"Worst" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... King's Man with his turbulent support of his monarch, now advanced reasons to show his side, and concluded by mocking his hearers to do their worst. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... French society." They did so, he remarks, in a spirit so Utopian, so ideally poetic, that historians have hesitated to take them seriously. The laws of the Courts of Love[77] may sometimes seem to us immoral and licentious, but in reality they served to restrain the worst immoralities and licences of the time. They banished violence, they allowed no venality, and they inculcated moderation in passion. The task of the Courts of Love was facilitated by the relative degree of peace which then reigned, especially by the fact that the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... 'You've done your worst; yet you see Michael Rust can bear it;' and then bowing to him, he said: 'Good bye, Enoch. Whatever may have happened to my child, I am blameless. I never sold her happiness to gratify my avarice. If she has become what Enoch's child was, the sin does not lie at ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... from the worst enemy that had afflicted them since the Babylonian captivity. Neither Assyrians nor Egyptians nor Persians had so ruthlessly swept away religious institutions. Those conquerors were contented with conquest and its political results,—namely, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... for a moment, but at length some fellow among them took this to himself, and demanded if I meant to accuse him of unnatural propensities? I replied that I did not allude to any one individual, but that it did seem clear to me that none but monsters of the worst description could be guilty of such conduct as had been exhibited daily before the hustings when I addressed ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... to come up here, when there is no real need for it," he muttered. "Two to one, eh? Well, I reckon I can put up a pretty stiff fight if it comes to the worst." Then he caught up his oars once more, and began to row down Cayuga Lake ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... jealousy is, and that I suffered such cruel inquietudes the evening the Queen gave me Madam de Themines's letter, which it was said was addressed to you, that to this moment I retain an idea of it, which makes me believe it is the worst ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... it were so! That is just like a man. They do not recoil from the worst crimes: betraying a wife, betraying a friend; but the thought that they may be accused of being afraid touches them more keenly than anything. Moreover, listen to what I say. Sidonie has gone; she has gone forever; and if you leave this house I shall think ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... said that whenever one of Scotty's fights was investigated, it always turned out that it had originally been no affair of his, but that out of native good-heartedness he had dropped in of his own accord to help the man who was getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw were bosom friends, for years, and had often taken adventurous "pot-luck" together. On one occasion, they had thrown off their coats and taken the weaker side in a fight among strangers, and after gaining a hard-earned victory, turned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are dark with doubt, And dying hope is at its worst; When all life's balls are scattered wide, With not a shot in sight, to left or right, Don't give it up; Advance your cue and shut your eyes, And ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a circular which they distributed shortly after my return to Germany at the end of December, 1916, it was stated, "What do you think of the American Ambassador? When he came to Germany after his trip to America he brought a French woman with him." And the worst of this statement was that it was true. But the League, of course, did not state that my wife came with me bringing her French maid by the express permission of the ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... noised abroad that he was a Prince, made the People flock faster to him than before. Which changed both his heart and behaviour from a Priest to a King. Insomuch that the Dutch began to be in doubt what this might grow to. Who to prevent the worst, set a watch over him: which he not liking of, took the advantage of the night, and fled with all his Followers and Attendance up to the King again, and came to the same place where he ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... and unreason in the attachment to provincial custom or time-honoured opinion; he knew nothing of that moral law which limits the success of revolutions by the conditions which precede them. What was worst united with what was best in resistance to his reforms. The bigots of the University of Louvain, who still held out against the discoveries of Newton, excited the mob to insurrection against Joseph, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... obtain little scandalous anecdotes of his miserable adversary, Morus; and deigned to adulate the unworthy Christina of Sweden, because she had expressed herself favourably on his "Defence." Of late years, we have had too many instances of this worst of passions, the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and had soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plentiful that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven by my watch when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Strom at slack water, which we knew ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... marvellous properties. I have in my possession a Dayong's whole outfit of charms which I bought from his relatives after his death; they were afraid to touch it, and for another Dayong to use it is taboo of the worst kind. Such charms are usually buried with the practitioner, but this old fellow evidently did not have a very large practice, and, at his death, he was somewhat neglected. One of the charms is a stone in which an active imagination might trace a resemblance to the hand or foot of an animal; ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... desirable to see for ourselves, or, as Emerson puts it, "leave others' eyes, and bring your own"? If one can give to the task patient observation, with a loving spirit, a desire to interpret faithfully and to see the best instead of the worst, may he not perchance find that the bird is not the monster he is pictured? And though the story be not so sensational, is it not better to clear up than to blacken the reputation of a fellow-creature, even a very ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... my worst again, and picturing the looks of Denham, and his disappointment if I managed to get anywhere near where he was on the lookout for us, when I jumped violently, quite startled, for Joeboy seemed to rise out of the black earth on ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... interrupting him, "perhaps he is married already: come, let me know the worst," continued she with an affected look of composure: "you need not be afraid, I shall not send the fortunate lady ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... for a time, I think they will not believe the man's story; or at any rate, will suppose that it was only one of the guard who, not being able to sleep, wandered round there and looked into the hut from behind. The worst of it is that I am afraid that there is no chance of my being able to take my cousin some limes and other fruit, tomorrow night, as I said I would. He is very ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... and all," said she to herself. "But the Law shall not catch him along o' me." He was vile—vile to her and to all women—but she could bear her own wrong, and she was not bound to fight the battles of others. He was a miscreant and a felon, the mere blood on those hands was not his worst moral stain. He was foul from the terms of his heritage of life, with the superadded foulness of the galleys. But she had loved him once, and he ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... down to zero. His worst anticipations were thus realised. For some moments his head was in a whirl, and he knew not what to say. ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... struggles of Fate should be even mentioned, much less presented in terms of art! For whom an artist is 'suspect' if he is not, in his work, a sportsman and a gentleman? Who shake a solemn head over writers who will treat of sex; and, with the remark: "Worst of it is, there's so much truth in those fellows!" close ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... uncommon occurrence. The distemper acted differently on different temperaments. Some it inflamed to an ungovernable pitch of madness, others it reduced to the depths of despair, while in many cases it brought out and aggravated the worst parts of the character. Wives conveyed the infection intentionally to their husbands, husbands to their wives, parents to their children, lovers to the objects of their affection, while, as in the case above ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it was difficult to cross; the provision of supplies and the conducting of sieges were equally difficult for the army attacking by land, while the Celts by means of their vessels could furnish the towns easily with everything needful, and in the event of the worst could accomplish their evacuation. The legions expended their time and strength in the sieges of the Venetian townships, only to see the substantial fruits of victory ultimately carried off in the vessels ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... will be our wisdom to welcome, whether those who bring it forward are popularly labelled as belonging to this, that, or the other school of Churchmanship. To allow party jealousies to mar the symmetry and fulness of a work in which all Churchmen ought to have an equal inheritance would be the worst of blunders. By all means let the raiment of needlework and the clothing of wrought gold be what they should be for such sacred uses as hers who is the daughter of the great King, but let us not fall to wrangling about the vats in which ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... But worst of all were those in the final stages of the disease, wandering vaguely about the street, their faces blank and their jaws slack as though they were living in a silent world of their own, cut off from contact with the rest. "One of them almost ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... half in joke, confirmed Anthony's worst fears. He imagined that Frederic suspected him of dishonorable conduct, although he forbore to say so in direct terms; and his repugnance to confess what he had done, to either Clary or her brother, was ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... worst of all. How often had, Pupkin heard her say that she simply hated diamonds wouldn't wear them, despised them, wouldn't give a thank you for a whole tiara of them! As for motor cars and steam yachts,—well, it was pretty plain that that sort of thing had no chance with Zena Pepperleigh. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... the representative bodies on the other hand; and the assemblies were showing the same unreasonableness in refusing to meet manifest public obligations. This state of things was becoming steadily more acute in all the colonies, but it was at its worst in the province of Quebec, where the constitutional friction was embittered by a racial conflict, the executive body being British, while the great majority of the assembly was French; and the conflict was producing a very dangerous alienation between the two peoples. The French colonists ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... regularity of a third day's rain, when trimming and shuffling are over, and the weather has settled down to do its worst. There were no variations of rhythm, no lyrical ups and downs: the grey lines streaking the panes were as dense and uniform as a ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Jim, Miss Redmond. We've been boys and men together, and good fellows always. But don't think that I'd regret his struggle for you, as you call it, even if it should mean the worst. He couldn't have done otherwise, and I wouldn't have had him. And if it's to be a—a home run—why, then, Jim would like that far better than to die of old age or liver complaint. It's all right, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... in all its extravagance" as Homer had of his gods, or Shakspeare of his fairies. But the distinction is obvious. Homer did not personally identify himself with a creed, or do his utmost to perpetuate the worst parts of it in behalf of a ferocious inquisitorial church, and to the risk of endangering the peace of millions of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of you!" she cried. "You are going to speak the truth as you see it, and let them do their worst. Of course, fundamentally, it isn't merely because they're orthodox that they won't like it, although they'll say so, and perhaps think so. It will be because if you have really found the truth—they will instinctively, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to hurt them, either. If worst comes to worst I'm going to put a few holes in the wing planes of the smaller craft. That will cause her to lose headway, and she can't keep up. They'll have to volplane to earth, but, if they know ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... rule, are among the many things which they do not order better in France, and the French Northern line is one of the worst managed in the world, barring none, not even the Italian vie ferrate. I make it a rule, therefore, to punish the directors of, and the shareholders in, that undertaking to the utmost within my limited ability, by spending as little money on their ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... that?' she returned, almost pettishly, only she looked so miserable. 'I have nothing to forgive. I only want you to be good to me and not think the worst, for I'm really fond of you, Ursula, only you are so reserved and cold ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the best that is in the human being. It places no value upon them. It lets them rot. But I think there is one comfort. I think civilisation possesses this one good, that it breaks us away once for all with the worst savageries of the past. No inquisition, for instance, can ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... growing as bad as the worst about species, and hardly have a vestige of belief in the permanence of species left in me; and this confession will make you think very lightly of me, but I cannot help it. Such has become my honest ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... less mix'd with other articles, which, without any tendency to inspire, promote, or confirm morality, serv'd principally to divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another. This respect to all, with an opinion that the worst had some good effects, induc'd me to avoid all discourse that might tend to lessen the good opinion another might have of his own religion; and as our province increas'd in people, and new places of worship were continually wanted, and generally erected by voluntary ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... organization was exterminated. But, so far from being exterminated, the individual members were merely scattered north, south, east, and west, each forming a nucleus around which gathered and clustered the very worst of the offscouring ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... war was carried on for the space of a fortnight, and did not cease until a quantity of gravel and small stones having got mixed with the snow of which we made our bullets, many of the combatants, besiegers as well as besieged, were seriously wounded. I well remember that I was one of the worst sufferers from this sort ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... always sees the worst side of everything; he says that she will never come back, and my mother shares his opinion rather than mine. But you, signor maestro, what ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "That is the worst of having a past," she said. "Let me put it, then, that entomology as a pursuit sternly ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... too kind to her, but at evening parties, where the lighting has been well considered, I have seen her look quite girlish. At her best she was not beautiful, but at her worst there was about her an air of breeding and distinction that always saved her from being passed over, and she dressed to perfection. In character she was the typical society woman: always charming, generally insincere. She went to Kensington for her religion and to ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... autobiographical record[17] marked the commencement of Gissing's reclamation from that worst form of literary slavery—the chain-gang. For he had been virtually chained to the desk, perpetually working, imprisoned in a London lodging, owing to the literal lack of the means of locomotion.[18] His most strenuous work, wrung from him in dismal darkness and wrestling of spirit, was now achieved. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... because He don't care, or even because He thinks it's best for mankind to let them have their swing when they choose to do evil. I incline to think that's my idea. He's made man, we'll say, made him in His own image, and He's put him here in a world of his own, to do the best or the worst with it. The way I look at it, He doesn't want to keep interfering with man, but lets him play the fool or play the devil just as he's a mind to. But every now and then He sends him word. If we're going to take ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... pleases them better, and of course there have been famous instances of the contrary, such as Mario and Grisi. As a rule singers do not meet much except at the theatre; it is only during rehearsals that they have a chance of talking, and then, as everybody knows, they show the worst side of themselves and are often in ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity, for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger generation, those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are as simple as children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant's day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore, being innocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, act ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... that he would examine the fatal chamber—at once he would know the worst. Should he do it now, or wait till daylight?—but the key, where was it? His eyes rested upon an old japanned cabinet in the room: he had never seen his mother open it in his presence: it was the only likely place of concealment that he ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... turning their backs to one another, a stone's throw apart. As our kuruma men knew the place, while we did not, we let them choose the inn. They pulled up at what caused me a shudder. I thought, if this was the best inn, what must the worst be like! However, I bowed my head to fate in the form of a rafter lintel, and passed in. A dim light, which came in part from a hole in the floor, and in part from an ineffective lamp, revealed a lofty, grotto-like interior. Over the hole hung a sort of witches' caldron, swung ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... applied tend to spoil the figure by expanding or contracting. On the whole, I think boiled linseed oil and white or red lead—white or red paint in fact—is less deleterious than other things I have tried. Shellac varnish is the worst. ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... was sufficient reply to this. Then, lapsing into his worst grammar, in his excitement he said, 'I never forgetted you one day since I was borned! It's like a bit of my puzzle map,' went on Bobby after a pause. 'It's a plan with a piece left out, and it isn't finished till it's putted in. Curly ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... was driven to desperation by this blow. He had lost his wife and his best counsellors; he had never been strong enough to restrain his son, nor resist his brother. David, his first-born and heir, the gay and handsome youth who was dazzling and delightful to his father's eyes even in his worst follies, had been, as no doubt he felt, delivered over to his worst enemy by that father's own tremulous hand; and the heart-broken old man in his bereavement and terror could only think of getting the one boy who remained to him safe and out of harm's way, perhaps with the feeling that Albany might ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... is true, shield his legs from the insidious attacks of such sneaking blasts as will always find out the undefended spots; but his great heart was so well-to-do in the inside of him, that, unlike Touchstone, his spirits not being weary, he cared not for his legs. The worst storm in the world could not have made that heart quail. For, think! there had just been the strong, the well-dressed, the learned, the wise, the altogether mighty and considerable Donal, the cowherd, actually desiring him, wee Sir Gibbie Galbraith, the cinder ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... nature-festivals, and forced at length to have reference to the nation and to its history, if they were not to disappear completely. The relation of Jehovah to people and kingdom remained firm as a rock: even to the worst idolaters He was the God of Israel; in war no one thought of looking for victory and success to any other God. This was the result of Israel's becoming a kingdom: the kingship of Jehovah, in that precise sense which we associate with it, is the religious expression of the fact of the foundation ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... have always said it, but it is even worse than I had thought,) the worst is that each of the combatants, for the most part incapable of cruelty under ordinary conditions, is now devoted to the horrible work of hatred and of reprisal; and even more than the combatants, their children, their orphans, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... them into recklessness and despair. To what purpose the effort to be virtuous, when it is an effort which is foredoomed to fail; when those that are saved are saved by no effort of their own and confess themselves the worst of sinners, even when rescued from the penalties of sin; and those that are lost are lost by an everlasting sentence decreed against them before they were born? How are we to call the Ruler who laid us under this iron code by the name of wise, and just, or merciful, ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... publicist, he has written some very valuable articles. Among them are observations on the famine year (he spent two months in one of the worst districts). In other articles he has analyzed a moral malady peculiar to our state of society:—honor. In the recent Russian duels he studied the perverse notions of honor and the moral changes produced by sickly egotism. He has studied the causes that bring about the complete loss of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... they doubt their own capacity. Instead of building up strong mental forces which would be of the greatest use to them their fear thoughts tear them down. Fear paralyzes energy. It keeps us from attracting the forces that go to make up success. Fear is the worst ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... made a fresh charge, and drove the Indians back to the town, yet dared not to venture too near the wall; and the fight continued in this manner for some time, alternately gaining and losing ground, several of the Spaniards being killed and wounded. Finding they had the worst of it in the open field, the Indians kept close behind the walls of the town. On this Soto alighted from his horse, causing others to do the same, and advanced up to the gate at the head of a party armed with targets, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the Radcliffe roof is undoubtedly the best in Oxford. It has been thus described by the worst of the many poets ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... principal ones below were square bays, mullioned. The castle was considered grand by the illiterate; but architects and readers of books on architecture condemned it as a nondescript mixture of styles in the worst possible taste. It stood on an eminence surrounded by hilly woodland, thirty acres of which were enclosed as Wiltstoken Park. Half a mile south was the little town of Wiltstoken, accessible by rail from London in ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of these two girls having diphtheria?" she said, in a scared voice, as if anxious to know the worst at once. ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... the hips, the legs, the feet, and how its direction, its tension, is always determined by the action. There is not a genuine fragment of Giotto in existence but has these qualities, and to such a degree that the worst treatment has not been able to spoil them. Witness the resurrected frescoes ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... pleasure travel, in whatever form, much of what has been said already applies. The best party is two, the next best four, the next best one, and the worst three. Beyond four, except in walking parties, all are impossible, unless they be members of one family under the command of a father or mother. Command is essential when you pass four. All the members of the party should have or should make a community of interests. If one draws, all ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... severe cold and felt really poorly. Being little used even to the lightest ailments, and thinking that it would be rather nice to be petted and cossetted by Yram, I certainly did not make myself out to be any better than I was; in fact, I remember that I made the worst of things, and took it into my head to consider myself upon the sick list. When Yram brought me my breakfast I complained somewhat dolefully of my indisposition, expecting the sympathy and humouring which I should have received from my mother and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... church in the West exhibits the voluntary system at its best—and at its worst. A task so vast and so momentous has never been imposed on the resources of any state establishment. It is safe to say that no established church has ever existed, however imperially endowed, that would have been equal to the undertaking of it. With ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... for his crimes. This is but the beginning. I have a debt of vengeance to extort from him. One scoundrel has been handed over to the law, another lies dead, another is in London in the hands of Langhetti's friends, the Carbonari. The worst one yet remains, and my father's voice cries to me day and night from ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... had his own way, becomes "an ingenious, well-accomplished gentleman, a man of honour in King's Bench Walk, and of excellent disposition and temper," in spite of a good deal more gallantry than our stricter age would pardon. The worst of it is that the worthy son is always being mistaken for the scamp, while the miserable Tony Lumpkin passes for a time as the pink of propriety. Eventually, he falls into the hands of some Alsatian tricksters. The first of these, Cheatley, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... now proved to be so slender as to allow her to seek a profit from his misfortune and dishonour, it would be better for him to dispense with her friendship altogether and to strengthen his connections with truer and more honourable friends. Should the worst come to the worst, he doubted not that he should be able, being what he was and much more than he was of old, to make a satisfactory arrangement with, the King of Spain. He was ready to save Calais at the peril of his life, to conquer it in person, and not by the hands of any of his lieutenants; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the worst, they do not offer violence to themselves in this rage of lust, but unto others, their nearest and dearest friends. [5593]Catiline killed his only son, misitque ad orci pallida, lethi obnubila, obsita tenebris loca, for the love of Aurelia Oristella, quod ejus nuptias vivo filio ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... "the way I look at it, we should wait till his time is pretty near up. Maybe he will renew the contract without our taking back the house, Abe; but if the worst comes to the worst, Abe, we give him what he spent on the house and take it back, providing he renews the contract for a couple ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... MRS. CHEVELEY. My worst? I have not yet finished with you, with either of you. I give you both till to-morrow at noon. If by then you don't do what I bid you to do, the whole world shall know the origin ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... worst of it is that he keeps others off!" Mrs. Bright exclaimed. "There's Jack Darling who lives with him—such a nice boy and a very excellent suitor from every ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... of wonderful and rare trees are protected as National Parks in the Sequoia and Grant groves, and Mariposa belongs to the state. It is against the law to cut the trees in those groves. Their worst enemy is fire, and a troop of cavalry is sent every year to guard them, and to keep out the sheep-herders, whose flocks would destroy the underbrush and young trees. But, unfortunately, lumbermen have put up mills near the Fresno and Kings River groups, and, wasting more than they use, are ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... Frank Greystock did not quite know whether he was going to the moors or not. The Ayrshire grouse-shooting is not the best in Scotland;—but there is grouse-shooting in Ayrshire; and the shooting on the Portray mountains is not the worst shooting in the county. The castle at Portray overhangs the sea, but there is a wild district attached to it stretching far back inland, in regard to which Lizzie Eustace was very proud of talking of "her shooting." Early in the spring of the present year ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... show of sorrow, compelled Mrs. Whitney to a still stronger exhibit. Janet, who in far-away France had not been touched by the financial anxieties, felt a genuine grief that gave her an admirable stimulus to her efflorescent oversoul. She had "prepared for the worst," had brought from Paris a marvelous mourning wardrobe—dresses and hats and jewelry that set off her delicate loveliness as it had never been set off before. She made of herself an embodiment, an apotheosis, rather, of poetic woe—and so, roused to emulation her mother's ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... vain and shadowy menacing of faults that are not! When things indifferent shall be set to overfront us, under the banners of Sin, what wonder if we be routed, and, by this art of our Adversary, fall into the subjection of worst and deadliest offences! The superstition of the Papist is "Touch not, taste not!" when God bids both; and ours is "Part not, separate not!" when God and Charity both permits and commands. "Let all your things ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... house last week I was conscious that this had happened—Leeson had made another discovery. I had not been in the drawing-room for more than a minute, and had barely shaken hands with Mrs. Leeson, when he pulled from his pocket a thin book. I knew the worst at once: it had about it all the stigmata of new poetry. It was of the right deadly hue, the right deadly size, the right deadly roughness about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... too sure of his own hold upon the hearts of the people, to be in the least disturbed by the attacks of hostile editors. But the extracts are of interest as showing that the opposition party of that time, the party organized and led by Jefferson, regarded Washington as their worst enemy, and assailed him and slandered him to the utmost. They even went so far as to borrow materials from the enemies of the country with whom we had lately been at war, by publishing the forged letters attributed to Washington, and circulated by the British in 1777, ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... that his worst fears were realized. Certainly the sight was one that might have filled a stouter heart with chill alarm. The horse had fallen into a deep drift, which covered him to the shoulders, and rendered him utterly helpless, entangled as he was with the harness and the ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... had there been much snow on the ground; but now it is of no consequence. This is quite the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather. I was snowed up at a friend's house once for a week. Nothing could be pleasanter. I went for only one night, and could not get away ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... a sly fox took off our best duck! Run for a gun! there a hen hawk flies! We always have the very worst of luck, The anxious mistress of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... were so utterly disheartened, and so nearly overcome with the cold, that they no longer looked upon exposure as the worst thing that could happen to them. They had made up their minds that it could not be avoided, and told themselves that the sooner it was over and they were allowed to leave their airy perch the sooner they would breathe easily again. They could not talk now. ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... associate Emile Boutmy. In his "Political Psychology of the English" he declares that the haughty, taciturn, solitary, unassimilative temperament of England, so admirable from the point of view of self-development, shows its worst side and comes to a malign florescence in the history ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... symmetric objects that have, or haven't, fallen from the sky, it seems to me that the disk is the most striking. So far, in this respect, we have been at our worst—possibly that's pretty bad—but "lapstones" are likely to be of considerable variety of form, and something that is said to have fallen at sometime somewhere in the Dutch West Indies ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... morning. Chind, a career man with the Irwadi Security Forces, did not like his new boss. Garr Symm was no career man. He knew nothing of police procedure. It was even rumored—probably based upon solid fact—that Garr Symm liked his brandy excessively and often found himself under its influence. Worst of all—after all, a man could understand a desire for drink, even if, sometimes, it interfered with work—worst of all, Garr Symm was a scientist, a dome-top in the Irwadi vernacular. And hard-headed Ramar Chind lost ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... hushed room. "You want to convict me," he said softly, "in the worst sort of way. Isn't ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... 'Jew, I am the worst subject for thee in all Ecbatana. I am a man without wants. I do nothing but live, and I have ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... what will happen," exclaimed Earl. "They will stand for a lot over there and they don't get angry easily; people like that are the worst kind when they do lose their tempers. One of these days they'll all get mad and those trouble makers will wake up to find that they've been playing ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... been chosen, not because they are by any means the worst specimens of our author's Greek, but because in both cases an elaborate argument is wrecked on this rock of grammar. If any reader is curious to see how he can drive his ploughshare through a Greek sentence, he may refer for instance to the translations ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... ago, with a queer unhappy restlessness, a feeling that life was slipping, ebbing away within reach of him, and his arms never stretched out to arrest it. It had begun with a sort of long craving, stilled only when he was working hard—a craving for he knew not what, an ache which was worst ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... its worst, and a healthy circulation expels the numbness from my fingers. Besides, once we are beyond the lines, the work on hand allows small opportunity to waste time on physical sensations. On this trip there is little interruption, ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the scream, and Professor Porter and Mr. Philander, and in a few minutes they came panting to the cabin, calling out to each other a volley of excited questions as they approached. A glance within confirmed their worst fears. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... comforted, Bade farewell with calm voice and tranquil eyes, And saw with new-born strength the new sun rise. Perhaps in Fairyland there chanced to be For them that grieve some sovereign alchemy To turn the worst to best, and the good queen Applied this soothing balm. Such things have been; But yet I doubt if any fairy art Was needed in the case of Elfinhart; The medicine that charmed away her dole Nature had planted ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... flanked the marble-tiled hall; behind these the dining-room ran the width of the rear. It was a typical gentlefolk's house of the worst period of Manhattan, and Major Belwether belonged in it as fittingly as a melodeon belongs in a west-side flat. The hall-way was made for such a man as he to patter through; the velvet-covered stairs were as peculiarly fitted for him as a runway is for a rabbit; the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... emotions they had seemed to Michael as dangerous as they were loathsome. Collective emotion might be on the side of the archangels or on the side of devils and of swine; its mass was what made it dangerous, a thing that challenged the resistance of the private soul But in his worst dreams of what it could do to him Michael had never imagined anything more appalling than the collective patriotism of the British and their Allies, this rushing together of the souls of four countries to make one ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... be having a lovely time in such a charming place. We have been to Saratoga. It was stupid enough to send your worst enemy there." ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Sahib. This stage of the struggle was not a final one; but both by its circumstances, and by the prestige which we acquired in the eyes of the natives, it gave us a moral ascendency which, even when our fortunes were afterwards at their worst, was never ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... as his face was at the best of times, though it was a sufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was at its worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft and cruelty of thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility rather than of design or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... saddened soul! the night is past, The morn, bright morn, has come at last; The rage of sin its worst hath done, Yet lives in power th' ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... though I wish he had allowed me to stay on deck—but then, you see, you couldn't be left alone; and if, after all, the Frenchmen do take us, why, there would have been no one to protect you. That consoles me for remaining here, and if the worst happens I'll fight for you. See, I've brought a cutlass, and a brace of pistols, and it would be a hard matter for any one to get in ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... practical, cold; the night was strange and tense. In the darkness she had fancies wholly unknown to her in the bright light of the sun. She battled with a haunting thought. She had inadvertently heard Nels's conversation with Stewart; she had listened, hoping to hear some good news or to hear the worst; she had learned both, and, moreover, enlightenment on one point of Stewart's complex motives. He wished to spare her any sight that might offend, frighten, or disgust her. Yet this Stewart, who showed a fineness of feeling that ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... a marriage treaty between the little queen and the future Edward VI. In London he was not considered so complaisant as some of the other commissioners, and was not made privy to all the engagements taken by his colleagues (ib. i. 834). But Beton "loved him worst of all," and, when Arran went over to the priestly party, Balnaves was, in November 1543, deprived of his offices ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Hyndsville as well; where they referred to her, succinctly, as "the Scarlet Witch." I heard from her directly only once, and that was the year she sent me a red flannel petticoat for a Christmas present. After that, as if she'd done her worst, she ignored ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the worst anxiety was over, and our mother recovered her composure. It was perhaps advisable for her, a defenceless widow, to leave the city, which might on the morrow be given over to the unbridled will of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... editorial staff of the Eon, through a friend who has influence with the management, and it was just then I was taken ill with this typhoid fever that has left me the wreck you see," he said, with a whimsically sad smile. "That is not the worst, though," he went on, a shadow falling over his upturned face, "I cannot explain it, although my doctor pretends to. I had written—oh! say half-a-dozen chapters of this book before my sickness. As soon as I began to be convalescent, ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... thee Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek, And crucify poor Shakespear once a-week. For thee I dim these eyes, and stuff this head, With all such reading as was never read; For thee, supplying in the worst of days, Notes to dull books, and prologues to dull plays; For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it; So spins the silk-worm small its slender store, And labours till it clouds itself ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... whole scene sink in to his brain—and then, when the maid came in to clear away the dinner-table, she got up and went to the piano, where she played some soft, but not sentimental tunes. Music of a certain sort would be the worst thing for him, but a light air while Marie was in the room could do no harm. Though, when she went over close to him again, she saw that even this pause had allowed him time to think, and that his face was once more overcome by melancholy, although ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... his immense army, and reflecting that in one hundred years not one soul would remain alive. To me, with respect to books, the same effect would be brought about by my own death. Here, said I, are one hundred thousand books, the worst of them capable of giving me some instruction and pleasure; and before I can have had time to extract the honey from one-twentieth of this hive in all likelihood I shall be summoned away.—DE QUINCEY, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... being that the English irritated me and I had so little sympathy with them that I could not write with any pleasure of their work. My sporting blood refused to boil at the spectacle of such a monster Empire getting the worst of it from an untrained band of farmers— I found I admired the farmers. So we decided to chuck it and go to London. I would not have missed it for anything. I would never have been satisfied, if we had not come. I have seen much of the country ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... I have done everything—except ask alms. I have learned, Fleda, that death is not the worst form ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... scorn of the world had opened his eyes to behold of what mean materials was shapen the divinity he had so honored. It may be that the glitter of the gems he had heaped around it had perpetuated the delusion which had first charmed him, and he had thus been saved the last, worst pang of wasted idolatry. It matters not. He died—as all such men must ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... it, and that is the worst of it! The reforms which emanate from the higher places are annulled in the lower circles, thanks to the vices of all, thanks, for instance, to the eager desire to get rich in a short time, and to the ignorance of the people, who consent to everything. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... this class always deceive the ambitious, though those in power distrust them. Probably we shall go on for ever proscribing them and keeping them by us.[48] Poppaea[49] had always had her boudoir full of these astrologers, the worst kind of outfit for a royal menage. One of them, called Ptolemy, had gone with Otho to Spain[50] and foretold that he would outlive Nero. This came true and Otho believed in him. He now based his vague conjectures on the computations of Galba's age and Otho's youth, and persuaded ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... her eyes shot fire. Should she breathe the scorn she felt, and brave the worst? Or should she temporize? Time might bring about a change, when she could safely send the mercenary suitor back to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... defence occupied; and General Meade's attempt to surprise his adversary, by interposing between his widely-separated wings, had resulted in decisive failure. If he fought now, the battle must be one of army against army; and, what was worst of all, it was Lee who held all the ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... from her low seat with brilliant, mocking eyes. "I have thought of that. It would not be the worst thing that could happen. Would you think it ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a foreboding that she was lost; she knew that magic was a crime of the highest degree in Catholic countries, and that she had been detected in the very act. "Well, well;" thought Amine; "it is my destiny, and I can brave the worst." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to and slowly devoured a small frog confined in the same vessel. The large dytiscus beetle is the great enemy of small fish. If the salmon is ever restored to the Thames these creatures will be among the worst enemies of the fry, though in swift rivers they are not plentiful. Frank Buckland states that in Hollymount Pond they killed two thousand young salmon. One of these was put into a bowl with a dytiscus beetle, which, "pouncing upon him like a hawk ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... yourself that the outward and {81} visible in your own life—the words you say, the actions you do, tend to become absolutely different from your real inward life; when you feel that every one is a hypocrite, and you are the worst of all, kneel down at that wonderful service, and take what is the one power of making outward and inward correspond, of making our words a true index of our thoughts, our actions a true presentation of our lives; kneel down and pray that ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... be ready for a hock and seltzer, at any rate," said the Colonel. "This desert dust gives a flavour to the worst wine." ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... was!" persisted Charlotte, anxious for the worst to be believed; and then she gave him a full account of the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... say, 'Liphalet," she went on, "Fred ain't the worst boy in the world, nor the dumbest neither, ef I do say it myself. I ain't a-sayin', mind you, that he 's anything so great or wonderful; but I 've got to thinkin' that there 's somethin' in him besides original sin, an' I should feel that ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... sixteenth year, was wont to come occasionally, express from Dresden, for a week or two, and give the young man lessons on the flute. The young man's Mother, good Queen Feekin, had begged this favor for him from the Saxon Sovereignties; and pleaded hard for it at home, or at worst kept it secret there. It was one of the many good maternities, clandestine and public, which she was always ready to achieve for him where possible;—as he also knew full well in his young grateful ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... one for grabbing you, my dear," the old man replied, smiling upon her, "but as for myself, the grabber would get the worst of it." ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the old books, the books of long ago! Who ever felt Miss Austen tame, or called Sir Walter slow? We did not care the worst to hear of human sty or den; We liked to love a little bit, and trust our fellow-men. The old books, the old books, as pure as summer breeze! We read them under garden boughs, by fire-light on our knees, They did not teach, they did not preach, or scold us into good; A ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... This is a time of great drinking, that I know; but never have I seen my lord drunken. And never hath any man seen me drunken, nor my father, nor my grandsire. There be ever enough sober ones in the worst of times to keep the world right side uppermost. And that thou wilt find when thou hast lived to be forty years old. But thou art but fourteen, and I am foolish to be angered with thee for what is, after all, but lack of experience. How soon come we ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow and the cimeter and the ax" (Enos i, 2o). The Nephites, on the other hand, tilled the land and raised flocks. Between the two tribes wars waged, the Nephites became wicked, and in the course of 320 years the worst of them were destroyed (Book ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... embodies, Madame," said Alain, "are those of fidelity to a race of kings unjustly set aside, less for the vices than the virtues of ancestors. Louis XV. was the worst of the Bourbons,—he was the bien aime: he escapes. Louis XVI. was in moral attributes the best of the Bourbons,—he dies the death of a felon. Louis XVIII., against whom much may be said, restored to the throne by foreign bayonets, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foundation of the Republic, had been to maintain obedience and fidelity to the States-General, the Stadholder, and the province in which they were garrisoned, and at whose expense they were paid. It was impossible to harmonize such conflicting duties and doctrines. Theory had done its best and its worst. The time was fast approaching, as it always must approach, when fact with its violent besom would brush away the fine-spun cobwebs which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
