"Destitution" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... back into the house she went up into the old lady's room with the intention of breaking to her the news of Katherine Fanning's widowhood and destitution, and of her own desire to invite her to come ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... organisation, and more leisure for pastoral intercourse with his flock, might have effected more. The vicar's chief concern indeed seemed to be with the prosperous and healthy members of his parish; if there was a case of destitution, of illness, of sorrow, it was certainly inquired into; some hard-featured lady, with a strong sense of rectitude and usefulness, would be commissioned to go and look into the matter. She generally returned saying cheerfully that she ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... under the guns of Valenciennes, and were disorganized and unable to resist, why did the allies remain six months in front of a few towns and permit the Committee of Public Safety to organize new armies? When the deplorable condition of France and the destitution of the wreck of the army of Dampierre are considered, can the parades of the allies in front of the fortresses in Flanders ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... to the English Opera will gratify those of the uninitiated, who are anxious to get acquainted with the manners and customs of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... attempted to make his escape by sea, was tossed about in a storm for some days, until at last he was driven on the coast in South Wales. He concealed himself for some days in the mountains. Here he was hunted about for a time, until he was reduced to despair by his destitution and his sufferings, when at length he came forth and delivered himself ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... mightily holped up by what you've been saying, and I reckon we ought to be doing something for them poor humans." In his poverty, in his need, his heart went out to those who seemed to him to be in greater destitution. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 3, July, 1900 • Various
... this reserve to pay his people, during the brief but expensive seasons of seed-time and harvest, must either work himself or starve. I have known no instance in which such sale has been attended with ultimate advantage; but, alas! too many in which it has terminated in the most distressing destitution. These government grants of land, to half-pay officers, have induced numbers of this class to emigrate to the backwoods of Canada, who are totally unfit for pioneers; but, tempted by the offer of finding themselves landholders ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... have replied that she had no choice between these long walks and utter destitution for herself and her children; but she said, cheerfully, that it was only since the weather had become so warm that she had found the walk at all beyond her strength, and the hot weather ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... mountain was found to consist of a fragment of original table-land, very marshy, and full of deep sloughs, intersected with small rills of water, pure and pellucid as crystal, and a profusion of wild parsley and celery. The prospect was one dreary scene of destitution, without a single ray of hope to relieve the misery of the desponding crew. After some days, the dead cow, hams, and cheese, were consumed; and from one end of the island to the other, not a morsel of food could be ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what 'we' (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable-looking woman is called into the boardroom, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. 'Where do you live?' inquires one of the overseers. 'I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William's-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... papers dated 1610-19 shows that an encomienda of Indians was granted to the seminary of Santa Potenciana for its support, in consequence of the destitution suffered ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... woman, still feeling persuaded that I had acted under a delusion in going to her house. How was it possible to associate the charming object of my heart's worship with the miserable story of destitution which I had just heard? I stopped the boy on the first landing, and told him to announce me simply as a doctor, who had been informed of Mrs. Brand's illness, and who had ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... be transformed into many other things. It gives the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little less ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Niagara and Toronto in Ontario came some twenty thousand more. It needs no {313} trick of fancy to call up the scene, and one marvels that neither poet nor novelist has yet made use of it. Here were fine old Royalist officers of New York reduced from opulence to penury, from wealth to such absolute destitution they had neither clothing nor food, nor money to pay ship's passage away, now crowded with their families, and such wrecks of household goods as had escaped raid and fire, on some cheap government transport or fishing schooner bound from New York Harbor to Halifax or ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... indeed, to hear that. But you were premature. I was deploring your destitution, not of cash, but of confidence. You think the Natural Bone-setter can't help you. Well, suppose he can't, have you any objection to telling him your story? You, my friend, have, in a signal way, experienced adversity. Tell me, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... referring to their ostentatious self-righteousness, pathetically shows the unfitness of pitting against one another teachers who share in an equality of forlorn destitution and contempt (iv. 6-13). He concludes this section with an affectionate but authoritative speech: he says that he has sent Timothy to Corinth, and hopes shortly to ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... were to a man all killed, imprisoned, or transported, Mr Simon Tappertit, being removed from a hospital to prison, and thence to his place of trial, was discharged by proclamation, on two wooden legs. Shorn of his graceful limbs, and brought down from his high estate to circumstances of utter destitution, and the deepest misery, he made shift to stump back to his old master, and beg for some relief. By the locksmith's advice and aid, he was established in business as a shoeblack, and opened shop under an archway near the Horse Guards. This being a central quarter, he quickly made a very large ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... our steps and abandoning the expedition. It was urged, however, (and with some propriety, too,) that inasmuch as I had abandoned a similar expedition only a few weeks before and given as my reasons for so doing, the "utter and entire destitution of the country," and that in the face of this we were again sent through the same country, it would be ruinous on all sides to return again without first meeting the enemy. Moreover, from all the information General Washburn had acquired, there could be no considerable force in ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... that the poor boy who, without any fault of his mother, had come into the world with a stigma on his birth, now, without any neglect of his father, was left in a state of complete destitution as well as ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... uttered these words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed upon him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that friend was absent from London and on so dangerous an expedition, he was ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hand or not employed, to light our whale-oil lamp by blowing a live coal held against the wick, often swelling our cheeks and reddening our faces until we were on the verge of apoplexy. I love to tell of our stage-coach experiences, of our sailing-packet voyages, of the semi-barbarous destitution of all modern comforts and conveniences through which we bravely lived and came out the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... priestesses, however, not unlike the prophets of antiquity, are subject to be scanted of due honor, or, at all events, of what is more essential than this as contributing to keep soul and body from parting company prematurely. The fact of her being in a state of destitution was notified not long ago to the magistrate of the Lambeth police-court, and that unappreciative functionary, while consenting to subscribe, with others, for her relief, openly expressed his conviction that she would be best off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... National Executive in any reasonable temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must, at best, attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout whole States. It is hoped that the already deeply afflicted people of those States may be somewhat more ready to give up the cause of their ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... Accordingly, as each individual among us hath a parent, so should we regard the whole people as parents of the state, and, so far from depriving them of what the state bestows, we ought, in the absence of such bounty, to find other means to keep them from destitution. If the rich will adopt this principle, I think they will act both justly and wisely; for to deprive any class of a necessary provision, is to unite them in disaffection to ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... not wholly composed of castles and cottages, and there are very many happy homes in it, and thousands upon thousands of happy people in them, in spite of the melancholy climate, the destitution of the poor, and the luxury of the rich. God is good. He is not only merciful, but a just judge. He equalizes the condition of all. The industrious poor man is content, for he relies on Providence and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Shocked at the destitution of her cherished son, Madame Bridau bought him a complete outfit of clothes at Havre. After listening to the tale of his woes, she had not the heart to stop his drinking and eating and amusing himself ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... may be, and the Condor shall spread her canvas wings for a further flight to Valparaiso, he has not the remotest idea. When he enters the town, it is to meet other skippers with ships crewless as his own, and exchange condolences on their common destitution. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... charms of the two young ladies, and spent nearly a month looking for work in their delightful company. It was not until they realised that their funds were reduced to almost nothing that they came down to earth with a thud. They had less than one hundred dollars between them and destitution. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... state of religious destitution in many settlements in Newfoundland and Labrador had been, I thought, sufficiently shown; and the benefits and blessing conferred, and to be conferred, by the Society, thankfully stated and fully demonstrated. I have, ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... attendant anaemia, may be induced by bad habits, destitution, or constitutional depravity. Sickly forms, wrecks of health, address our senses on every side. All these subjects evidently once had a capital in life, sufficient, if properly and carefully husbanded, to comfortably afford them vital ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... will hail the prospect of Emancipation, but will deprecate the length of time. They will feel that it gives too little to the now living Slaves. But it really gives them much. It saves them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend immediate Emancipation in localities where their numbers are very great; and it gives the inspiring assurance that their ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... want during the twenty-five years after this, and die in droves. I estimate that in 1715 more than one-third of the population,[5102] six millions, perish with hunger and of destitution. This description is, in respect of the first quarter of the century preceding the Revolution, far from being too vivid, it is rather too weak; we shall see that it, during more than half a century, up to the death of Louis XV. is exact; so that instead of weakening ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... generally be found that those who know what it is to have been in need and destitution are very much less afraid of it, and consequently more inclined to extravagance, than those who know poverty only by hearsay. People who have been born and bred in good circumstances are as a rule ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... everywhere become shyer than it used to be in the days before slumming (now itself of the past) began to exploit it. At any rate, I thought that in my present London sojourn I found less unblushing destitution than in the more hopeless or more shameless days of 1882-3. In those days I remember being taken by a friend, much concerned for my knowledge of that side of London, to some dreadful purlieu where I saw and heard and smelled things quite as bad as any ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... are full of reflections of this sort. The destitution of the Campagna of Rome demonstrates triumphantly what an aversion mankind has to arbitrary government, while the well-populated mountain of St Marino shows what a natural love they have for liberty. Whigs abroad were well caricatured by Smollett in Peregrine Pickle ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... a style of pomp and ostentation far beyond that of the emperor himself. His officers imitated him in extravagance. Even his soldiers lived in luxury. To support this lavish display many thousands of human beings languished in misery, starvation threatened whole provinces, and destitution everywhere prevailed. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... not fewer things, not the return to an age of poverty or dreary destitution; we need more power over things; to let the man, so long buried beneath the money and the lands and houses, come to the top; to set ourselves over our things; to make them serve us, minister to our lives ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... shoulders; small black boys learned on their back little brothers equally inky, and, gravely depositing them, shook hands. Never had I seen human beings so clad, or rather so unclad, in such amazing squalid-ness and destitution of garments. I recall one small urchin without a rag of clothing save the basque waist of a lady's dress, bristling with whalebones, and worn wrong side before, beneath which his smooth ebony legs emerged like those of an ostrich from its ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... I refer to, great commercial distress prevailed. Amongst the working and lower classes the most frightful indigence and destitution were experienced. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... more nearly to his own. The return of Violet to her old home, for instance, is most fortunate in its failure to follow the rules, that attractive young lady being quite content to be whisked back in the turning of a page from destitution in Lambeth to the place she loves, without knowing or caring at all how the miracle has been wrought; while we, reader and author alike, equally in the dark, are too happy to have her home to worry about it either, preferring to wander with her through the dear old rooms and let explanations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... morning, and the hotel band was going through its repertoire for the benefit of a champagne party on the lawn. There was nothing melancholy about this party; and King couldn't help saying to Mrs. Farquhar that it hardly represented his idea of the destitution and depression resulting from the war; but she replied that they must do something to keep ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Bubble! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial! Situated as thou art in the very heart of stirring and living commerce, amid the fret and fever of speculation—with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House about thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... change from the illegal persecutions [in the form of pogroms] to the legal persecutions of the third of May? Maltreated, plundered, reduced to beggary, put to shame, slandered, and dispirited, the Jews have been cast out of the community of human beings. Their destitution, amounting to beggary, has been firmly established and definitely affixed to them. Gloomy darkness, without a ray of light, has descended upon that bewitched and narrow world in which this unhappy tribe has been languishing so long, gasping for breath in the suffocating atmosphere ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... pampered existence led by the dogs at the castle. She had none of Strap's veneration for the epithet of gentleman. Eliza owned to a "sneaking kindness for people of quality." But Mary cared only for a man's intrinsic merit. His rank could not cover his faults. Therefore, with the misery and destitution of so many men and women staring her in the face, the amusements and occupations of the few within Lady Kingsborough's household continually grated ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... thirst. Happily, after two hours' walking, a charming country lay open before us, covered with olive trees, pomegranate trees, and delicious vines, all of which seemed to belong to anybody who pleased to claim them. Besides, in our state of destitution and famine we were not likely to be particular. Oh, the inexpressible pleasure of pressing those cool, sweet fruits to our lips, and eating grapes by mouthfuls off the rich, full bunches! Not far off, in the grass, under the delicious shade of the trees, I discovered a spring of fresh, cool water, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... friends who have been in Florida, and have seen the destitution of the colored people there, have put into our hands five thousand dollars for the establishment of anew school in one of the destitute regions of that State. The good friends who are interested so largely in this move desired that the Secretary should go from New England ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... means of subsistence were left to the mass of the agricultural population. In admiring the greatness and glory of the city, therefore, we must remember that there was a gloomy counterpart to its splendor in the very extended destitution and poverty to which the mass of the people were everywhere doomed. They lived in hamlets of wretched huts along the banks of the river, in order that the capital might be splendidly adorned with temples and palaces. They passed their lives in darkness and ignorance, that seven hundred ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... tall stout reed (Arundo donax) resembling sugarcane. Although taxes and other burdens are heavy, and wages very low, yet to a mere visitor like myself there appeared none of those occasional signs of destitution which strike one in walking through a town at home, nor did I see ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... they fled in consternation, determined to be beyond their reach at all hazards. This scene of confusion, fright and distress was continued throughout the forenoon. In every part of the city scenes of destitution, misery and woe met the eye. Families were hurrying away from their homes, without a shelter,—without means of conveyance,—without tents, money, or a day's provision, with as much of their household stuff as they could carry in their ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... members of the brood were not involved in this graceless agitation. The complaints stopped with Guinivere. Harold, Rosemary and Rutherford were too young to realise the state of destitution into which the family had fallen. They were quite happy, contented and, so far, unaware of the gravity of a situation which was more or less apparent to their elders. Frederick, Marie Louise and Wilberforce formed ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... given you and all I've done for you gets no thanks, goes for nothing, I find: but after this all I can do against you I'll do, and do it with good reason. By the Lord, I'll put you down where you came from, the depths of destitution, I will. By heaven, I'll make you appreciate what you are now ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... wily legacy hunter should dispatch an agent to Africa and catch us in our lie? Or even suppose the hireling servant, glutted with prosperity, should tip off his cronies or give the whole scheme away out of spite? There would be nothing for it but flight and, in a fresh state of destitution, a recalling of poverty which had been driven off. Gods and goddesses, how ill it fares with those living outside the law; they are always on the lookout for what is coming to them!" (Turning these possibilities over in my mind I left the house, in ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... we were alone he informed me that since my departure he had undergone great misery and destitution, having, during the whole period, been unable to find a master in need of his services, so that he was brought nearly to the verge of desperation; but that on the night immediately preceding my arrival he had a dream, in which he saw me, mounted on a ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... confetti. Primarily, of course, they touched my patriotic emotions, and brought tears to my eyes; also they provided me with the printed matter I required, for I found on the back of them some short but striking little scientific essays about some kind of pill. Comparatively speaking, in my then destitution, those tickets might be regarded as a small but well-chosen scientific library. Should my railway journey continue (which seemed likely at the time) for a few months longer, I could imagine myself throwing myself into ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... when McGrath had been present, and therefrom the "Record" went on to deduce that not even Peter Rathbawne, with all his obstinacy, all his blindness to the welfare of his employees, was responsible for their present destitution in the same sense as was the Lieutenant-Governor, who might have avoided the strike by a conciliatory word, and who, instead, had advised Mr. Rathbawne to fight the working-people until the last ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... carried out in England. One or two Templars died in prison, but none were executed; and the majority were dismissed with pensions or secluded in monasteries. Edward and his nobles took good care to make a large profit out of the transaction. The resources of the Temple alone kept the king from destitution during the period between the death of Gaveston and his reconciliation with the earls. Many barons laid violent hands on estates belonging to the order, and long held on to them despite papal expostulation. The Hospitallers found that the lands of their ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... still they are Christians, and carry their infants to the Greek Church in Nabloos for baptism. What a deplorable state of things! Since the date of this journey the Church Missionary Society's agents have in some degree ministered to the spiritual destitution of these poor people by supplying some at least with ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... her little child came down to see us. She stood for a moment and looked around her and at the two small children on the blankets, and we could hear her murmur mucha pobre (very poor.) She could see our ragged clothes and dirty faces and everything told her of our extreme destitution. After seeing our oxen and mule which were so poor she said to herself "flaco, flaco" (so thin.) She then turned to us, Rogers and I, whom she had seen before, and as her lively little youngster clung to her dress, as if in fear of such queer looking people as we were, she took an orange from her ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... chancery. Constant efforts were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail exorbitant salaries, and to put down electioneering corruption. In 1809 Erskine introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1810 there were earnest, if somewhat futile, debates on spiritual destitution, the non-residence and poverty of the clergy, and the scarcity of places of worship. Moreover, early in 1811, a premonitory symptom of the repeal movement caused some anxiety in Ireland. It took the form of a scheme for a representative assembly to sit in Dublin, and manage the affairs of the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... but a precarious subsistence by his pen; although from the little we can glean of his history, the inference is, he was improvident, and easily led away by gay, dissipated companions. One of his biographers gives a melancholy account of the destitution of his latter days, and states, that he was reduced to the necessity of borrowing a shilling, to satisfy the cravings of hunger, from a gentleman, who, shocked at the distress of the author of "Venice Preserved," put a guinea into ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... all your efforts to get corroborative evidence. There is no use in inquiring about Violet Strachan; she is dead three years ago. I paid her, on Hogarth's account, a small weekly sum, that she used to come to my office for to keep her from destitution, but that payment is at an end. The other witness could only prove the irregular marriage, which there is no doubt about, as Henry Hogarth owns to it in his will. The only evidence that would be worth anything ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... gentleman. He had been in his youth a great admirer of the style of Alessandro Scarlatti, an eminent composer, both in opera and sacred music, of whom little is known, except his work; he left a son, Domenico, who was hardly less famous. But he was a confirmed gambler, and left his family in great destitution, from which the famous artificial soprano, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... of invisible treasures. The more fiercely they were assailed, the dearer became the cause for which they suffered, and the more profoundly the moral springs of faith were stirred in their souls. The natural revulsion of their souls was from destitution, contempt, peril, and pain on earth to a more vivid and magnified trust in a great reward laid up for them ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... state of destitution—and that is a remarkably low state in London!—old Liz had an air of refinement about her tones, words, and manner which was very different from that of the poor people around her. This was not altogether, though partly, due to her Christianity. ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... o'clock. In the letter which you will take to father, I have told him our destitution; and that the money spent for your railway ticket has been obtained by the sacrifice of the diamonds and pearls, that were set around my mother's picture; that cameo, which he had cut in Rome and framed in Paris. Beryl so much depends on the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Beth, to whom Hugh was as the apple of her eye, used to make him little presents of things that he needed—his wardrobe was always scanty and threadbare—and would at intervals lament his state of destitution. "I can't bear to think of the greedy creatures taking away all the ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... spoke English well enough to seem a native of the country, and I knew how I must behave if I wished to be let alone. Although the landlady was a worthy woman, her house was not exactly suitable for me; my stay in England might be protracted, and if I came to destitution I should be wretched indeed; so I resolved to leave the house. I received no visitors, but I could not prevent the inquisitive from hovering round my door, and the more it became known that I saw no one, the more their curiosity ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... unmistakable warnings of an approaching landslip. The alarm was given, and the villagers, hurriedly leaving their cottages, saw the whole place slide downwards and become a mass of ruins. No lives were lost, but, as only one house remained standing, the poor fishermen were only saved from destitution by the sums of money ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... she coincided eagerly. "Why couldn't he come along? There will be plenty of room if I operate the car. It is a case of destitution of which Uncle Percival has just learned—a widow and three children actually suffering. Surely it can do no harm for Captain West to ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form." (535, 1.) Thus the Small Catechism sprang, as it were, directly from the compassion Luther felt for the churches on account of the sad state of destitution to which they had been brought, and which he felt so keenly during the visitation. However, Luther's statements in the German Order of Worship concerning the catechetical procedure in question and answer quoted above show that ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... relations. The poor woman did not long survive his ill-usage and neglect, and died in 1782. Hatfield himself found great difficulty in raising money, and was, at last, thrown into the King's Bench prison for a debt of L160. Here he was very miserable, and was in such absolute destitution that he excited the pity of some of his former associates and victims who had retained sufficient to pay their jail expenses, and they often invited him to dinner and supplied him with food. He never lost his assurance; and, although he was perfectly well ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... savagely, for that unlucky sentence recalled to him his late interview with his employer, and his present destitution. "Knew! And why have you dared to hunt me out, and halloo me down?—why must this insolent tyranny, that assumes the right over these limbs and this free will, betray and expose me and my wretchedness wherever ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tranquillity of the province in a great measure depended upon silencing these troops—who were not only clamorous and menacing, but in a state of nakedness and destitution—which rendered it probable that they might help themselves at the expense of the inhabitants—I consented to the application of the Junta, placing at their disposal the monies taken in the Portuguese treasury, amounting in cash to Rs.62.560 $423 ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... ill-treatment and wretchedness. But the presence of a Christian in the city could not long be tolerated, and the Foullans threatened to besiege it. The doctor, therefore, left it on the 17th of March, 1854, and fled to the frontier, where he remained for thirty-three days in the most abject destitution. He then managed to get back to Kano in November, thence to Kouka, where he resumed Denham's route after four months' delay. He regained Tripoli toward the close of August, 1855, and arrived in London on the 6th of September, the only ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Carlovingian line, A.D. 887, and the division of the empire, the Church of Rome and the Christian world fell into a highly demoralized state, attributable to the destitution to which ecclesiastical bodies were reduced by the frequent predations of bands of robbers, the immorality of the priesthood, and the power of electing the popes falling into the hands of intriguing and licentious patrician females, whom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... they passed a vote, earnestly soliciting the Rev. William Brattle of Cambridge, to visit them. He was always a known opponent of Cotton Mather. To have selected him to come to them, in their distress and destitution, indicates the views then prevalent in the Village. He went to them and guided them by his advice, until they obtained ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... of antagonism, but a free, good-natured intercourse between all classes, and a general look of ease and contentment. Of course, there are poor in Turin, as everywhere else,—except Japan, if we may credit travellers; but nowhere are my eyes saddened by the spectacle of that abject destitution which blunts, nay, destroys, the sense of self-respect. The operatives, especially,—what are here called the braccianti,—this salt of all cities, this nursery of the army and navy, this inexhaustible source of production and riches, impress me by their appearance of comfort and good-humor. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... them—that would have been quite contrary to oriental indifference and fatalism—and then because it would have been excessively difficult to make them out, in the confused ash heap which had taken their place. The number of families reduced to destitution must have been very considerable, but individual charity is very liberal amongst the Mussulmans, as indeed amongst all people possessed of religious faith. I got home, at one o'clock in the morning, worn out. Shortly afterwards the wind rose. If it had begun to blow a little earlier, nothing ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... pair of shoes? Man sometimes gives his charity in a rough way, and it falls like the fruit of a tree in the East, which fruit comes down so heavily that it breaks the skull of the man who is trying to gather it. But woman glides so softly into the house of destitution, and finds out all the sorrows of the place, and puts so quietly the donation on the table, that all the family come out on the front steps as she departs, expecting that from under her shawl she will thrust out two wings and go right up toward ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... been at sea three years; he knows nothing of my past misery and destitution, nor of my ever wearing boy's clothes. Uncle, please don't tell him, especially of the boy's clothes." And in the earnestness of her appeal Capitola clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the old man's face. How soft those gray eyes looked when ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... vast and profound as itself. God discovered it. From the bosom of His own fulness He saw that being without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she said ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... among them would be so like dwelling under the oak of Mamre, in the tents of Abraham. From what he remembered of Partan Jeannie's reputation as a being only tolerated and assisted by his mother, on account of her extreme misery and destitution, he could believe that the ne'er-do-weel son, who must have forsaken her before he himself was born, might have really been raised in morality by association with the grave, faithful, and temperate followers of Mohammed, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the land that sometimes parents destroyed their children, rather than let them grow up to a life of suffering. This vast system of organized oppression, like all tyranny, "was not so much an institution as a destitution," undermining and impoverishing the country. It lasted until time brought its revenge, and Rome, which had crushed so many nations of barbarians, was in her turn threatened with a like fate, by bands of northern barbarians ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... our actions but our stomachs. I know not whether it was piety or economy that swayed her soul, but I never met a person who was so rigid as this lady in the observance of the church calendar, especially whenever a day of abstinence allowed her to deprive us of our beef. Nothing but my destitution compelled me to ship in this craft; still, to say the truth, I had well-nigh given up all idea of returning to the United States, and determined to engage in any adventurous expedition that my profession offered. In 1824, it will ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... a clear case of destitution and collapse. John Storm began to feed the old creature with the chicken and milk sent up ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... suffered for want of food. Banks suspended specie payment, manufactories were forced to stop work, and paralysis fell on the whole industry of the nation. It was estimated that ten thousand persons were thrown out of employment. These soon used up their earnings, and destitution and suffering of course followed. Their condition grew worse as cold weather came on, and many actually died of starvation. At length they became goaded to desperation, and determined to help themselves to food. Gaunt men and women, clad in tatters, gathered in ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... a state of abject destitution. His rooms were bare of every salable object save the cheapest of necessary toilet articles, and a rather extravagant color-box and set of brushes. But this fact of his having refused to sacrifice the implements of his art, put a final touch to Ivan's growing friendship ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... and wreak his vengeance upon all who presumed to give evidence against him; while many of the most respectable families in the districts were ashamed to place on record the suffering and dishonour inflicted on their female members; and still more had been reduced by them to utter destitution, and driven in despair into other districts. To use his own words—"The once flourishing districts of Gonda and Bahraetch, so noted for fertility and beauty, are now, for the greater part, uncultivated; villages completely deserted in the midst of lands devoid of all tillage everywhere ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... his right hand, and his head too, in business and money matters—and now, of course, more than ever—was at his wits' end. He discussed the disquieting, threatening problem with some friends of Chopin, and through one of them the composer's destitution came to the knowledge of Miss Stirling. She cut the Gordian knot by sending her master 25,000 francs. [FOOTNOTE: M. Charles Gavard says 20,000 francs.] This noble gift, however; did not at once reach the hands of Chopin. When Franchomme, who knew what had been done, visited ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... alone but mysterious darkness, must be woven into the fabric of love. In this world the soul may sometimes wander as if in pastures, sometimes is poised breathless and intent. Sometimes it is fed by beauty, sometimes by most difficult truth, and experiences the extremes of riches and destitution, darkness and light. "It is not," says Plotinus, "by crushing the Divine into a unity but by displaying its exuberance, as the Supreme Himself has displayed it, that we show knowledge of ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... text-book." (Universal Encycl., 2, 96.) These conditions were not greatly improved until printing was invented. Luther had to do with people who were emerging from the sad conditions of that age, the effects of which were still visible centuries after. He writes: "The deplorable destitution which I recently observed, during a visitation of the churches, has impelled and constrained me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian Doctrine, in such a small and simple form. Alas, what manifold misery I beheld! The common people, especially in the villages, know ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... growing steadily darker and darker all the time. And then we naturally contrasted our circumstances with hers: this freedom and sunshine, with her darkness and chains; our comradeship, with her lonely estate; our alleviations of one sort and another, with her destitution in all. She was used to liberty, but now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature by nature and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an animal; she was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom where ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... Pensacola, over Yorktown and Newbern.' We have girded them in on the Mississippi, on the Atlantic, and on the Gulf. We know that they are destitute of almost every thing save mere food and arms, and that every month sinks them deeper and deeper in destitution and misery. The war is on their own soil, and their own armies are a scourge and a curse to their own estates. Every where the plantation and the farm are made desolate—every where the direst distress is taking the place of comfort. And all this they brought on themselves by the most determined ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... small mud-covered box, with four bare walls and a narrow doorway facing toward the south. Herein lived and suffered a family of human beings—freedmen and women without the stigma of slavery, but with all the misery of destitution and often of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and the establishment of his better principles might qualify him for receiving it for his own distribution. It was difficult to believe that his subjection to opium could much longer resist the stings of his own conscience and the solicitations of his friends, as well as the pecuniary destitution to which his opium habits had reduced him. The proposed object was named to Mr. C., ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... make his studies and his charts. He made them so thoroughly that he died of yellow fever before having begun his work, having come to the end of his money and leaving his widow in the most cruel destitution. Countess Larinski said to her son: "We have nothing more to live on; but, then, is it so necessary to live?" She uttered these words with an angelic smile about her lips. Abel set out for California. He undertook the most menial services; he swept the streets, acted as porter; what ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... lightly upon the next few days. I would rather forget the atmosphere of squalor and destitution that pervaded our household when the carpets had been stripped up and we were stumbling about among half-packed barrels upon bare, resounding floors. I do not seek to retrace in detail the process of packing, which began with some buoyancy and system, to degenerate at last in its endlessness ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... their de facto government they took part in repressing the uprising of the Piedmontese against the French at Carmagnola. And when three hundred wounded soldiers, fleeing from the Austrian army, who pursued them to the Vaudois frontiers, reached Bobbio in a state of appalling destitution, M. Rostaing, the pastor, and his people, fed them out of their scanty stores, dressed their wounds, and carried them on their shoulders over frightful precipices, and along snow-covered defiles impassable to ordinary traffic. This act of humanity ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... compensation, some property, valued at 60 l. a year, which he had purchased when the estates of the Chapter of Westminster were sold. In the great fire, 1666, his house in Bread-street was destroyed. Thus, from easy circumstances, he was reduced, if not to destitution, at least to narrow means. He left at his death 1500 l., which Phillips calls a considerable sum. And if he sold his books, one by one, during his lifetime, this was because, knowing their value, he thought he could dispose ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... sand and thorny bushes, filthy cast-aways of clothing, worn-out boots, and broken bottles. The forlorn loneliness of this poor abode, and the perfection of its Californianness, in all the circumstances of exposure, frailness, destitution, and dirt, were enough of themselves to make it an object of interest to the not-too-busy passer; yet, to complete its pitiful picturesqueness, Pathos had bestowed a case of miniatures and a beautiful child. Beside the entrance of the tent a rough shingle was fastened to the canvas, and against ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... training for the larger responsibilities that awaited her. There was at first little in the situation to beguile her spirits. It was a bad season of rain and want, and she was seldom out of the abodes of sickness and death. So great was the destitution that she lived on rice and sauce, in order to feed the hungry. And never had she suffered so much from fever as she did now ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives it a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice and wonders what it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look up the precious souls ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... privative word, denoting destitution; as, fatherless, faithless, pennyless."—Webster's Dict., w. Less. "Bay; red, or reddish, inclining to a chesnut color."—Same. "To mimick, to imitate or ape for sport; a mimic, one who imitates or mimics."—Ib. "Counterroil, a counterpart or copy of the rolls; Counterrolment, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hostile march; and many little acts of protective kindness had been shown by both the brothers (generally at Raymond's instigation) towards some feeble or miserable person who might otherwise have been left in absolute destitution. These small acts of kindness won them goodwill wherever they went, and also assisted them to understand the words and ways of the people as they would ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... power does not increase wages is because it does increase the value of land. It is the universal fact that where the value of the land is highest civilisation exhibits the greatest luxury side by side with the most piteous destitution. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the manes of the BUBBLE! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... whom my friends may be convinced of the reality of my distress, if they pretend to doubt it, as I suppose they do. But to be more explicit is impossible; it would be too humiliating to particularize the circumstances of the embarrassment in which I am unhappily involved—my utter destitution. To disclose all might, too, be liable to an inference which I hope I am not so void of delicacy, of natural pride, as to endure the thought of. Pardon me, madam, for thus giving trouble, where I have no ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... and his hands lay upon his knees, loosely weak and expressive of utter hopelessness. Very slowly he raised his face at last and turned his eyes upon the only friend that seemed left to him in his destitution. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... this to be a little more than one-third of the ultimate cost of these Liquors to the consumers, that cost cannot be less than One Hundred Millions of Dollars per annum!—a sum amply sufficient, if rightly expended, to banish Pauperism and Destitution for ever from the British Isles. And yet the poor trudge wearily on, loaded to the earth with exactions and burdens of every kind, yet stupifying their brains, emptying their pockets and ruining their constitutions with these poisonous, brutalizing liquors! I ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley |
