"At worst" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... help him to catch the horse without showing himself, frightening the thief so by his horrible appearance, that he took warning and became an honest man from that time." "With the permission of the court," said the fellow, "if the thief had got the gift from above to see me, could I help it? But at worst this is a single peccadillo," said he; "it is not above a hundred years since the day which terminated my mortal career, yet how many of my friends and neighbours have I not tempted hither after me, during that time? May I be in the deepest pit, if I have not as much ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... course have left office altogether, or have been open to the imputation of objecting to an arrangement for the conduct of public affairs which had always met with his most decided approbation."[49] At worst, the Solicitor-General can only be blamed for letting his abnormally sensitive conscience lead him into political casuistry, the logic of which might not appear so cogent to the governor as to himself, when the crisis should come. How sensitive that conscience was, may be gathered from ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... sermons as long and tedious as those of an Elizabethan divine. The result is that even novels containing the presentment of love in its most passional phases lose their right to the name. At best they can be called only disparate chapters of fiction; at worst, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... an illicit act and under threat of arrest. The consequences—of a truth—would not be vastly severe for the frequenters of this secret club; fines mayhap, which most of those present could ill afford to pay, and at worst a night's detention in one of those horrible wooden constructions which had lately been erected on the river bank for the express purpose of causing sundry lordly offenders to pass ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... other worries. Radiation had no immediate effect. At worst, it would be a few hours before he ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... popular ideal of the best society. We must have a four hundred made up of the most brilliant artists, authors, doctors, professors, scientists, musicians, actors, and ministers, with their wives, daughters, and sisters, who will walk to one another's dinners, or at worst go by trolley, and occupy the cheaper seats at the opera, and dance in small and early assemblages, and live in seven-room-with-bath flats. Money must not count at all in the choice of these elect and beautiful natures. The question is, how shall we get the dense, unenlightened ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... under the violence of tempests, silently reared their head in more peaceable times; and while the storm was brewing, were courted by all sides, and thus received still some accession to their privileges, or, at worst, some confirmation of them. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... myself sincerely, and my courage failed. I feel that I could never resume the habit of labor, and renounce this mode of life, sometimes rich, as to day, sometimes precarious,—but at least free and full of leisure, joyous and without care, and at worst a thousand times preferable to living upon four francs a week. Not that interest has guided me. Many times have I refused to exchange a lover, who had little or nothing, for a rich man, that I did not like. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... ambition. At worst, he could die for France. It is splendid to have something to die for. It makes life ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "have you ever considered the possibilities of blackmail if the right sort of evidence were obtained under this new 'white-slavery act'? Scandals that some of the fast set may be inclined to wink at, that at worst used to end in Reno, become felonies with federal prison sentences looming up in the background. Think ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... indeed!" chimed Lawless. "And a fig for death, at worst! It has to be done, my master, soon or late. And hanging in a good quarrel is an easy death, they say, though I could never hear of any that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbor hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement—these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the day" written in every ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... be naive enough to believe that the promise to return complete sovereignty retaining only economic rights is a satisfactory solution. It threw fresh light upon the contention that at most and at worst Japan had only taken over German rights, and that since we had acquiesced in the latter's arrogations we had no call to make a fuss about Japan. It revealed the hollowness of the claim that pro-Chinese propaganda had wilfully misled Americans into confusing the few ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... upon it, my dear, that these agreeable assurances, and hopes of his begun reformation, shall not make me forget my caution. Not that I think, at worst, any more than you, that he dare to harbour a thought injurious to my honour: but he is very various, and there is an apparent, and even an acknowledged unfixedness in his temper, which at times gives me uneasiness. I am resolved therefore to keep him at a distance from ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... not at loss for an excuse. Her husband must still be in his office at this hour. He would not be asked for any very strict accounting for his action. At worst there was an approaching riding festival, for which he ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... company camel would already be over-weighted by the mess box and X.'s valise—with its extra blanket and extravagant under-clothing. Great would be the searchings of heart. Still everything always came right in the end—the Brigade sent us some "buckshee" camels at the eleventh hour, or at worst we got permission to send some stuff by train, when it could be delivered in due course somewhere within reach. Something always did have to go by train anyway, for we had now a second blanket per man, and there were not enough camels to carry these, so that round about a ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... would she be at Great Marlow alone? And he knew that hand—how deftly it moved and moved others. Selina Collett would not have invited him with underlinings merely to see a shoreside house and garden. Her silence regarding a particular name showed her to be under injunction, one might guess. At worst, it would be the loss of a couple of days; worth the venture. They agreed to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... printing—has gone through with more or less good fortune. To the door of every generation there comes a knocking, and unless the household, like the Thane of Cawdor and his wife, have been doing some deed without a name, they need not shudder. It turns out at worst to be a poor relation who wishes to come in out of the cold. The porter always grumbles and is slow to open. "Who's there, in the name of Beelzebub?" he mutters. Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... cries the knight, we may yet be forgiven, Or at worst buy the bishop's reversion in heaven; Our frequent escapes in this world show how true 't is That gold is the only Elixir Salutis. Derry ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which I am to present to the Committee for Accounts; and being come to a resolution to conceal nothing from them, I was at great ease how to draw it up without any inventions or practise to put me to future pain or thoughts how to carry on, and now I only discover what my profit was, and at worst I suppose I can be made but to refund my profit and so let it go. At noon home to dinner, where Mr. Jackson dined with me, and after dinner I (calling at the Excise Office, and setting my wife and Deb. at her tailor's) did with Mr. Jackson go to find ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lived an orderly life, but at worst it was only a heedless life. I had been a fool, but not a damned one. There was in me something loftier than a desire for pleasure, something worthier than material ambition. What else lay latent—if anything—I may only surmise. It ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the stain Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain'd war, Then let him know, and tell him Timon speaks it, In pity of our aged and our youth I cannot choose but tell him that I care not, And let him take't at worst; for their knives care not While you have throats to answer. For myself, There's not a whittle in the unruly camp But I do prize it at my love before The reverend'st throat in Athens. So I leave you To the protection of the prosperous gods, As ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... mausoleum, the distribution of a score of histories and several hundreds of human figures on a chapel-vaulting, the raising of S. Peter's cupola in air: none of which tasks can be either lightly undertaken or carried out with ease. At worst, Michelangelo's melancholy might be ascribed to that morbus eruditorum of which Burton speaks. It never assumed the form of hypochondria, hallucination, misogyny, or misanthropy. He was irritable, suspicious, and frequently unjust both to his friends ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... traveller along an old trail, over sandy spaces shadowed by melancholy pines, beside stagnant lagoons, across sluggish streams, and into cypress swamps, the lurking-place of reptiles, the dreary haunt of bats and vultures. The road, at best, was an indifferent bridle path, and at worst, a blind labyrinth of seldom trodden ways in the woods. Arlington carried in his saddle-bags a supply of bread and cheese, and he kept ready primed, in holster at his pommel, a brace ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... tried to speak words of encouragement. The charge being utterly false, at worst a capable solicitor might succeed in refuting it. He was about to take his leave, when he remembered that he did not know Daniel's address: Mrs. ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... effort was so to bear himself that the unhappy truth should not be suspected, and so well he played his part that he made it harder for himself to endure. It was not only that he had not betrayed himself either in the past or present by word or deed, but that he had been able to so control himself at worst that he had met his kinsman's eye with a clear glance, and chosen such words of response and sympathy, when circumstances so demanded of him, as were generous ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to make amends. What manner of man he was she did not know. But what availed that to keep her, a creature of fire and dew, from the clutch of emotions strange and poignant? He had called himself a liar and a coyote, yet she knew it was not true, or at worst, true in some qualified sense. He might be hard, reckless, even wicked in some ways. But, vaguely, she felt that if he were a sinner he sinned with self-respect. He was in no moral collapse, at least. It was impossible ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... be rewarded for long expectation, and boundless expense; for he should then, he said, be sure of her person, and had long secured her heart. He knew he had strong prejudices and strange scruples to combat; but was prepared, and should not find them difficult to conquer; at worst, his steward in a parson's habit would lull ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... the above traits, many hackers have difficulty maintaining stable relationships. At worst, they can produce the classic {computer geek}: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or her craft. Fortunately, this extreme is far less common than mainstream folklore paints it — but almost all hackers ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... nobody entered the room with a somersault, tripped over a pin or hung his hat on the scenery. They all behaved as if they were presenting us with what is known as a human document, to be regarded au grand (or, at worst, au petit) serieux. The fun—and there were some very pleasant touches—was not so much the fun of a huge and preposterous joke, but rather the humour of character or incidental detail. The part of Lord Glandeville, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... of arrival—the Fitchburg Railroad. One should have dropped down upon the sacred spot by parachute; or, at worst, have come on foot, with staff and scrip, along the Lexington pike, reversing the fleeing steps of the British regulars on that April day, when the embattled farmers made their famous stand. But I remembered that Thoreau, whose Walden solitude was disturbed by gangs of Irish laborers laying ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... asked," Mr. Merriman wrote, on his own and Mr. Sauer's behalf, with reference to the suggestions of the Home Government, "to deal with a number of men who have, at worst, taken up arms in what they, however erroneously, considered to be a righteous war—a war in which they joined the Queen's enemies to resist what prominent men both here and in England have repeatedly spoken of ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... she would obtain that, and obtain it as quickly and quietly as possible; no talk, no exposure, no disagreeable comments. This was the main point, and to carry it, Ethel Thorne felt herself capable of more than the surrender of one small child. The separation at worst would only be partial; she could see the boy every day if she wished—even after her marriage with Cecil Cumberland. Nesbit had promised, and in all her experience of him she had never known him break his word. Then she could retain the little fellow ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... great aversion, so they have still been under Heart-breaking Sollicitudes, how they might therein best serve both God and Man? In fine, Have there been faults on any side fallen into? Surely, they have at worst been but the faults of a well-meaning Ignorance. On every side then, why should not we endeavour with amicable Correspondencies, to help one another out of the Snares wherein the Devil would involve us? To wrangle the Devil out ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Katherine). This your free, And sweet ingenuous confession, binds me Forever to you; and it shall go hard, But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, That now seems blindly straying; or, at worst, In me you have still a sister.—Some wives, brother, Would think it strange to catch their husbands thus Alone with a trim widow; but your Katherine Is arm'd, I think, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... brought me flowers. I never had any constitution—trust a Latin race for that—and I became very ill indeed. With a man like you, a chill at worst; with me, pneumonia in a day. Then she came to see me herself, saw the doctor, got in all sorts of things, and was coming to nurse me through the night herself. God bless her for the thought alone! I was supposed not to ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... bailiffs and jails! when one of the sisterhood advised me to take lodgings in a part of the town where I was unknown, and pass for an heiress, by which artifice I might entrap somebody to be my husband, who would possibly be able to allow me a handsome maintenance, or at worst screen me from the dread and danger of a prison, by becoming liable for whatever debts I should contract. I approved of this scheme, towards the execution of which my companion clubbed her wardrobe, and undertook to live with me in quality of my maid, with the proviso that ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... On a transient view, bribery is rather a subject of disgust than horror,—the sordid practice of a venal, mean, and abject mind; and the effect of the crime seems to end with the act. It looks to be no more than the corrupt transfer of property from one person to another,—at worst a theft. But it will appear in a very different light, when you regard the consideration for which the bribe is given,—namely, that a Governor-General, claiming an arbitrary power in himself, for that consideration delivers up the properties, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... momentary shock of a pistol- bullet—what is it? Perhaps it may save the wretch after all from the pangs of some lingering disease; and then again I shall have the character of a murderer, if known to have shot him; he will with many people have no such character, but at worst the character of a man too harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in protecting his property. And then, if not known as the man who shot him, where is the shadow even of vengeance? Strange it seemed to me, and passing strange, that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Qualitie soever, Interlarded with Poetry." Per contra, the learned Acidalius published a book in Latin and afterwards in French, to prove that women are not reasonable creatures. Modern theologians are at worst merely sub-acid, and do not always say so, if they think so. Meanwhile most persons have been content to leave the world to go on its old course, in this matter as in others, and have thus acquiesced in that stern judicial decree, with which Timon of Athens ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... protected, would itself protect individuals, as far as such protection is possible, against the errors and superstitions of State medicine, which are at worst no worse than the errors and superstitions of private practice, being, indeed, all derived from it. Such monstrosities as vaccination are, as we have seen, founded, not on science, but on half-crowns. If the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... always weightily and with good sense. To take a concrete example, he, no more than Lord Cromer, would have intoxicated his mind with a fantastic idea like that of the Cape to Cairo railway as did Mr. Rhodes. That was at its best only a symbol and at worst the caprice of an Imperial egoist. Though Mr. Chamberlain had gained from his training and business success some of the best qualities of the statesman, that is, confidence in himself, and his sound practical sense, he was not, as I think his greatest admirers ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... good," he muttered, "but hospitality may hide in that hovel. Knock and know." And having by this time arrived at the door of the dwelling, he proceeded to rain a succession of blows on it with his clinched fists, as if he were determined not to be denied, and, at worst, to ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... itself implies it; it means that something is lacking, that one man has a thing which another has not. But all men are equal, therefore, argues the democrat, I have no failing; therefore I need not try to conceal and control my alleged failings, as they are at worst merely mannerisms, and are ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... doubts and suspicions, and with misgivings on Marian's behalf but indifferently mitigated by the reflection that, at worst, the girl had escaped unhindered and alone in her private car. By now she ought to ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,—that it has no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended upon it, and so would Judge Douglas, if his ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... kind of beauty remembered from the great design of past art; but it will lead nowhere, since it is cut off from the very experience, the passionate personal interest in people and things, which gave design to the great art of the past. It is at best satirical, at worst parasitic, using up all devices of design and turning from one to another in a restless ennui which of itself can give no enrichment. It may have its uses, since it insists upon the supreme importance of design and provides a new method for the expression of three dimensions; ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... Rose's manner that Catherine's action with regard to the picnic had not been unmeaning nor accidental, as on second thoughts he had been half-trying to persuade himself. Evidently those about her felt it to be ominous. Well, then, at worst, when they met they would meet on a different footing, with a sense of something critical between them. Oh, if he did but know a little more clearly how he stood! He spent a noonday hour on a gray rock on the side of the fell between Whindale and Marrisdale, studying the path opposite, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by the unwisdom of a civilisation which required ignorance of innocence, she had as yet lost none of her sweetness and confidence in herself and in a world which she considered a friendly one at best and, at worst, more ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... peruke; of natural walking into that which will disarrange no wristbands; of plain language into quips and embroideries; and of human life in general, from a green race-course, where to be defeated was at worst only to fall behind and recover breath, into a slippery pole, to be climbed with toil and contortion, and in clinging to which, each man's foot is ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... harsh and strange, Something is wrong: there needeth a change. But what or where? at the last or first? In one point only we sinned at worst. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Cheverino was soon concealed by volumes of thick smoke. Our regiment was almost covered from the Russians' fire by a piece of rising ground. Their bullets (which besides were rarely aimed at us, for they preferred to fire upon our cannoneers) whistled over us, or at worst knocked up a shower of ...
— How The Redoubt Was Taken - 1896 • Prosper Merimee
... of season; at worst, the season 's out of it," sez Hammy to me: "and furthermore, good friend, in life, as on the stage, your part must be a role of actions, not of words." I used to say over the things 'at this pair made up, until I had 'em ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... one thing to be done,' she said. 'It is childish to attempt to deceive a creature who is evidently not what he seems. Let me go myself, my parents. Trust me to do my best. And, at worst, if I perish, it will be in a good cause. Better it should be so than that our people should be driven from their homes, the whole country devastated, and all ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... aside only if not expressed truly. There is a period in man's life when his feelings are the pathos of the inexpressible, the anguish of vagueness. The poetry which attempts its expression cannot be called baseless—at worst it may be worthless; but it is not necessarily even that. The sin is not in the thing expressed, but in the failure ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... equivalent for the mimes' appearance: nothing but the painter's bare notion (probably quite incongruous with our notion) of what these figures ought to look like. Take Macbeth as an instance. From a definite painting of him what do we get? At worst, the impression of a kilted man with a red beard and red knees, brandishing a claymore. At best, a sombre barbarian doing nothing in particular. In either case, all the atmosphere, all the character, all the poetry, all that makes Macbeth live for us, is lost utterly. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... way-warden may do that: I wear out no ways, I go across country. Mend! saith he? Why I can but starve at worst, or groan with the rheumatism, which you do already. And who would reek and wallow o' nights in the same straw, like a stalled cow, when he may have his choice of all the clean holly bushes in the forest? ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... watching for him at the Gare du Nord, with a mind to follow and wait for his prey to make some incriminating move, this chance-contrived change of vehicles and destination would throw the detective off the scent and gain the adventurer, at worst, several ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... prudent course, and staying where we were until it could be seen how matters were going to turn out. But Yagi and he looked at things with different eyes. In the first place, Yagi did not believe that the portents indicated anything more serious than, at worst, a sharp thunderstorm, while at the same time his instructions from Kamimura were that the reconnaissance was to be executed with the utmost dispatch, and that, this done, he was to immediately ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... follow the directions given. So far I had done nothing to get back my own. I had been driven from pillar to post without making a single step forward. At worst I could but fail, while it might be possible that by this step I might be revenged ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... but it can't be early. Oh, may we meet you! Our little Penini is radiant, and altogether we are all in good spirits. Which is a shame, you will say, considering the state of affairs at Sebastopol. Forgive me. I never, at worst, thought that the great tragedy of the world was going on there. It was tragic, but there are more chronic cruelties and deeper despairs—ay, and more exasperating wrongs. For the rest, we have the most atrocious system in Europe, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... like pride. Look at the case on its merits. On the one side a disappointment for Miss Cameron. I don't doubt she's counting on coming, but at worst a worldly disappointment. And the very grievous humiliation for you of writing to tell her that you have made a mistake. You deserve that, Finlay. If you wouldn't be a man who has jilted a woman you have no business ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... drove "air wedges" over our lines in this vertical or "cloud bank" formation, ploughing a scar path a mile or more wide through our positions. But at worst, to us, this did not mean the loss of more than a dozen men and girls, and generally their raids cost them one or more ships. They cut paths of destruction across the map, but they could not cover the entire area, and when they ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... be ground for our feet, sky for our eyes, At least, at worst. All I can whisper is dreams And faith I hold, being doubtful of all things "wise" And all the outrage ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... like a cold-blooded villain, now, I would at worst be classifiable. But I intend the girl no harm, I am honestly fond of her. I shall talk my best, broaden her ideas, and give her, I flatter myself, considerable pleasure: vulgar prejudices apart, I shall leave her no whit the worse. Why, the dear little thing, not for the ransom ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... which, in Mr. Abernethy's inquiry, I regard as little more than a mere diagram on his slate, for the purpose of fixing the attention on the intellectual conception, or as a possible product, (in which case electricity must be a composite power,) or at worst, as words quae humana incuria fudit. This which, in inanimate Nature, is manifested now as magnetism, now as electricity, and now as chemical agency, is supposed, on entering an organized body, to constitute its vital principle, something ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... For certain Either som one like us night-founder'd here, Or els som neighbour Wood-man, or at worst, Som roaving robber calling ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... native is seen less often; that it is long since he ventured to cross the last line, where death set up landmarks in the slain. At length the secret comes out: the tribe which welcomed the first settler with shouts and dancing, or at worst looked on with indifference, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Lovelier by far than Rye, not only in itself, but because of what it offers you, those views of hill and marsh and sea with Rye itself, like I know not what little masterpiece of Flemish art, in the middle distance eastward, Winchelsea is a place never to be left or at worst never to be forgotten. One comes to it from Rye on a still afternoon of spring when the faint shadows are beginning to lengthen, expecting little. In fact, if the traveller be acceptable, capable ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... she remained far more aware of him and his opinions than of theirs. She would have liked Gregory to show more consciousness of her and his relationship, of the fact that she, too, had Fanshawe blood in her veins. She would have liked to impress, or please or, at worst, to displease him. She would very much have liked to secure him more frequently for her dinners and her teas. He vexed ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... opportunity. His sleep and the economy of oxygen may save the ship. However, the commander allows half an hour's grace for music. There is a gramophone, of course, and the "ship's band" performs on all manner of instruments. At worst, a comb with a bit of tissue paper ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... room, each the very ditto of the other. There is only one way out of it: when the destined dance arrives he must go boldly up to one of them with the usual "My dance, I believe?" For there's, at any rate, an even chance of his being right; while, at worst, if she answers, "I think not," his doubt is at once solved in favor of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... As I had anticipated, he had fainted for want of food. Of course, I was very sorry for him, for his plight was pitiable, but he was playing for high stakes, and a little starvation does no man any harm. In his case there was half a million at the end of his brief martyrdom, which could, at worst, only last another twenty-four hours. I reckoned that Mme. la Marquise could not keep the secret of her husband's possible whereabouts longer than that, and in any event I was determined that, despite all risks, I would go myself to the police on ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... "Far from it. At worst an unhappy victim of his own carelessness in loosing a peril upon his neighborhood. You're forgetting a connecting link; the secretive red-dot communications from New York City addressed by Moseley to himself on behalf of some customer ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the people took heart; and even at the sight of the enemy's shipping did not lose all hope. There were no soldiers aboard; Butler's army could not dare the passage of the forts in the shells of transports that contained it; the fleet, cut off as it was from all re-enforcement and supply, could, at worst, only shell the city and retire—again running the gauntlets of the two forts; and then the only loss to the city—for the flotilla in its incomplete state could not have been made effective as a defense—would have been the cotton and the trifling ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... matter of opinion; but, at all events, we do not even then become participators in an injustice which we did not create, and do not uphold or help to perpetuate, but merely accommodate ourselves to. At worst, we are but accessories to it after the fact. In simply accepting the situation and striving to make the best of it for ourselves, without trying to make it better and only abstaining from making it worse for others, our conduct may be contemptible, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... 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 heart, and never forgot, however old he grew! Illustrious Quantz, we say, gives Fritz ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... characterise. The proportions of the sitter must be sacrificed to the proportions of the portrait; the lights are heightened, the shadows overcharged; the chosen expression, continually forced, may degenerate at length into a grimace; and we have at best something of a caricature, at worst a calumny. Hence, if they be readable at all, and hang together by their own ends, the peculiar convincing force of these brief representations. They take so little a while to read, and yet in that little while the subject is so repeatedly introduced in the same light and with the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... religion to 'a more convenient season,' when the pleasures of life should have lost their charm, and they themselves should be drawing near the close of their pilgrimage. That theory which made a deadly sin of that which was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... He was enthusiastically certain of its importance and value to the kingdom and his dynasty. So little did he object to the agent of Ralegh's alleged intrigue through Cobham with the Spanish Court that he never allowed a symptom of impatience on that side to escape him. Ralegh's guilt at worst depended wholly on the reality of his partnership in Cobham's dealings with Arenberg. In the spring of 1604, Arenberg, who had left England at the end of the previous October, before the Winchester trials commenced, returned as the Archduke's envoy for the negotiation of peace ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... men also humiliate us, degrade us, jeer at, ridicule the miseries that they and their society entail upon us. Yet for sooth, they must be spared the discomfort of becoming a little infatuated with a woman for a time—a short time, at worst! Their feelings must ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... letting you know that in his past there is a sadness which a career of excitement and danger is necessary to enable him to forget. Having been won over as a sympathiser and admirer, the reader is ready to believe that at worst the dashing outlaw could never have been a very bad fellow. Certainly the author has carefully kept him from participation in the grosser acts of lawlessness of which his revengeful old partner Ben Marston, the more typical bushranger, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... often eloquently represented by leaders like Felix Adler, W. M. Salter, Washington Sullivan, Stanton Coit, and others; all these teachers with one accord deprecate and dismiss theological doctrines as at best not proven, at worst a hindrance, and commend instead morality as the all-embracing, all-sufficing and all-saving religion. To quote Mr. Salter, who certainly speaks ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... wish thy lot, now bad, still worse, my friend, For when at worst, they say, things always mend. To a Friend in Distress. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Meldon, "I must be off. It's nearly ten o'clock, thanks to your lazy habit of not breakfasting till after nine. Fortunately, I've still got Doyle's bicycle. Not that it's at all a dependable machine. The pedal will probably come off once at least on my way in. However, at worst, I'll be there ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... from those around and within them; so long as, like the men of the Middle Ages, they blandly threw everything into their own image, or, like those of the Renaissance to some extent and the Augustan period still more, regarded other ages at worst with contempt, and at best with indulgence as childish—the historical novel could not come into being, and did not. It only became possible when history began to be seriously studied as something more than a chronicle of external events. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on time depend, Things when they are at worst will mend; And let us but reflect On our condition th' other day, When none but tyrants bore the sway, What did ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... gallows, and a groan damnation! But such the public candour, without fear My client waives all right of challenge here. No newsman from our session is dismiss'd, Nor wit nor critic we scratch off the list; His faults can never hurt another's ease, His crime, at worst, a bad attempt to please: Thus, all respecting, he appeals to all, And by the general voice will stand ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... a house. Trying to be your own architect is as foolish as drawing a sketch of little Jerry on canvas and then calling in a house painter to smear on a daub of blue for his coat, a bit of yellow for his hair, white for his collar, and just anything for the background. At worst, though, this futuristic result can be taken to the attic, turned face to the wall and forgotten; but a botched house won't let you forget. You have to live in it along with your mistakes, day after day ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... Ezra, the night he died, Called sons and sons' sons to his side, And spoke, 'This world has been harsh and strange; Something is wrong: there needeth a change. But what, or where? at the last, or first? In one point only we sinned, at worst. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most—that it has no practical effect; that at best, or rather I suppose at worst, it is but an abstraction. * * * How has the planting of Slavery in new countries always been effected? It has now been decided that Slavery cannot be kept out of our new Territories by any legal means. In what do our new Territories now ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the Paris had said, and the "vrai monde" would not come in its greatest rush until after Christmas and the New Year; yet the Casino was filled with a throng of persons many of whom looked immensely rich and important, and none of whom, at worst, was shabby. Even those who were dowdy appeared well-to-do. Mary saw that it was not necessary to gamble in groups. Men and even women, all alone, pushed their way through the thick wall of hats and shoulders round the table, sometimes being lost altogether, or sometimes emerging again in three or ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to shut in an army. Its very numbers were against it. Once in, if the way out were blocked, it could never leave it again. Some of the generals,—General Wimpfen among them—saw this, and were uneasy; but the little court around the emperor was confident of safety. 'At worst,' they said, 'we can always reach the Belgian frontier.' The commonest military precautions were neglected. The army slept soundly on the night of August 31. At the worst they believed themselves to have a line of retreat open to Mezieres, a town on the frontier of Belgium. No ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... for a start early to-morrow morning. We are to have a sandcart with a desert horse for Cleopatra, who has tried a camel and found it wanting. I fancy she thinks a sandcart the best modern substitute for a chariot; and at worst, it ought to be as comfortable. Slaney has promised a yellow one —cart, not horse. The horse, by request, is to be white. The other ladies are having camels. I daren't think of Miss Hassett-Bean at the end of the week. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... set himself more malevolently to compass his death. Onate maintained, on the other hand, that their prisoner was worth more to them alive than dead. There was a chance that he might weaken before morning and tell secrets. At worst they would still have his life as a card to hold in case of need over the head of the rebels. If it should turn out that this was not needed, he could be executed in the morning ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... late, now," said Sir George, bitterly. "If they do condemn me I shall claim the benefit of clergy. I know some of the prayers, and if I can only find the right page I shall get on well enough. They will only fine me, though, at worst." ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... teachers of sexual morals in England. Children deal with the impressionable age and give the early bias. Adults stand aside, and teach only extreme reticence. The discussions of boys are often obscene. As a consequence vast numbers grow up with the idea that unchastity is a gallant adventure, or, at worst, only a peccadillo. Even in old age such men look back to past intrigues with satisfaction. After marriage another tradition, or bias, also taught by English boys, comes into action—the tradition to keep the plighted word, to "play the game." ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... is probable, indeed, that they really anticipated no possibility of an attack, as the Dijon franc tireurs were the first who appeared upon the scene of action; and the Prussians were, consequently, in entire ignorance of the vicinity of any armed body of the enemy and, at worst, apprehended a stray shot from a straggler from one of the French armies, hidden in ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... said the banker, hopefully, "if we must face this thing, we must. The probabilities are that it will turn out as Hobart says. At worst it can only be a sad interruption and episode. Hobart will be better satisfied in the end if he does what he ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... my puppets or my plot-wires creak a bit noisily,—what then? Creaking, at worst, is a sure indication of movement,—of action,—of incessant progress of sorts. A thing that creaks is not standing still and gathering mildew. It moves. Otherwise it could ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... a fine time, — save for the horror of the Rock-trail. ... He shuddered. ... Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that ghastly game. ... It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar lay, ten feet — twenty — a hundred deep, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... free, And sweet ingenuous confession, binds me For ever to you; and it shall go hard, But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, That now seems blindly straying; or at worst, In me you have still a sister.—Some wives, brother, Would think it strange to catch their husbands thus Alone with a trim widow; but your Katherine Is ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... swum the harbour with his clothes on so had he plunged into any adventure that came to hand; he knew Fear just as little as he knew Consequence. Well, now he found himself for the first time in his life face to face with Fate. All his adventures up to this had been little things involving at worst loss of life by accident. This was different; it involved his whole future and the future of the girl who had mastered ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... be exceedingly easy to match and beat it out of the author himself—you must go to the maddest of the seventeenth-century metaphysicals—say to Edward Benlowes himself. But this is nothing: it is at worst an obvious playful exaggeration, very like some things of Dickens's own transposed into another key. But take this opening of the fifteenth chapter ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... meditation, and there he ripens with the swedes, so that by the back-end of the year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the reward of manhood is neither more nor less than this sensation at the ribs. Soon thereafter, or at worst, sooner or later (for by holding out he only puts the women's dander up), he is led captive to the Cuttle Well. This well has the reputation of being the place where it is ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... Staff in an encouraging manner; he was genuinely diverted. "At worst it's a worthy and uplifting—ah—fiction. Go on.... Then you're not a Secret ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was chiefly, if not wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The government and the Chief Justice thought it convenient to lay the whole blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at worst guilty only of aggravated manslaughter, was tried and executed for murder. His dying speech is one of the most curious monuments of that age. The savage spirit which had brought him to the gallows remained with him to the last. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse of the Whigs ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
