"Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'm sorry for is Codfish," came from Randy. "That poor little rat looks about as miserable as any ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... I found that we were all huddled together in a miserable manner. We were deep in the water; being, as I found on mustering, thirty-one in number, or at least six too many. In the Surf- boat they were fourteen in number, being at least four too many. The first thing I did, was to get myself ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... know," said poor Phyl, "I never could understand you quite, but now that I am in trouble you seem a friend—I'm miserable—but there's no use having friends here. It only makes it the worse having ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... suffering great pain and often unable to move. But repining never passed her lips. Perhaps she did not repine. Perhaps she did not grieve to quit her harassed life, the children she so seldom saw, her constant pain, the husband "not dramatic enough in his perceptions to see how miserable others might be in a life that to him was all-sufficient."[1] For some months she lay still, asking sometimes to be lifted in bed that she might watch the nurse cleaning the grate, because she did it as they did in Cornwall. For some months ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... and in one or two instances they did protest, in discourses of considerable length, against those private, and, for what they could find, unargued judicial opinions, which must, as they fear, introduce by degrees the miserable servitude which exists where the law is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "the benefits which were expected from the gods were of a public character, affecting the whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks and herds, and success in war. So long as the community flourished, the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence, but was rather taken to prove that the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."[9] Jehu and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although Jehu was ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... flesh; when the rabbits fail, they are reduced to the greatest distress both for food and raiment. I saw a child that remained naked for several days after its birth, its parents having devoured every inch of their miserable dress that could be spared from their bodies: it was at last swaddled ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... Carroll. "I am really the most happy of men—that is, as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so damned miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets—I have L80 to last me through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next to yourself, the most wonderful woman ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... down, and now Christine—she thinks I don't know. I'm no fool; I see a lot of things. I'm no good. I know that I've made her miserable. But I made a merry little hell for you too, and you don't ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... next year, therefore, the Emperor attacked the town and conquered it without much difficulty. The victory was unfortunately stained by the inhuman excesses of the Imperial troops, and Charles's hold on Tunis was very short-lived. In 1541 came the miserable fiasco of the Spanish expedition to Algiers. Here, also, the Knights behaved with their usual bravery; but Charles's disregard of the advice of his Admiral, Andrea Doria, resulted in the failure ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... in which the water was reached by a flight of steep steps, and where dark, underground cells opened on to the deep silent pool. They were terribly damp, but here poor Foster-father had to drag out long, miserable days, cut off even from news of the others. Until one day, just when the sentry was eating his mid-day meal, he heard a violent barking, and by swinging himself up by the bars of the tiny shaft of the well he could just get a glimpse of Tumbu on the steps. Why had he come? Perhaps he had been ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... terrible cowards—and taking the best of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are apt to make some one trait in the characters, some one trick in the manners, some one incident in the lives of people we meet the text of an objection to the whole person. And a state of objection is a miserable state, and a dangerous one, because it stops our growth by robbing us of half our power to love, in which lies all our strength, and which, with the delight of being loved, is the one thing worth living for. When we know in ourselves that love is heaven, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... her failure would have been no triumph to him. Was not Keyork enlisted on her side, ready to help her at all times, by word or deed, in accordance with the terms of their agreement? But of all men Kafka, whom she had so wronged, was the one man who should have been ignorant of her defeat and miserable shame. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... tells me that he believes he never had so poor a low thought in him to trouble himself about it. He says the hand of God is much to be seen; that all his children are in good condition enough as to estate, and that their relations that betrayed their family are all now either hanged or very miserable. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... be used by them alone—to further their dark causes. They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to faithful subordinates. They cannot say, "Here is the end; this is the work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!" They must "stoop to conquer." Every miserable detail becomes of moment, until by-and-by the art of intrigue and conspiracy begins to lose proportion in their minds. The detail has ever been so important, conspiracy so much second nature, that they must needs be intriguing and conspiring when the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... years old, I believe myself no longer susceptible of such follies. But alas! that is the very thing which causes me to be miserable." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... figures; and their places were progressively supplied with the work of local artists. These last it was one of my first duties to review and criticise. Some of them were villainous, yet all were saleable. I said so; and the next moment saw myself, the figure of a miserable renegade, bearing arms in the wrong camp. I was to look at pictures thenceforward, not with the eye of the artist, but the dealer; and I saw the stream widen that divided me from ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... has seen the position here and who has been every where to look at the Insurgent side. He tells me that at the batteries outside the city he saw some very good men, but that, taken as a whole, the National Guards within the city are the most miserable lot he ever saw under arms. All the barricades are admirably made as to workmanship, but there is not one of them that could not be taken by troops approaching from streets at angles with the points ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... security which it vainly promises. Even if the inspection and regulation of vice were physically perfectly successful, it might still lead to national degeneration, but instead of being a success it has proved, especially in France, a miserable failure. We cannot place all the blame upon local conditions, for the presence of an army in a foreign land in wartime ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... "I'm miserable, miserable," she wrote. "There doesn't seem to be anything to live for. I suppose it's selfish and horrid to grumble because Mother has married again, but why did she choose the very moment when she was to take me into life? Oh, Alice, what am I to do? I feel like a rabbit ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... a victim to state policy, and his position with his friends did not suffer at all in consequence of his disclosures. Personally, he exulted in his conduct to the end of his life, and took pleasure in watching and recording Deane's disreputable career and miserable end. "As he rose like a rocket, so he fell like the stick," a metaphor which has passed into a proverb, was imagined by Paine to meet Deane's case. [1] The immediate consequence of Paine's resignation was to oblige ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... in Mullah Jami (Garden viii.). When a sheep leapt out of the stream, her tail happened to be raised, and a woolcarder said laughing:—"I have seen thy parts genital." She turned her head and replied, "O miserable, for many a year I have seen thee mother-naked yet never laughed I." This alludes to the practice of such artisans who on account of the heat in their workshops and the fibre adhering to their clothes work in naturalibus. See p. 178, the Beharistan ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and monarchies has ever been that the masses of the people do not know enough to take care of the high concerns of government. If they do not, the human race is in a miserable condition. If, indeed, the great masses of mankind, who are permitted to transact their own business, are incompetent to participate in government, then farewell to the republican system of government; it can not stand a day; it is a wrong foundation. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and a miserable log-hut near by. The family had fled, frightened by the cannonade. We found them cowering in the woods,—a man, his wife and daughter. The land all around them was exceedingly rich, but they were very poor. All they had to eat was hog and hominy. They ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... she was told, might lose his post in the Bavarian service if she married this Socialist, her brother would have absolutely no career open to him, her sisters could not marry in their own rank of life; in fact, the whole family were alleged to be entirely unhappy and miserable through her stubbornness. The following letter—obviously dictated—was ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... miserable woman who had ruined him, maddened by grief, and determined to end his life, Malgat went home. There he found ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... harshly: "God knows! That swindler, Munn, keeps her a prisoner. Doctors long ago urged her to submit to an operation; Munn refused, and he and his deluded women have been treating her by prayer for years—the miserable mountebank!" ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... came to me. He was a miserable specimen in every way—pale, lethargic, stupid almost beyond belief. He had no mother; and the father, though a man of leisure, evidently found it difficult to make the lad much of a companion. I felt certain from the first that the boy was an exceptionally bad victim of self-abuse; ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... because in very truth parting was her intent; and in haunting for a while the dark and crooked ways which her feet had blessed, he had but the poor satisfaction of knowing that he was depriving of her ministrations lives inconceivably more miserable than his own. That consciousness when it came touched him in a point of honor, and forced him to relinquish the quest; but there remained with him thenceforth a maddening sense that if, accepting his withdrawal, she had resumed her avocations, he now knew daily where ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... prejudices so far, as to find wickedness in the piercing cries, in the dreadful howlings, which torment wrested from this unhappy victim to superstitious vengeance. Are not all these avengers of the gods miserable men, blinded by their piety, who, under the impression of duty, wantonly immolate at the shrine of superstition, those wretched victims whom the priests deliver over to them? Are they not savage tyrants, who have the rank injustice to violate thought; who have the folly to believe ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... miserable. I don't believe any place is that, where there's a family, and enough food to eat and wood to burn—if the family is happy in itself. Besides, with two hours' work, and without spending one cent, you could make it much less shabby than ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... in a voice eloquent of the struggle through which he had passed, "I would not perjure myself to prolong my own miserable existence another day, but God will forgive a sin committed to save another's life. Upon your head be it, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to some distance as I turned toward the miserable figure, and ordered him to show me some method of escaping from the crate. He held a freshly plucked crow in his hand, and in reply to my question climbed slowly on a platform of sand which ran in front of the holes, and commenced lighting ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... concerning her and her fortunes. Yet there unmistakably was the Van Dorn set to her pretty head and a Van Dorn gesture in her gay hands that had come down from at least four generations in family tradition. And he had no right even to be offended when she would merge that Van Dorn blood with the miserable Adams heredity. His impotence in the situation baffled him, and angered him. The law was final to his mind; but it did not satisfy his wrathful questioning heart. For in his heart, he realized that denial was not ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... respect the value of things as the event of fortune, and they esteem only that to be providently done which the happy success commends. By which means it cometh to pass that the first loss which miserable men have is their estimation and the good opinion which was had of them. What rumours go now among the people, what dissonant and diverse opinions! I cannot abide to think of them; only this will I say, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... that you put before me. Had I been Marianne's lover, I should be bound to tell you that Marianne had never been my mistress. These falsehoods are necessary. No; I have not been Marianne's lover, but I advise you, if you do not wish to be perfectly miserable, not to seek to become so. You are one of those men who throw their hearts open as wide as a gateway. She is a calculating creature, who pursues, madly enough I admit, without consistency or constancy in her ideas, any plan that she may have in view. She might be flattered to have you as ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... forlorn-looking house, that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, looked piteously at ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... hands and let them drop to his sides. Then he muttered something—a long sentence—in dialect. His voice sounded like a miserable old man's. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... please me to have you spend the months of July and August as my guest at Elmhurst. I am in miserable health, and wish to become better acquainted with you before I die. A check for necessary expenses is enclosed and I shall expect you to arrive promptly on ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... destroy the very first principles of morality. Yet I meet my adversary in the flesh, and find that he treats me not only with courtesy, but with no inconsiderable amount of sympathy. He admits—by his actions and his argument—that I—the miserable sophist and seducer—have not only some good impulses, but have really something to say which deserves a careful and respectful answer. An infidel, a century or two ago, was supposed to have forfeited ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... And how much less a piece of himself is that man? So little as that when it falls out (as it falls out in some cases) that more misery and more oppression would be an ease to a man, he cannot give himself that miserable addition of more misery. A man that is pressed to death, and might be eased by more weights, cannot lay those more weights upon himself: he can sin alone, and suffer alone, but not repent, not be absolved, without another. Another tells me, I may rise; and I do ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... buried beneath the ruins, were heard imploring by their cries the help of the passers-by, and nearly two thousand were dug out. Never was pity more tenderly evinced; never was it more ingeniously active than in the efforts employed to save the miserable victims whose groans reached the ear. Implements for digging and clearing away the ruins were entirely wanting; and the people were obliged to use their bare hands, to disinter the living. The wounded, as well as the invalids who had escaped from the hospitals, were laid on the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Srutis.[1219] The robber takes away the ornaments of corpses from cemeteries, and wearing apparel from men afflicted by spirits (and, therefore, deprived of senses). That man is a fool who would make any covenant with those miserable wretches or exact any oath from them (for relying ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the blood run up into his face, under the sting of the other's puzzled protest, as it would never have done under open contempt or threat. A miserable, dull hopelessness possessed him. "It's part of the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... glimpse when she was sleigh-riding. Now all at once, when they had stopped to look at some wonderful doll-houses, she saw her face to face. Ellen had been gazing with rapture at a great doll-house completely furnished, and Andrew had made one of his miserable side inquiries as to its price, and Fanny had said, quite loud, "Lord, Andrew, you might just as well ask the price of the store! You know such a thing as that is out of the question for any child unless ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... at Oxford its decline must have been rapid. When a certain young John James was an undergraduate of Queen's, 1778 to 1781, he and his correspondents spoke severely of the "miserable condition of Fellows who (under the liberal pretence of educating youth) spend half their lives in smoking tobacco and reading the newspapers." About 1800 the older or more old-fashioned of the Fellows at New College, "not liking the then newly introduced ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... been carefully introduced into the present old new tragedy. Ugone Spinola is the presiding genius of Doria's woes: and dogs him about for the pleasure of making him miserable. He is a finished epicure in revenge; picking little tit-bits of it with the most savage gout all through; but particularly towards the end of the play. This taste was, it seems, first acquired in consequence of a feud ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... accumulated round it, we return to the text in its simplicity, and grasp its plain positive truth, "The field is the world." It was all empty; nothing good grew there, until the seed was brought from heaven and sown. The nation, the family, the soul that has not Christ, is poor, and wretched, and miserable, and ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... a sentiment founded on the good dinners, good stories, opera stalls, and days' hooting you have gotten or hope to get out of a man, the snug things in his gift, and his powers of procuring enjoyment of one kind or another to miserable body or intellect—why, such a friendship as that is to be appraised easily enough, if you find it worth your while; but you will have to pay your pound of flesh for it one way or another—you may take your oath of that. If you follow my advice, you ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... in the cities or towns the traveller might journey for miles without meeting man, woman, child, or even beast. Edmund Spenser declared that the story of many among the inhabitants, and the picture one could see of their miserable state, was such that "any stony heart would rue the same." Mr. Froude affirms that in Munster alone there had been so much devastation that "the lowing of a cow or the sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be heard from Valentia to the Rock ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Folkestone. I spent sevenpence on dropping pennies into silly automatic machines and peepshows of rowdy girls having a jolly time. I spent a penny on the lift and fourpence on refreshments. That cleaned me out. The rest of the time I was so miserable that I was glad to get back to the office. Now ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... the war. Many farms were mortgaged, and now and then one was sold to satisfy creditors. The farmers accordingly clamoured for paper money, but the merchants in towns like Boston or Providence, understanding more about commerce, were opposed to any such miserable makeshifts. In Rhode Island the farmers prevailed. Paper money was issued, and harsh laws were passed against all who should refuse to take it at its face value. The merchants refused, and in the towns nearly all business was stopped during ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... in fact, every day of my life solicited by all parties to throw the weight of my influence in one scale or another; but I am paralysed. I often wish I had no position in the country. The sense of its responsibility depresses me; makes me miserable. I speak to you without reserve; with a frankness which our short acquaintance scarcely authorises; but Henry Sydney has so often talked to me of you, and I have so long wished to know you, that I open my ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... a quality endowed with a blessing; On God it is most just to meditate aright; To God it is proper to supplicate with seriousness, Since no obstacle can there be to obtain a reward from him. Three times have I been born, I know by meditation; It were miserable for a person not to come and obtain All the sciences of the world, collected together in my breast, For I know what has been, what in future will occur. I will supplicate my Lord that I get refuge ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... have constantly instructed me that indulgence in this infatuating cant is more deeply associated with depravity and continuance in vice than is generally supposed. I recollect hardly one instance of a return to honest pursuits, and habits of industry, where this miserable perversion of our noblest and peculiar faculty was not ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... a variation from the normal type, except in my habit of thinking deeply about these things rather than being moved by purely instinctive reactions. I could be happy ever so simply, I think. Mismated, I should be tigerishly miserable. I know myself, within certain limits—but men I do not know at all, except in theory. I have never had a chance to know men. You and Tommy Ashe have been the only two possibilities. I've liked you both. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a more than half-secularised Church get on well together. 'When they do agree, their agreement is wonderful.' And it is a miserable thing to reflect that about the average Christianity of this generation there is so very little that does deserve the antagonism of the world. Why should the world care to hate or trouble itself about a professing Church, large parts of which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... creature, who evidently would have much preferred making them drunk with his vile whisky to preparing them any pretence for a dinner. But they firmly declined his liquor, so muttering unintelligibly to himself he shambled off to obey their behests. After some delay they succeeded in getting a miserable meal of some kind; and then, the horses being sufficiently rested, they set off once more at a good pace, not halting again until, just before sundown, they arrived at the depot, where the first ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... its debauch, saloons and gambling dens silent, the streets almost deserted. To Keith, whose former acquaintance with the place had been entirely after nightfall, the view of it now was almost a shock—the miserable shacks, the gaudy saloon fronts, the littered streets, the dingy, unpainted hotel, the dirty flap of canvas, the unoccupied road, the dull prairie sweeping away to the horizon, all composed a hideous picture beneath the sun glare. He could scarcely ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... partisan to the cause. The party for negotiation conquered, and was in the majority in the Storthing, though not in great numbers. The issue could scarcely be attributed to the Swedish proposal alone, but also in no slight degree to the miserable, impoverished condition to which the country had been brought by the old Radical government. Mr BLEHR resigned in the autumn 1903, after the elections. Professor HAGERUP, the leader of the Conservatives, then became Prime Minister at ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... only exception is in the case of the three Generals-in-Chief. Thus Fourier had imposed upon himself the reserve which certain vanities have blamed so severely. I shall add that nowhere throughout the precious proof sheets of M. Champollion do we perceive traces of the miserable feelings of jealousy which have been attributed to Napoleon. It is true that upon pointing out with his finger the word illustrious applied to Kleber, the Emperor said to our colleague: "SOME ONE has directed my attention to THIS EPITHET;" but, after a short pause, he added, "it is desirable that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... to receive a commission as a line officer of the navy. It is true that some three or four Negroes have attempted to complete the course of instruction at this academy, but, their treatment, as a result of race prejudice, made their efforts futile, as well as their stay there more miserable than a decade of confinement in a Hun penitentiary. Intimidation, humiliation, and actual physical violence, notwithstanding their determination, finally resulted in the conclusion to abandon the coveted goal of becoming officers in the great ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... son? Remember, we do not toil for these possessions to lock them up—to content ourselves, as the miserable miser, with the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to ourselves only—useless to all others as to ourselves! Learning, like love, like money, derives its ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was right!" she exclaimed, with that other kind of feeling to which I found it harder to put a name. "I came home miserable from the match ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... She understood afterwards that he had not found it so merry as he had fancied, to come with a wife to the miserable little house in the fishing village. It did not seem so fine now to bring home a better man's child. He was anxious about what she would do when she ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... them and cultivating them in every suitable way; so he perpetually sought to enrich each one's soul, as a fruitful olive, with increasing virtue. But he saw the trees overthrown by the assault of the evil spirit, and exposed on the earth, and enduring that miserable kind of death; yet he uttered no reviling word, but rather blest God, thus giving a deadly blow ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... about to be paid, but considerate; there is a bouquet in petticoats for the Entresol—even, for me, a condescending word. "When you see Mr. SHONES in London, you tell him next year I make se Gulf-Links." I don't know who the dickens JONES may be, but I snigger. It all springs from that miserable fiction of being an Habitue. "Sans adieux!" ejaculates "Mr.," who is great at languages; so am I, but, somehow, find myself saying "Good-bye" quite naturally. A propos of languages, "Mr." is very patient with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... the body.) Poor miserable dust! This body now is honest as the best, The very best of earth, lie where it may. This mantle must conceal the thing from sight, For soon Rosalia, as I bade her, shall Be here. Oh, Heaven! vouchsafe to me the power To do this last stern act of justice. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Tim was walking across the water meadows, he saw a youth of serious and agricultural appearance throwing a poor, defenceless little terrier into the mill stream. Every time the miserable little animal crawled up on to the river bank the youth hurled it into the deep water again. Now, that was the kind of thing that Victor was very down on. In every chapter Victor punished people for cruelty to animals. Victor's blood always boiled at ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... look as miserable as possible; so that every one who sees you, may cry, There goes ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... on his shoemaker's bench, trimming a half-sole. He was drabbled with dew, grass-stained, unkempt, and miserable; and on his face was still the unexplained wretchedness, the problematic sorrow, the esoteric woe, that had been written there by nothing less, it seemed, than the ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... yet that volume has taught me, in the story of parallel fortunes with ours, that it may be so. It has given me a long lesson in the hollow economy of that world which men seek, and name society. It has told me that we, or I, at least, may be made and kept miserable for ever." ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating over her ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... field till he had tired me out. I think he drank a good deal, and I am quite sure that the oftener he drank the worse it was for me. One day he had worked me hard in every way he could, and when I lay down I was tired, and miserable, and angry; it all seemed so hard. The next morning he came for me early, and ran me round again for a long time. I had scarcely had an hour's rest, when he came again for me with a saddle and bridle and a new kind of bit. I could never quite tell how it came about; he had only just ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... rose again, in the confession, "There is no health in us," and in the supplication, "Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders." ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... upon him night and day like that insect which, having once entered the brain of an elk, gnaws ceaselessly at it until the miserable victim's last breath is drawn. While he retained for Pepeeta a devotion which tormented him with its intensity, his guilt made him tremble in her presence. He shuddered when he approached her, like a worshiper who enters a shrine with a ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... house during the late war, have not improved it; the bed-curtains especially, which for the last forty years have supplied each traveller with a precious little bit, hastily torn off, are of course in tatters. The bedstead is of common deal, coarsely put together; a miserable portrait of Le Kain, in crayons, hangs inside of the bed, and two others, equally bad, on each side, Frederic and Voltaire himself. Round the room are bad prints of Washington, Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, and several other celebrated personages; the ante-chamber is decorated with naked figures, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... us, as the biggest wig in the most benighted Chancery would have to grant;—only the Kaiser will not, never would; the Kaiser plants his armed self on Schlesien, and will hear no pleading. Jagerndorf too, which we purchased with our own money—-No more of that; it is too miserable! Very impossible too, while we have Berg and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Verona. I don't know how I kept my senses through it all. To hear him talk, the world was a paradise outside Venice, but I have found to my cost that there is no place like home. I curse the hour when I first saw the miserable wretch. He's a beggarly knave; always whining. He wanted to enjoy his rights as my husband when we got to Padua, but I am thankful to say I gave him nothing. Here is the writing he gave me; take it, and do what you like with it. But if you have any heart, send ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... K. Henrie grounded vp a guiltie conscience.] The king was not hastie to purchase the deliuerance of the earle March, bicause his title to the crowne was well inough knowen, and therefore suffered him to remaine in miserable prison, wishing both the said earle, and all other of his linage out of this life, with God and his saincts in heauen, so they had beene out of the waie, for then all had bene well inough as he thought. But to let these things passe, [Sidenote: The kings daughter ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... that, "for the little the he had to live, he might drink sack altogether." He died and was buried in the ice far from the vessel, but when afterwards two more were dead of scurvy, and the others, in a miserable state, were working with faint hope about their shattered vessel, the gunner was found to have returned home to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a port-hole. They "digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomeness," ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... which happened to be the fete of 'Arafat.[FN92] And as he chanced to glance at Ja'afar the Barmaki, he said to him, "O Wazir, I desire to disguise myself and go down from my palace into the streets and wander about the highways of Baghdad that I may give alms to the mesquin and miserable and solace myself with a sight of the folk: so do thou hie with me nor let any know of our faring forth." "With love and good will," quoth Ja'afar. So his lord arose and passed from the audience-room into the inner palace where the two donned disguise and made small ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... that was true. No ward in all the hospital would take him in to lie side by side with the most miserable white wreck there. Like the bat in Aesop's fable, he belonged to neither race; and the pride of one, the helplessness of the other, kept him hovering alone in the twilight a great sin has brought to overshadow ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... made him very unhappy. Odd! that a boy who had never had a home should be homesick! Yet that was the real name of the miserable, sinking sensation at his heart; and as he crossed the hall to the bathroom, his face ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... Vicksburg, Million's Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner; I appeal to the testimony of every Union officer under whom black soldiers have fought, as the most fitting reply to such questions. Shame on the miserable sneer, that we are spending the money and shedding the blood of white men to fight the battles of the negro! Blush for your own unmanly and ungenerous prejudices, and ask yourself whether future history will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... miserable three-quarters of an hour. The kitchen seemed to wear a strange desolate look, though seen in its wonted bright light of fire and candles, and in itself nice and cheerful as usual. Fleda looked at it also through that vague fear which casts its own lurid colour upon everything. The very flickering ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... it: if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. But men do not acknowledge this law, or strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowledge, and food, and pleasure for nothing; and in this effort they either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or they obtain them by making other men work for their benefit; and then they are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than robbers. I am not one who in the least doubts or disputes the progress of this century in many things useful to mankind; but it seems to ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... betrayed their secret. Suppose that she was even now telling his wife what had happened in the wood. Well, he must go down to them and flatly deny whatever Norah said. But he tingled and grew hot with a most miserable shame; his heart quailed at the mere notion of the sickening, disgraceful character of such a scene—he, the highly respected Mr. Dale, the good upright religious man, being accused by a little servant girl and having to rebut her accusations in the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... he owed, in the first instance, that faith and those hopes which were now more precious to him than life itself; for that it was by reading her poem of 'The Sceptic' he had been first awakened from the miserable delusion of infidelity and induced to 'search the Scriptures.'" This was not the only time she received a comforting assurance of this kind with ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... the Sabaean dialects of southern Arabia still survive in modern forms; Arabic, which has now overflowed the rest of the Semitic world, was the language of central Arabia alone. In northern Arabia, as well as in Mesopotamia and Syria, Aramaic dialects were used, the miserable relics of which are preserved to-day among a few villagers of the Lebanon and Lake Urumiyeh. These Aramaic dialects, it is now believed, arose from a mixture of Arabic with "the language ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... perfect pest, and as soon as possible sent him to a public school, where he fought like a Mameluke Bey, learned his lessons with the zeal of a philosopher, and, at the end of ten years ran away to sea, where he became as sick as a dog and as miserable ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... us apart, you are very foolish, for if we were never to speak to each other again we would be accused of having had a 'lover's quarrel,' so don't keep me at a distance any longer on that account. You are making us both miserable for nothing; for I don't believe you are enjoying yourself a bit under the new rule that you have set up. Confess now, are you? honor bright, Dexie?" and he looked ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... family has a plot of its own. Sometimes a few families combine and own a place together; they generally select a spot in a grove of trees, and make it as attractive as possible. The Chinese are more careful of their resting places after death than before it; a wealthy man will live in a miserable hovel, but he looks forward to a commodious tomb beneath pretty shade trees. The tender regard for the dead is an admirable trait in the Chinese character, and springs, no doubt, from that filial piety which is so deeply engraved ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... is no hope. Oh, could I but see him happy, I should ask no more; but, oh, to see him miserable, and feel I have no power to soothe—when—" She paused abruptly, again the burning blood dyed her cheeks, even her temples with crimson. Mary's eyes were fixed upon her in sympathy, in love; Ellen fancied in surprise, yet suspicion. With ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... overwhelmed by images of death, crave at last for the one thing stranger than all these—the experience of it? It is easy to believe so, and that, ill, wretched, and abandoned by Degen at the miserable Cigogne Hotel, he should seek relief in the gradual dissolution which attends upon loss of blood. And then, when he had recovered, when he was almost happy once again, the old thoughts, perhaps, came crowding back upon him—thoughts of the futility of life, and the supremacy of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... trumpets announced the conclusion of the ceremony. *1 But it was not the note of triumph, but of humiliation; for it proclaimed that the armed foot of the stranger was in the halls of the Peruvian Incas; that the ceremony of coronation was a miserable pageant; that their prince himself was but a puppet in the hands of his Conqueror; and that the glory of the Children of the Sun had departed for ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... of the other meeting, we came out long before the speeches were ended. Well, of course, I did not sleep any all night. The next day I felt quite miserable. Mrs. W. went with Mr. S. and myself for a quiet ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... torture me. I am out of patience with them. What right has any pedant, because he thinks proper to vex and entangle his own brain with doubts, to force his gloomy dogmas upon me? Let those who love sack-cloth wear it. Must I be made miserable, because an over-curious booby bewilders himself in inquiry, and galls his conscience, till, like the wrung withers of a battered post-horse, it shrinks and shivers at the touch of a fly's foot? What, shall I not enjoy the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... table, covered with a sumptuous cloth, embroidered and embossed with gold,—at least what was gold; so are all the tables. Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief. The next is her dressing-room, hung with patch-work on black velvet; then her state bedchamber. The bed has been rich beyond description, and now hangs in costly golden tatters. The hangings, part of which they ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... lawless pursuits at will. When caught, there was little delay in bringing them to trial and securing a conviction; and trivial technicality in forms played no part in reaching results. At times there were multiple executions, and in the community there was no morbid sentimentality shown for the miserable wretches. Not the least of their torture was sitting in the meeting-house on the Sunday before execution and listening to their own funeral sermons, when the minister told them what they might expect in the next world if they got their just dues. On June 30, 1704, six poor victims were ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green
... toward the light;— Me miserable! Here's one that's white; And one that's turning; Adieu to song and "salad days;" My Muse, let's go at once to Jay's, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... unless he held land worth forty shillings a year. In Virginia likewise it was the landholder who enjoyed distinction and consideration, who was sent to the House of Burgesses and was bowed and scraped to as his coach bumped along over the miserable roads. The movement to cities did not begin until after the Industrial Revolution, and people still held the healthy notion that the country was the proper place in which to live ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... War, after she had borne the brunt of the first against Turkey. Then, besides, the military temptation offered the Bulgarian staff was irresistible. Serbia had been through two wars before the heavy drain of this one. A country of swineherds and miserable villages, dependent for munitions upon England and the Allies—she was caught in a wedge, with Bulgaria on the one side and the Austro-Hungarian advance on the other. At the most the Central Powers had probably no more than 300,000 troops—about the same number that the Bulgars had. Against such ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... not being no longer apply, and the reason why some people adopt the false idea of annihilation is because they have commenced by adopting the false alternative of either annihilation or an eternal prolongation of this life. A man makes[521] himself miserable because he thinks he has lost something or that there is something which he cannot get. But if he does not think he has lost something or is deprived of something he might have, then he does not feel miserable. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... youthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged.' Ante, ii. 10. The hermit in Rasselas (ch. 21) says:—'The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.' In Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 203, we read that 'Johnson thought worse of the vices of retirement than of those of society.' Southey (Life of Wesley, i. 39) writes:—'Some time before John Wesley's return to the University, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... all loved her, and it gave him a miserable feeling. He felt that they were unworthy of her—that they would not worship her always and become ministers for her sake, as he was going to do. He even wondered if it wouldn't be better, after all, to become a prize fighter and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow |
