 'the slaves are infinitely better off than half the continental peasantry.' To the Englishman, 'they are happy compared with the miserable Irish.' But supposing that this answered the question of original injustice, which it does not, it is not a true reply. Though the negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... American editions can be found of Burke, of Gibbon, of Hume, or even of Robertson, the historian of the continent; but if one imports such an edition, he finds himself taxed at the Custom-house to pay for the miserable thing he refuses. You look in vain for an edition of Jeremy Taylor; and if you import that of Bishop Heber, you pay a guinea to the Customs to sustain the privilege of American publishers to publish it if they choose. The writings of Lord Clarendon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... king, named Marraboo: we arrived before he had moved abroad, and, after going through winding narrow paths or streets, we were conducted by one of his people to his palace, a wretched hovel, built with mud, and thatched with bamboo. In our way to this miserable habitation of royalty, a confused sound of voices issued forth from almost every hut we passed, which originated from their inhabitants vociferating their morning orisons to Allah and Mahomet; their religion being an heterogeneous ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... hundred thousand dollars O N Pomeroy eloped with poor Lady Chetwynde She acted out of a mad impulse in flying She listened to me and ran off with me She was piqued at her husband's act Fell in with Lady Mary Chetwynd Expelled the army for gaming N Pomeroy of Pomeroy Berks O I am a miserable villain ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... or even to conceal them. When I am led by conversation to express them, I do it with the same independence here, which I have practised every where, and which is inseparable from my nature. But enough of this miserable tergiversator, who ought indeed either to have been of more truth, or less trusted by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... earless, thumb-fingered Gentile! [Throwing open the window] Here, Johnny! You can't practise your scales if you leave 'em here! [He throws out the music-roll and shivers again at the cold as he shuts the window.] Ugh! And I must go out to that miserable dancing class to scrape the rent together. [He goes to the fire and warms his hands.] Ach Gott! What a life! What a life! [He drops dejectedly into the armchair. Finding himself sitting uncomfortably on the big book, he ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... about? He don't seem to be usin' my language," he said, in a tone of wrathful perplexity. Ranald was too miserable to answer, but Kenny was ready with ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... the wealth, cultivation, and populousness of China and Indostan, he found, in St. Domingo, and in all the other parts of the new world which he ever visited, nothing but a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by some tribes of naked and miserable savages. He was not very willing, however, to believe that they were not the same with some of the countries described by Marco Polo, the first European who had visited, or at least had left behind him any description of China or the East Indies; and a very slight resemblance, such as that ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... her into his private office, and Ernestine was too sincere a lover of beautiful things to be wholly miserable in a ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... in a gossamer sort of way," The words echoed in her mind, and vaguely, beside her own image in the glass, there rose a vision of girlhood—pale, gold hair, pink cheeks, white frock—and she turned away, miserable, from that conscious, that intellectual distinction with which, in general, she could persuade herself to ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been taught in any school? No. Can the parents read? No. Shall we find a Bible in the cabins? No. Weak, wicked, and absolutely poor, in dumb and stolid content with animalism and dirt, here families are herding like cattle, in windowless and miserable cabins of one room. The children who fail to receive the benignity of death grow up here and exist and suffer in this dreadful life. Yet we can ride by this plantation and in sight of it any day on our way to Florida, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various
... possible for a sea-faring man to be perfectly temperate, Jack took more than his share of grog; and, when on shore, spent all his time in dissipation. Luckily, he had no wife to be made miserable by his errors, though perhaps a good woman might have had an excellent influence on him. As he had no home of his own, his time when in port was spent at some miserable tavern by the water-side, where he could meet the crews of vessels from all quarters of the world, and join ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... case are hardly distinguishable from the end; and thus, according to the above rigid reasoners, the human race will not have reached the lowest depths of misery so long as it rejects the one thing which ex hypothesi might render it less miserable. Either then all this talk about truth must really be so much irrelevant nonsense, or else, if it be not nonsense, the test of conduct is something distinct from happiness. The question before us is a plain one, which may be answered ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... some temper. "I must have disgusted you last night. What sort of a miserable, spineless, cowardly, caddish travesty of a man do you take me for, to think I would let you ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... uomini perle femminelle."[38] If the Black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the White party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the Pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "were for themselves"; and whoever it may be who is singled out in the setta dei cattivi, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Batignolles. I had an hour and a half for that; at half-past eight I had to return, and stay until ten or half-past. In accepting this position I believed that I should be able to finish my education, interrupted by the death of my father, and to study law and become something better than a miserable clerk of a business man. It was impossible with Monsieur Caffie, so I left him, and this was the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that? Clotaldo? Who are you, I say, That, venturing in these forbidden rocks, Have lighted on my miserable life, And ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... preserving the traces of an old civilisation and institutions as venerable and noteworthy as any in Christendom, but to make of her a chosen nation like that people, long ago dispersed by a sufficiently miserable catastrophe, to whom was given of old the mission of showing forth the will of God before the world. Whether what he gained for his country was not much more important than what he thus deliberately sacrificed is a question that will never be answered with ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must make provision for the last. He that never thinks, never can be wise. Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it may fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us consider, that youth is of no long duration, and that, in maturer age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... expression of grief, and comforted the children, and poor Aunt Hominy, with silent tears streaming down her cheeks to see him eat and suffer, kept up a clatter of epicurean talk, lest he might turn and see her miserable. As he finished his meal, and took out his gold tooth-pick, and felt a comfortable joy of such misery and sympathy, Vesta opened the door, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... so to-day. He ordered the lawyers to come to him, and I believe they were here when I started to this miserable concert. It was not on account of the money, but for fame, that I desired to become a prima donna. But I renounce my intention; this evening has shown me many thorns where I thought to find only roses. I renounce honor and renown, and ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... unfortunate king to Paris, where he was reduced to support a wife and seven children (for his lot had horns in it) by cleaning shoes and snuffing candles at the opera. In which situation, after he had spent a few miserable years, he died half-starved and broken-hearted. He then revisited Minos, who, compassionating his sufferings by means of that family, to whom he had been in his former capacity so bitter an enemy, suffered him to ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... weeks after the Doctor and his young disciple met again at the "Mitre," and Goldsmith was present. The poet was full of love for Dr. Johnson, and speaking of some scapegrace, said tenderly, "He is now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson." At another "Mitre" meeting, on a Scotch gentleman present praising Scotch scenery, Johnson uttered his bitter gibe, "Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... disguise myself in the daytime in a cardinal's robe and hat, and pass my time trotting about from church to church, from consistory to consistory, when I ought properly to be leading a magnificent army in the battlefield, where you would enjoy a captain's rank, instead of being the chief of a few miserable sbirri?" ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tyranny of the Christians; and I truly believe, nor think I am deceived, that it is more than fifteen. 15. Two ordinary and principal methods have the self-styled Christians, who have gone there, employed in extirpating these miserable nations and removing them from the face of the earth. The one, by unjust, cruel and tyrannous wars. The other, by slaying all those, who might aspire to, or sigh for, or think of liberty, or to escape from the torments that they suffer, such as all the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... inclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well as tenants, are turned out of their possessions, by tricks, or by main force, or being wearied out with ill usage, they are forced to sell them. By which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families (since country business requires many hands), are all forced to change their seats, not knowing whither to go; and they must ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... like millstones; if you do not put the wheat into them to grind, they will grind each other's faces. So some of us are fretting ourselves to pieces, or are sick of a vague disease, and are morbid and miserable because the highest and noblest parts of our nature have never been brought into exercise. Surely this promise of Christ's should come as a true Gospel to such, offering, as it does, if we will trust ourselves to Him, a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... enraged officer, on this, thundered down invectives on poor Paddy's head, and finished off in a most un-officer-like way by kicking him down the hatchway from whence he had just emerged. Adair returned crestfallen and miserable, brooding over the injury and insults he had received. There could have been no doubt that a formal complaint made to the captain would have brought down a severe reprimand on the head of the marine officer, but the idea of making a complaint ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... for a miserable 80; of which 30 had been put on by one man. Of course they had to follow on, and as the time was short, it was agreed to curtail the usual interval, and finish up the match ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... mean that I was miserable!" she said; "but there's something now that does make everything ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the State of the Church in North Carolina is very miserable; which is of greatest Moment, and requires the most charitable Direction and Christian Assistance; not only for the Conversion of the Indians and Baptism of Negroes there, but for the Christening and Recovery ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... That was a very miserable time for me, even before my last visit to Checkshill. My long unemployed hours hung heavily on my hands. I kept away from home all day, partly to support a fiction that I was sedulously seeking another situation, and partly to escape the persistent question in my mother's eyes. "Why ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... poor thatched cottage, like a poor barn, or stable, peeling of hemp, in which I did give myself good content to see their manner of preparing of hemp; and in a poor condition of habitt took them to our miserable inn, and there, after long stay, and hearing of Frank, their son, the miller, play, upon his treble, as he calls it, with which he earns part of his living, and singing of a country bawdy song, we sat down ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... have? What right has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or her requirements, to hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which a workman fashions a candlestick or an extinguisher? Is it because the poor creatures are already so feeble and miserable that a brute claims the power to torture them, merely at the dictate of his own fancies, which may be more or less just? And, if by this weakening or heating system of yours, which draws out, softens, hardens the fibres, you cause frightful ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... believed my story, if at all. One thing was clear: the magic check now made it all real to him. As he handed me back the strip of paper he gave me a look that seemed to say: "So you are a manufacturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable ragamuffin." ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of Nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition[56] counts ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... crying had really made my head ache more badly than it had ever ached before. I got up and dressed, but had to lie down again, and thus I spent the day; and when my sisters came in to see me I would not speak to them. Never, I think, was child more perfectly miserable; and though I gave little thought to that part of the matter, I can now see that I must have made the whole household wretched. And yet by this time I was doing myself the greatest injustice. I was no longer angry ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... went to the blockhouse where the ammunition is kept, and here I found the two soldiers, one hiding in a corner, and the other with a lighted match in his hand. 'What are you going to do with that match?' I asked. He answered, 'Light the powder, and blow us all up.' 'You are a miserable coward,' said I, 'go out of this place.' I spoke so resolutely that he obeyed. I then threw off my bonnet; and, after putting on a hat and taking a gun, I said to my two brothers: 'Let us fight to the death. We are fighting ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... where before I should have had the whole; perhaps it was all this together, combined with the secret evils I had not hitherto found out in my own heart and disposition; but the result was, that I had now and then such miserable moments of being angry, and provoked, and unhappy, not because my cousin had done anything unkind, but simply because he had, in some unintentional manner, interfered with my pleasure, that I was ready to wish I had never had a cousin, or that he ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... spectator who knew nothing of the world, and who was put into it merely to make his observations, he would take a great part of the old world to be new, just struggling with the difficulties and hardships of an infant settlement. He could not suppose that the hordes of miserable poor with which old countries abound could be any other than those who had not yet had time to provide for themselves. Little would he think they were the consequence of what in such countries they ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... miserable that I couldn't fight against it any longer, I got up and walked slowly out the rear door of the ferry-boat cabin. No one was there, and I slipped quickly over the rail and dropped into the water. Oh, friend Hetty, it ...
— Options • O. Henry
... world be closed against this trade, we may then indulge a reasonable hope for the gradual improvement of Africa. The chief motive of war among the tribes will cease whenever there is no longer any demand for slaves. The resources of that fertile but miserable country might then be developed by the hand of industry and afford subjects for legitimate foreign and domestic commerce. In this manner Christianity and civilization may gradually ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... was a baby. Later her mother had married unhappily a man who followed the night paths of the criminal underworld. Afterward he had done time at Sing Sing. Through him Annie had been brought for years into contact with the miserable types that make an illicit living by preying upon the unsuspecting in big cities. Always in the little Irish girl there had been a yearning for things clean and decent, but it is almost impossible for the poor in a great city to escape from the ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... KLAHAUIA. Poor; miserable; wretched; compassion. Ex. Hyas klahowyum nika, I am very poor; mamook klahowyum, to take pity ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs
... By the pasha's salt which I have eat, by your soul, by the mother who bore you, by the stars and the heavens, I swear that all the Wahabi say is false. Where is the mare they pretend to have lost, and where the miserable jade that fell to my lot? I got a mare, 'tis true, but so lean, so wretched, that I sold her to an Arab the day after the battle. You may have the bridle and saddle, if you please; but as for the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... is it: I'm going to feed the motormen and conductors. I got the idea yesterday when I was coming up from Louisville by trolley, when I saw the poor fellows eating such miserable lunches out of tin buckets with everything hot that ought to be cold and cold that ought to be hot. I heard them talking about it and complaining and the notion struck me. I went up and sat by the men and asked them how they would like to have a supper handed them every ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... A miserable man am I, cries the poet; for Orlando, beyond a doubt, died in Roncesvalles; and die therefore he must in my verses. Altogether impossible is it to save him. I thought to make a pleasant ending of this my poem, so that it should be happier somehow, throughout, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... method of making rich men richer and poor men poorer; of making distressed families more distressed; of making a portion of the human family utterly and hopelessly miserable, debasing the moral nature, and thus clouding with despair their temporal ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and her aunt entered the cottage. It had but one room, and that was wretched enough. Many of the windows were broken, and pieces of shingle were stuck over the holes in the glass. In one corner stood a miserable bedstead, with a ragged coverlet partially spread over a dirty bed tick filled with leaves. There was only one chair, and that was a broken rocker, on which the unhappy mistress of the cottage was seated. But there were two or three rough ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... "unless you take pity on me, and promise to become my wife, they will indeed cause my death." As I said this, she sprang up, tore her hand away from me, and cried with mocking laughter, "What does the knave mean? Ha! ha! the poor, miserable varlet!" ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... be dated from the time of his death, and manifestly point out the end of his particular mission to them. From the making this declaration, as it stands in St. Matthew, his discourses are to his disciples, and they chiefly relate to the miserable and wretched condition of the Jews, which was now decreed, and soon to be accomplished. Let me now ask, Whether, in this state of things, any farther credentials of Christ's commission to the Jews could be demanded or expected? He was rejected, his commission was determined, and ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... animation had come to her. The miserable nervous energy that once sustained her had given place to healthy activity, to bustling, restless, overflowing gayety. She had no trace now of the weakness, the dejection, the prostration, the supineness, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... first he did know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the dim gray of the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known; for there was much looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation among the miserable, ragged, half-starved creatures by ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... they had so nobly contended in England, and were ready to employ against those who differed from them, the same 'carnal weapons' that had already driven them from their mother-country. His sufferings were indeed light, in comparison of those which were afterwards inflicted on the miserable Quakers by the government of Massachusetts; but still they were hard for flesh and blood to bear, and galling to a free spirit to receive from those who boasted of ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... sorry for me; and the third looked on the floor, and frowned as if something had hurt his feelings. He was the oldest and gravest-looking of the three, and I knew before he had been ten minutes in the room that he adored Vere with his heart, and disapproved of her with his conscience, and was miserable every time she did or said a ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... paradise. I know the story of your struggle with that coward and of your noble act of renunciation. It cut into my heart like a knife to speak to you those necessary words the other day, and I have been miserable ever since. I said to myself at last that I would go to you and tell you that I could not be happy apart from you; and that your happiness was mine. This seems presumptuous, intrusive: I wish to be neither. I have merely come to ask that I may be free to call upon you and to try to make you ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... Leofwin. "I think these parties get worse every year." These were soothing words. "Particularly those damned charades," he went on. "Now, my dear fellow, you know perfectly well that yours was a miserable failure." ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... causing great excitement in the minds of the natives. The gig was soon lowered and came as close as she could. There was not water enough for her to come within four miles of the shore, but we went out to meet her occupants. Tom, who was one of them, looked so ill and miserable that I felt quite alarmed for a few minutes, till the doctor comforted me by assurances that it was only the effect of the Chinese dinner last night—an explanation I had no difficulty in accepting as the correct one after perusing the bill of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... was a boy, in a sudden mood of adventure one day, he enlisted in the United States Navy. Shortly afterwards he regretted having done so. Some one went to his father and told him that the boy was on board a warship at Hampton Roads, homesick and miserable. Dr. Talmage went directly to Washington, straight into the office of Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Navy. "I am Dr. Talmage," he said promptly; "my son has enlisted in the Navy and is on a ship near Norfolk. I want to go to him and bring him home. He is homesick. Will ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them: every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an Eternity reserved for him.' I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, 'Show me ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... the desolation of rocks and snow, till early in the night they met a man whom they knew as a servant of Rogers, and who said that he could guide them to Fort Edward. One of them had lost his snow-shoes in the fight; and, crouching over a miserable fire of broken sticks, they worked till morning to make a kind of substitute with forked branches, twigs, and a few leather strings. They had no hatchet to cut firewood, no blankets, no overcoats, and no food except part of a Bologna ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... floor, and must have appeared miserable. She passed her hands back over her forehead many times as if brushing something away. "If ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Poor Mr. Froehling looked very miserable. Mrs. Hegner felt very sorry for Mr. and Mrs. Froehling. When her husband had heard of what had befallen the unfortunate barber, and how he had been ordered to pack up and leave his shop within a few hours, he had said roughly: "Froehling ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... rapids before we reached the mission of Mandavaca. The village, which bears also the name of Quirabuena, contains only sixty natives. The state of the Christian settlements is in general so miserable that, in the whole course of the Cassiquiare, on a length of fifty leagues, not two hundred inhabitants are found. The banks of this river were indeed more peopled before the arrival of the missionaries; the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... giggled, and since then Laura had made poor Connie's life miserable—or so Connie declared. She could not have forgotten Paul Martinson, even ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... clothed, it continues to awaken the conscience and to convert the soul. Its dissemination at this period either in the original or in translations, contributed greatly to the extension of the Church; and the gospel, issuing from this pure fountain, at once revealed its superiority to all the miserable dilutions of superstition and absurdity presented ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... a little of that first dreary feast of ours," she said. "You knew what it was like then to feed a genuinely starving girl. And I was miserable, Leonard. It didn't seem to me that there was ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sex, The admiration of ours. She lived universally belov'd, and admir'd She died as generally rever'd, and regretted, A loss felt by all who had the happiness of knowing Her, By none to be compar'd to that of her disconsolate, affectionate, Loving, & in this World everlastingly Miserable Husband, Sir JOHN SHELLEY, Who has caused this inscription ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... pretended things, he and they also; his position, too, had come gradually, he had got to accept it without thinking before it was an established fact. But now the truth had been brought home to him—more or less—and he was miserable, and, according to the custom of his sort, set to making bad worse as soon as ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... that live and struggle and die, in the more easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and delicate and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that? Every time that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument, it fell on a miserable drop of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt all that could make ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Debate on the Scotch Judicature Bill. Lord Wynford made a miserable speech, which proved he knew nothing about the subject. The Chancellor was very angry with him, and once interrupted him improperly. The debate was dull, and there was ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... two ladies, naturally turned the laugh against them, and the phrase, repeated from mouth to mouth, was adopted by the people of the faubourgs as a title glorifying their miserable condition ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... was all arranged with a miserable Jew, the guardian of the house, whose family has had charge of the funds for three generations; he had no doubt some secret instructions, in case he suspected the detention of any of the heirs, for this Marius de Rennepont had foreseen that our Company ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... attack Johnson on the side of his pension. One thought he varies three times. 'Such pamphlets,' he writes, 'will be as trifling and insincere as the venal quit-rent of a birth-day ode.' This again appears as 'The easy quit-rent of refined panegyric,' and yet again as 'The miserable quit-rent of an ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... for me to know myself?—A. Then thou knowest thyself, when thou art in thine own eyes, a loathsome, polluted, wretched, miserable sinner; and that not anything done by thee, can pacify God unto thee (Job 42:5; Eze 20:43,44; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... relating to them have on our memory; the vivid recollection we retain of minute circumstances which accompanied any object or event that deeply interested us, and of the times and places in which we have been very happy or very miserable; the horror with which we view the accidental instrument of any occurrence which shocked us, or the locality where it took place and the pleasure we derive from any memorial of past enjoyment; all these effects ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... line of profession, the public will not be long in making a discovery of its existence, and the bounty, as is most usually the case, would quickly follow upon the heels of approbation. But many a meritorious man in the Metropolis is pining away his miserable existence, too proud to beg, and too honest to steal, while others, with scarcely more brains than a sparrow, by persevering in a determination to leave no stone unturned to make themselves appear ridiculous, as a first step to popularity; and having once excited attention, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... feed them? Nipples, quills, spoons—none of them would fit these mites of mouths. What a miserable mother I was! How poorly equipped for foundlings! They were dying for lack of food; and as they pawed about and whimpered in my hands I devoutly wished the shot had put them all out of misery together. I was tempted to turn heathen and ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... and pecuniary embarrassments rarely have the effect of sweetening such. He removed to an inland town, and embarked in mercantile pursuits; but misfortune followed him, and reverses came thick and fast. One miserable day, when from early morning everything had gone wrong, an importunate creditor, of wealth and great influence in the community, chafed at Mr. Aubrey's tardiness in repaying some trifling sum, proceeded to taunt and insult him most ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Miserable, utterly miserable. We have camped in the 'Slough of Despond.' The tempest rages with unabated violence. The temperature has gone to 33 deg.; everything in the tent is soaking. People returning from the outside look exactly as though they had been in a heavy shower of rain. They drip ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... of the year has kicked in, I thought everything would be as merry as a marriage bell, but as yet there hasn't been a ripple on the water. The only thing that acts as a star of hope to my miserable existence is a date with a Summer stock that opens the first of June, and there is a heap of smoke around that. I wish some one would tip me off to some way of earning an honest living without having to resort to a sock full of sand ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... once spent a black month of misery at Dinan)—"and there was a fellow there who had got two storks. And one stork died—it was the she-stork." ("What did it die of?" put in Harold.) "And the other stork was quite sorry, and moped, and went on, and got very miserable. So they looked about and found a duck, and introduced it to the stork. The duck was a drake, but the stork didn't mind, and they loved each other and were as jolly as could be. By and by another duck came ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... respect as the white people. It is a cheering thought throughout life that something can be done to ameliorate the condition of those who have been subject to the hard usages of the world. It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him. In the American Revolutionary war sacrifices were made by men engaged in it, but they were cheered by the future. General WASHINGTON himself endured greater physical hardships than if he had ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... grating of the lock he turned. The gaoler had left him with no light but the rays of the moon, which, shining through a barred window some eight or ten feet from the ground, shed a gleam upon a miserable truckle-bed and left the rest of the room in deep obscurity. The prisoner stood still for a moment and listened; then, when he had heard the steps die away in the distance and knew himself to be alone at last, he fell upon the bed with a cry more like the roaring of a wild ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... body, which he might destroy at a shot!" However, that no imputation might rest on his courage, he consented to meet his adversary—for whom, by the way, he expressed the most thorough contempt—next morning, at the Bois de Boulogne. They met; and this miserable man received the reward of his perfidy and malice, by a ball through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... fact, that eight days ago a poor devil who begged for his livelihood had thrown himself into the water because he had no more money. Simon had been there when they fished him out again, and the sight of the fellow, who had seemed to him so miserable and ugly, had then impressed him—his pale cheeks, his long drenched beard, and his open eyes being full of calm. The ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... strange, that the conclusion of his Preface should be expressed in terms so desponding, when it is considered that the authour was then only in his forty-sixth year. But we must ascribe its gloom to that miserable dejection of spirits to which he was constitutionally subject, and which was aggravated by the death of his wife two years before[876]. I have heard it ingeniously observed by a lady of rank and elegance, that 'his melancholy was then at its meridian[877].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... do you think about it now? I want you to look and think. I want every one to look and think. Half the misery in the world comes first from not looking, and then from not thinking. And I do not want you to be miserable. ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... madness was only madness, and nothing more, and that it seized him in the same way, week by week, through the months and the years, leaving him thus on the stroke of twelve each Wednesday night, a broken, miserable, self-deceived man. As in certain dreams, we dream that we have dreamed the same things before, so with him an endless calendar of Wednesdays was unrolled before his inner sight, all alike, all ending in the same terror ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... that likeness by wrong-doing, he might understand that the fullness of the glory of God's image could not shine through his own face. Yet he believed that he was, in spite of all his imperfections, made in the image of his Maker. Now comes this horrible linkage with a miserable brute to either shock and confound him or to degrade him. We can easily imagine, some of us have bitterly experienced, the shock of this changed conception. But it was only because we mistook the clothing for the truth in both cases. We read science in ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... old man—old no longer, but erect and gallant—bearing in his hand the false white hair that had won his way into their desolate and miserable home. He saw her listening to him, as he bent his head to whisper in her ear; and suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as they moved slowly down the dim wooden gallery towards the door by which they had entered ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... cross, platter, and straw. The first two are, they say, supreme for the health. Does not that excite our pity? Lo, a poor sick person, whose body is hot with fever, whose soul foresees the end of his days, and a miserable sorcerer orders for him as the only cooling remedy, a game of cross. Sometimes it is the invalid himself who may perhaps have dreamed that he will die unless the country engages in a game of cross for his health. Then, if he has ever so little credit, you will see those who can best play at ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... and do not ask to see me until we have passed the fifteenth of the month. You will see me that night at La Scala. I wish to embrace you, but I am miserable to think of your being in Milan. I cannot yet tell you where my residence is. I have not met your brother. If he writes to me it will make me happy, but I refuse to see him. I will explain to him why. Let him not try to see me. Let him send by this messenger. I hope he will contrive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... four or five sailors who were unloading the goods. The captain went forward interfering rather than assisting. I was alternately despairful and desperate. Once or twice as I stood waiting there for things to accomplish themselves, I could not resist an impulse to laugh at my miserable quandary. I felt all the wretcheder for the lack of a breakfast. Hunger and a lack of blood-corpuscles take all the manhood from a man. I perceived pretty clearly that I had not the stamina either to resist what the captain chose to do to expel me, or to force myself upon ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... of miserable disciples arrived in Tiberias. For an hour and a half they had been soaked to the skin. The wind had become quite cold, and they were chilled through. Only after they entered the city of Tiberias did they find an inn where there was room ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... you believe it, this miserable fortune-hunter is actually either engaged to her or on the eve of being engaged! Poor Mrs. Milton-Cleave is so unhappy about it, for she knows, on the best authority, that Mr. Zaluski is unfit to ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... suppose, is dead. The most we can hope for is that he died fast. It's very like another kind of miserable hope I felt once, a long time ago, for a lot of people who could be offered little more than hope for a fast death, because of something somebody was trying to prove. There's some consolation this time. ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... upon these chances, I began to feel very miserable, not with mental anguish alone, but with bodily pain. Worse than thirst it was, or the soreness of my bones. A new misery was fast growing upon me. My head swam with dizziness, the sweat started from my brow, and I felt sick both at the heart and in the stomach. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... of Commons, where I am all powerful; I am given—not this earldom, which, as belonging to my house, would alone have induced me to consent to a removal from a sphere where my enemies allow I had greater influence than any single commoner in the kingdom,—I am given, not this, but a miserable compromise of distinction, a new and an inferior rank; given it against my will; thrust into the Upper House to defend what this pompous driveller, Oxford, is forced to forsake; and not only exposed to all the obloquy of a most infuriate party opposed to me, but mortified by an intentional ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hands of the instructors, and how languidly and dully is that power employed by the mission! Too much concern to make the natives pious, a design in which they all confess defeat, is, I suppose, the explanation of their miserable system. But they might see in the girls' school at Tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifely sisters, a different picture of efficiency, and a scene of neatness, airiness, and spirited and mirthful occupation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and comfortable environment, even Hapgood for the moment forgot to be miserable, and as he smoked a good cigarette and watched the water running into the tub now and then hummed a Broadway air. As for Conniston, his serene good nature under most circumstances, his greatest asset in the small frays he had had with the world, ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... were all in marching order. We proceeded by an early train on the Chatham and Dover Railway, and by nine o'clock in the morning had reached our destination—Dover. It was, I think, one of the coldest and most miserable mornings I ever experienced. The sea was very rough, the waves lashing on the roadway; and the rain came down in torrents. During the night there had been such a storm in the Channel, the natives said, that ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... had come here this afternoon partly because he thought it his duty, and partly because he wanted to create closer relations with a parishioner so likely to be useful as Mrs. Murray. He was miserable with a cold, and was weak with fatigue. His next sermon was turning out dull and disjointed. His building committee were interfering and quarreling with Wharton. A harsh north-west wind had set his teeth on edge and filled his eyes with dust. Rarely ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... just been born unto thee will I take under my protection. When she will have grown up and be a fine lass, give her but to him who will build her up a temple, where there will be ten columns, each composed of ten stones. If thou dost not execute these my orders thy daughter will be as miserable ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... a metal plate set upright in the wall, and secured to it by straps of metal. Evidently the miserable being knew what this portended, for he began to scream—a monotonous, high-pitched shriek that didn't stop till he was ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... Burghers determined on the destruction of every soul of them. They procured the assistance of a Toda, as they invariably do on such occasions, as without one the Curumbers are supposed to be invulnerable. They proceeded to the Curumber village at night and set their huts on fire, and as the miserable inmates attempted to escape, flung them back into the flames or knocked them down with clubs. In the confusion one old woman escaped unobserved into the adjacent bushes. Next morning she gave notice to the authorities, and identified seven Burghers, among whom was the Moneghar or ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... a fool, Ikey; I can't deny it. I can't even lift my voice in protest. No man in his sober senses would have sold that necklace of glorious gems for such a miserable pittance. Here, Ikey, take back your money and give ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... follow Christ fully than to follow with a half heart and halting step. The prophet was right in his pungent question, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" The undecided man is a halting man. The halting man is a lame man and a miserable man, and the out-and-out Christian is the admiration of men and angels, and ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Hindus of a growing feeling, not very different from that which Tacitus described, when he said of the Germans: "Who would go to Germany, acountry without natural beauty, with a wretched climate, miserable to cultivate or to look at—unless it ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... revoke your power of attorney. And as much for Morty's sake as for your own. He will lose your money if he keeps it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies of remorse. He will be infinitely more miserable than if he merely failed in business. That is honorable. It would only hurt his pride. Then he could get a position again, and you would have ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... crime more fell, more foul; if there be anything worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother, it is that of a deliberate instigator and abettor to the deed; this it is that shocks, disgusts, and appals the mind more than the other; to view, not a wilful parricide, but a parricide by compulsion; a miserable wretch, not actuated by the stubborn evils of his own worthless heart, not driven by the fury of his own distracted brain, but lending his sacrilegious hand, without any malice of his own, to answer the abandoned purposes of the human ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in the crime of that Good Friday wear a peculiar brand of infamy as they are portrayed on the pages of history; but among them all, the most despicable, the one whose name bears the deepest infamy, is Judas, an apostle turned traitor, for a few miserable coins betraying his best friend into ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... "You miserable dog—I ought to kill you!" The words came from between his set teeth. He drew back his hand and slapped him first on the right cheek, then on the left. He flung Slim from him the length of the cabin, where ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... his father of having been smoking in the boathouse just before the fire, and Danny was so miserable, and so surprised at being caught in the barn, that he made a full confession. Tearfully he told the story, how he and some other boys, finding the boat house unlocked, for some unknown reason, had gone in, and smoked ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... three months, Balzac received no letter from his "Polar Star," but he expressed his usual fidelity to her. Miserable or fortunate, he was always the same to her; it was because of his unchangeableness of heart that he was so painfully wounded by her neglect. Carried away, as he often was, by his torrential existence, he might miss writing ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the finest scene in the fillum ought to 'appen. Imagine a crowd of defrauded an' infuriated soldiery, led by Reginald, marching up to the F.P. compound and demanding that the miserable Blaney an' their stakes should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... touched the hearts of all those present, the unhappy Kwan-yu fell upon the floor. This time he did not bow before his master, for at the sight of the miserable conglomeration of useless metals his courage failed him, and he fainted. When at last he came to, the first sight that met his eyes was the scowling face of Yung-lo. Then he heard, as in a dream, the stern voice of ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... hand, "our union is too essential to the good cause to be broken off upon such idle terms of dissension. I am fixed to gratify Glendinning in this matter—my promise is passed. The wars, in which I have had my share, have made many a family miserable; I will at least try if I may not make one happy. There are maids and manors enow in Scotland.—I promise you, my noble ally, that young Bennygask ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... good jest in a time of misfortune is food and drink. It is strength to the arm, digestion to the stomach, courage to the heart. It is better than wisdom or wine. A prosperous man may afford to be melancholy, but if the miserable are so, they are worse than dead—but it is sure to kill them. Near me I had a comrade whose wit it was alone that kept life in me upon the desert. All the way from Emesa, had it not been for the tears of laughter, those of sorrow and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... come—and all was done Swifter than I have spoken—I beheld Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun. I rushed among the rout, to have repelled That miserable flight—one moment quelled 2375 By voice and looks and eloquent despair, As if reproach from their own hearts withheld Their steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there New multitudes, and did those rallied ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... you think literature is only produced by the miserable noodles who sit in their studies at home, till their muscles wither and their hearts get flabby? My book will be a man's book, with a man's blood and a man's brains in it. It will be a book that will make posterity ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... appearance evidently bears the mark of the improvement in their situation. Their dress is upon the whole neat and comfortable, covered in general by a species of smock frock of a light blue colour, and exhibiting none of that miserable appearance which Mr Young described as characterising the labouring classes during his time. They evidently had the aspect of being well fed, and both in their figures and dress, afforded a striking contrast to the wretched and decrepid inhabitants of the towns, in whom the real ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Besides, I always had a dumb dislike of business. I used to moon. We were so troubled with business-troubles we had no time to live. We never really got to know each other. I used to think my mother was hard and unsympathetic because her view of life wasn't mine—as if it could be. It was a miserable tangle. There was my father, whose love for us made him leave us that horrible legacy of investments. And my mother was so busy providing for us she had no leisure to love us. And my brother and I were so different in temper and age and inclination ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... prove myself a fool, to avoid being a criminal. Go on and spoil your life; you seem to be wholly bent upon it. Face rebel bullets or do some other reckless thing. I only wish to give you the solace of knowing that you have made me as miserable as a girl can be, and that too at a moment when I was awakening to better things. But I am wasting your valuable time. You believe in your heart that Mr. Strahan can console me with his gossip to-morrow evening, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... wish to disobey him, but the very thoughts of the life I should have to lead, talking and debating, or worse, listening to long debates in the close atmosphere of the House of Commons, would make me miserable. So, pray, if he suggests such a thing to you, tell him you are sure that I should not like it, and beg ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the White people. It is a cheering thought throughout life, that something can be done to ameliorate the condition of those who have been subject to the hard usages of the World. It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... in his case the experiment had proved more enjoyable, but I am not one to break the bruised reed by making such a suggestion. On the contrary, I expressed my firm conviction that Orlando was probably even more miserable than ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... object of our examination in the afternoon. There was a little stream falling in at the head, but rocks prevented it from being accessible to boats, or to a raft; and a walk of perhaps a mile to the eastward, afforded nothing but the sight of a stony country, and of a few miserable huts. Our greyhound started a kangaroo, but it was lost in the wood; and there were no ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... city. Even what she has confessed regarding you, my friend, does her honor: I have read her deposition in the secret reports myself, and seen her signature."—"The signature!" exclaimed I, "which makes me so happy and so miserable. What has she confessed, then? What has she signed?" My friend delayed answering, but the cheerfulness of his face showed me that he concealed nothing dangerous." If you must know, then," replied he at last, "when she was asked about you, and her intercourse with you, she said quite frankly, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... be its own punishment." The Philosopher, too, says of the wicked (Ethic. ix, 4) that "their soul is divided against itself . . . one part pulls this way, another that"; and afterwards he concludes, saying: "If wickedness makes a man so miserable, he should strain every nerve to avoid vice." In like manner, although, on the other hand, the good sometimes do not receive material rewards in this life, yet they never lack spiritual rewards, even in this life, according to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... is most picturesquely grouped on a kind of esplanade, and runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some forty miserable huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them worthy of the name of cottages. A stairway made of crossed trunks of trees leads up to the village, which lies hidden from the traveler's eyes until the steps ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... revelling in its bloomy wetness; strong and fit in muscle and nerve, carrying wood, getting his head soaked, doing all the foolish things which youth does with impunity and careless joy. The new restlessness, which he had come so far to quiet, broke over him in miserable, taunting waves. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Cartier (Roberval having failed to arrive in time) sets out; again he passes the gloomy Saguenay and the cliff of Quebec; again he leaves his companions to prepare for the winter; again he ascends the river to explore the rapids, still dreaming of the way to Asia; again after a miserable winter he sails back to France, eluding Roberval a year late, and carrying but a few worthless quartz diamonds and a little sham gold. Then Roberval, the Lord of Norembega, reigns alone in his vast and many-titled domain, for another season of snows and famine, freely using ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... signal of the muddy pools under her mother's eyes and the little quivering nerve beneath the temple, she shut him out of her presence for a day and a night, and when he came fuming up every few minutes from the hotel veranda, miserable and fretting, met him at the closed door of her mother's darkened room ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... a panting supplication To hear my voice, my face to see; Thy mighty prayer prevails on me, I come!—what miserable agitation Seizes this demigod! Where is the cry of thought? Where is the breast? that in itself a world begot, And bore and cherished, that with joy did tremble And fondly dream us spirits to resemble. Where art thou, Faust? whose ...
— Faust • Goethe
... of this little family party, gentlemen, sits Tom all the while, as miserable as you like. But, when everything else is arranged, the old gentleman's daughter says, that their strange conduct was a little device of the waiting-maid's to disgust the lovers he had chosen for 'em, and will he forgive her? ...
— The Lamplighter • Charles Dickens
... scribbling. "Personal habits are tabu? I so regret. The demonstration." He waved grandly at the tray. "Anti-grav sandals? A portable solar converter? Apologizing for this miserable selection, but on Capella they told me—" He followed Melinda's entranced gaze, selected a tiny green vial. "This is merely a regenerative solution. You appear to have no cuts ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made Learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacancies given ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... before, Willem Van Wyk was the happiest hunter in existence, and now he was about the most miserable. One of the two captives, for which he had suffered so many hardships, had escaped, and in all probability would never be again seen by the eyes of a white man. The realisation of his fondest hopes was delayed for ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... girl's great extremity, God, the great physician, dictates to her, then languishing in her miserable, hopeless condition, what course to take and what to do for a cure, which was to go and touch the Duke of Monmouth. The girl told her mother that, if she could but touch the Duke she would be well. The mother reproved her for her ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... beasts and cattle and fish and fowl, but never that man should exercise a like dominion over his fellow-man. * * * * * * * * * Monuments, laws, institutions, through a continuous series of ages, teach and splendidly demonstrate the great love of the Church towards slaves, whom in their miserable condition, she never left destitute of protection, and always to the best of her power alleviated. Therefore, praise and thanks are due to the Catholic Church, since she has merited it in the prosperity of nations, by the very great beneficence of Christ, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. In a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go farther and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude, to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. Whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... same Personage who has in all ages been disposed to buy men's souls at his own delusive price, and to make his dupes sign the infernal contract with their blood, has been very busy in certain parts of the State, trying to get signatures, under the miserable pretence that party pays better than patriotism, and that times of whirlwind and disaster are those in which he, the contractor, has most power to advance the interests of his adherents. But some ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... invincible repugnance, and in a frenzy of dismay and terror she screamed aloud and started up as if to fly. Then, recollecting herself, she sank down moaning.—Oh, heavens! she thought, there was no escape, no help! How wretched she was! how utterly miserable! all alone, alone, in such a dreary, lonesome world, with no home, nor father, nor mother, nor brother,—with only a sister who had a husband and children, whom she loved, as she ought, far better than she did her. There was nobody to whom she was the dearest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... he, "hate me, despise me; I believed I could do something and I can do nothing. Madame, you are now the recognized wife of M. de Monsoreau, and are to be presented this evening. I am a fool—a miserable dupe, or rather, as you said, M. le Baron, the duke is ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... they should go down and attack the town and pillage it. When the captain heard this, he shouted out to the men, 'My fine fellows, I hear what you say, and I hope you will not longer think of doing that same. You will agree that it is beneath us to make a number of poor people miserable by destroying their houses and such comforts of life as they possess. Remember, you are Englishmen, and should scorn to injure people who, though they are called our enemies, have not lifted even a finger against us. Let ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... prefer to be alone in the boat?" she asked hastily, fixing her eyes upon him. But when she saw the long helpless creature standing before her in such a miserable state of confusion, strong and handsome as he was, she sprang up, threw her arms round his neck, and said, half laughing, half crying, "Oh, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... morning, over there in Paris, when she had told me that she had invited one of de Mersch's lieutenants to betray him by not concealing from Callan the real horrors of the Systeme Groenlandais—flogged, butchered, miserable natives, the famines, the vices, diseases, and the crimes. There came suddenly before my eyes the tall narrow room in my aunt's house, the opening of the door and her entry, followed by that of the woebegone governor of a province—the ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... admirable picture of the Elevation of the Cross, proved too much for his endurance. After he had exerted all his powers to produce a masterpiece of art, the canons, upon viewing the picture, pronounced it a contemptible performance, and the artist a miserable dauber; and Vandyck could hardly obtain payment for his work. When the picture had received high commendation from good judges, they became sensible of their error, and requested him to execute two more works; but the indignant ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... and night at her bedside. The Dutch Envoy wrote that the sight of his misery was enough to melt the hardest heart. When all hope was over, he said to Bishop Burnet, "There is no hope. I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the most miserable. She had no faults; none; you knew her well; but you could not know, none but myself could know, her goodness." The funeral was remembered as the saddest and most august that Westminister had ever seen. While the queen's remains lay in state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... should take place in the morning, in which the cook's talent should be fairly tested. Certainly every chance was afforded him. Not only was he encouraged by Rubini and Lablache (whose gravity on the occasion was wonderful), but by a few others, Costa included, as instrumentalists. The failure was miserable, ridiculous, as everybody expected." Frederick Crowest describes a certain Count Castel de Maria who had a spit that played tunes, "and so regulated and indicated the condition of whatever was hung upon it to roast. By a singular mechanical contrivance this ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... heaped over with flowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and women, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in shapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how miserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificial discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne, and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... gallant and bold. O was an Oyster Wench, and went about town, P was a Parson, and wore a black gown. Q was a Queen, who was fond of good flip, R was a Robber, and wanted a whip. S was a Sailor, and spent all he got, T was a Tinker, and mended a pot. U was an Usurer, a miserable elf, V was a Vintner, who drank all himself. W was a Watchman, and guarded the door, X was expensive, and so became poor. Y was a Youth, that did not love school, Z was a Zany, a ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... got a garden," continued my mother, ignoring my aunt's last remark; "which is quite an unusual feature in a London house. And it isn't the East End of London; it is a rising suburb. And you won't make me miserable ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... risen that kept between them sixty-two horses and two hundred and fifty-two cows, beside the sheep, and the manor farm was worth twice as much as before. The town of Herning, sometimes called "the Star of the Heath," is the seat of Hammerum county, once the baldest and most miserable on the Danish mainland. In 1841 twenty-one persons lived in Herning. To-day there are more than six thousand in a town with handsome buildings, gas, electric lighting, and paved streets. The heath is half a ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... man's sin-bearer; that He had fulfilled the obedience which man had neglected to fulfil; that He came to save sinners, to lift the weary and heart-broken, the wretched and the penitent, out of their miserable state; that man is saved simply by turning away from his sins, from his idolatries, from the thoughtless course he may have hitherto followed, and looking trustfully, believingly, on Jesus crucified for him. The young man ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... fellowship, though all the resident dons wished it. "A servitor never has been elected student—ergo, he never shall be." Brown admired Gaisford, and always spoke kindly of him "in all his dealings with me." Yet the night after he won his double first was "one of the most intensely miserable I was ever called to endure." Relief, and of the right kind, came with his election as Fellow of Oriel in April, 1854. In those days an Oriel Fellowship still kept and conveyed its peculiar distinction, and the brilliant young scholar had at ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that .. I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries; —aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable office, —to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... mountains, and down on the other side. The country was quite strange to them, and somehow, before they knew it, they were not on the road recommended to them by their hosts of the night before. Night overtook them when they were still, as the phrase has come down in our family, "in a miserable, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... called, and claimed often, with apparent truth, to be of more ancient descent than the masters whom they served, bore, nevertheless, the livery of extreme penury, being indifferently accoutred, and worse armed, half naked, stinted in growth, and miserable in aspect. Each important clan had some of those Helots attached to them: thus, the MacCouls, though tracing their descent from Comhal, the father of Finn or Fingal, were a sort of Gibeonites, or hereditary servants to the Stewarts of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... women, cannot affect, so far as I can see, purity, religious sanctity, or religious sentiment itself. But here is where the change begins. In order to accommodate a religion to all natures, all sorts of petty, miserable, paltry things are introduced. The pomp of the ceremonies, instead of being a true pomp which lays hold on the soul, often degenerates into a commerce in relics, medals, of little saints and Virgins. To what, gentlemen, do the ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... ago. I fear I cannot stand the heat this summer. I said 'heat' but do not mean that exactly. This climate is rather pleasant, if we could only provide comforts. It is the constant hard work and miserable way of living that makes ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the barn, which still—as always—whistles with wind and water. Fouillade lights his candle, and by the glimmer of the flame that struggles desperately to take wing and fly away, he sees Labri. He stoops low, with his light over the miserable dog—perhaps it will die first. Labri is sleeping, but feebly, for he opens an eye at once, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... is simply that of a fearless, sensible, and conscientious minister, who took a strong interest in the political drama of his time, and advocated liberty of conscience before even Milton or Locke. But his chief distinction is to have been marked out for revenge in company with Milton by the miserable Restoration Parliament. ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... they could not work her into port. It was reported that a ship in evident distress was outside, and at once a boat's crew of Flinders' men from the Investigator was sent down to assist in towing her to an anchorage. "It was grievous," Flinders said, "to see the miserable condition to which both officers and men were reduced by scurvy, there being not more out of one hundred and seventy, according to the Captain's account, than twelve men capable of doing their duty." Baudin's ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... numbers, was fixed for the distribution of our miserable provisions. The ration of wine was fixed at three quarters[21] a day: we shall say no more of the biscuit: the first distribution consumed it entirely. The day passed over pretty quietly: we conversed on the means which we should employ to save ourselves; we spoke of it as ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... continued two months and gives no sign of cessation. Professor Airy says it will continue five weeks longer. Not a drop of rain has fallen in all that time. We have frosts every night, the hedges are as bare as at Christmas, flowers forget to blow, or if they put forth miserable, infrequent, reluctant blossoms, have no heart, and I have only once heard the nightingale in this place where they abound, and not yet seen a swallow in the spot which takes name from their gatherings. It follows, of course, that the rheumatism, covered by a glut of wet weather, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... still more outraged than your climate. Your mildness, humanity, and benevolence, are no more; cruelty, barbarity, a sanguinary love of torture, are now your distinguishing characteristics; the scream, the yell of the miserable, unresisting African, bleeding under the scourge of relentless power, affords music to your ears! Ah! from what unfriendly cause does this arise? Has the God of heaven, in anger, here changed the order of nature? In every other region, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... law, as well as the stealing or the forgery itself; and that the Prohibition law does not make the drinking or even the buying of liquor, but only the making or selling of it, a crime; but what a miserable refuge this is for a man who professes to believe that the abolition of intoxicating liquor is so supreme a public necessity as to demand the remaking of the Constitution of the United States for the purpose! Not ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... think! She wanted to go prancing about the settlement. She might have heard something there, so I told her she mustn't. It wasn't safe outside our fences, I said. Thereupon she rushes at me with her ten nails up to my eyes. 'You miserable man,' she yells, 'even this place is not safe, and you've sent him up this awful river where he may lose his head. If he dies before forgiving me, Heaven will punish you for your crime . . .' My crime! I ask myself sometimes whether I am dreaming! It will make me ill, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... He did not need to remind her of that. Even when she closed her eyes so that she might not see him, she was aware of it. Even when he was through talking and she did not hear his voice, she was aware of it. And, though she was miserable about it, she would have been more miserable had he ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, she quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and asked: 'What ails you, dear wife?' 'Ah,' she replied, 'if I can't eat some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our house, I shall die.' The man, who loved her, thought: 'Sooner than let your wife ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... sheep in nearly every large family; and these two were Gerard's black brothers. Idleness is vitiating: waiting for the death of those we ought to love is vitiating; and these two one-idea'd curs were ready to tear any one to death that should interfere with that miserable inheritance which was their thought by day and their dream by night. Their parents' parsimony was a virtue; it was accompanied by industry, and its motive was love of their offspring; but in these perverse and selfish hearts that homely virtue was perverted ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... down upon the seat of rock. "Now you are mine, Bruennhilde,—Gunther's bride. Withhold not your favour from me now!" She cowers, shattered and stupefied, murmuring, "How could you have helped yourself, miserable woman!" The right of the stronger she recognises, primitive woman, as a right. Fairly vanquished, she must accept the fate of battle,—no dignity, as no success, would pertain to further struggle. When with a gesture of command he points her to her stone chamber, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... roubles in his pocket, Russian officialdom is not so gracious. By the expenditure of a few more coins I got my dog through the Customs without trouble, and had leisure to look about me. A miserable object was being badgered by half a dozen men in uniform, and he—his lean face puckered up into a snarl—was returning them snappish answers; the whole scene suggested some half- starved mongrel being worried by school-boys. A slight ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... you perceive the force of thought. Now consider what miserable thinking is likely to bring you. It, according to the analogy above, can only eventually attract for you in fact the miserable conditions that you have dwelt upon in imagination. If, on the contrary, you think constantly of fine and prosperous things, ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... enmity and the two dukes gave King Birger no end of trouble, there being war between them three times in succession, bringing the country into a miserable state. During the second war King Birger was taken prisoner by his brothers, but he was afterwards set free under the promise that he would no more disturb Sweden, a third part of which ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... my youngest brother Davie, a very little fellow then, for he could not speak plainly, came running in great distress to Kirsty, crying, "Fee, fee!" by which he meant to indicate that a flea was rendering his life miserable. Kirsty at once undressed him and entered on the pursuit. After a successful search, while she was putting on his garments again, little Davie, who had been looking very solemn and thoughtful for some time, said, not in a questioning, but in ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... window-sill, and inside, a canary, in an alcove hung with plants and flowers, sang as if it were the heart of summer. All was warm and comfortable, and it was like a dream that I had just come from the dismal chance of a miserable death. My cloak and cap and leggings had been taken from me when I entered, as courteously as though I had been King Louis himself, and a great chair was drawn solicitously to the fire. All this was done by the servant, after ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... smoke before the flames reached them. But he would allow of no little chamber, and had a stake erected on the summit of the pile, round which an iron chain was fastened, and to the end of this chain the miserable criminal: and truly many hearts were moved with pity when Pug-nose was fastened to the stake, and the pile was lit, seeing how she ran right and left to escape the flames, with the chain clattering after her, in her white death-shift, stitched with black, which Sidonia gave out she made for ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... at such a height for his feet to work on the axle that the machine, of necessity, is very unstable, and is likely to upset if ridden without great caution round a curve. Thirdly, to diminish as far as possible this last objection, miserable little wheels must be employed, which cannot be geared up, that is, made to travel faster than the treadles, and so be equivalent to larger wheels. Therefore, though it is likely that at such low speeds only as it is safe to run such a machine it may move more easily than a machine of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... suddenly before a sentry on duty in the palace, offering him his gold. But the man refused the bribe and instantly called the guard. Fortunately the mass of the people were not near by. Some life-guards who just then came up placed the miserable captive between their horses, and conveyed him as rapidly as they could towards their barracks. But these were at some distance, the news of the capture spread like wild-fire, and they had not gone far before the mob began to gather around ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... to his parents, so neglectful of his affianced, is not to be redeemed. I brought about this betrothal: tell Isaura that I release her from it. I have watched her closely since she was entrapped into it. I know how miserable the thought of it has made her, though, in her sublime devotion to her plighted word, she sought to conceal from me the real state of her heart. If the betrothal bring such sorrow, what would the union do! Tell her this from ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... o'clock in the morning. And in case you are a little short I beg of you to make use of the enclosed, with my best wishes and apologies. You may take it as a loan; I do not care as to that. I am utterly miserable. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... appears to a friendless young writer. And from our brief correspondence I had already pictured you grim and elderly, with huge black brows bunched together as if your eyes were ready to spring upon me miserable. I even thought of adding a white beard,—you do use long graybeard words sometimes, and naturally I had associated them with your chin. You can imagine, then, my relief as I entered your office, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... 374) the common ruin. Plots were hatched for kidnapping the Cardinal and bringing him home to stand his trial for treason. Sir Geoffrey was arrested in August, 1538, was induced, or forced, to turn King's evidence, and as a reward was granted his miserable, conscience-struck life.[1041] The Countess was spared for a while, but Montague mounted the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... artist? Look at your friend, Bertrand Ballard. What has he to live on? What will he have laid by for his old age? How has he managed to live all these years—he and his wife? Miserable hand-to-mouth existence! I'll see my son trying to emulate him! You'll be an artist? And how will you support a wife if you ever have one? You ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... years. These hundred-and-eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mohammed's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most things sooner than that. One would be entirely at ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... Old Greek Life.—In all of the traditions and writings descriptive of the old Greek social life, with the exception of the Works and Days of Hesiod, the aristocratic class appears uppermost. Hesiod "pictures a hopeless and miserable existence, in which care and the despair of better things tended to make men hard and selfish and to blot out those fairer features which cannot be denied to the courts and palaces of the Iliad and ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... betrayed their secret. Suppose that she was even now telling his wife what had happened in the wood. Well, he must go down to them and flatly deny whatever Norah said. But he tingled and grew hot with a most miserable shame; his heart quailed at the mere notion of the sickening, disgraceful character of such a scene—he, the highly respected Mr. Dale, the good upright religious man, being accused by a little servant girl and having to rebut her accusations in the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... "it is a miserable old thing; but there is no other in the village, and his daughter has got the 'Anadyrski ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... heart, destroys All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake: "When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake! When move in a sweet body fit for life, And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife 40 Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!" The God, dove-footed, glided silently Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, The taller grasses and full-flowering weed, Until he found a palpitating snake, Bright, and cirque-couchant in ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... no toil or danger. He did not care if the enemy were five or twenty to one. But he was not a workman who never complains of his tools, or an ox content to be muzzled while treading out the corn. He spoke of his soldiers as such poor and miserable creatures as their captains did not dare lead them into battle. Wellington sometimes was as uncomplimentary to his. He bitterly criticized Ormond. Grey had granted him the custody of Barry's Court. He wrote in February, 1581, to Sir Francis Walsingham, with ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... pasture-land in the older States are so poor and worn out that from four to eight acres furnish but a miserable subsistence for a good-sized cow. No animal can flourish under such circumstances. The labor and exertion of feeding are too great, to say nothing of the vastly inferior quality of the grasses in such pastures, compared with those on more recently seeded lands. True economy would dictate that ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... a prospect without horizon, a boundless space into which an all-consuming desire prompted them to plunge. But, fastened to their miserable bodies, they had the desire without ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... matter of fact the girl was rather dazed, at this time, too deeply sunk in a miserable contemplation of her own affairs to be conscious of the immediate discomfort of the moment. She had dreamed many a happy dream, as the years went by, of her father: had thought he would claim her some day, be proud of her. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... tradition of public service behind it—that brings before the mind a gathering of Greek humanity in the smiling peace of a Greek country place. It is idle to pretend that a man of ability who goes into the schoolmastering profession does not have to make many sacrifices. His salary is usually miserable; his chances of a head mastership must be at present in inverse ratio to the vigour with which he acts on the principles he believes in, for these posts are mostly reserved for the "safe," as the debates of the Head Masters' Conference used to show, until, a few years ago, that body very ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... circumstances," restricted itself to Fare Thee Well; while the Times, in a leading paragraph, feigned to regard "the two extraordinary copies of verses ... the whining stanzas of Fare Thee Well, and the low malignity and miserable doggerel of the companion Sketch," as "an injurious fabrication." On Thursday, the 18th, the Courier, though declining to insert A Sketch, deals temperately and sympathetically with the Fare Thee Well, and quotes the testimony of a "fair correspondent" (? Madame de Stael), that if ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... your consent may in time be obtained—that is the hope; and I shall be a miserable man ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... herself in the deepest sables; she spoke of herself as a wretched widow who could never taste hope again; and of her baby as a poor hapless orphan, as yet unwitting of its misery. She declined to see any visitors, and persisted in being miserable and disconsolate, and in taking lonely walks to brood over her wretchedness. And at the end of that time she electrified her husband's family—all but one—by the announcement that she was about to marry again. Not ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... away and left the place: cautioned of her danger, as I then believed; self-doomed to destruction, as I know now. From that point, I have already traced the succession of events which led me to the astounding discovery at the quicksand. The retrospect is now complete. I may leave the miserable story of Rosanna Spearman—to which, even at this distance of time, I cannot revert without a pang of distress—to suggest for itself all that is here purposely left unsaid. I may pass from the suicide ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... other, after a pause, "I come late to see you, for which I crave pardon; but—I am myself so miserable! See, I ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... and he went down to Salem. As he said good-bye to Kitty he had an impression that she was sorry she had made him go; but she kept up bravely, and put a bold face on it, and saw him off, and went home and cried for an hour, and was perfectly miserable until he came ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... should do. I was to be in the same garden with this lad, who was always sneering at me; and I felt that if I let him have the upper hand he would make my life very much more miserable than it had ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... seemed to be speaking more kindly to me now, and this made me all the more miserable, for I had felt quite at home; and though Shock and I were bad friends, and Ike was not much of a companion, I did not ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... freely pardons, he cannot be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration, and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take revenge were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to the service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost all the rebels. Criminals who are executed are considered to expiate their ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... dark, miserable place, very low and very damp; the walls disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches. The water was trickling out of a leaky butt, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with the sickly eagerness of starvation. The grate was screwed up so tight as to hold no more ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... mechanically, he emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He did not eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture certain. But better anything than this passive, meek, miserable waiting. I told Soames that for the honour of the human race he ought to make some show of resistance. He asked what the human race had ever done for him. 'Besides,' he said, 'can't you understand that I'm in his power? You saw him touch me, didn't you? There's an end ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... the day after you performed the grand transformation scene in your brotherhood extravaganza. I should have been greatly amused by what was told me of this prank, if I had not seen that it had caused so much trouble. Sylvia was in a wretched way, and in an extremely bad temper. Marcia was almost as miserable, for she was acting the part of an extinguisher not only to Sylvia's hopes and aspirations, but to her own. So far as I could see there was no way out of the doleful dumps in which you seemed to have plunged yourself and all parties concerned, but I set ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... aloud, but the horror of the prospect had for a moment a so paralysing effect that they could not reply. Leave Sandhurst in the middle of one's course, and become—a clerk! Leave Eton and the fellows, and go to one of those miserable, second-rate shows which all good Etonians regarded with ineffable contempt! Was it possible to suffer ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fable, as I can easily prove. But supposing it to be correct, the Romans would not be the less deserving of pity. It is a miserable consolation to people who have nothing, to be told that their taxes are low. For my part, I would much rather have heavy taxes to pay, and a good deal to pay them with, like the English. What would be thought ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... said, "some of them were, but not like your men, Alessandro. They were very different; miserable looking; they could not read nor write, and they ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... window. He nodded and his nod was returned. Hannah's experience was as gloomy as his own. She did not look happy and somehow the idea that she was not happy pleased him; Abbie Larkin had been altogether too happy; it grated on him. He was miserable and he wanted company of his own kind. He stopped, hesitated, and then turned in at ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... furniture. On its filthy walls hung innumerable bunches of rusty keys, of all sizes, disposed without order. Among them, to the astonishment of Jochonan, hung the keys of his own house, those which he had put to hide when he came on this miserable journey, and he gazed upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... in, little by little, till he got it ashore, when lo and behold! he saw in it a one-eyed, lame-legged ape. Seeing this quoth Khalifah, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah! verily, we are Allah's and to Him we are returning! What meaneth this heart- breaking, miserable ill-luck and hapless fortune? What is come to me this blessed day? But all this is of the destinies of Almighty Allah!" Then he took the ape and tied him with a cord to a tree which grew on the river-bank, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... barely enough vitality to hand your name down to posterity and blast the fair future of Dakota by leaving your trade-mark on future generations, you snivel and whine over your blasted life! If your life had been blasted a little harder twenty years ago, the life of your miserable little wife ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... less, that the newly thrown up shingle of a seashore is hardly less free from soil; beneath these surface-stones is not so much a sand as a cemented rubble, with a small admixture of loam. Vegetation is rare and miserable, some of the absinthium and lavender so low and poor as scarcely to be recognised, and two or three miserable grasses, with Centaurea calycitropes and solstitialis, were the principal plants I could find." A mineralogical examination ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... how glad I am!" cried one of these creatures, while the other, less vital or more miserable, whimpered and gurgled ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Rumania. Had I succeeded in this the situation would be much better. No reasonable man will deny that the Balkan States are neutralizing each other at the present time, which in itself makes the whole situation all the more miserable. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... this morning. To tell the truth that place has lost all charm for me. Whenever I find myself there I get to shivering, and looking around, just like I half expected to see a ghost step out, and pick up one of those miserable coins right before my very eyes—ugh! it's horrible to feel that way, and I used to be so fond of my ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... with particulars of Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge became Val's that, if he liked, Crum could go behind. He simply longed to say: "I say, take me!" but dared not, because of his deficiencies; and this made the last act or two almost miserable. On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before they close; let's go on to the Pandemonium." They took a hansom to travel the hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because they were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade. It was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that, during all this scene of horror, not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, had not my support been founded in that miserable, though strong, consolation that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined I was perishing with the world itself! At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees, ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... me—how he used to borrow my money and never pay me—and how he used to thrash me and make me obey him, because he was my eldest brother—I shed a torrent of tears at his loss; and then I reflected how miserable my poor mother must be, and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... eternal snows. There I can love at liberty. There I can breathe my sighs without one tell-tale wind to carry them to the ears, with them to disturb the peace of those whom beyond all mankind I venerate and adore. I may be miserable, I may be given up to ever-during despair. But my patron and his spotless ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... The cold and miserable weather clung to us long. In Paris it snowed heavily, and I was constrained to betake myself in a cab—"chauffe," it is needless to remark—to seek out a kindly dentist, the bitter east wind having sought out and found a weak spot wherein to implant ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Ineffectual restrictions! Vile profanation of oaths! Miserable mockery of legislation! If a bare majority of the voters in any one State may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free from its operation—say here it gives too little, there too much, and operates unequally—here it suffers articles ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... territories about the Niger to consult the Long Juju on various matters. They were led by a circuitous route to Arochuku, and housed in a village. Batches of from ten to twenty were regularly taken away, ostensibly to the Juju, but were either sacrificed or sold into servitude, only a miserable remnant of 130 succeeding in reaching the hands ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... badly. He constantly repeated to himself the old adage, that there was no smoke without fire; and lamented the misfortune that had brought him into close relation with things and people that were so little to his taste. He sat for awhile, with a pen in his hand, at the miserable little substitute for a library table which had been provided for him, and strove to collect his thoughts and go on with his work. But the effort was in vain. Bozzle would be there, presenting his document, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... present time this condition of craving for knowledge is confined, from the point of view of numbers, to a small portion of the people. But the intellectuals of every country are in a minority—in some countries in a miserable minority—and the influence they exercise is never proportionate to their numbers. At the same time the intellectuals of Japan are, in view of the fact that the country has for some short time been open to Western influences, an amazingly large proportion ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... several times, and as often was the miserable man hunted from his place of refuge only to seek another, from which he was in like manner hunted by those who ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... lost them forever. She has begun to burn our seaport towns, secure, I suppose, that we shall never be able to return the outrage in kind.... If she wishes to have us subjects ... she is now giving us such miserable specimens of her government that we shall ever detest and avoid it, as a combination of robbery, murder, famine, fire, and pestilence." His humor could not be altogether repressed, but there were sternness and bitterness underlying it: "Tell our dear, good friend, Dr. Price, who sometimes ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?—always miserable, whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many theories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by a desire ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... there be no Ship fitted up for the Reception of sick Officers, those who are taken ill on Expeditions must be in a most miserable Situation; as there is no Place to receive them in the common Hospital Ships, they must remain almost without Assistance in a crowded Cabin amongst People in Health; as was the Case in some of our Expeditions during the ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... deplorable as is their condition, it is still not so wretched as Colonizationists and slaveholders, for obvious reasons, are fond of representing it. It is not true that free negroes are "more vicious and miserable than slaves can be,"[97] nor that "it would be as humane to throw slaves from the decks of the middle passage, as to set them free in this country,"[98] nor that "a sudden and universal emancipation without colonization, would be a greater CURSE to the slaves ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... malice no longer irritated him like nettles. He looked with curiosity upon them and began to understand. The agony of his unconscious fury was replaced by a clear contemplation of the separating abyss; and this made him even more miserable. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... roi de Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper, nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out, and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of himself and of how to get ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... desire to render me miserable for life?" he asked so seriously that at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush and pallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... But, somehow, word got around, and the lives of them men were made miserable by the questions they were asked about the gold on the island, and when they intended to go ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... observed Martin; "I'd rather pass the winter hunting beavers, than pass it at Quebec, miserable as you may ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... erected that of St. Stephen. Ducarel's description of it, which I have just seen in a copy of the "Anglo-Norman Antiquities," in a bookseller's shop, is sufficiently meager. His plates are also sufficiently miserable: but things are strangely altered since his time. The nave of the church is occupied by a manufactory for making cordage, or twine: and upward of a hundred lads are now busied in their flaxen occupations, where formerly the nun knelt before the cross, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... not say so, but he feared just that. What miserable black luck! Almost I threw the rod and reel overboard. Some sense, however, prevented me from such an absurdity. And as I worked the tuna closer and closer I grew absolutely sick with disappointment. The ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... into a harsh laugh. "And do you think I care for that? That having been driven by a woman's perfidy into crime I am going to bridle my tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her, and if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... had rented about thirty boys, with whom he was trying to work the completely decayed plantation. Many acres were covered with coffee trees, but owing to the miserable management of the French company, the planters had changed continually and the system of planting just as often. Every manager had abandoned the work of his predecessor and begun planting anew on a different system, so that now there was an immense tract of land planted which had never ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... come, was erected at the cost of his mistress, the Countess of Albany, who herself sat to Canova for the figure of bereaved Italy. This curious and unfortunate woman became, at the age of nineteen, the wife of the Young Pretender, twenty-seven years after the '45, and led a miserable existence with him (due chiefly to his depravity, but a little, she always held, to the circumstance that they chose Good Friday for their wedding day) until Alfieri fell in love with her and offered his protection. Together ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... 9. The miserable ends of those who were opposed to the honour of the Virgin. 1. The death of Julian the Apostate, very oddly represented; he lies on an altar, transfixed by an arrow, as a victim; St. Mercurius in the air. (For this legend ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... over the advantageous offer that had been made to me. It was added: 'I have come to know your reply; I will keep my promise if you will give your consent; if, on the contrary, you refuse, you will be the most miserable girl in the world, and all sorts of mischances will happen to you.' I replied: 'If there were no God I would fear those threats; I am consecrated to Him.' It was replied to me: 'You will not get much help from God; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Anglais! How dare you venture here? This is our island, far better than your miserable Malta. We have taken possession of it, and will hold it against all the world. Begone with you, or we will sink you, and your ship to the bottom; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... position where he might listen to their converse while he pursued his avocation. Their words distil into his soul; they speak the language of Canaan; they talk of holy enjoyments, the result of being born again, acknowledging their miserable state by nature, and how freely and undeservedly God had visited their hearts with pardoning mercy, and supported them while suffering the assaults and suggestions of Satan; how they had been borne up in every dark, cloudy, stormy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... these meditations by a wild tumult which came up from the slaves' hall some distance off and reached her ears in the women's sitting-room. Could her grandmother have opened the wine stores all too freely; were the miserable wretches already drunk? ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to say you pay anything for that old rookery!" said a slug, who was characteristically insinuating himself between the stems of the celery intended for dinner. "A miserable old shanty like that, without stables, grounds, or ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... inconsiderate of others; everlastingly complaining, and, in herself, drearily uninteresting. We travelled down in the omnibus from Ober-Ammergau with three perfect specimens of the species, accompanied by the usual miserable-looking man, who has had all the life talked out of him. They were grumbling the whole of the way at having been put to ride in an omnibus. It seemed that they had never been so insulted in their lives before, and they took care to let everybody in the vehicle know that they had paid ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... do, Karl did not know. He was naturally a stupid sort of lad, and what little sense nature had given him, had been nearly beaten out of him by harsh treatment. He had had a miserable life of it, and had never found himself so comfortable as he was now with his aunt and her husband. They were kind to him, because they wanted to make use of him. He did not want to offend them, nor to leave them; for if he did, he must return home again, which he dreaded ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... Same Place. Still neither horses nor men. At 1.30 they arrived; my men had gone over to the range, and had searched every creek, but without success. When found, the runaway animals were standing on a rise looking very miserable and at a loss what to do; they had skirted the hill as far down as Mount Delusion. The men took them to the last water, remained there through the night, and left for this place this morning. I will give them an hour's rest, and go to the springs to-night. Arrived at the springs at sundown; they ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... seat in the gallery, is flattered and coaxed and caressed until one wonders whether the source of virtue is the drinking of sour ale. Mr. Ingram, you do it yourself. You impress mamma and me with the belief that we are miserable sinners if we are not continually doing some act of charity. Well, that is all very pleasant and necessary, in moderation; but you don't find the poor folks so very anxious to live for other people. They don't care much what becomes of us. They take ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... did my comrade invite me to a meal, which, even with this preface, was far more miserable and scanty ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... royal family circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome stranger; and such homage as she received was conceded to her rank and not to herself. "Of all princesses," she once wrote to a friend, "I really think I am the most miserable." ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... of it," she said unsteadily. "Lizzie is miserable, to-day. Will you tell your mother, Billy, and ask her to come over to see her this evening? I mustn't ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... back on my pillows, and I groaned. Here was a predicament! Mistaking me for that miserable rebel I had succoured at Mirepoix, and whose letters I bore upon me that I might restore them to some one whose name he had failed to give me at the last moment, the Vicomte de Lavedan had poured the damning story of his treason into ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... had, Tom!" he burst out with. "Why, would you believe it, some miserable tramps raided the camp, and got away ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... Kirk rarely whined. He had never felt so miserable in his life, but he tried to infuse a tone of lightness into the conversation. After all, if Ruth's intuition fell short of enabling her to understand his feelings, nothing was to be gained ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... a long time after that terrible hour. Although Maud had not succeeded in strangling her, yet the black silk handkerchief left marks on her neck. Then the struggle, the shock and the remembrance of the horrors related by the miserable woman, threw her into a nervous fever, and it was many weeks before she recovered sufficiently to enjoy life. Deborah never forgave herself for having left Sylvia alone, and nursed her with a fierce tenderness which ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... and I got caught in a miserable little snow flurry," explained Roberta, pulling the pink shawl closer, "and—I got my feet wet. My throat's horribly sore. It won't be well for a week, and I can't try ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... and populousness of China and Indostan, he found, in St. Domingo, and in all the other parts of the new world which he ever visited, nothing but a country quite covered with wood, uncultivated, and inhabited only by some tribes of naked and miserable savages. He was not very willing, however, to believe that they were not the same with some of the countries described by Marco Polo, the first European who had visited, or at least had left behind him any description ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... troubled by the children's disappointment, was assuring them with eager mendacity that Kris would be certain to make his usual visit, while down-stairs the mother walked slowly to and fro. She had that miserable gift, an unfailing memory of anniversaries, and now, despite herself, the long years rolled back upon her, so that under the sad power of their recurrent memories she seemed ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... them. It is this passion that drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this distinction so very pleasant. It has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort, that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is, that, where we cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that flattery is so prevalent; ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... iron constitution and keen perceptions, and his capital of more than four hundred thousands of florins and income of ten thousand, convinced that a man is always endowed by Heaven with too much for his own happiness, and just enough to make him miserable. ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Honain!' said the Princess, with a melancholy air. 'You are the only person who has an idea in all Bagdad, and you leave me. A miserable lot is mine, to feel everything, and be nothing. These books and flowers, these sweet birds, and this fair gazelle: ah! poets may feign as they please, but how cheerfully would I resign all these elegant consolations of a captive ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... and hit her brother hard with all her baby force, then, without waiting to see if she had hurt him or not, she rushed from the room without speaking, made straight for her own little bedroom, and, throwing herself down on the floor with her head on a chair, burst into a storm of miserable, angry crying. ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... through the streets of his city, if it did not bring back the smile, brought back the old pride of ownership and domination. He still had a kingdom; he was still king. Resentment rose against the cause of the miserable twelve hours which had thrown the machinery of his being out of order. He passed the word to himself that he should sleep to-night and that from this moment, henceforth things would be the same as they had been before Jack came home. Yes, there was just one reality for him. It was enthroned in his ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... right through into the other world," the doctor answered bluntly; "and as there don't seem to be anybody else to take the bull by the horns, I'd advise you, having made the woman's life about as hard and miserable as you could, to try and help her to ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... universally belov'd, and admir'd She died as generally rever'd, and regretted, A loss felt by all who had the happiness of knowing Her, By none to be compar'd to that of her disconsolate, affectionate, Loving, & in this World everlastingly Miserable Husband, Sir JOHN SHELLEY, Who has caused this ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... importance of this handling was felt by every one, and therefore it was understood that the real game would be played out on this middle day. It had been all very well for Chaffanbrass to bully Dockwrath and make the wretched attorney miserable for an hour or so, but that would have but little bearing on the verdict. There were two persons there who were prepared to swear that on a certain day they had only signed one deed. So much the solicitor-general ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... and kept me away. I never permitted my wife to want for the comforts of life during my absence; but she sued for divorce some years ago and it was granted, with alimony which I doubled. You know the miserable story now. Pardon me for dragging it to such a length. I don't see why I should have told it ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... took all Nan's wit and wisdom to keep him from betraying the secret; for it was best to say nothing and spare all discussion of the subject for Rob's sake. Ted's remorse preyed upon him, and having no 'Mum' to confide in, he was very miserable. By day he devoted himself to Rob, waiting on him, talking to him, gazing anxiously at him, and worrying the good fellow very much; though he wouldn't own it, since Ted found comfort in it. But at night, when all ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... then you will pass years in a dungeon, riveted to a wall, groping for your jug that you may drink, gnawing at a horrible loaf of darkness which dogs would not touch, eating beans that the worms have eaten before you. You will be a wood-louse in a cellar. Ah! Have pity on yourself, you miserable young child, who were sucking at nurse less than twenty years ago, and who have, no doubt, a mother still alive! I conjure you, listen to me, I entreat you. You desire fine black cloth, varnished shoes, to have your hair curled and sweet-smelling oils on your locks, to please low women, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... all my friends think I am very forgetful and that you think I am ungrateful as well, but I am going to plead not guilty. Right after Christmas Mr. Stewart came down with la grippe and was so miserable that it kept me busy trying to relieve him. Out here where we can get no physician we have to dope ourselves, so that I had to be housekeeper, nurse, doctor, and general overseer. ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... said she, 'you too accurately describe a miserable passage in my life, which has often been represented in a false light. The best of husbands'—here she sobbed, and became slightly inarticulate with her grief—'will sometimes be displeased. I was young and curious, he was justly angry with my ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the same state, I shall come to you in the ensuing spring, when you must engage a house for me somewhere in the country, amid beautiful scenery, and I shall then become a rustic for a year, which may perhaps effect a change. Resignation!—what a miserable refuge! and yet it is my sole remaining one. You will forgive my thus appealing to your kindly sympathies at a time when your own ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... prosperity of the world and most earnestly to their power strive to promote them, have all the disturbances and disasters happening charged on them by those fiery vixens, who (in pursuance of their base designs, or gratification of their wild passions) really do themselves embroil things, and raise miserable combustions in the world. So it is that they who have the conscience to do mischief will have the confidence also to disavow the blame and the iniquity, to lay the burden of it on those who are most innocent. Thus, whereas nothing more disposeth men to live orderly and peaceably, nothing ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Chikuyo going N. for the Lake, and Mironga being but one-and-a-half hour off, we went on to Chipanga: this is the proper name of what on the Zambesi is corrupted into Shupanga. The headman, a miserable hemp-consuming[31] leper, fled from us. We were offered a miserable hut, which we refused, Chikala meanwhile went through the whole village seeking a better, which we ultimately found: it was not in this chief to ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... determined enemy to every species of violence. I see no connection, but what the obstinacy of pride and ignorance renders necessary, between justice and the sword, between reason and bonds. I deplore the miserable condition of the French, and think that we can only be guarded from the same scourge by the undaunted efforts of good men.... I severely condemn all inflammatory addresses to the passions of men. I know that the multitude ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... done all he could, since his return from lawyer Dawson's, to make his house bright and warm for the reception of his beloved. He had a strong apprehension of the probable fate of poor Daniel Robson; he had a warm sympathy with the miserable distress of the wife and daughter; but still at the back of his mind his spirits danced as if this was to them a festal occasion. He had even taken unconscious pleasure in Phoebe's suspicious looks and tones, as he had hurried ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... could make nothing of, and on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... STREPSIADES. Miserable fellow! Why, 'tis I who had you taught how to refute what is right, and now you would persuade me it is right a son should beat ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... not tell her the hope Bettina had given, which was singing joyfully in his heart all the time. And so Mrs. Douglas was tortured all through the night with miserable forebodings. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... near the window, had just opened the Court Almanac which he received every year. This book had great influence over him; he read it with extreme attention, and reading prodigiously stirred up his bile. My mother, knowing by heart all his ways and oddities, used to try to hide the miserable book, and often whole months would pass without a sight of it. But, in revenge whenever he did happen to find it, he would sit for hours with the book before ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... sir, will in the end be sure to set right whatever opinion contradicts her great laws, let who will be the teacher. But, indeed, the more I reflect on those miserable times in which we both lived, the more I esteem it a favour of Providence to us that we were cut off so soon. The most grievous misfortune that can befall a virtuous man is to be in such a state that he can hardly so act as to approve ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... a result of all this, the kind-hearted private employers and capitalists would find that no one would come and work for them to be driven and bullied and sweated for a miserable trifle of metal money that is scarcely enough to purchase sufficient of the necessaries of life to keep body ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... arrest, Cadet Prescott put in more than two miserable hours endeavoring to get that letter written. But he couldn't get it penned. Then a knock came the door, and a telegram was handed in. ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... but these people do not understand you. You are true to your ideal, but the women you have hitherto known were only so many imperfect realisations of it, and so you went from one to the other, always searching, but never satisfied. And you have it in you to be so much happier or so much more miserable than other men—I should have trembled for you if your hopes had ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... men with a hip-pocket to whom the open spaces of the world call loudly; whereupon Mr. Levinski took Winifred on one side and told the audience how, when he had been a young man, some good woman had refused him for a similar reason and had been miserable ever since. Accordingly in the Second Act Winifred withdrew her refusal and offered to marry Dick, who declined to take advantage of her offer for fear that she was willing to marry him from pity ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... place instantly! These scribblers, rag-smudges, incroyable! Why, it is perfectly preposterous! Did you ever hear such dissonance? His tie is in G major, and I am painting this symphony in E minor. I will have to start it again. Take that roaring tie of yours off, you miserable wretch! Remove ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... end is the state, with a long table, covered with a sumptuous cloth, embroidered and embossed with gold,—at least what was gold; so are all the tables. Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief. The next is her dressing-room, hung with patch-work on black velvet; then her state bedchamber. The bed has been rich beyond description, and now hangs in costly golden tatters. The hangings, part of which they say her Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... repugnance. All this, it must be remembered, took place in the earliest part of the reign of the Emperor Alexander I[A]. He was obliged, greatly against his will, to return to his father's country house. Dirty, poor, and miserable did the paternal nest seem to him. The solitude and the dullness of a retired country life offended him at every step. He was devoured by ennui; besides, every one in the house, except his mother, regarded him ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... had refused to partake of the clams while the man in gray was present, was feeling very hungry, and that made him still more miserable. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... talents, engrossed the Duchesse's platonic affections at this juncture. When he had sold his beasts at market, he would ride over and read Rousseau and Schiller with Madame la Duchesse, who formed him. His pretty young wife was rendered miserable by all these readings, but what could the poor little ignorant countrywoman know of Platonism? Faugh! there is more than one woman we see in society smiling about from house to house, pleasant and sentimental and formosa superne enough; but I fancy a fish's tail is flapping under ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Saturday night to Monday morning—at home, in his mother's company. It was a wise decision, and it served a double purpose; for not only did it remove a sure victim from the band of savages that held possession of the school through every weekly holiday, but it gave one miserable boy just enough respite from his wretchedness to stifle the revelations which time and suffering would otherwise have surely brought. Even so, at first, Becker trembled lest the terrible Chief should be made aware of his son's treatment at that noted school. But weeks passed and no ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... occurs in many and many a well-meant sermon, is a real danger to modern Christianity. When detected, it may seriously injure many believers, and fill them with miserable doubts. So my advice to you, as a young theological student, is "Sift your reasons well, and, before you offer them to others, make sure that ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... enemies shall die with us. Come then, ye generous Portugueze, and unite with us. You have among yourselves the objects of your vengeance—obey not the authors of your misfortunes—attack them—they are but a handful of miserable panic-struck men, humiliated and conquered already by the perfidy and cruelties which they have committed, and which have covered them with disgrace in the eyes of Europe and the world! Rise then in a body, but avoid ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... wrote Mrs. Stanton, "No, my dear, instead of my resigning and leaving those half-fledged chickens without any mother, I think it my duty and the duty of yourself and all the liberals to be at the next convention and try to reverse this miserable ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... saying. "Can it be,"—he thought,—"that I shall not be able to conquer myself,—that I shall give in to this—nonsense?" (The severely-wounded in war always call their wounds "nonsense." If a man could not deceive himself,—he could not live on the earth.) "Am I really a miserable little boy? Well, yes: I have beheld close by, I have almost held in my hand, the possibility of happiness for my whole life—it has suddenly vanished; and in a lottery, if you turn the wheel just a little further, a poor ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... behavior allows of none milder. And what have I done in my turn? snatched from a lingering death an unfortunate young man, whose only crime consisted in having pleased this unreasonable madame d'Egmont. I procured the king's protection for the miserable object of the princess's affection; I obtained his safe removal to another country; and, having done all this, I communicated my knowledge of the transaction to the comtesse d'Egmont. Does this bear any comparison ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... say, "Trot on, dear Brownie! we'll soon be there!" by way of cheering herself; for certainly the Brownie needed no cheering, and was trotting on bravely. Then the thought of Mr. Van Brunt, as she had seen him lying on the barn floor, made her feel sick and miserable; many tears fell during her ride when she remembered him. "Heaven will be a good place," thought little Ellen as she went; "there will be no sickness, no pain, no sorrow; but Mr. Van Brunt!—I wonder if he is fit to go to heaven?" This was a new matter of thought and uneasiness, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... which, for obvious reasons, was not included in the written Memorial. They were directed to state, in a manner more circumstantial than we had dared to write, the peculiar horrors of our situation; to discover the miserable food and putrid water on which we were doomed to subsist; and finally to assure the General that in case he could effect our release, we would agree to enter the American service as soldiers, and remain during the war. Thus instructed our ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... safe," cried the captain, hurrying up to him. "I can talk to the miserable wretches now. Hi! there, forward. Come away from those guns. Capstan-bars, all of you. Keep in shelter, and down with every one who tries to get on board; ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... habitants from Kamouraska" they stuck to the deck and encamped under the great sail, but the rain fell so heavily that they could not even keep their cigars alight. At length "with beards like Jews," cold, wet, half-starved and miserable, they reached their destination. As they landed at Murray Bay they saw a salmon floundering in a net, bought it, and carried it with them to the house of a man named Chaperon where they had engaged lodgings. Here, says Dr. Henry, the sensation of being clean and comfortable ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... unimaginably depraved characters. Sharp unexpected touches evoke humanity in the fantoccini of his wayward art. No dramatist has shown more consummate ability in heightening terrific effects, in laying bare the innermost mysteries of crime, remorse, and pain, combined to make men miserable. It has been said of Webster that, feeling himself deficient in the first poetic qualities, he concentrated his powers upon one point, and achieved success by sheer force of self-cultivation. There is perhaps some truth in this. At any rate, his genius was of a narrow and peculiar ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... enclosed his answer to my letter under this address, 'To Thomas Jefferson Esq., American Governor of Virginia.' I paused on receiving the letter, and for some time would not open it; however, when the miserable condition of our brethren in Charleston occurred to me, I could not determine that they should be left without the necessaries of life, while a punctilio should be discussing between the British General and myself; and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Austria, Guy-Patin made a congress of all the giants and dwarfs in the Germanic Empire. A peculiarity of this congress was that the giants complained to the authorities that the dwarfs teased them in such a manner as to make their lives miserable. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... no exaggeration of the astral effects of the emotions we indulge in the physical body. If, then, the sorrow of a weeping relative distresses us here it is clear that it must bring really keen distress to the one who is the subject of such grief. His life may thus be made miserable by the very persons who would be the last to cause him sorrow if they understood ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... went on with her books, but the more she read the more miserable she became, because there was nobody with whom she could interchange what she thought about them. She was alarmed at last to find that something very much like hatred to her husband was beginning to develop itself. She was alarmed because ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... myself to deserts and woods, inhabited only by beasts; but they cannot use me more cruelly than I have been used by my fellow-creatures; therefore, I will rather trust myself with them, than continue to be a miserable slave.' ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... jealous self-watchfulness in our sweet Shakespeare, and dream of any congeniality between him and one that, by every tradition of him, appears to have been as mere a player as ever existed; to have had his mind tainted with the lowest players' vices,—envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings after applause; one who in the exercise of his profession was jealous even of the women-performers that stood in his way; a manager full of managerial tricks and stratagems and finesse: that any resemblance should be dreamed of between him and Shakespeare,—Shakespeare who, in the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... these sixty thousand people, fellow-creatures of ours, who are known as the lazaroni of Naples, whom we half pity and altogether despise, and look upon as lowest members of the Caucasian race, are not altogether very miserable. On the contrary, taken as a whole, they form the oiliest, fattest, drollest, noisiest, sleekest, dirtiest, ignorantest, prejudicedest, narrow-mindedest, shirtlessest, clotheslessest, idlest, carelessest, jolliest, absurdest, rascaliest—but still, all that, perhaps—taken all in all—the happiest ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... guest, like you, sir, comes to me like a blessing." And the Cat, greatly impressed, remained. After a good supper he lay down by the fire, and, having run all day, was at once asleep, and made but one nap of it till morning. But how astonished, and oh, how miserable he was, when he awoke, to find himself on the open heath in the snow and almost starved! The wind blew as if it had a keen will to kill him; it seemed to go all through his body. Then he saw that he had ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to talk with me about her one day. "I am a very miserable man, Grant," he said. "I am afraid I have lost my wife's regard. Oh, don't tell me it is partly my fault. I know it well enough. And I know you haven't had a very good opinion of me lately. But I am ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... how I dident hear the raskle's insultin remarks, but I was secretly itchin to be a silent spectator to his funeral, and see his miserable carciss sunk down under about 6 foot of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... was passing the miserable hovels which lay out by the northern dunes, a poor young woman came to her door and called to him; she held the remains of a pair of elastic-sided boots in her hand. "Oh, shoemaker's boy, do be so kind as to mend these a bit for me!" she pleaded. "Just sew them up anyhow, so that they'll ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the body.) Poor miserable dust! This body now is honest as the best, The very best of earth, lie where it may. This mantle must conceal the thing from sight, For soon Rosalia, as I bade her, shall Be here. Oh, Heaven! vouchsafe to me the power To do this last stern act of justice. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... overcast. A good supply of fish caught in the morning. A small black native dog made its appearance about the camp, and was immediately run down and worried by our dogs. From the miserable mangey appearance of this animal I conjectured that it had belonged to the natives who were probably skulking about us, and who are very much attached to their dogs. I was therefore very sorry that this poor animal ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... of the followers of routine, and of teachers wanting in talent! We see and hear a great many virtuosos, old and young, with and without talent, renowned and obscure. They either play in an entirely mechanical manner and with faulty and miserable touch, or else, which is less bearable, they strut with unendurable affectation and produce musical monstrosities. In order to conceal their indistinct mode of execution, they throw themselves upon the two pedals, and are guilty ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... up a stick and struck him, and beat his horse and drove him away; but as he was leaving he caught a glimpse of Finola at the door of the hut, and saw that she was crying. This sight made him so very miserable that he could think of nothing else but her sad face that he had always seen so bright, and he allowed the old horse to go on without minding where he was going. Suddenly he heard a voice saying: "It is time for you ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... the people preferred digging for honey in the rocks. Of the inhabitants we find it recorded that, like all Nomads, they are idle to the last degree, contenting themselves with tanned skins for dress and miserable huts for lodging. Changing ground for the flocks and herds is a work of little trouble; one camel and a donkey carry all the goods and chattels, including water, wife, and baby. Milk in all stages (but never polluted by fire), wild ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... would add, "you might make a note that the world would not come to a miserable end if everyone was born dumb"—but he was very glad ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... was trying to buy off the real heir to the estate with a pitiful pittance, in order to preserve the ill-gotten remainder for Lady Emily's son, why, Granville for his part would be no active party to such a miserable compromise. If some other man was the Colonel's lawful heir, let that other man take the property and enjoy it; but he, Granville Kelmscott, would go forth upon the world, an honest adventurer, to seek his fortune with his own right hand ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Uncle Jolly, as he poked his cotton night-cap out of bed—"frost an inch thick on the windows, water all frozen in the pitcher, and I an old bachelor. Heigho! nobody to give any presents to—no little feet to come patting up to my bed to wish me 'A happy New Year.' Miserable piece of business! Wonder what ever became of that sister of mine who ran off with that poor artist? Wish she'd turn up somewhere with two or three children for me to love and pet. Heigh-ho! It's a miserable piece of business to ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... a time in the abyss of self-reproach. The very day they reached Gauley Bridge in their unceremonious retreat, he came to me, crying with shame, and said, "General, I have behaved like a miserable coward, I ought to be cashiered," and repeated many such expressions of remorse. I comforted him by saying that the intensity of his own feeling was the best proof that he had only yielded to a surprise ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... he has any intention of calling his story 'The River.' But I am sure the last chapter will contain something about an unhappy wretch who wore a derby hat at the moment he walked hand in hand with his miserable Past into ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... friend—in fact, I felt as if I had no friend. So I sat down on a chair in the yard with the little dog by me, thinking, I remember, that the chair was our own property and no one had a right to object to my being there. And I also remember that the whole miserable affair brought to mind most vividly scenes of eviction that had been illustrated in the papers from time to time, when poor women had been ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... me, joyful occurrences; they are facts in my life: I relate them, as I formerly have related that which was miserable, humiliating, and depressing; and if I have done so, in the spirit which operated in my soul, it will not be called pride or vanity;—neither of them would assuredly be the proper name for it. But people may perhaps ask at home, Has Andersen ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Falkner had been less self-conscious he would have seen it plainly. But Kate only buried her face in her lifted muff, slightly raised her pretty shoulders, and, dropping her tremulous eyelids, walked on. "It seems a pity," she said, after a pause, "that we cannot preserve our own miserable existence without taking something from others—sometimes even a life!" He started. "And it's horrid to have to remind you that you have yet to kill something for the invalid's supper," she continued. "I saw a ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... impotent too. And there are many of us whose type of religion is far gloomier than it should be, and whose motive of service is far more servile than it ought to be, just because we have not got beyond the centurion, and can only say, 'I am not worthy; I am a poor, miserable sinner.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pulling off the gray lichens as she listened, now slips away, and goes home and writes a letter; and to-morrow morning, when the mail goes to the next village, two people will be happy in God's world instead of being miserable. And now? Oh, now it is a merry song; for, after all, Melody is a child, and a happy child; and though she loves the sad songs dearly, still she generally likes to end up ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... wept passionatelie, and claspt her Arms about me; but, when I began to speak, and to tell her of much that had made me miserable, she hearkened in motionlesse Silence, till I told her that Father had torn the Letter and beaten the Messenger. Then she cried, "Oh, I see now what may and shall be done! Roger shall be Peacemaker," and ran off with Joyfulnesse; I not withholding her. But I can never ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... of my lack of beauty, my miserable five-feet-one-inch stature, and I looked at the man beside me, small and round-shouldered, and we were both dependent children of indigence. The contrast we presented to the other pair struck me hard, and I laughed a ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... That thou shouldst dwell with me, and leave the old. Sure dost not like me!—Shrivel'd hag of hate, My phiz, and thanks to thee, is sadly long; I am not either, beldame, over strong; Nor do I wish at all to be thy mate, For thou, sweet Fury, art my utter hate. Nay, shake not thus thy miserable pate; I am yet young, and do not like thy face; And, lest thou shouldst resume the wild-goose chase, I'll tell thee something all thy heat to assuage, —Thou wilt not hit my ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... and its outer end is closed by a triumphal arch. Next to this, and outside of the city as it then was, the king purchased ground, perhaps because it was cheap, and built the present university edifice. As much farther out of the then city proper lies the miserable little town of Schwabing. Professors and students disliked to be taken so far from their lodgings and their beerhouses, and the old university had been quite within the city. When the removal took place, Dr. Neumann sketched the history of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the objects of the tour was to see the fair at Nijni Novgorod, and here the travellers arrived on August 6th, after a miserable railway journey. Owing to the breaking down of a bridge, the unfortunate passengers had been compelled to walk a ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... thought too has distressed me to the very bottom of my soul! My parents are advanced in years; if I should lose them before I have confessed my secret to them! It is written above that I am to know every sorrow! Heaven has cruelly tried me, but to-day a ray of pity seems to have fallen upon my miserable fate. The princess is steadily improving, and I have received good news from Maleszow; I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... gorgeous and goodly equipage.... Who hath persuaded him, that this admirable moving of heaven's vaults, that the eternal light of these lamps so fiercely rolling over his head ... were established ... for his commodity and service? Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as this miserable and wretched creature, which is not so much as master of himself, exposed and subject to offences of all things, and yet dareth call himself Master and Emperor of this universe?... [To consider ... the ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... quarters of a century, sometimes in the spirit of a narrow sectarianism, but not seldom in a more excellent way, devoted its main strength to missions in the American colonies. Its missionaries, men of a far different character from the miserable incumbents of parishes in Maryland and Virginia, were among the first preachers of the gospel in the Carolinas. Within the years 1702-40 there served under the commission of this society in North Carolina nine missionaries, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... presence of a Mr Crick. Sometime ago Mr Crick was expelled by an indignant house, wearied of his prolonged indecencies of demeanour, but his constituency sent him back untamed and rejoicing—his mission being to prove that the Ministry was composed of thieves and liars. The miserable charges dwindled into nothing; but one at least of his constituents is persuaded that the debates, as printed in the newspapers, would lose so much of sparkle if Mr Crick were banished permanendy from the house that ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... it friendship," he went on resolutely, "for this one week let no such false word be uttered between us—you must know, I say, that our love has been everything to me! Till I met you, my life was empty, miserable; since I met you it has been filled, satisfied, and that even if I have received what Madame de Lera dares ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... fairly choked her with anger. "Why did I refuse to marry him? Francois Bigot! Do you ask me seriously that question? Did you not tell me of your own love, and all but offer me your hand, giving me to understand—miserable sinner that you are, or as you think me to be—that you pledged your own faith to me, as first in your choice, and I have done that which I had better have been dead and buried with the heaviest pyramid of Egypt on top of me, buried without hope ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... also our need of the miserable sous—make it impossible for us to keep our manuscripts sheltered from the asses. Art ought to be—like one's beloved—out of reach, out of the world. Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul. So when one of my books appears, I let go of it with horror. I get as far ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... conscience speaks louder. And here, even at this early point in his history, what I might call his fourth birth may begin to take place: I mean the birth in him of the Will—the real Will—not the pseudo-will, which is the mere Desire, swayed of impulse, selfishness, or one of many a miserable motive. When the man, listening to his conscience, wills and does the right, irrespective of inclination as of consequence, then is the man free, the universe open before him. He is born from above. To him conscience needs never speak aloud, needs never speak twice; ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... compassion has this sad experience given me for sinners. It has taught me why so few of them emerge from the miserable state into which they have fallen. Such as see it only cry out against their disorders, and frighten them with threats of future punishment! These cries and threats at first make some impression, and they use some weak efforts after liberty, ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... that he gave her she murmured, "Yes, yes, yes!" "Would she be his own dear wife?" "Ah, if she dared. She would have no other spouse, no, not even if the Emperor came himself with all the seven electors. But he must not make her more miserable than she was already. What could they do? he never would be allowed to marry her." "He would manage that." Then he pressed her again to his heart, with such ardour that the knave behind the door grew jealous, and springing up, called out—"If ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... day had it not been for the masterly foresight of Speug and the opportune arrival of Jock Howieson. That worthy had taken his division by a circuitous route, in which they had been obstructed by a miserable Episcopal school which wanted a fight on its own account and had to receive some passing attention. A little late, Howieson reached the Cathedral, and then, judging it better not to come down Breadalbane Street, where his attack would have been exposed, he made his ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... in truth, namely, openly and known both in heaven and earth, and in hell, and let me have respect and authority enough so that I may be trusted and believed more than any lawyer. For so God the Father of all mercies hath entrusted to me, a poor, miserable, condemned sinner, the Gospel of His dear Son, and therein thus far I have behaved and conducted myself truly and faithfully, and it has made much progress in the world through me, and I am honored as a teacher of truth, notwithstanding the curse of the Pope and the wrath of emperors, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the republication of Sanskrit texts, and there are traces among the Hindus of a growing feeling, not very different from that which Tacitus described, when he said of the Germans: "Who would go to Germany, acountry without natural beauty, with a wretched climate, miserable to cultivate or to look at—unless it ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... left Coralie in the morning and returned to the Latin Quarter, he took out his purse and found the money he had lost. At first he felt miserable over the discovery, and thought of going back at once to return a gift which humiliated him; but—he had already come as far as the Rue de la Harpe; he would not return now that he had almost reached the Hotel de Cluny. He pondered over Coralie's forethought ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... him of all people? It never for a moment occurred to him to doubt Casey's word. He saw it now; hideous as the deed was, Casey was capable of it—had always been capable of it. Let it go for a miserable tribute to Casey's honesty in the past that Gilbart accepted the infernal statement at once and without suspicion. He knew now that from the bottom of their intercourse this candid devil had been grinning up at him all the time; only his own cowardly, comfortable habit of seeing the world as ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rebellion—St Laurent, Batoche, and Duck Lake—in a collective letter dated March 12, 1885, denounced in the strongest language 'the miscreant Louis David Riel' who had led astray their people. The venerable bishop of St Albert, while pleading for Riel's dupes, had no word of pity for the 'miserable individual' himself. Under date July 11, 1885, the bishop writes thus to ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... 1859, and in 1873 was appointed canon of Westminster. After publishing "Village Sermons" and "The Saint's Tragedy," Kingsley took part with F.D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, attacking the horrible sweating then rife in the tailoring trade, calling attention to the miserable plight of the agricultural labourer, and the need for sanitary reform in town and country. In "Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet," first published in 1849, Kingsley writes from the point of view of the earnest artisan of sixty years ago, and the success of the book, following the author's pamphlet ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
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