"Unlucky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... darling!" began Mrs Staunton. But her warning came too late; the unlucky words had been spoken; and Ralli, smarting under a sense of humiliation from the scorn and loathing of him so freely displayed by this pretty child—scarcely more than a baby yet—sprang to his feet, and, seizing May roughly by the arm, dragged her with brutal ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russel-street, Covent Garden, told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other he was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... and, after some 400 yards of good path, we entered a neat little village, and found our crew snoring snugly asleep. We "exhorted them," refreshed the fire, and generously recruited exhausted nature with quinine, julienne and tea, potatoes and potted meats, pipes and cigars. So sped my annual unlucky day, and thus was spent my first jungle-night almost ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... his own country, and found to his grief that he had been imposed upon; but it was too late to think of marriage, so he dropped all farther pretensions to his mistress; nor would she after this unlucky adventure be induced ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... love-juice, and he instantly awoke; and the first thing he saw being Helena, he, as Lysander had done before, began to address love-speeches to her: and just at that moment Lysander, followed by Hermia (for through Puck's unlucky mistake it was now become Hermia's turn to run after her lover), made his appearance; and then Lysander and Demetrius, both speaking together, made love to Helena, they being each one under the influence ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... take his place. Paulus was somewhat diffident, but finally consented, and began his poem with the words, "You bid me, Priscus...," on which Javolenus, who was sitting near, called out, "You mistake! I do not bid you!" The audience greeted this sally with a laugh, and so put an end to the unlucky Paulus's recitation. Pliny contemptuously remarks that it is doubtful whether Javolenus was quite sane, but admits that there are people imprudent enough to trust their business to him. [12] We may think a single jest is somewhat scanty ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... with the earliest gleam of dawn. Isoult summoned Jennifer, Barbara, and Ursula the cook, and asked whether they would cast in their lot with hers or remain in Cornwall. Jennifer answered that she feared the journey more than the commons, and the fourth of July was a very unlucky day on which to commence any undertaking: she would stay where she was. Ursula and Barbara, both of whom had been with their mistress ever since her marriage, replied that they would ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the crash of my unlucky fall seemed to release all the prisoned noises of the house. A faint scream within the room was but a prelude, lost the next moment in the roar of dismay, the clatter of weapons, and volley of oaths and cries and curses which, rolling up from ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the park, yet parading the streets, he would take his hat off to her, with an air of profound respect, and ask permission to take her portrait. Generally he met a prompt rebuff; but if the fair was so unlucky as to hesitate a single moment, he told her a melting tale; he had once driven his four-in-hand; but by indorsing his friends' bills, was reduced to painting likeness, admirable likenesses in oil, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of these unlucky boys got a dark lanthorn, which was a thing, at that time, the country-people did not understand; and with this he walked about the orchard, and two or three closes near the house, shewing the light in different directions. His comrades would then call all the old women about ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... It is thought unlucky to postpone a wedding. Better withdraw the invitations in case of severe illness or death, and have a quiet home ceremony with ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "Well, that's real unlucky now. He went to Pine Creek down the line only yesterday, and won't be back till to-morrow. Are you ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... glee that our landlord was an Englishman. I rallied the Doctor upon this, and he grew quiet[219]. Both Sir John Hawkins's and Dr. Burney's History of Musick had then been advertised. I asked if this was not unlucky: would not they hurt one another? JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. They will do good to one another. Some will buy the one, some the other, and compare them; and so a talk is made about a thing, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... placed over the glass in the skylights. Life lines had been stretched along the decks, and the swinging ports, through which the water that came over the rail escaped, were crossed with whale line by Peaks, to prevent any unlucky boy from being washed through, if he happened to be thrown off his feet by a rush of water to ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... serpents, the clustering of bees, had their mystic and boding interpretations. Even hasty words, an accident, a fall on the earth, a sneeze (for which we still invoke the ancient blessing), every singular or unwonted event, might become portentous, and were often rendered lucky or unlucky according to the dexterity or disposition of the person to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... laughter, out there in the bog, was a new element of terror to Patsy. He had better be getting away from this queer unlucky place before the riders were out of hearing. The little old grandfather, with his blazing eyes of wrath and the stick concealed somewhere behind his coat-tails, his most familiar aspect to Patsy, ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... according to tradition, no one was ever born there who was not from birth insane, or who did not become so before death. "In the last generation, three persons had the misfortune for the first time to see the light of day on this unlucky spot, and all three were mad. Of one of them, who is remembered by the name of Wild Murdoch, many strange stories are told. It is said that his friends used to tie a rope round his body, make it fast to the stern of the boat, and then pull out to sea, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... scarcely paid any attention to the discussion of affairs at the council-table for the rest of the sitting. He rose hastily at last, despairing to find any outlet of escape from the difficulties which surrounded him in this unlucky affair. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I do not doubt I could find something nice about Lyons or Selfridge if I searched for it. But I shall not. The nearest postman or cab-man will provide me with just the same brain of steel and heart of gold as these unlucky lucky men. But I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath, nor led ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... Mary Reynolds is not unlucky thirty-three. The sooner you go to see Miss Wilder the sooner you'll know her fate. Now I'm going on a tour of exploration and noisy admiration. I'm sure I haven't ohs and ahs enough to fully express my feeling of elevated pleasure at so much magnificence. And to thing that I, ordinary, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... said Mike despondently, "we should perhaps be swept in here again, or be upset and drowned. I say, Cinder, did you ever see such an unlucky pair as ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... breed, which happened to be with the party, seized the hog by the ear. At the same time a soldier ran up to despatch the animal with a large stick, and not observing the dog in the dusk, he accidentally struck him an unlucky blow on the head, and killed him. Poor Billy's fate was universally regretted in the camp, where he was a general favourite. The hog weighed 80 lbs., had large tusks, and his hide was half-an-inch thick. ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... we were aboard our own ship again," said Kiddle to me one day, "for I don't know how it is, but the crew of this ship declare that she is doomed to be unlucky. I don't know how many men they have not lost. They have scarcely taken a prize, and they are always getting into misfortune. It's not the fault of the Captain, for he is as good a seaman as ever stepped, and the officers are all very well in their way, and so there's no doubt it's the ship's ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... tales. Hesiod was the founder of a more didactic sort of poetry. He is about a century later than the Iliad. Besides the Theogony, which treats of the origin of the gods and of nature, his Works and Days relates to the works which a farmer has to do, and the lucky or unlucky days for doing them. It contains doctrines and precepts relative to agriculture, navigation, civil and family life. Hesiod was the first of a Boeotian school of poets. He lacks the poetic genius of Homer, and the vivacity and cheerfulness which pervade ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... looked closely at it, you would never guess it to be soap; it was black and coarse, and more like wood than anything else. If any unlucky pilgrim used it on his face or hands, it would make his skin burn like fire. But this did not often happen, for the people in Persia do not use much soap on themselves, or their clothes, and sand does very well for cleaning cooking pots and pans. So it ...
— The Cat and the Mouse - A Book of Persian Fairy Tales • Hartwell James
... no longer there; he had taken to his heels. But M. d'Anquetil was still there with Catherine, and he it was who received the burning torch on his forehead, an outrage he could not stand. He drew his sword, and drove it to the hilt in the unlucky knave's stomach, teaching him, at his own expense, how fatal it may be to attack a gentleman. Now M. Coignard had not got twenty yards away from the house when the other lackey, a tall fellow, with the limbs of ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... Bull Bun was followed, as the reader knows, by a long period of masterly inactivity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned. McDowell, a good soldier, but unlucky, retired to Arlington Heights, and McClellan, who had distinguished himself in Western Virginia, took command of the forces in front of Washington, and bent his energies to reorganizing the demoralized troops. It was a dreary time to the people of the North, who looked fatuously from week to ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the side galleries were filled in with bales of cotton, the windows blocked up, at last the very doorways, all but one: lights were burned in the cabin day and night: the Carolina became, in fact, a floating mass of cotton, which, had the season been dry, one unlucky spark might have set in a blaze—an accident by no means unknown; luckily, the rain continued to fall more or less daily, as is ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... it was years ago; you were on your first tour in America, I must have been about twelve, and Tom fourteen. We had only just settled in here, you know; and one unlucky Saturday we were playing in the garden at 'King ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a more loyal but as unlucky a Frenchman, David de Novion, came to meet Ralegh at the inn. He brought a message from le Clerc, the French Resident, that he wished to see Ralegh. The Government knew of this, and thought that, by affecting ignorance, it might learn more. On July 30 had arrived a Council warrant for ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... father when he went out and bought a red pot for the unlucky pansy, which, after its travels and its night in brown paper, looked as disconsolate as Mary herself. "I know it'll die right away," she muttered as she set it on the window-sill. "Oh, dear, there's mother ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... guilty, and was sentenced to die. He made no complaint, or none of which a record is preserved. He asked for the Sacrament, which was of course allowed, and Drake himself communicated with him. They then kissed each other, and the unlucky wretch took leave of his comrades, laid his head on the block, and so ended. His offence can be only guessed; but the suspicious curiosity about his fate which was shown afterwards by Mendoza makes it likely that he was in Spanish pay. The ambassador cross-questioned Captain Winter very particularly ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... sewing and raised her head. She was a servant girl by calling, one of those unlucky creatures who are overtaken by trouble when they have scarce arrived in the great city from their native village. "Well," said she, "it's quite certain that one won't be able to dawdle in bed, and that one won't have warm milk given one to drink before getting up. But, all the same, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... what's to prevent you," and he gave him such another hard jab that Jack grabbed the elbow. "But I wouldn't start tomorrow—it's unlucky to clam on Wednesday," ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... cannibal confesses that he has not quite got over his gloating recollections of the delicacies of his diabolical cuisine; or that fashionable converts turn with a yearning heart, not to theatres and balls, but to the "dear remembrance" of the splendors 'of tattoo and amocos; or that some unlucky wretch who has not mastered the hideous passions of his old paganism has almost battered out the brains of a fellow disciple in a sudden paroxysm of anger; or that some timid soul is haunted with half-subdued ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... powerful "trektow" stood the enormous strain, and the equally powerful waggon groaned and jolted up the stony steep until it had nearly gained the top, when an unfortunate drop of the right front wheel into a deep hollow, combined with an unlucky and simultaneous elevation of the left back wheel by a stone, turned the vehicle completely over on its side. The hoops of the tilt were broken, and much of the lading was deposited in a hollow beside the waggon, but a few of the lighter and smaller articles went hopping, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... behaviour. We have had a good deal of serious discourse together. The man has really just and good notions. He confesses how much he is pleased with this day, and hopes for many such. Nevertheless, he ingenuously warned me, that his unlucky vivacity might return: but, he doubted not, that he should be fixed at last by my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... unlucky to the possessors. Easton Piers hath had six owners since the reigne of Henry 7th, where I myself had a share to act my part; and one part of it called Lyte's Kitchin hath been sold four times over ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... near New Rochelle, three hundred acres of good land, with the necessary fences and buildings upon it. Pennsylvania voted him five hundred pounds, currency. And the Virginians were talking about making a similar donation, when an unlucky pamphlet from Paine appeared, demolishing the claim of Virginia to the Western country. This publication changed the views of the chivalry, and Paine lost his grant. He owned, besides, a small place in Bordentown,—a gift, we believe, of the State of New ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... able to go back to school was an unlucky one for me. It was so dolefully quiet everywhere. After he had gone, I slipped down-stairs on the banister, but the blinds were drawn in the parlour and dining-room, and it was so still that the only sound to be heard was the slow ticking of the great clock in the hall. When it gave a loud ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... Click, the Bricklayers make with their Trowels, thus bringing me down from my Altitudes! Sure, we hardly knew how well off we were at Chalfont, till we came back to this unlucky Capital, looking as desolate as Jerusalem, when the City was ruinated and the People captivated. Weeds in the Streets—smouldering Piles—blackened, tottering Walls—and inexhaustible Heaps of vile ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... did not actually lure vessels to destruction on their cruel coasts, which it may be feared they did sometimes, they at least did nothing to avert the disasters which, to their mind, were sent by a merciful providence. There was even a proverb that it was unlucky to rescue a drowning man—widespread, for Scott mentions it in the "Pirate"; the bad luck which these coast-folk had in view being the fact that a rescued personage could claim his property that the sea had ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... air. All the long house behind him seemed asleep, deserted. No noise came forth, no laughter, the echo of no music, the ringing of no bell; the heat had wrapped it round with drowsiness. And the silence added to the solitude within him. What an unlucky chance, that woman's accident! Designed by Providence to put Antonia further from him than before! Why was not the world composed of the immaculate alone? He started pacing up and down, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the first it was an unlucky move—for me. The house was too big, and required a lot of extra furnishing. The studio wasn't as good as my other one had been, and there was only an apology for a garden. But Eva had her wish. People called on her, and finding her pretty, vivacious, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... threw me into such a ferment that I quite forgot how tired I was and fairly ran across the last half dozen vessels that I had to traverse before I came under her tall side. However, when I got close to her I saw that she was not the Hurst Castle after all, but only another unlucky vessel that had broken her nose in collision and so had filled forward and gone sagging ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... temper; he was always a very passionate man. He told his daughter that if she did not kill her child, he himself would kill the pair of them. He would have married her to someone else, to a rich man of high rank. This unlucky accident must be kept secret. The girl was very miserable. Her brother stood forth in her defence, and took her part against his own father, and his father cursed him in consequence, expelled him from the house, and forbade him ever to show his face there ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... another word, an unlucky touch of Foster's heel laid the easel, with an amazing clatter, flat on the marble floor! Hester bounded through the doorway more swiftly than her own gazelle, slammed the door behind her, ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... the last fact, which resulted in exciting once more the torrent of public opinion. From this moment all unlucky casualties which could not be otherwise accounted for were put down ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... arm—"shows that you were much worse hurt than I was. But I was pretty well done for, and a most gruesome object, when we came up with Sher Singh. His manners ain't exactly ingratiating at the best of times, as you have more than once remarked to me, but when he saw my unlucky hair, his language was positively improper. You see, it was my misfortune—and your very good fortune, I'm inclined to think—that I wasn't you. He even sent for water and had some of the blood washed off my face, to make ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... exhibitions of this unlucky pair, and their passing round the hat without catching even the greasy pence they courted, have very little to do with the great question to be decided at the next elections, except in so far as we may be justified in suspecting their purity of motive ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... discovering the will of the gods, according to the common practice of Pagan antiquity, Haman ordered the lot to be cast, which was supposed to discriminate between lucky and unlucky days, little aware that "the whole disposing thereof is of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... to my aid and was unlucky in not getting the cool-headed Kendall, for my own wits were gone. The next moment all had left us and I was down on the ground toiling frantically, with no help but one hand of my mounted companion, to heave the stalwart frame of ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... an unlucky dog like myself, who has lost his ship, has very little chance of getting another," said Adair; "and that the bright hopes I entertained of soon getting my post-rank must be abandoned ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... it, drew out my magnifier, looked at it in one light and another. What was wrong with it? I could not say. Nine experts out of ten would undoubtedly have pronounced the stone genuine. I, by virtue of some mysterious instinct that has hitherto always guided me aright, was the unlucky tenth. I looked at the bishop. His eyes met mine. There was no need of spoken word ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... was unwilling to relinquish his horses and attendant charioteer, but with them advanced to the swift ships,—foolish! Nor was he destined to return again, borne on his steeds and chariot from the ships to wind-swept Ilium, having avoided evil destiny. For him unlucky fate first encircled from the spear of Idomeneus, the illustrious son of Deucalion. For he rushed towards the left of the ships, by the way in which the Greeks were returning from the plain with their horses and chariots. Thither ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... and unlucky days was prevalent. The fragment of a calendar shows each day marked good or evil, or triply ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... one sentence always in her mouth, a sentence that was the refrain of her thought: "What can you expect? I am unlucky. I have had no chance. From the beginning nothing ever succeeded with me!" She said it in the tone of a woman who has abandoned hope. With the persuasion, every day more firm, that she was born under an unlucky star, that she was in the power of hatred and vengeance that were more powerful ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... till one day the brilliant idea struck Grandmamma of decorating little Pamela with a coral necklace. She little knew what she was about; both babies burst into howling distress, and were not to be quieted even when the unlucky beads were taken away; no, indeed, they only cried the more. Grandmamma and Nurse were at their wits' end, and Grandpapa's superior intelligence had at last to be appealed to. And ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... sore and nervous, but talked of his letter to the Queen, and Lord Palmerston's to Persigny, as "unlucky." Lord Palmerston seems convinced that he is perfectly in the right, and everybody else in the wrong, and would, I am sure, take advantage of any step, taken without sufficient consideration by the Queen, to make a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... well, indeed, that it has given to the name of the unlucky "capitan de la guerra" of the ancient Mexicans the honorific title of an aboriginal "cultus-hero,"—is ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... and looking at Orion with unmistakable displeasure, "Orion will give up his berth to you, Zebedee. He seems so very sure that the schooner is unlucky. I came down from Boston in her, and I saw nothing about ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... who were entrenched in a small earthwork on the southern side of the isle, and not more than cannon-shot distance from the Mexican encampment. Two field pieces, set in battery, defended the work; and the schooner, whose unlucky shot had swamped the canoe, lay at a cable's length from the land, in a little bay that ran ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Rabirius was involved in the same prosecution as having received part of the money; Cicero defended him, and as it seems with success, on the plea that equites were not liable to prosecution under the lex Julia. Towards the end of his speech he drew a clever picture of his unlucky client's misfortunes, and declared that he would have had to quit the Forum, i.e. to leave the Stock Exchange in disgrace, if Caesar had not come to his rescue by placing large sums at ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... of this unlucky fourteenth century a marked religious revival extended over Europe. Perhaps men's sufferings had caused it. Many sects of reformers appeared, protesting sometimes against the discipline, sometimes the doctrines, of the Church. In Germany Nicholas ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... were of the florid periwig architecture—I mean of that pompous cauliflower kind of ornament which was the fashion in Louis the Fifteenth's time, at which unlucky period a building mania seems to have seized upon many of the monarchs of Europe, and innumerable public edifices were erected. It seems to me to have been the period in all history when society was the least natural, and perhaps the most dissolute; and I have always fancied ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... completed and published at Oxford, with a numerous list of subscribers. Experience had not yet taught him wariness in his approaches to his patron. At the suggestion of his relative, Commodore Johnstone, in an unlucky moment he inscribed his book to the Duke of Buccleugh. This nobleman had declared his acceptance of the dedication in a manner so gracious, that Mickle was once more decoyed with the hope of having found a powerful protector. After ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... clerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps than soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day, but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open in the Esmeralda Union, and besides ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... give unlucky Oleander his coup de grce. Poor devil! I pity him, too. If you intend to make your entree like the ghost of Banquo at the feast, you can't appear, of course, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... parting from it for a moment. This man's talk was all of well-dressed highwaymen, whose conversation and manners induced the unwary to join company with them. Then in some shady dell whistling up their men, the unlucky traveller found himself despoiled—of his goods certainly, perhaps also of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... irregularity in the one, was always corrected by the other. Our success would probably have been more complete but for the rain which unfortunately set in soon after we commenced our march, which rendered the fire of many of our muskets useless, and by obscuring the sun, led to several unlucky mistakes. As an instance of this, a body of 50 prisoners who had surrendered, were ordered to the fort in charge of a subaltern and 14 volunteers; the officer mistaking the direction, conducted them towards the British camp in the route by which we had ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... having left behind, in his wine cellars, twenty thousand bottles of rare vintages. Wine, I believe, is contraband of war. Certainly in this instance it was. As we speedily discovered, it was a very unlucky common soldier who did not have a swig of rare Burgundy or ancient claret to wash down his black bread and sausage that night ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... was solemnly reminded, that it was not for me to interrupt the course of justice, but to await its decision with patience. I saw they were determined to prevent our departure as long as possible; and, judging that the only way to assist in the completion of the unlucky business, was to interpose no obstacle to its natural course, I henceforth held my peace, conjuring my companion on no account to give directions for dinner. After a sitting of nearly seven hours on the second day, when everything that could be lugged ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... should visit a certain Temple of which it seems she had heard a great deal from a native servant. Had I known then, as I know now, the reputation of the place, and the intense hatred which the priests felt for any of the white races since that unlucky American affair"—he realized suddenly that he appeared to be excusing himself, and his manner hardened—"well, I can only regret that I allowed Miss Ryder to set foot in ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fingers, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen. Adj. ill-timed, mistimed; ill-fated, ill-omened, ill-starred; untimely, unseasonable; out of date, out of season; inopportune, timeless, intrusive, untoward, mal a propos[Fr], unlucky, inauspicious, infelicitous, unbefitting, unpropitious, unfortunate, unfavorable; unsuited &c. 24; inexpedient &c. 647. unpunctual &c. (late) 133; too late for; premature &c. (early) 132; too soon for; wise after the event, monday morning quarterbacking, twenty- ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... why Gower stubbornly refused to pay more, when his collecting boats came back to the cannery so often with a few scattered salmon in their holds. They were primitive folk, these salmon trollers. They jeered the unlucky collectors. Gower was losing his fishermen as well as his fish. For the time, at least, the back of his long-held ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was well educated and a great reader, quiet and somewhat reserved, and though his humour did not lie on the surface, he could appreciate a joke. My recollections of him, after his steadiness and reliability, are chiefly of his personal mishaps, for he was an unlucky ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... startled look, he turned, and went in the direction of San Juan. We knew him at once for a deserter, but had no zeal to arrest him; and he had already got past us, when some one ejaculated,—"D—- him, why don't he go right? That's not the road to Costa Rica!" Upon this unlucky speech, the officer in command of the detail, who, either through inattention or design, was suffering the man to pass unquestioned, ordered him to be followed and seized. He was a German, and either a dull, heavy fellow, or else stupefied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... of Indigo Seed upon the ground and since informed you the frost took it before it was dry. I picked out the best of it and had it planted but there is not more than a hundred bushes of it come up, which proves the more unlucky as you have sent a ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... cloak was singeing at a little iron stove that stood behind the door. Poor Madame Thekla! Out we rushed, and she revenged herself by vociferating to the crowd outside, as the Tyrolian had done just before, and by exhibiting her unlucky cloak in a sort of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... in Rome in her time a nobleman, Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi, ex-praetor, ex-consul (A. D. 27) ex-governor of Mauritania, the husband of Scribonia, by whom he had three sons. There was never a more unlucky family than this. The origin of their misfortunes is curious enough. Licinius Crassus, whom Seneca calls "stupid enough to be made emperor," committed, among other fatuities, that of naming his eldest son Pompeius Magnus, after ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... the state some service, and they know it. No more of that; I pray you in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. 96 SHAKS.: Othello, Act v., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... been lacking in such of Mr. Le Queux's books as I have chanced to read. I may have been unlucky in my selection, and there may be admirable qualities in those of his novels which I have not read. But in the three or four volumes known to me I found that the persons were puppets, moving in unnatural situations, meeting sensational adventures which constituted all that ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... his way in the usual No Thoroughfares of speech, and Podsnap and Twemlow say Hear hear! and sometimes, when he can't by any means back himself out of some very unlucky No Thoroughfare, 'He-a-a-r He-a-a-r!' with an air of facetious conviction, as if the ingenuity of the thing gave them a sensation of exquisite pleasure. But Veneering makes two remarkably good points; so good, that they are supposed to have been suggested to him by the legal gentleman ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... me a bad turn. Unlucky day!' he sighed as he received it. 'My little fortune was more safe with him than in a bank, and every year it brought me in a pretty income. Where can I find another ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... waiting, and another dull colonel came into waiting. An impertinent servant made a blunder about tea, and caused a misunderstanding between the gentlemen and the ladies. A half-witted French Protestant minister talked oddly about conjugal fidelity. An unlucky member of the household mentioned a passage in the " Morning Herald " reflecting on the queen ; and forthwith Madame Schwellenberg, began to storm in bad English, and told him that he had made ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... lasted long. He not only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself to picking up stories and anecdotes of a certain kind. He believed in presentiments, predictions, omens, meetings, lucky and unlucky days, in the persecution and benevolence of destiny, in the mysterious significance of life, in fact. He even believed in certain "climacteric" years which someone had mentioned in his presence and the meaning of which he did not himself very well understand. "Fatal" ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of the clouds were often watched through the whole night. In the same country, the inhabitants regard certain days as unlucky, or ominous of bad fortune. The day of the week on which the third of May falls is deemed unlucky ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... bird does not strictly belong to any of the present established genera. The make indeed is altogether that of an hornbill, and the edges of the mandible are smooth, but the toes being placed two forwards and two backwards, seem to rank it with the Parrots or Toucans; and it has been unlucky that in the specimen from which the description was taken, the tongue was wanting, which might in a great measure have determined the point: but the inducement for placing it with the hornbills has had the greater weight, as not a single species ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... When he arose on the morrow, he asked for them and was acquainted with their affair, whereupon he built over them a building and appointed to himself a day of ill-luck and a day of good fortune. If any met him on his unlucky day, he slew him and with his blood he washed that monument, which is a place well known in Kufah; and if any met him on this day of good fortune he enriched him. Now there accosted him once, on his day of ill- omen, an Arab of the Ban Tay[FN289] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in private that objections were raised or candidatures recommended on theological grounds. But rumours were abroad that the authorities of Brasenose were canvassing their college on these grounds: and in an unlucky moment for Mr. Williams, Dr. Pusey, not without the knowledge, but without the assenting judgment of Mr. Newman, thought it well to send forth a circular in Christ Church first, but soon with wider publicity, asking support for Mr. Williams as a person ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... professions, especially for the Church, used to be ever recurring in conversation to the staple metaphysical questions,—occasionally, no doubt, much in the style of Jack Lizard in the Guardian, who comforted his mother, when the worthy lady was so unlucky as to scald her hand with the boiling tea-kettle, by assuring her there was no such thing as heat, but which at least served to show that this branch of liberal education fully occupied the mind of the individuals ostensibly ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... unfavourable opinion of the moral character of the people amongst whom they were then residing, but on this evening of the Sabbath, a Fantee was robbed of his effects, and stabbed by an assassin below the ribs, so that his life was despaired of. The most unlucky part, however, of this tragical affair to Richard Lander, was, that the natives, from some cause, which he could not divine, had imbibed the conceit that he was skilled in surgery. In vain, he protested that he knew nothing of the anatomy of the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... say that, child. I snatched about two hours' sleep this morning, and when I woke I felt very much like Coleridge's unlucky sailor: ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... answered Raymond, whose estimate of the word was not so comprehensive. "You'd think it would have been rather a case for generosity, but Dan didn't seem to see that. It's unlucky for me in a way he's not larger-minded. He's content with justice—what he calls justice. But justice depends on the mind that's got to do it. There's no finality about it, and what Daniel calls justice, I call beastly ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... salary of five hundred pounds a year, his rooms in the Quai d'Orsay (with coals and gas) and, besides, that wonderful treasure of historic documents, which had supplied the sap of his books, all this had been carried away from him by this unlucky 'flood,' all by his own flood! The poor man could not get over it. Even after the lapse of two years, regret for the ease and the honours of his office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the witch of Eye, who were hurried before the Council of Henry VI, that unfortunate Duchess of Gloucester who had to walk the streets of London, the Duchess of Bedford, the conspirators against Edward IV who were supposed to use magic, the unlucky mistress of Edward IV—none of these who through the course of two centuries were charged with magical misdeeds were, so far as we know, accused of those dreadful relations with the Devil, the nauseating ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... season of the year when a dream occurred, the day of the cycle, and the then predominant influence of the two powers of nature. By the positions of the sun, moon, and planets in the zodiacal spaces he could determine whether any one of the six classes of dreams was lucky or unlucky. Those six classes were ordinary and regular dreams, terrible dreams, dreams of thought, dreams in waking, dreams of ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... Glumdalclitch never to trust me abroad for the future out of her sight. I had been long afraid of this resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky adventures that happened in those times when I was left by myself. Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time, walking to the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... In this way he stimulates the invaded to a combined attack upon the common enemy, and we need not tell our readers how successfully, nor how desperate the struggle, the very next year; which ended in the complete ascendancy of the Hanover rat, or reigning family, over the unlucky Jacobite native. Under his figure of a rat, this Jacobite is very scurrilous indeed upon the Hanoverian succession; and, continuing his polypian imitations, relates a few coarse experiments upon his subject illustrative of its destructive properties, voracity, and sagacity, which set ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... documents in which the grounds of the administrative policy were explained, can we do otherwise than smile at the pretensions of the pseudo-judges? Is not the frequency of this unfounded judging much more apt to harden an unlucky statesman than to make him amenable to counsel? On the other hand, when a public man finds himself and his actions criticised by men who have knowledge, he must be a hardy one indeed who can ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... be born on the thirteenth. Cousin May says thirteen is awfully unlucky," said Katy impressively, when Chicken Little told her the ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... got that message through before Graves did his work!" he said. "He'd have had to believe you then, of course. How unlucky!" ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... travelled part of the way in a litter, and part on a pillion behind her bridegroom, who rode on horseback the whole way. He had with him a regular army of retainers, besides sundry maidens for the Lady Marnell, at the head of whom was Alice Jordan, the unlucky girl who, at our first visit to Lovell Tower, was reprimanded for leaving out the onions in the blanch-porre. Margery had persuaded her mother to resign to her for a personal attendant this often clumsy and forgetful ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... unlucky accident was this! One Moment's longer stay had made me happy, [Aside. And render'd up these ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... wondering why he had seen but one side of the question the night before, for in the broad light of day there seemed a dozen, and all leading to trouble! That emerald-eyed daughter of a renegade priest had proven a host in herself when it came to breeding trouble. She certainly had been unlucky. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... have been contented at home, when he was well off. It's very unlucky he ever brought us here. I don't see what is to become ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... water that came in his way. When he got pretty near, he'd stop to listen, and then the caller had to be very careful and put his trumpet down close to the ground, so as to make a lower sound. If the moose felt doubtful he'd turn; if not, he'd come on, and unlucky for him if he did, for he got a warm reception, either from the rifles in our hands as we lay hid near the caller, or from some of the ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... keep the mule from running away, when a violent kick released his hold and knocked him out. We immediately set up our little "Mummery" tent on the hot, sandy floor of the desert and rendered first-aid to the unlucky astronomer. We found that the sharp point of one of the vicious mule's new shoes had opened a large vein in Mr. Hinckley's leg. The cut was not dangerous, but too deep for successful mountain climbing. With Gamarra's aid, ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... not be found a very difficult member of the poultry family to carve, unless, as may happen, a very old farmyard occupant, useless for egg-laying purposes, has, by some unlucky mischance, been introduced info the kitchen as a "fine young chicken." Skill, however, and the application of a small amount of strength, combined with a fine keeping of the temper, will even get over that difficulty. Fixing the fork firmly in the breast, let the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... at once, for Mr. Horner, honest and true himself, and much smitten with the fair Ellen, was too happy to be circumspect. The answer was duly placed, and as duly carried to Miss Bangle by her accomplice, Joe Englehart, an unlucky pickle who "was always for ill, never for good," and who found no difficulty in obtaining the letter unwatched, since the master was obliged to be in school at nine, and Joe could always linger a few minutes later. This answer being opened ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... said of the spirit protecting the treasure," I remarked, "Don't you think he's right about the curse hanging over it? I believe it would be unlucky ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Scotland there is a superstition that it is unlucky to tell the name of infants before they are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... the Square, after as painful a five minutes as I care to remember, Willoughby kept repeating, "Very unlucky—very unlucky," till we arrived at our own door. Then he began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... well be called the tiger of the insect world. The devotional attitude is the position in which it can best seize its insect prey; for when an unsuspecting insect lights on what seems to be a green twig, snap!—those blade-like forelegs armed with sharp spikes come together like scissors, and the unlucky victim is cut to pieces ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... I assure you, sir. A matter of years' standing. In unlacing the senor's helmet, the evening that he was taken prisoner, I was unlucky enough to twitch his mustachios. You recollect the fact, of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... said Lena sharply. "I've been at her house. She has rafts of nurses to do all the waiting on her children. I guess she doesn't let them trouble her any more than she can help. If she's unlucky enough to have the squally little things, she keeps away ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... very superstitious; and there are all sorts of omens, among which there is a particular bird which has obtained the name of the omen bird. His cry on the right of, or behind, a person engaged in any enterprise is an unlucky sign, and he abandons his object; while the cry heard on the left is a favorable omen, and the individual is ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... roof you are all in a certain sense made known to one another, and should, therefore, converse freely, as equals. To shrink away to a side-table and affect to be absorbed in some album or illustrated work; or, if you find one unlucky acquaintance in the room, to fasten upon her like a drowning man clinging to a spar, are gaucheries ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Some unlucky mistakes which happened that day, must here take place; first, an order to the whole horse on the left to march to the right, which so discouraged the foot of that wing to see themselves abandoned, that to it may be attributed their shameful behaviour that day; nor were these horse of ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... his thrilling adventure, then explained: "The ships, still fighting, disappeared behind the horizon. I thought that an unlucky outcome for the Emden was possible, also a landing by the enemy on the Keeling Island, at least for the purpose of landing the wounded and taking on provisions. As there were other ships in the neighborhood, according to the statements of the Englishmen, I saw myself faced with the certainty ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... told him, 'Yes.' He said he knew it as soon as I spoke to him on the platform. He asked me who she was, and I told him her name. He said to me, 'Ah! you lucky dog.' I told him I did not know that I was not most unlucky, for I had no reason to think she was going to marry me. He said, 'You tell her I say you'll be all right.' I felt better, especially when the old chap said, 'I'll tell her so myself.' He knew her. She always travelled with him when ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... drawing his sword. Orm the King-brother was also severely wounded; and with great difficulty they escaped to their ships, and instantly pushed off from land. It was generally considered as a most unlucky meeting for Olaf's people, as Earl Erling was in a manner sold into their hands, if they had proceeded with common prudence. He was afterwards called Olaf the Unlucky; but others called his people Hat-lads. They went ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... made an offering daily at the shrine of the Goddess of the Earth. Fortune was displeased at this, and came to him and said, "My man, why do you give Earth the credit for the gift which I bestowed upon you? You never thought of thanking me for your good luck; but should you be unlucky enough to lose what you have gained I know very well that I, Fortune, should then come in for all ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... pretty children the mother has," said the old Duck with the rag round her leg. "They're all pretty but that one; that is rather unlucky. I wish she could have that one ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... awake that night, tossing and turning in her bed in that delightful apartment in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and reviewing the fell array of these unlucky affairs. As she eyed them, black shapes against the glow of her firelight, it struck her that the same malevolent influence inspired them all. For what had caused the failure and flatness of her tableaux (omitting the unfortunate incident about the lamp) ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson |
