"Dire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Margaret sat up suddenly in bed, with the conviction that she had slept in. To her this was to ravel the day: a dire thing. The last time it happened Gavin, softened by her distress, had condensed morning worship into a sentence that she might ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... And of the prouostye. Il est mes parens He is my kynnesman 12 Et ie le sien; And I am his; Si men puis vanter. So I me auaunte. "Bernard, est le clocque sounee "Bernard, is the clocke sowned Pour aller a le euure?" For to goo to werke?" 16 "Vous[1] voules dire "Ye wolde saye Le clocque des ouuriers?" The ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... detained the other's hand for a second or so and said, looking wistfully in his face, "Ainsi, vous partez seul? je ne l'aurais pas cru; et, je l'avoue franchement, ca me contrarie. N'importe; je connois votre jeu; et je ne vous tiens pas pour battu, quand c'est manche a. Ce serait une betise, de dire—'au revoir.' Adieu; amusez ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... most of the assertions that have been made. They do not constitute even the suggestion of proof that, when Chaucer lost his controllerships and gave up his annuity, he was out of favour with the King, that he was soon in dire financial straits, and that when again in 1391 he lost the clerkship of the works, he was out of favour and pressed ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... he was in dire straits, and only by much ingenuity did he manage to raise enough to keep up appearances. He borrowed right and left, taking from one to satisfy the demands of another—an endless chain sort of arrangement that was bound to break ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... brain that had never failed had proved its resourcefulness once again in this hour of dire trouble. Druce was gone. He would never be heard of in Chicago again. It had cost thirty thousand dollars, but what was thirty thousand dollars? Mary Randall and her crusaders were crushed. Anson was ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... a highly interesting passage, but difficult, from being corrupt in the G. Text, and over-curt in Pauthier's MSS. In the former it runs as follows: "Hil hi a une jenerasion de jens que sunt appelles Argon, qe vaut a dire en francois Guasmul, ce est a dire qu'il sunt ne del deus generasions de la lengnee des celz Argon Tenduc et des celz reduc et des celz que aorent Maomet. Il sunt biaus homes plus que le autre dou pais et plus sajes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... In this dire extremity the writer found his way to one of our Shelters, and there found God and friends and hope, and once more got his feet on to the ladder which leads upward from the black gulf of starvation to competence and character, and usefulness ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... serve on British. These orders in council were so frequent that it seemed as if the French on one side of the British Channel and the English on the other were hurling decrees and orders at one another for their own amusement while inflicting dire injuries on other ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... O Muse! in what ill-fated hour(43) Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power Latona's son a dire contagion spread,(44) And heap'd the camp with mountains of the dead; The king of men his reverent priest defied,(45) And for the king's ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Sea, the vast desolation frozen hard in summer a few inches below the surface, on which nothing beyond the mosses ever grew. It was easy to understand the brain-crushing sameness and monotony of an existence chequered only by times of dire scarcity on ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... moiety of her earnings, and many a half-dollar that had come from Rose's pretty little hand, had been converted into gold, and forwarded on the same pious errand to the green island of her nativity. Ireland, unhappy country! at this moment what are not the dire necessities of thy poor! Here, from the midst of abundance, in a land that God has blessed in its productions far beyond the limits of human wants, a land in which famine was never known, do we at this moment hear thy groans, and listen to tales of suffering that to us seem almost incredible. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... it. I am apprehensive that the turrets of the monitors will defy any efforts we can make to destroy them. Our prestige will receive a shock from which it will be long in recovering; and if the calamities I dread should overtake us, the annals of this war will not present so dire a one as will ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... the power of restoring the goods? Every moral act derives its character (says a Schoolman with an unusual combination of profundity with quaintness) 'aut voluntate originis aut origine voluntatis'. Now the very essence of guilt, its dire and incommunicable character, consists in its tendency to destroy the free will;—but when thus destroyed, are the habits of vice thenceforward innocent? Does the law excuse the murder because the perpetrator was drunk? Dr. Hawker put ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... crueldades, que Atahuallpa en los de la Sangre Real hico, dire de Relacion de mi Madre, y de un Hermano suio, que se llamo Don Fernando Huallpa Tupac Inca Yupanqui, que entonces eran Ninos de menos de diez Anos." Ibid., Parte 1, lib. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... had handed down to them. These, having discovered the divine art of fixing their thoughts so that they can transmit them to their posterity, become, as it were, one and the same people with their descendants (se sont, pour ainsi dire, identifies avec leur neveux); while our descendants will in their turn be one and the same people with ourselves (s'identifieront avec nous). This reunion in a single person of the experience of many ages, throws back the boundaries of man's ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray, Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds, And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had rais'd To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire. But now the sun with more effectual beams Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dri'd the wet From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds, Who all things now beheld more fresh and green, After a night of storm so ruinous, Clear'd up ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... Donald's second word was, turning to the old father: "An' it is my own that I've saved; she's gien hersel' to me for all time, an' we'll ask for your blessin' on us without any waitin'!" Tears filled the mother's eyes. She thought of another daughter. A dire instinct smote her of woe ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... she was in her own room, she threw herself on her knees, and prayed fervently for help and support in their dire distress. In the stillness, as she knelt, she heard an interchange of voices, which she knew must be those of her brothers in the next room. She went nearer to that side, and heard them more distinctly. ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should make our way to the barracks, but the ladies were unwilling to encounter the storm, and begged to remain where they were. Evening was now approaching, but the hurricane gave no signs of abating. In whatever direction we looked we could see its dire effects. Not a shrub, not a cane, remained standing. Every tree had been blown down. It seemed as if a vast scythe had passed over the land. The uproar continued as loud ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... going insane," he said, laughing harshly. "Fool! To let that woman's memory disturb me. So much for her dire prophecy!" And he snapped his fingers and dropped the letter ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was twenty-two he was at Cambridge, and the tidings arrived that a dire financial storm had wrecked the family fortune. The young man had ever been led to suppose that his father was rich—rich beyond all danger from loss—and that he himself would never have a concern beyond amusing himself, and the cultivation of his intellect. And so in practical affairs his education ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... separation of censured and not confuted), or else of a | divinity and natural philosophy. In deceitful simplicity. For if they mean | a number of memorable passages Bacon that the ignorance of a second cause doth | indeed warns his readers of the dire make men more devoutly to depend upon the | consequences of confusing divinity providence of God, as supposing the | with natural science: to combine effects to come immediately from his hand, ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... moon bright, * Stay thy speech and with boon of good news requite. Love pledged me his word he would see thee and said, * Hie thee home and order the house aright. I awoke this morning in cark and care, * In tears distraught and in dire despite; For the wrongs and farness thou doom'st me dree * Have forced my forces to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... father, for the sake of your noble grandfather! It is Pep who begs you, Pep who has known you ever since you were a boy. The farmhouse is at your service; everyone who lives in it is eager to serve you—but do not persist in this caprice! It will bring some dire misfortune upon us all!" ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the ravell'd noose, As each a different way pursues, While sullen or loquacious strife, Promis'd to hold them on for life, That dire disease, whose ruthless power 75 Withers the beauty's transient flower: Lo! the small-pox, whose horrid glare Levell'd its terrors at the fair; And, rifling ev'ry youthful grace, Left but the remnant of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Bourbon, dit le Duc d'Aumale, fils de Louis-Auguste de Bourbon, legitime de France, Duc de Maine, mort le 8 Septembre, 1708: enfin Philippe d'Artois, Comte d'Eu, et Connetable de France, mort selon son epitaphe a Micalice en Turquie, c'est-a-dire Nicopoli, le 16 Juin, 1397. Le Mausolee de celui-ci, qui est de marbre, est enferme dans une espece de Cage de fer, dont les barreaux n'empechent point qu'on ne puisse en approcher et y porter la main. Le Prince y ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... stesso; Che senza domandarne e chi ne parla. Il pastor, che lo vede cosi oppresso Da sua tristrizia, e che vorria levarla, L'istoria nota a se the dicea spesso Di quei duo amanti a chi volea ascoltarla, Ch'a molti dilettevole fu a udire, Gl'incomincio senza rispetto a dire: ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... solito[Lat], more-majorum. for the sake of conformity; as a matter of course, of course; pro forma[Lat], for form's sake, by the card. invariably, &c. (uniformly) 16. for example, exempli gratia[Lat], e. g.; inter alia[Lat], among other things; for instance. Phr. cela va sans dire[Fr]; ex pede Herculem[Lat]; noscitur a sociis [Lat]; ne e quovis ligno Mercurius fiat [Lat][Erasmus]; "they are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations" [Bacon]. "The nail that sticks up will get hammered ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... madmen shot past the spot where Byring had sat, and vanished round an angle of the road, shouting and firing their pistols. A moment later there was a roar of musketry, followed by dropping shots—they had encountered the reserve-guard in line; and back they came in dire confusion, with here and there an empty saddle and many a maddened horse, bullet- stung, snorting and plunging with pain. It was all ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... in combat dire. Medicines may serve the body's pangs to still; Nought but the spirit fails ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... which she had come; but—the agility by which with help of vines and twigs she had let herself down these declivities, was not the strength that would mount them again. It was impossible. Wych Hazel saw that it was impossible, and certainly she would never have yielded the conviction but to dire necessity. She stood considering one particular jump down which she had made,—nothing but desperation could ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... dire misfortune," I said, when we had both walked round inspecting the black dank walls of our prison. "I wonder what fate ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... regard to these charitable institutions. We are very hard and unsympathetic in them. A distinguished woman has been here lately—a Miss Cobbe (a fellow-worker with Miss Carpenter)—who, having overworked herself, was forced by her physician to come here for three months and rest, under dire penalties. She went to Isa Blagden's, and returned to England and her work just now. She is very acute, and so perfectly without Continental prejudices, that she didn't pretend to much interest even in our Italian movement, having her heart in England and with the poor. But she was ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... voyez en moi—you see, lady, in me, le Chevalier Riccaut de la Marliniere, Seigneur de Pret-au-val, de la branche de Prens d'or. You remain astonished to hear me from so great, great a family, qui est veritablement du sang royal. Il faut le dire; je suis sans doute le cadet le plus aventureux que la maison n'a jamais eu. I serve from my eleven year. Une affaire d'honneur make me flee. Den I serve de holy Papa of Rome, den de Republic St. Marino, den de Poles, den de States General, ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... practised on its own gridiron each afternoon until it was time to scrimmage with the 'varsity. Clint was first choice right tackle, with Robbins close behind and hard after him. Being at training-table was lots of fun, although Clint regretted leaving Amy. The latter's dire forebodings regarding the food at the second's table proved unjustified. They had plenty to eat and of the sort that was best for them. Steaks and chops and roasts formed the meat diet, eggs appeared at breakfast and supper, there was all the milk they could drink, ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Dire was the conflict. Down at Wrotham there were floods of tears. In the end, Bella effected a compromise; the marriage was to be at a church, but in the greatest possible privacy. No carriages, no gala dresses, no invitations, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... fruits, brought forth by wintry suns. Ten thousand dangers lie in wait to thwart The process. Heat and cold, and wind and steam, Moisture and drought, mice, worms, and swarming flies Minute as dust and numberless, oft work Dire disappointment that admits no cure, And which no care can obviate. It were long, Too long to tell the expedients and the shifts Which he, that fights a season so severe, Devises, while he guards his tender trust, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... instant, the shrill sound of the whistle rung, piercing, through the dismal place in which we were imprisoned. It was answered. The same hoarse voices once more were heard: but in tones fifty fold more dire. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... had these long-ago people to remember, and that was to cover up their well every night, otherwise, as they knew from their fathers and grandfathers before them, the spirit of the well would grow angry with them and wreak some dire ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... death you are too sick to care whether you live or die. In some great convulsion of nature, a great typhoon, for instance, when the wind in its fury lashes the walls of the house till they writhe, and there are the shrieks of people in dire distress, and fire, and the crash of giant waves, and all that makes for horror, the shock of these brute irresponsible forces of nature is too tremendous for fear to obtrude. Thought is suspended—you are in an ecstasy of awful emotion, emotion made ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... alone could render Him an object of religion, or even of interest, to mankind." Sometimes in accents of wistful {90} wonder, sometimes in tones of revolt and defiant unbelief, the question is asked:—Why does God allow dire calamity, painful disease, earthquakes and shipwrecks, and accidents of the mine? Why does He permit war, or vivisection, or poverty, or vice—in fact any of "the heartache and the thousand natural ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... intensity of horror as this little word? At its sound there rises up a grim vision of "confused noise and garments rolled in blood." April 12, 1861, cannon fired by traitor hands, boomed out over Charleston harbor. The dire sound that shook the air that Spring morning did not die away in reverberating echoes from sea to shore, from island to headland. It rolled on through all the land, over mountain and valley, moaning in every home, at every fireside, "War! ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... brand of confessed injustice upon that rankling and vindictive resentment with which the profligate and passionate part of the American press has been threatening us in the event of concession, and which is to be manifested by some dire revenge, to be taken, as they pretend, after the nation is extricated from its present difficulties. Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to make this spirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall have ourselves chiefly to ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... their visits to the church. They had either strolled away as they came out or gone in to rest on the return. Stransom, besides, now faltered; he couldn't walk as of old. The omission made everything false; it was a dire mutilation of their lives. Our friend was frank and monotonous, making no mystery of his remonstrance and no secret of his predicament. Her response, whatever it was, always came to the same thing—an implied invitation to him to judge, if he spoke of predicaments, of how much comfort ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... was as gallant as if he had been a gentleman and bound in honor to rescue a lady in dire peril of life and honor, instead of another ruffian inflamed by her beauty and desirous to possess ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... papa! papa! Was I never to have done with this eternal quotation of "papa"? I was horrified to find myself gradually conceiving a dire hatred of my excellent brother-in-law. One thing was certain, at any rate: sleep was no longer possible; so I hastily dressed, and went into the garden. Among the beauty and the fragrance of the flowers, and in the delicious morning air, ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... parson in the kitchen to win back his breath. He was near fordone, poor man! but still entreatingly prayed, in sentences broken by consumptive spasms, for wisdom and faith and the fire of the Holy Ghost in this dire emergency. When I entered the room where Elizabeth lay, 'twas to the grateful discovery that she had rallied: her breath came without wheeze or gasp; the labored, spasmodic beating of her heart no longer ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... was Amabel's. But her husband had released her; no longer pleaded; and with the lifting of that dire oppression the realities of her life flooded her almost with relief. It was impossible, this gay, this facile, this unseemly love, but, as she rejected and put it from her, the old love was the stronger, cherished the more closely, in atonement and solicitude, the man shrunk from and repulsed. ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the present, my chance acquaintance," he said, "and remember that in me you have a friend. The day may come when you too will be in dire distress, beyond the skill of mere solitude and books to soothe. Farewell, and may all good things be ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Le Breton, as a matter of fact, rightly or wrongly, did take this curious standpoint about things in general; and did then and there turn back through the deep snow, all his soul burning within him, fired with dire remorse, and filled only with one idea—how to prevent this wicked article to which he had contributed so many facts and opinions from getting printed in to-morrow's paper. True, it was not he who had put in the usual newspaper platitudes about the might ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... artillery. The garrison consisted of 2,300 men, besides women and children. To tell the story of the second siege and final surrender of Fort William Henry would require pages. Suffice it to say that the dire tragedy of Oswego was re-enacted on a much more extended scale. For six days the garrison was valiantly defended by Lieutenant-Colonel Munro, a veteran of the 35th Regiment of the line. Day after day ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... needed to realize that there were difficulties in the way, and that high-explosive is awkward stuff to deal with—a gun of my own 5-inch battery in South Africa was, shortly after I had left the unit to take up other work, blown to pieces by a lyddite shell detonating in the bore, with dire results to the detachment. To secure detonation is more difficult in a small, than in a big shell; but other countries had managed to solve the problem in the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... that dire December morning, is our knowledge of the real agony of those appalling moments, the absolute magnificence of these human souls who were ordered to march to the grave as surely as was the Light Brigade at Balaclava. For though Balaclava ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... violence. As soon as Birney became the accepted leader in the national society, there was friction between his followers and those of Garrison. To denounce the Constitution and repudiate political action were, from Birney's standpoint, a surrender of the only hope of forestalling a dire calamity. He had always fought slavery by the use of legal and constitutional methods, and he continued so to fight. In this policy he had the support of a large majority of abolitionists in New England ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... not. Not only must I die, but in order to die I must traverse all the hideous tortures of the soul which that lost spirit had learnt in its dire wanderings. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... n'y a que les choses humaines exposees dans leur verite, c'est-a-dire avec leur grandeur, leur variete, leur inepuisable fecondite, qui aient le droit de retenir le lecteur et qui le retiennent en effet. Si l'ecrivain parait une fois, il ennuie ou fait sourire de pitie les lecteurs serieux.—THIERS to STE. BEUVE, Lundis, iii. 195. ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... dire?" asked Sipiagin, flinging the pamphlet on the table with a graceful gesture ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... people on the island, but that one family of ten individuals has managed to gain possession of eight farms, in addition to their own, and that the other nine families are forced to live on one farm. Obviously, 900 people would be attempting to live under conditions of dire poverty, and the island, with its population of 1,000, would now offer an excellent example, not of overpopulation, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... the child crossed by the dreamer and the mystic, bred of Calvinism and speculation on human fate and chance, and on the mystery of temperament and inheritance, and all that flows from these—reprobation, with its dire shadows, assured Election with ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... in stories, a dire distemper atoning Death of an ill-blest prince, Androgeos, angrily slaughter'd, Taxed of her youthful array, her maidenly bloom fresh-glowing, Feast to the monster bull, Cecropia, ransom-laden. Then, when a plague so deadly, the garrison undermining, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... criticism, when necessary, is a safeguard against the acceptance by the people as a whole of that intemperate antagonism towards the judiciary which must be combated by every right-thinking man, and which, if it became widespread among the people at large, would constitute a dire menace ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... among the miracles how the high beatitude consequent upon that wonderful event of Dorothy's love put Richard in a vaguely belligerent mood. It was an amiable ferocity at that, and showed in nothing more dire than just an eye of overt challenge to all the world. Also, he dilated and swelled in sheer masculine pride of himself, and no longer walked the streets, but stalked. Naturalists will not be surprised by these revelations, having observed kindred phenomena ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... venison, that thy soul may bless me! Who art thou? says the blind old man—astonished that any should ask what he has already given away. Recognising the beloved voice which replied, I am thy son, thy first-born Esau, and dreading some dire calamity, Isaac trembled exceedingly, crying, "Who? where is he that hath taken venison and brought it me; and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed." By the basest, cruelest fraud, Jacob has possessed himself of ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... years of hideousness, Constricted brows, and strain, and stress! And still, despite humanity's groan, The torturing, "tall-hat" holds its own! What proof more sure and melancholy Of the dire depths of mortal folly? Mad was the hatter who invented The demon "topper," and demented The race that, spite of pain and jeers, Has borne it—for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... Marquesan queen, there was a uuama tehito, or ancient hole, the origin of which was lost in the dimness of centuries. It was fifty feet long and said to be even deeper, though no living Marquesan had ever tasted its stores, or never would unless dire famine compelled. It was tapu to ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... peintre, les deux grandes machines de son oeuvre; and the writer of the catalogue of Madame de Pompadour's pictures when they were sold in 1766 testifies thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "J'ai entendu plusieurs fois dire par l'auteur qu'ils etaient du nombre de ceux dont il etait le plus satisfait." They were then sold for 9800 livres, and Lord Hertford paid 20,200 francs ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... persons at Cape May who came to believe that they stood in dire need of money. Yet they wished it for very different reasons: Philip Holt wanted money to save himself from disgrace; Madge desired it to help her uncle and aunt save their old home, "Forest House," to send Eleanor back to graduate at Miss Tolliver's in the fall, to start on her search for her father, ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... she said. "Go! go, and may God help me! You have seen me—me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and haunted by sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour move you to await my explanation or to help in my distress. Go!" she repeated. "I am lost indeed." And with a passionate gesture she turned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... m'oblige a lui donner ma lettre ouverte: cet usage etabli retient mon coeur tout pret a lui rendre justice, mais sa modestie est aussi grande que son merite, et je craindrois que la plus simple verite ne parut a ses yeux une grosse flaterie; je puis vous dire de lui, ce qu'il disoit un jour d'un autre—le metier de cet homme-la est d'etre aimable. J'ajouterai,—et de meriter l'estime de tous ceux qui ont ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... tribute than they expect to get, and generally use threats as a means of extortion. One of their chiefs, the Lion-Claw, was very troublesome, sending back the presents which had been made him, and threatening dire vengeance if his demands were not complied with. Further on, Monkey's-Tail, another chief, demanded more tribute; but Speke sent word that he should smell his powder if he came for it; and, exhibiting the marksmanship of his men, Monkey's-Tail thought ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight: Devise extremes beyond extremity, To make him curse this cursed crimeful night: Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright; And the dire thought of his committed evil Shape every bush ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... afternoon newspaper next day, he read on the front page how young Lackman, stepping off the train in his home city that morning, had been placed under arrest; his school had been raided, and half a dozen of the teachers were in jail, and a ton of Red literature had been confiscated, and a swarm of dire conspiracies against the safety of the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... not too often or too much, but generally on the wrong occasion. He was no scholar and did not encourage his son that way; but he had a great liking for stories. He was of a peaceable and inoffensive temper, but on great provocation would turn on a bully with surprising and dire consequences. Old Thomas, after Abraham was turned loose, continued a migrant, always towards a supposed better farm further west, always with a mortgage on him. Abraham, when he was a struggling professional man, helped him with money as well as he could. We ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... with such a strong conviction that Mr. Bessel was in overwhelming distress and need of help that sleep was no longer possible. He was persuaded that his friend had rushed out to some dire calamity. For a time he lay reasoning vainly against this belief, but at last he gave way to it. He arose, against all reason, lit his gas, and dressed, and set out through the deserted streets—deserted, save ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... dire peril and no one realized it more than did the young hunter who had been attacked by the two wild beasts of the forest. Like a flash he rolled over and doubled up to prevent the wildcats from reaching his head ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... enchants de vous avoir emp'ech'ee de vous abaisser jusqu''a la sollicitation. Votre m'emoire me blesse. Quoi! vous, vous, r'eduite 'a repr'esenter vos malheurs! Accordez moi, je vous conjure, la grace que je vous demande 'a genoux, et jouissez de la satisfaction de vous dire, J'ai un ami qui ne permettra jamais que je me jette aux pieds des grands. Ma Petite, j'insiste. Voyez, si vous aimez mieux me faire le plaisir le plus sensible, ou de devoir une grace qui, ayant 'et'e sollicit'ee, arrive toujours trop tard pour contanter l'amiti'e. Laissez moi go'uter ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... mild an excursion involve so dire a risk, what must be the desperation of this horseman who is coming at a thundering gallop along the county road from Pittsfield? His horse is in a foaming sweat, the strained nostrils are filled with blood and the congested eyes protrude as if they would ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... dire confusion. None of the men were seamen, but some of them gained the side of Brian, others scrambled in through the ports, and more than one of them fell short and went down. Standing in the sinking boat ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... noted that it is a dire affront to an Arab if his first cousin marry any save himself ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... little filial recalls of expression, movement, tone. It was all unmistakable, and as pretty as possible, if one would, and even as funny; but it put the pair so together, as undivided by the marriage of each, that the Princess il n'y avait pas a dire—might sit where she liked: she would still, always, in that house, be irremediably Maggie Verver. The Prince found himself on this occasion so beset with that perception that its natural complement for him would really have been to wonder if Mr. Verver had produced on people something ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the impetuous blood begotten of success tingling through all his veins, he had no thought that dire mishap could seize on him; that pain or malady or mortal weakness could pierce his armour, which youth and health had girt about him. From place to place he went, wherever there was need of some brave ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... suggestion, which might be so full of dire consequences, she was instantly galvanized into action. Starting ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... amuser; dans le sens metaphysique on en fait un des attributs de la folie: Ice je l'employe comme embleme de gaiete et d'enfance. Le Pritems est une Epitre ecrite de la campagne a un de mes amis; j'etois sous le charme de la creation, pour ainsi dire; les vers ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... people were really being sold by the government like sheep for this paltry price. The trusted Tilley, easily first in popular affection by reason of his probity and devotion to public duty, was discredited. His opponent in the city of St John, A. R. Wetmore, illustrated the dire effects of Confederation in an imaginary dialogue, between himself and his young son, after this fashion: 'Father, what country do we live in?'—and, of course, the reply came promptly—'My dear son, you have no country, for Mr Tilley has sold us all to the Canadians for eighty cents a head.' Time ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... feelings. I know very well how seriously they have been compelled to regard their trouble, and out of respect for their protracted suffering and efforts to get relief I should instead have sympathized and condoled with them in their dire misfortune. But we all know and realize that there are occasions when we get into awful and painful predicaments, and, when the whole situation is taken in, it becomes comical and ridiculous, so that for a time ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... be a sure sign of early death to some member of the household. In Notes and Queries a correspondent remarks that crowing hens are not uncommon, that their crow is very similar to the crow of a very young cock, and must be taken as a certain presagement of some dire calamity. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... their parents. In that respect they always remain as little children. I know many families of which the married branches continue to live in their father's house, forming a sort of small colony, and living in the most perfect harmony. They cannot bear the idea of being separated, and nothing but dire necessity ever forces them to leave their fatherland. To all the accounts which travellers give them of the pleasures to be met with in the European capitals, they turn a deaf ear. Their families are in Mexico—their ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... She feels that we are flattered by the preference her offspring show for our society; but between ourselves, Cleena, I think it's more raisin-bread than affection. You made a dire mistake in beginning to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... absolute respect, and unbounded devotion. Besides, if such divine happiness be accorded me, your indulgence would not have to stoop so low as you might fancy. Though reduced by an adverse destiny and the jealous hatred of one of the great ones of the earth, who must be nameless, to the dire necessity of hiding myself under this disguise, I am not what I seem. I do not need to blush for my birth—rather I may glory in it. If I dared to betray the secrecy imposed upon me, for reasons of state, I could prove to you that most illustrious ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... of the little Bunkers thought it so much fun—no, indeed! At the rate Vi and Mun Bun were screaming, the accident which held them prisoners in the attic of the old house seemed to threaten dire destruction. ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... his death, will forever illumine the pages of our history. For the fourth time the officer elected by the people and ordained by the Constitution to fill a vacancy so created is called to assume the executive chair. The wisdom of our fathers, foreseeing even the most dire possibilities, made sure that the Government should never be imperiled because of the uncertainty of human life. Men may die, but the fabrics of our free institutions remain unshaken. No higher or more assuring proof could exist of the strength and permanence of popular government ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... came, using as an excuse a dire need of notepaper, and stopped to dawdle, lighting one of his cigarettes, Petro felt an urgent desire to be cross. She had on some perfume which he hated, and a split skirt, and was altogether ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... fellows' dens, yet it was cheerful enough. Cotton had come back from the match hungry and a trifle bruised from a smart upset, only to find his own fire out, and preparations for tea invisible. Having uttered dire threats against his absent, erring fag, he moved into his friend's room, and the two clubbed together their resources, and the result was a square meal, towards which Cotton contributed something like 19/20, A.V.R. Todd's share being limited ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... opportunity of the unbiased editor has come and the rash claimant is admonished in fatherly, protecting tones to 'Remember that only in the Home'—he always spells home with a capital in this connection—'should a woman be in evidence.' He almost weeps when he pictures the dire consequences that would inevitably result should women enter the uncleanly pool of politics. Chivalry would become extinct—chivalry being the guiding principle, according to the unbiased editor, on ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... here to consider principles of the first magnitude and which may result in the shedding of innocent blood. One of the objects of this meeting is to prevent so dire a calamity. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... the sight of high heaven. But at this season of construction and dire crisis how shall these mutual suspicions find a place? Once more I issue this announcement; if you, my fellow countrymen, do indeed place the safety of China before all other considerations, it behooves you to be large- minded. Beware of lightly ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... and all were well, And then we'll speed us to our native land. Quezox: But, noble Francos, we now wend our way To meet the vermin which do suck our blood, And they with tongues which serpent-like can charm May fool thee with their tales of dire intent. Francos: (striking his breast): Fear not, they soon shall feel how vain it were To seek to trick one who, in halls of state, Hath met the wiles of shrewd, self-seeking men, But to ward off attack with virtue's ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the most gloomy days I had as yet seen. I found the Parliament had almost lost all their spirit, and that I should be obliged to bow my neck under the most shameful and dangerous yoke of slavery, or be reduced to the dire necessity of setting up for tribune of the people, which is the most uncertain and meanest of all posts when it is not vested with ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... indeed, especially for the unfortunate men who were compelled by dire necessity to toil unceasingly at the back-breaking labour of working the pumps; but I felt no apprehension as to our ultimate safety. Five inches of water per hour was a formidable gain for a leak to make in spite ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... to an end and the McGregor's Christmas holidays were no exception to this immutable law. A day arrived when Carl, Mary and Tim were obliged to return to school, and following swift on the heels of this dire occasion came a yet more lamentable one when Uncle Frederick Dillingham was forced to go back to his ship and sail for China. The latter calamity entirely overshadowed the former and was a very real blow not only to Mulberry Court, where the captain had become an object of ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... Je dois dire, pour commencer, que ma naissance ne porta pas bonheur la maison Eyssette. La vieille Annou, notre cuisinire, m'a souvent cont depuis comme quoi mon pre, en voyage ce moment, reut en mme temps la nouvelle de mon apparition dans le monde et celle de la disparition ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... bomb of love with stinging smart Exploded in Ignaty's heart. In anguish dire I weep again The arm that at Sevastopol I lost ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in Algonquin who could remain angry at Lawyer Ed and be hammered by him on the back. He was voted the most exasperating person in the world, by people of all ages, and many a time an indignant individual would announce publicly that dire vengeance was about to be launched upon his wicked head. But when all Algonquin waited for the blow to fall, presently Lawyer Ed and the injured party would appear in the most jovial companionship, and once more his execution was postponed. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... more ordinary people, and she in her old clothes, and after hunting a little, find them in the lobby of the chapel below stairs, and there I observed she endeavoured to avoid me, but I did speak to her and she to me, and did get her pour dire me ou she demeurs now, and did charge her para say nothing of me that I had vu elle, which she did promise, and so with my heart full of surprize and disorder I away, and meeting with Sir H. Cholmley walked into the Park with him and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Doating passion, pain of heart, terrible suggestions of despair, kept altering her countenance as she leaned against the mouldering door-post, imprisoned by the black mists that prevented her safely leaving the hovel. A sudden, dire, revolution in her religious impressions was wrought, or rather completed, in that dismal scene. David had more than once wrung her very soul by dark hints of self-destruction in the event of her ever forsaking him. He had thus been led into discussions on suicide, and had even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... walls were built by men who did a deed Of blood:—terrific conscience, day by day, Followed, where'er their shadow seemed to stay, And still in thought they saw their victim bleed, Before God's altar shrieking: pangs succeed, As dire upon their heart the deep sin lay, No tears of agony could wash away: Hence! to the land's remotest limit, speed! These walls are raised in vain, as vainly flows Contrition's tear: Earth, hide them, and thou, Sea, Which round ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... form and in the ideas expounded than in the spirit of the histrionism and mimicry? And must not the vigor, from what we have seen, have been intensified in Plautus? LeGrand alone seems to have caught the essence of this:[109] "Que dire de la mimique? D'apres les indications contenues dans le texte meme des comedies, d'apres les commentaires—notamment ceux de Donat, d'apres les monuments figures—en particulier les images des manuscrits, elle devait etre en general tres vive, souvent trop vive ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... erected when Henry II. was king. In the churchyard is the grave of Grace Darling, and many hundreds come to look on the last resting place of the gentle girl who was yet so heroic, when her compassionate heart nerved her girlish frame to the gallant effort on behalf of her fellow-creatures in dire peril, when she ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... Sammy's dire threat for a long time that he would seek the adventurous life of a buccaneer on the rolling main. But he had never set a definite date for his departure upon this venture. To-day was the day. Fate willed it thus. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... the stars, and vanish may they curst, Or fall from heaven, that in their dire aspect[47] Abridg'd the health and welfare ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... He, armed with the knife, cleared the way whithersoever he went, until, protected by the crowd of persons attending him, he reached the gate. Icilius and Numitorius take up the lifeless body and exhibit it to the people: they deplore the villany of Appius, the fatal beauty of the maiden, and the dire necessity of the father. The matrons who followed exclaim, "Was this the condition of rearing children? were these the rewards of chastity?" and other things which female grief on such occasions suggests, when their complaints are ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... citizenship had satisfied her. But always, within the barriers of her own individuality, that faith which is deeper, warmer, more masterly than reason, had kept her the reverent lover of duty, the passionate guardian of character, for whose sake she would deny not only ease and joy, but, even, if the dire need came, beauty itself. Art the Romans had had to borrow. Their character they had hewn for themselves, with a chisel unknown to the Greeks, out of the brute mass of their instincts. Its constancy, its dignity, its magnanimity, probity ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... so rapidly that he was already almost upon the crouching boy, who stared at him as if in dire dismay, as well he might. It was not too late, even then, for the boy to have escaped, could he have understood the real situation, and that it was the food in the packs the bear craved, rather than his life; but he did not seem to realize ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... and so dire, that I can scarcely credit it! Are we then truly in danger of becoming prisoners to barbarians? Is Eve Effingham, the beautiful, innocent, good, angelic daughter of my cousin, to be their victim!—perhaps ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper |
