"Bane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but write: Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men, 480 A strong nativity—but for the pen! Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink, Still thou mayst live, avoiding pen and ink. I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain, For treason botch'd in rhyme will be thy bane; Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck, 'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck: Why should thy metre good king David blast? A psalm of his will surely be thy last. Dar'st thou presume in verse to meet ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... siren of the stage, Charmer of an idle age, Empty warbler, breathing lyre, Wanton gale of fond desire; Bane of every manly art, Sweet enfeebler of the heart; Oh! too pleasing is thy strain. Hence to southern climes again, Tuneful mischief, vocal spell; To this island bid farewell: Leave us as we ought to be— Leave the ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... generous warmth in good old English cheer; I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here. 'T is but the fool that loves excess; hast thou a drunken soul? Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... conduct will tell against them in the country, and when the House of Lords is accused of stopping legislation, people will not fail to ask, What else is the House of Commons doing, or rather how much more? They assert that tithes are the great bane of Ireland, and the cause of the disorder which prevail, and they propose a Tithe Bill as the remedy, but they clog it with a condition which they know, with as much certainty as human knowledge can attain, will prevent its passing into a law, and in this shape they persist in producing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Beware, Sire! Put by That blade in its blood-rusted scabbard. The PHARAOHS, the CAESARS have found That it wounds him who wields it; and you, though your victim there, prone on the ground, Look helpless and hopeless, you also shall find Persecution a bane Which shall lead to a Red Sea of blood to o'erwhelm selfish Tyranny's train. "Beware!" Tis the shade of MENEPTHA that whispers the warning from far. Concerning that sword there's a lesson the PHARAOH may teach to the TSAR! * ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... her hand, saying softly: "Ah, William, would that it had been so. Too late I begin to think on those things which might have been, had Sybilla de Thouars been born under a more fortunate star. As it is I can only go on—a terror to myself and a bane to others." ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... their career into extravagance and display,—limited indeed in range, but rampant within that range,—and thereby throws the influence of highest authority in favor of, rather than against, that reckless profusion, display, and dissipation which is the weakness and the bane of our social life. It signalizes in a marked and public manner the completion of the most varied and thorough course of study in the country, and the commencement of a career which should be the most noble and beneficial, not by peculiar and appropriate ceremonies, but by the commonest rites ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its own nature, merely continues in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For what is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It is that practical considerations cling to it and stifle it. It subserves interests not its own. Our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the first thing and the play of mind the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the most valuable of all metals has been discovered on the upper waters of the Pahang River and tributaries. The Chinese swarm in their thousands on the western slopes, and outnumber the Malays by more than three to one. They are surely the bane of the wanderer's existence. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... happiness and the only things worth living for in this world, and I am determined to have my revenge. While we remain together on earth, I will pursue you—whatever your course in life may be, I will find you out; I will balk you in your dearest wishes—I will prove your bane in whatever you undertake—I will destroy your happiness—I will stand like a lion in your path, and bar your progress. I will not injure you in life or limb—I might kill you, but I will not do that—as you have injured me by legal means, so will I keep within the law in taking my revenge, ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... faint sigh of assent. She was disappointed by her sister's tone; for in the time past she had more than once suspected that Geraldine Challoner loved George Fairfax with a passionate half-despairing love, which, if unrequited, might make the bane of her life. And, lo! here was the same Geraldine discussing her engagement as coolly as if the match had been the veriest marriage of convenience ever planned by a designing dowager. She did not understand how much pride had to do with this ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... ever to change a note, wha the deil d'ye think wad be sic fules as to gie me charity after that?it wad flee through the country like wildfire, that auld Edie suld hae done siccan a like thing, and then, I'se warrant, I might grane my heart out or onybody wad gie me either a bane or a bodle." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... insipid, and dangerous reading, are the bane of English female education. They teach a sort of false romantic sentiment, and withdraw the mind from attention to the ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... softness of manner, and as to that tenderness of character which was the bane of his existence,—as to his real and great goodness, which made him loved always and everywhere, and which caused such bitter tears to be shed at the news of his death,—these qualities are not to be sought in the strange, fanciful being who is styled ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Tom Staple was not a happy man; university reform had long been his bugbear, and now was his bane. It was not with him, as with most others, an affair of politics, respecting which, when the need existed, he could, for parties' sake or on behalf of principle, maintain a certain amount of necessary zeal; it was not with him a subject for dilettante ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to ancient times, we shall see that even Occidentals were dominated by intuitionalism. All primitive knowledge was dominated by intuitions, and was as absurd as many still prevalent Oriental conceptions of nature. The bane of ancient science and philosophy was its reliance on a priori considerations; that is, on intuition. Inductive, carefully logical methods of thought, of science, of philosophy, and even of religion, are relatively modern developments of the Occidental mind. We have learned to doubt intuitions ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the quiet of my being, foes, If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread, I find—my daunted soul doth there repose.... On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane.... Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade, I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink Her lovely face I picture from my mind.... Oft hath her living likeness met my sight, (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear, On beechen stems, on some green lawny ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... triumphed over the need for ink, or that our temperaments have become Russian; but that some of us have become infected with the wish to see and record the truth and obliterate that competitive moralising which from time immemorial has been the characteristic bane of English art. In other words, the Russian passion for understanding has tempered a little the English passion for winning. What we admire and look for in Russian literature is its truth and its profound and comprehending tolerance. I am credibly informed that what Russians ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... story", where a father slays his son unwittingly, and then falls at his brother's hand, a tale combining the Rustam and the Balin-Balan types, is one of the Hilding tragedies, and curiously preserved in the late "Saga of Asmund the Champions' bane". It is an antithesis, as Dr. Rydberg remarks, to the Hildebrand and Hadubrand story, where father and son must fight and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... How love has been my bane! My cunning fails, and all my arts are vain. Have mercy, fair one, lest my pupils all Mock me, who point a path ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... the bane of the paying teller's profession, and it is the general practice in conservative banks to accept no checks or other paper which shows signs of erasure or alteration in ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... home-stayers,—of the wise, but feeble-hearted. Yet the Norns have spoken; and it must be that another hero shall arise of the Volsung blood, and he shall restore the name and the fame of his kin of the early days. And he shall be my bane; and in him shall the race of heroes ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... arrogance of the South. While the principles of the abolitionists have been the shallow pretence, the craven cowardice of such men as BUCHANAN and CUSHING has been the real incitement to the South to pour insult and wrong on the North. Concession has been our bane. It was paltering and concession that palsied the strong will and ready act which should have prevented this war; for had it not been for such men as the traitors who are now crying out for Southern rights, the rebellion would have been far more limited in its area, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... out, With stomach huge he laid about, Imprinting many a wound upon 800 His mortal foe, the truncheon. The trusty cudgel did oppose Itself against dead-doing blows, To guard its leader from fell bane, And then reveng'd itself again. 805 And though the sword (some understood) In force had much the odds of wood, 'Twas nothing so; both sides were ballanc't So equal, none knew which was valiant'st: For wood with Honour b'ing engag'd, 810 Is so implacably ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... to put on the proper dresses and to tell their father where they were going, Ruth and Alice DeVere were soon on their way to Central Park, where the scene was to be filmed, or photographed over again—a "retake," as it is called, the bane alike of camera men ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... roiff and rest; I luve bot thee allane.' 'Makyne, adieu! the sone gois west, The day is neir-hand gane.' 'Robin, in dule I am so drest That luve will be my bane.' 'Ga luve, Makyne, quhair-evir thow list, For lemman ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... you understood the thing, you would know that green water is a sailor's bane. He scarcely relishes ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... it when hard-pressed, and that a certain old farmer there, one season when the hay crop failed, cut and harvested tons of it for his stock in winter. It is said that the milk and butter made from such hay are not at all suggestive of the traditional Ambrosia!) It is the bane of asthmatic patients, but the gardener makes short work of it. It is about the only one of our weeds that follows the plow and the harrow, and, except that it is easily destroyed, I should suspect it to be an immigrant from the Old World. Our fleabane is ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... that run away with it so sweetly. I cannot even find it in me to scold you for your many follies. Young woman, I don't approve of you, but you are the sweetest creature that ever walked this earth. Thanks be where thanks are due that I am a woman; you would have been my bane had I ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... characters. It is acknowledged that Mr. Smith was much inclined to intemperance, though Mr. Oldisworth has glossed it over with the hand of a friend; nor is it improbable, that this disposition sunk him in that vis inertiae, which has been the bane of many of the brightest geniuses of the world. Mr. Smith was, upon the whole, a good natured man, a great poet, a finished scholar, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... affection are the best of human qualities, and doubtless you yourself have enough character to retain them. But the complaisance of others will weaken your character. Flattery and servile compliments will break down its defences and self-interest too, the bane of all sincerity. What though you and I can talk plainly with each other to-day? Others will address themselves not to us but to our fortunes. To persuade an emperor what he ought to do is a laborious task: any one can flatter him ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... child, His father's footsteps following plain, To Christ's crying deaf ears did yield, A rotten ear was then his bane." ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... on that alane; He can fell twa dogs wi' ae bane, While ither folk Must rest themselves content wi' ane, ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... nobody's business. There, as I see it, is the bane of the whole situation at present. To be sure, epidemics occasionally wake us up. And, really, an epidemic is a fine thing for a city to have. It is the only scourge that drives us busy Americans to progress. It took an epidemic of typhoid, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... the darkling way Thither, whence life-return the Fates denay. But ah! beshrew you, evil Shadows low'ring In Orcus ever loveliest things devouring: Who bore so pretty a Sparrow fro' her ta'en. 15 (Oh hapless birdie and Oh deed of bane!) Now by your wanton work my girl appears With turgid eyelids tinted rose ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... letter I wanted to write a few lines, as are not in such a hasty, interrupted fashion. Yet not much have I to say, for great occasions of bliss, of bane,—tell their own story, and we would not by unnecessary words come limping after the true sense. If ever mortal was secure of a pure and rational happiness which shall grow and extend into immortal life, I think it is you, for the love that binds you to him you love is wise ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... of kind concern Even from those who seem most truly ours. Who would resign all this, to be approached, Like a sick infant by a canting nurse, To spread his arms in darkness, and to find One universal hollowness around? Forego, a little while, that bane of ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... holly White Damp, cold woods; North and West. Mount. honeysuckle Yellowish Mountain woods and bogs; Mass., West. N. American papaw Lurid purple Banks of streams; Pa. and South. Pepper-root White Rich woods; Middle States. Rare. Puccoon Yellow Shady woods; N. Y. and West. Red bane-berry Rocky woods. Common Northward. Red sandwort Sandy fields; sea-coast. Common. Rheumatism-root White Low woods; Middle States, West. Rhodora Rose-color Damp, cold New England woods. Scarlet corydalis Dry woods and fields; Northeast ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... name. Bote he is dem young faller bane goin' 'round hare dees two, t'ree days, lukin' lak preacher out of a ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... ever yet befallen any young woman in the world to wish with secret intensity that she might have been, for her convenience, a shade less inordinately pretty? She had come to that, to this view of the bane, the primal curse, of their lavish physical outfit, which had included everything and as to which she lumped herself resentfully with her mother. The only thing was that her mother was, thank goodness, still so much prettier, still so assertively, so publicly, so trashily, so ruinously ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... willingly wander any-whither with George Borrow. But, for the most part, the art of writing travels is lost—its imaginativeness, its credulity, its cherishing of mystery, and its proneness to awe. The old travellers are never sentimental—and sentiment is the very bane of road-books,—and they never describe for description's sake. The world was much too wonderful in their eyes for such unprofitable excursions of fancy. Beauty and danger, difficulty and strangeness, novel fashions and unknown garbs, were to them earnest and absorbing realities. The aspect ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... spirit of contradiction. But the truth is, he had the good sense to see that he might "go farther and fare worse;" and that, at any rate, he would thus secure himself from the intrusions of that "good company," which had been his bane. By-the-by, his last "good thing" appertains to his residence here. Some one asked him how he could think of residing in "such a place as Calais?" "I suppose," said he, "it is possible for a gentleman to live ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... the rocky soil He dug a trench profound, That in the flood of serpent blood And bane he might ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... after my father's mother, and her name shall be Thorgerda," for she came down from Sigurd Fafnir's-bane on the father's side, according to ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... the bane of literature. Except my works and those of my particular friends, nothing is good that is not as old as Jeremy Taylor: and, entre nous, the best parts of my friends' books were either written or suggested ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... hath the conquering War-king another deed to do, And he saith: "Who now gainsayeth King Lyngi come to woo, The lord and the overcomer and the bane of the Volsung kin?" So he fares to the Isle-king's dwelling a wife of the kings to win; And the host is gathered together, and they leave the field of the dead; And round as a targe of the Goth-folk the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... you wish to hunt him?" said the advocate, mocking. "Did you ever gallop, sir, after a hedgehog? have you assisted to draw a badger? I am badgered by him, and will blame him, ay, ban him, for he is my curse, my bane; why should I not curse him as Noah cursed that foul whelp Canaan? Beshrew him for a block-head, a little black-browed beetle, a blot of ink, a shifting shadow, a roving rat, a mouse, yes, sir, a very mouse, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... God's mother, Maid adored, Robbed sin's poison of its bane, And the Snake, his green coils lowered, Writhing on the sod, outpoured ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... as well, but 'tisn't a many. There's hen bane which do kill the fowls and fishes if they eat the seed of it. And there's water hemlock which lays ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... then, My Queen, thy charities do pass The bounds of sense at times! A bane On such unwholesome tenderness! Dost nothing owe to him who shares Thy couch, and suffers by thy cares? He could have slept upon the floor, And left you still his creditor. A leper!—in my bed!—God's truth! Out ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... are so vast, That, deluge-like, they lay whole nations waste. Debauches and excess (though with less noise) As great a portion of mankind destroys. The beasts and monsters Hercules oppress'd, Might in that age some provinces infest; These more destructive monsters are the bane Of every age, and in all nations reign; But soon would vanish, if the world were bless'd With sacred love, by which ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... of foot binding does not fall so heavily upon women like myself, who may sit and broider the whole day through, or, if needs must travel, can be borne upon the shoulders of their chair bearers, but it is a bane to the poor girl whose parents hope to have one in the family who may marry above their station, and hoping thus, bind her feet. If this marriage fails and she is forced to work within her household, or, even worse, if she is forced to toil within ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... In the silence of a forest, the gloom of a deep ravine, resides a living mystery, indefinite, but redoubtable. Through all the works of Nature or of man, nothing exists, however seemingly trivial, that may not be endowed with a secret power for blessing or for bane. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... series contains different varieties, no Stamp being included in two Packets, and purchasers will by this novel method be saved the inconvenience of acquiring duplicates, which is as a rule the bane of ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... relatives. And as a morsel of meat, if in air, may be devoured by birds; if on ground by beasts of prey; and if in water by the fishes; even so is the man of wealth exposed to dangers wherever he may be. To many the wealth they own is their bane, and he that beholding happiness in wealth becometh wedded to it, and knoweth not true happiness. And hence accession of wealth is viewed as that which increaseth covetousness and folly. Wealth alone is the root of niggardliness and boastfulness, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... criticism as Scott. Miss Edgeworth, in one of her letters, reminds him how they had both agreed that writers who cared for the dignity and serenity of their characters should abstain from "that authors' bane-stuff." "As to the herd of critics," Scott wrote to Miss Seward, after publishing "The Lay," "many of those gentlemen appear to me to be a set of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them." It is probable, therefore, that he was quite unconcerned ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of the streets of Madrid seems to be fire and water, bane and antidote. It would be impossible for so many match-venders to live anywhere else, in a city ten times the size of Madrid. On every block you will find a wandering merchant dolefully announcing paper and phosphorus,—the one to construct cigarettes and the other to light ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... that which followed. The Irishman's hand rose suddenly from below the table, an open clasp-knife balanced on the palm; there was a movement swift as conjuring; Trent started half to his feet, turning a little as he rose so as to escape the table, and the movement was his bane. The missile struck him in the jugular; he fell forward, and his blood flowed among the dishes on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instincts have been the bane of humanity. They have given us the stiletto, the Morgue, the bowie-knife. Our race must inevitably in the end outlive them. The test of man's plane in the scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They are surviving relics of the ape ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... pity: YOU know not the power of those irresistible, those fatal sentiments, to which her Heart was a prey. Father, She loved unfortunately. A passion for One endowed with every virtue, for a Man, Oh! rather let me say, for a divinity, proved the bane of her existence. His noble form, his spotless character, his various talents, his wisdom solid, wonderful, and glorious, might have warmed the bosom of the most insensible. My Sister saw him, and dared to love though She ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... stop just a minute?" he said, in a voice that showed that this music was the bane of his life. "One can't ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... mei, Dominus vocavit me per viam simplicitatis et humilitatis, et bane viam ostendit mini in veritate pro me et pro illis qui volunt mini credere et imitari. Et ideo volo quod non nominetis mihi aliquam regulam neque sancti Benedicti neque sancti Augustini neque sancti Bernardi, neque aliquam viam et formam vivendi praeter illam quae mihi a Domino ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... doubly arm'd: my Death and Life, My Bane and Antidote are both before me. This in a Moment brings me to an End; But This informs me I shall never die. The Soul, secur'd in her Existence, smiles At the drawn Dagger, and defies its Point. The Stars shall fade away, the Sun himself Grow dim with Age, and Nature sink in Years; But thou shalt ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... [fly-bane]. Amanita muscaria, or Agaricus muscarius (fly-agaric). This is the Siberian fungus, with ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... sit on his white hause-bane, And I'll pike out his bonny blue e'en: Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair We'll theek our ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... bane, - A harder case you never heard, My wife (in other matters sane) Pretends that ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... variants in the Poetic Edda have evident marks of contamination with the Volsung cycle, and some points of superficial resemblance. Helgi Hjoervardsson's mother is Sigrlinn, Helgi Hundings-bane's father is Sigmund, as in the Nibelungen Lied Siegfried is the son of Sigemunt and Sigelint. Helgi Hundingsbane is a Volsung and Wolfing (Ylfing), and brother to Sinfjoetli; his first fight, like Sigurd's, is against the race of Hunding; ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... a new grave added to the little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a little board and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of "our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of noble intellects," and otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. "He leaves an only child to mourn his loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... from us, Mr. Alwyn!" she said with a slight smile—"I do not wonder at it. These receptions are the bane ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... "are the bane of one's existence. They hamper all one's most cherished desires until one is of an age when the desires become non-existent. My aunt Lilla is always saying to me, 'When you're a much older woman, dearest.' And I reply, 'But, Aunt Lilla, now is ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... appealed immediately to the mind of Flaccus, whose combative instincts found their natural satisfaction in the prospect of an interchange of blows. The finer and more complex spirit of Gracchus issued in a more uncertain mood. The bane of the thinker and the patriot was upon him. Was a man who had led the State to fight against it, and the rule of reason to be exchanged for the base arbitrament of the sword? None knew the emotions with which he turned from the Forum to gaze long and steadfastly at the statue of his father and to ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... two out of the three chapar men putting in a good portion of their time "hitting" the seductive pipe, and tinkering with their opium-smoking apparatus. They only have one outfit between them; both of them are half blind with ophthalmia, and the bane of their wretched existence seems to be a Russian candle-lamp, with a broken globe, that persists in falling apart whenever they attempt to use it—which, by the by, is well-nigh all the time—in ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... his breakfast, and was descending the steep path to the river, where the Rosabel was moored. The weather was cloudy, and out at sea it looked as if the fog would roll in, within a short time, as it often did during the spring and summer. Indeed, the one bane of this coast, as a pleasure resort, is the prevalence of dense and frequently long-continued fog. Sometimes it shrouds the shores for several days at a time; and it has been known to last for weeks. It is cold, penetrating, and disagreeable to the denizen of the city, seeking ease and comfort ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... had never seen the light. You were born to be the bane of my house. But since you have confided to me this precious secret, let me ask you what you think will be the probable ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... and stood in rapture In sight of gold he held in capture; And then, with sudden qualm possessed, He wrung his hands and beat his breast: "O, had the earth concealed this gold, I had perhaps in peace grown old! But there is neither gold nor price To recompense the pang of vice. Bane of all good—delusive cheat, To lure a soul on to defeat And banish honour from the mind: Gold raised the sword midst kith and kind, Gold fosters each, pernicious art In which the devils bear a ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... wisdom the fruits of our joint councils, joint efforts, and common dangers; reverence religion, diffuse knowledge throughout your land, patronize the arts and sciences; let Liberty and Order be inseparable companions. Control party spirit, the bane of free governments; observe good faith to, and cultivate peace with all nations, shut up every avenue to foreign influence, contract rather than extend national connection, rely on yourselves only; be Americans in thought, word and deed;—thus ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... manners were portrayed. Cooper was also the founder of the "sea-novel," a line of fiction in which he was followed by an English writer, Marryat (1792-1848). Richard H. Dana and Fitz-Greene Halleck were poets who had a much higher than the merely negative merit of freedom from tumidity, the bane of the earlier American bards. Not only in verse, but also in his prose tales, Dana manifested genius. Several later poets, acknowledged at home and abroad, well deserve the name. Such are Bryant (1794-1878), ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village held in farm under Government, was considered ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at present—a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between that we are ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... assistants into the cell, but too late. The spirit had departed; and they found but the now silent mourner, with folded arms, and a countenance that had in it volumes of unutterable wo, bending over the inanimate form of one whose life and misnamed love had been the bane of hers. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... and vile; lascivious groups may stand side by side with pictures of saints and madonnas. To leave the figure, it is wise counsel to read on principle, and, armed with principle, to accept and imitate the good, and to reject the evil. Conscience gives the rule, and for every bane will give ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... lurked mid flowers where she did pass, Pierced her fair foot with his envenomed bane: So fierce, so potent was the sting, that she Died in mid course. Ah, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... remained in England indulging himself in lavish expenditure and display. The consequences of this were the impoverishment of his estates and their eventual management by rack-renters. These rack-renters, whose only interest lay in squeezing money out of the impoverished tenants, became the bane ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... railways. Moreover, the Austrian territory throughout this section is so mountainous and well timbered that large forces of troops could be well screened from observation, whereas the country opposite Belgrade is fiat and bane. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... you spent, I find, some considerable time, and gave yourself good room to examine the natural curiosities of that extensive kingdom, both those of the islands, as well as those of the highlands. The usual bane of such expeditions is hurry; because men seldom allot themselves half the time they should do: but, fixing on a day for their return, post from place to place, rather as if they were on a journey that required dispatch, than as philosophers investigating the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... and heels on fire, And like the very soul of evil, He's galloping away, away, And so he'll gallop on for aye, The bane of all ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... divided into barbarous and civilized; their common possession, or life, is some object either of sense or of imagination; and their bane and destruction is either external or internal. And, to speak in general terms, without allowing for exceptions or limitations (for I am treating the subject scientifically only so far as is requisite for my particular inquiry), we may pronounce that barbarous states live in a common ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... no hand upon her, he made no sign and spoke no word, but she, as drugged by another's will as if she were under the bane of opium, followed him unhesitatingly into the secret places of the temple. Her bare feet made no sound on the dust of centuries; her eyes looked back unwaveringly into the eyes of the gods who leered down upon her; her hair caught around ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Bolingbroke had no idea of wit, his satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them; but, in every page you see he intended to be witty: every paragraph would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, would be his bane;' and Lord Hervey ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... getting out his clinical thermometer. "It has been her bane, poor lady, that difficult temper. Years ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... by the Sire de Coucy, one of the best and oldest captain of Christendom; [62] but the constable, admiral, and marshal of France [63] commanded an army which did not exceed the number of a thousand knights and squires. [631] These splendid names were the source of presumption and the bane of discipline. So many might aspire to command, that none were willing to obey; their national spirit despised both their enemies and their allies; and in the persuasion that Bajazet would fly, or must fall, they began to compute how soon they should visit Constantinople ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... household word—or perhaps one should say a trench-hold word. Who is ever the worse for a laugh? Certainly not the soldier in trench or dug-out or shell-swept billet. Rather may it be said that the Bairnsfather laughter has acted in thousands of cases as an antidote to the bane of depression. It is the good fortune of the British Army to possess such an antidote, and the ill-fortune of the other belligerents that they do not ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather
... Hoang Ho and you enter the loess country, dear to the tiller of the soil, but the bane of the traveller, for the dust is often intolerable. But there was little change in scenery until toward noon of the following day, when the faint, broken outlines of hills appeared on the northern horizon. As we were delayed by a little accident it was getting ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... the clerk, "he said it bane a dam cold day ven you get that money. Aye tank that ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... up the Shield of Peace, and the battle was stayed; and therewith he cried to King Halfdan: "Two choices are in thine hands now, either that thou give up all to my will, or else gettest thou thy bane like thy brother; for now may men see that mine is the ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... no lesse hurtfull, and the rather to hiues of straw: and therefore couerings of straw draw them. They will in either at the mouth, or sheere themselues an hole. The remedy is good Cats, Rats-bane and watching. ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... purpose, in short more character, than ours. The great charm of such a man as Darwin, for instance, is his simple manliness and transparent good faith, and the absence in him of that finical, self-complacent smartness which is the bane ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... have one good dog on the run here, who knows every patch of poison-plant between Kendenup and the grazing-ground, and barks round it, keeping the sheep off it, till the whole flock has safely passed. This poison-plant—of which there are several kinds, some more deadly than others—is the bane of the colony. They say that sheep born in the colony know it, and impart their knowledge to their lambs, but that all imported sheep eat it ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... thine ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... ought," Rachel could not help saying. Mrs. Carleton here entreated her to listen, and seized her hand, so that there was no escape. The tale was broken and confused, but there could be little doubt of its correctness. Poor Bessie had been the bane of young Carleton's life. She had never either decidedly accepted or repelled his affection, but, as she had truly said, let him follow her like a little dog, and amused herself with him in the absence of better game. He was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and failure; his wife died of grief, and the opportunity presented itself of a Celtic reaction against the Anglicization of the reign of Malcolm III. The throne was seized by Malcolm's brother, Donald Bane. Malcolm's eldest son, Duncan, whose mother, Ingibjorg, had been a Dane, received assistance from Rufus, and drove Donald Bane, after a reign of six months, into the distant North. But after about six months he himself was slain in a small fight ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... St. Saviour's, however, he kept fixing his mind on that "last domain," as he called it to himself. If this was done intentionally, that he might be saved from distraction and despair, it was well done; if it was a real illusion—the old self-deception which had been his bane so often in the past—it still could only do him good at the present. It prevented him from noticing the attention he attracted on the railway journey from St. Saviour's to Montreal, cherishing his canary and his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the line, as if to make Canadians feel more bitterly how much kinder England is to the children who desert her, than to those who remain faithful. It is the inconsistency of imperial legislation, and not the adoption of one policy rather than another, which is the bane of the colonies." ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... the maid replied, As her light skiff approached the side,— 'I well believe, that ne'er before Your foot has trod Loch Katrine's shore But yet, as far as yesternight, Old Allan-bane foretold your plight,— A gray-haired sire, whose eye intent Was on the visioned future bent. He saw your steed, a dappled gray, Lie dead beneath the birchen way; Painted exact your form and mien, Your hunting-suit of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... favored him with a sunny smile. "As well ask me how much my living expenses must be in order to cover my earnings. Whatever one is, the other will be approximately ditto—or perhaps slightly in excess thereof. Anyhow, nothing but rigid economy—bane of my life—will make the one fit into the other. But I have a thought. Something tells me these boys need white flannels, so get out your stock, Kurtz. If they can't play tennis they must learn, for my sake." Bob's remarkable ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... is gone, anyhow,' said the baker. 'It was the bane of my life. I had no idea how easy it was to remove it. Give me your pickaxes young miner, and I will show you how a baker ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... that cursed valet grinning maliciously at me from behind his chair, say to me,—'Simpson, I hear that you make too free with my wine, and are frequently intoxicated; stop it, or I shall dismiss you.' In short, Lagrange was the bane of my existence, and I secretly swore to be terribly revenged upon him for his tattling propensities. You'll soon see how ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... those songs of her mother's race to which she always turned with tears of pleasure. They breathe a Vedic solemnity and simplicity of temper, and are singularly devoid of that littleness and frivolity which seem, if we may judge by a slight experience, to be the bane of modern India. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the kinges dere sone, The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free, Which alwey for to do wel is his wone, The noble Troilus, so loveth thee, That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be. 320 Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye? Doth what yow list, to make ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... accomplish by this plan the very aim which he had at heart when he proposed the classification plan—a just, impartial and equal reimbursement to every player in the game, so far as the finances of each club would permit—and without that bane to ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... place is Paris!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "After being bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a dandy in the Champs-Elysees with impunity!—Oh! I am unlucky! bankrupts are my bane." ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... which make up "a love of a man." Added to this, he really did possess a good share of common sense, and with the right kind of influence would have made a far different man from what he was. Self-love was the bane of his life, and as he liked dearly to be flattered, so he in turn became a most consummate flatterer; always, however, adapting his remarks to the nature of the person with whom he was conversing. Thus to Nellie ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... however, especially thank one of my correspondents for sending me a pamphlet, called "Sectarianism, the Bane of Religion and the Church,"[138] which I would recommend, in the strongest terms, to the reading of all who regard the cause of Christ; and, for help in reading the Scriptures, I would name also the short and admirable arrangement of parallel passages relating to the offices of the clergy, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... it must be hypnotism. But Dick thinks it might be something simpler. I think Mr. 'Opkins very nice. He says you promised to lend him a book. What would help him to talk like a real country boy. So I have lent him a book about a window. By Mr. Bane. What came to see us last year. It has a lot of funny words in it. And he is going to learn them up. But he don't know what they mean. No more do I. I have written a lot of the book. It promises to be very interesting. It is all a dream. He is just the ordinary ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... here, excellent spies among the ambassadors," said Roberjot, "and through them we have skilfully fanned the flames of that discord which seems to be the bane of Germany. It is true, they hold secret meetings every day in order to agree on a harmonious line of policy, but discord, jealousy, and covetousness always accompany them to those meetings, and they ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the Nation calls For help, and weakness and disgrace Lag in her tents and council-halls, And down on aching heart and brain Blow after blow unbroken falls. Her strength flows out through every vein; Mere time consumes her to the core; Her stubborn pride becomes her bane. In vain she names her children o'er; They fail her in her hour of need; She mourns at desperation's door. Be thine the hand to do the deed, To seize the sword, to mount the throne, And wear the purple as thy meed! No heart shall grudge it; not a groan Shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... white of egg, flea-bane seeds, and lime; powder them and mix juice of radish with the white of egg; mix all thoroughly and with this composition annoint your body or hand and allow it to dry and afterwards annoint it again, and after this you may boldly take up hot ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... try if his magic can invent an antidote to the bane," said he, half-aloud, and with a stern smile, as he summoned Mascari to his presence. The poison which the prince, with his own hands, mixed into the wine intended for his guest, was compounded from materials, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... just; hence the stubborn tenacity with which Nihilism maintains its grip upon the middle and lower classes. If the 'Little Father' wishes to stamp out that terrible scourge of secret and deadly conspiracy which is the bane and menace of his existence, he must purge the Russian nobles of their present lust of cruelty and oppression, and must render it possible for every one of his subjects, from the highest to the lowest, to obtain absolute justice. When he has accomplished this ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... chose for planting thee, Accurst he rear'd thee from the ground, The bane of children yet to be, The scandal of the village round. His father's throat the monster press'd Beside, and on his hearthstone spilt, I ween, the blood of midnight guest; Black Colchian drugs, whate'er of guilt Is hatch'd on earth, he dealt ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... damnable faces and begin, Come, the croking rauen doth bellow for reuenge. Murd. Thoughts blacke, hands apt, drugs fit, and time Confederate season, else no creature seeing: (agreeing. Thou mixture rancke, of midnight weedes collected, With Hecates bane thrise blasted, thrise infected, Thy naturall magicke, and dire propertie, One wholesome life vsurps immediately. exit. Ham. He poysons him for his estate. [F4v] King Lights, I will to bed. Cor. The ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... evolution which would have delighted Darwin. In the party of engineers which first camped there was Sinclair and it was by his advice that the contractors selected it for division headquarters. Then came drinking "saloons" and gambling houses—alike the inevitable concomitant and the bane of Western settlements; then scattered houses and shops and a shabby so-called hotel, in which the letting of miserable rooms (divided from each other by canvas partitions) was wholly subordinated to the business of the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... pursued Ulick, changing his note to eagerness. 'La grande nation herself finds that logic was her bane. Consistency was never made for man! Why where would this world be if it did not ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rocks, Dens, and Caves; but I in none of these Find place or refuge; and the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel 120 Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries; all good to me becomes Bane, and in Heav'n much worse would be my state. But neither here seek I, no nor in Heav'n To dwell, unless by maistring Heav'ns Supreame; Nor hope to be my self less miserable By what I seek, but others to make ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... his first burst of joy, "but nae doubt we are waur aff than we hae been, or suld be. And for eating—what signifies telling a lee? there's just the hinder end of the mutton-ham that has been but three times on the table, and the nearer the bane the sweeter, as your honours weel ken; and—there's the heel of the ewe-milk kebbuck, wi' a bit of nice butter, and—and—that's a' that's to trust to." And with great alacrity he produced his slender stock of provisions, and placed them with much formality ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... said she, "what matters it? If, by God's mercy, he is alive still, he will not let me die for want of a word from him. Impatience hath been my bane. Now, I say, God's will be done. I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... The bane of this science, as every one knows, has been its theorizing, and its want of careful inductive reasoning from facts. The classifications in it have been endless, varying almost with the fancies of each new student; while every prominent follower of it has had some pet hypothesis, to which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... of a thousand pounds. The Duke of Lancaster, who was not his brother's tool, was quietly disposed of for the moment, by making him so exceedingly uncomfortable, that with the miserable laisser-aller, which was the bane of his fine character, he went home to enjoy himself as a country gentleman, leaving politics to ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... but he feels his security, and stands aloof. In this he is doubtless encouraged by his mother, who is continually reminding him of what he owes to his family; for this same family pride seems doomed to be the eternal bane ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... these circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally depressed upon the island, under the bane of civil wars, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... episcopal palace at Beauvais, the last Easter preceding, when the communion was administered under both kinds, "after the fashion of Geneva."[1162] Salignac was a timid man, a fair sample of the "Nicodemites," who had proved the bane of the Reformation in France. For thirty years he had held, and to some extent—if we may credit his own words—professed the same doctrines as Calvin, continually exhorting his hearers to turn from an empty, formal worship, to Christ as the only Saviour. Confessedly ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... our new beer is the sweeter and clammier, and wants more spice. The doctor hath seasoned his with pretty wit enough, to do him justice, which in a sermon is never out of place; for if there be the bane, there ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... mentions as the bonds and ligaments of the commonwealth, the pillars and the sustainers of every written statute; these they be which will bear chief sway in such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissness, for certain, are the bane of a commonwealth; but here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... one righteous man succeeds The seer Amphiaraus, good and brave. His post is at the Homoloian gate. Here he reproaches heaps on Tydeus' head, Calling him murderer and the public bane, Leader of Argos in all evil ways, The Furies' pursuivant, henchman of death, That has Adrastus to his ruin trained. Thy brother too, stained by his father's fate, Great Polynices, with accusing face Turned heavenward, he upbraids ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... glowering round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares: Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. By this time he was 'cross the foord, Whare in the snow the chapman smoored, {149b} And past the birks and meikle stane Whare drunken Charlie brak's neck-bane: And through the whins, and by the cairn Whare hunters fand the murdered bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Where Mungo's mither hanged hersel'. Before him Doon pours a' his floods; The doubling storm roars through the woods; The lightnings ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... reader, give not yourself up to curiosity. Consider of how many it is the bane. Would you to gratify this tear away the mystery from the Milkmen's Hall and wrong the Ancient Company of Milkmen? Would they if all the world knew it and it became a common thing to tell that tale any more that ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... on to "him," who was addressed as Bane, or Dane, or something of that ilk; and I was sorry for poor Sir Samuel, whose face showed how little he enjoyed the prospect of being cooped up in ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... around us calls for faith. Have then a little patience. We shall soon know all. Meantime, I, thy confessor for the nonce, do strictly forbid thee, on thy soul's health, to hearken learned lay folk on things religious. Arrogance is their bane; with it they shut heaven's open door in their own faces. Mind, I say, learned laics. Unlearned ones have often been my masters in humility, and may be thine. Thy wound is cared for; in three days 'twill be but a scar. And now God speed thee, and the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... other branches of Literature as well as the ennobling sentiments inspired by religion, patriotism and other affections of the human heart. An elevating mission, indeed, be it only directed in a worthy course. Frivolity and license are alike the bane of literature and art. Earnestness of purpose and severity of moral tone are the stamina of both. Shorn of these, both alike find their strength is gone from them. It is consoling to reflect that notwithstanding the laborious turmoil of politics we have had three, and I think successive, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the hero, is Jurii, who might easily have been a protagonist in one of Turgenev's tragedies. He is the typical Russian, the highly educated young man with a diseased will. He is characterised by that indecision which has been the bane of so many Russians. All through the book he seeks in vain for some philosophy of life, some guiding principle. He has abandoned faith in religion, his former enthusiasm for political freedom has cooled, but he simply cannot live without ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... were so violent against each other, one in his manner of treating Lord Temple, who was in the House, and the brother in his justification of his brother, that the House was obliged to interfere to prevent mischief. Lord Temple comes to me; but politics is the bane of friendship, and when personal resentments join, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the most notable recent advance in rural matters consists in the improved means of communication in rural districts. The country is relatively isolated, and it is this isolation in its extreme forms that is the bane of country living. Undue conservatism, lack of conformity to progressive views, undue prominence of class feeling, and a tendency to be less alert are things that grow out of this isolation; but better means of communication decrease ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... and a trade in furs and other products of the country opened with the Indians. Perhaps the precious metals, found in such quantities by the Spaniards at the South, might enrich the North. Happily they found not that pernicious bane which is alike the corrupter of private morals and the debaucher of nations. To these considerations may be added a willingness at least on the part of the government, to rid itself of idle profligates and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... earthly Freia—cruel maiden— There slumbers she, perhaps—the proud one rests in Joy's downy arms, undreaming aught of Balder! As if I did not love, were not a half-god; As if by Skalds my name were never chanted As if I were a demon, bad as Loke! Ha! if upon my tongue lurked bane and magic, When fear enchains it and the pale lip trembles; When broken words and a disordered wailing Are all with which I can express my bosom's Desire intense, and dread unwonted torments. Ha! were my voice like Find's when he, distracted, Goes over Horthedal; as when he bellows, And ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... been plucking plants among Hemlock, Henbane, Adder's Tongue; Nightshade, Moonwort, Libbard's bane, And twice, by the dogs, was like ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... courage—still impar Wisdom to virtue, valor to the heart! Still first to check th' encroachment—to declare "Thus far! no further, shall the assailant dare;" Thou keep'st thy ermine white, thy State secure, Thy fortunes prosperous, and thy freedom sure; No glozing art deceives thee to thy bane; The tempter and the usurper strive in vain! Thy spear's first touch unfolds the fiendish form, And first, with fearless breast, thou meet'st the storm; Though hosts assail thee, thou thyself a host, Prepar'st to meet the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various |
