"Embitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hope as he does; she is only a woman, and the future is not hers to make at will. She is not the conqueror, the lord and king of her own destiny; there are so many difficulties in the path of her life which she would like to forget at this moment, so as not to embitter the happiness which has come to her; there is her shiftless mother and vagabond father, there is the pressure of poverty and filial duty—it is easy for Andor—he is ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... yearns after the hidden God. To a reasonable man and no other is to be reasoned with on matters of truth and interest the assumption of this brief season as all, will be a double motive not to hasten and embitter its brevity by folly, excess, and sin. If you are to be dead to morrow, for that very reason, in God's name, do not, by gormandizing and guzzling, anticipate death to day! The true restraint from wrong and degradation is not a crouching conscience of superstition ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... for instance, were to—to promise to be his wife, he would be sure that it was for himself she cared! She did not know that he was anything other than just Mr. Drake Vernon. No carking doubts of the truth and purity of her love would ever embitter his happiness. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... a certain vicar, or clergyman, Dr. Primrose and his family, who pass through heavy trials and misfortunes. These might crush or embitter an ordinary man, but they only serve to make the Vicar's love for his children, his trust in God, his tenderness for humanity, shine out more clearly, like star's after a tempest. Mingled with these affecting trials are many droll ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... harbor-master, land commissioner, gold warden, etc., was chairman, and introduced me, for what reason I never knew, except to embarrass me with a sense of vain ostentation and embitter my life, for Heaven knows I had met every person in town the first hour ashore. I knew them all by name now, and they all knew me. However, Mr. Myles was a good talker. Indeed, I tried to induce him to go on and tell the story while I showed the pictures, but this he refused to do. I may explain ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... uncertainty. Doctor Anderson tells us, that he undertook the chief direction; and Mr. Nichols,[2] that he assisted Archibald Hamilton the printer. Whatever his part might be, the performance of it was enough to waste his strength with ignoble labour, to embitter his temper by useless altercation, and to draw on him contempt and insult from those who, however they surpassed him in learning, could scarcely be regarded as his superiors in native vigour and fertility of mind. "Sure I," said Gray, in a letter to Mason, "am something a better ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... other reminders of our acquaintance that you may happen to possess; I enclose the locket, the ring, your letters, and the tie that you worked. We discussed this matter the other day, but I cannot believe that you will still hold to a determination that can serve no purpose, except perhaps to embitter feelings on both sides. From what I have known of you I cannot believe that you are indulging motives of revenge—but, otherwise, I must confess that I am at a loss.—Expecting to receive the letters by return, I am, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... fortune which he amassed amidst the ruin of the national finances, and the palace—now known as Somerset House, London—which was rising before the eyes of the world amidst the national defeats and misfortunes, combined to embitter the irritation with which the council ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... insistent in his protestations of innocence) that there was nothing between them. But if so, it was due solely to Concha—she had plenty of admirers and, besides, her old time friendship would impel her not to embitter Josephina's life. Concha was the one who had resisted and ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had to expect!" said the lady, at once allowing her desire to embitter her relations with her husband to get the better of her interest in the measure she desired to pass through Parliament. She left the room, closing the door after ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Boers, frankly regretting the loss of that independence for which we took the field; but also as those who wish to give no offence to any honourable opponent. Our aim has been to do equal justice to both sides in the war; to unite and reconcile, not to separate and embitter, two Christian peoples destined to ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... eloquent signs which marked our interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself, by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart, without which her very love would have degraded its object. It is not in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable doubts of the source from which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that the very thing which should have stood for opportunity to the boy had been used to embitter him and drive him into danger. But he must not lose his birthright. An almost passionate desire welled in Rose's heart to hold on to it for him. True, she too had been a slave to the farm. Yet not so much a slave to it, she distinguished, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... thought to Jack Tosswill. Miss Pendarth had been right, after all. That sort of experience might well embitter the whole of the early life of such a priggish, self-centred youth; and while he was chewing the cud of these painful, troubling thoughts there came a woman's voice ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... by calm reflection, or when those, who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes, when the yearly revenue scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different from the present will arise, and embitter the remembrance of former follies. A mind disarmed of its rage feels no pleasure in contemplating a frantic quarrel. Sickness of thought, the sure consequence of conduct like yours, leaves no ability for enjoyment, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... but rendered its possessor happy, when a prince of keener feelings would have died of despair. This insouciant, light-tempered, gay, and thoughtless disposition, conducted Rene, free from all the passions which embitter life, and often shorten it, to a hale and mirthful old age. Even domestic losses, which often affect those who are proof against mere reverses of fortune, made no deep impression on the feelings of this cheerful old ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... take a serious view of things, having caught something of her mother's gloomy Puritanism, which her own unhappy disposition and contracted life had done nothing to sweeten, and not a little to embitter. She was not, perhaps, incapable of improving the occasion for her brother's benefit even then, by warnings against devotion to perishable idols, and hints of chastenings ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... to live estranged (and shall die so) from all my relations. My nearest relations, it is true, died years ago; the others are scattered over the world, and scarcely remember their relationship to me. Their ancestors, who have done their utmost to embitter my life, seem to have left it as a legacy to their children to forget me, and to trouble themselves as little about old Aunt Roselaer as if she had never existed. But man must think of his end. I am in my seventy-fifth year, and a recent ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... him to fill my mind with suspicions that embitter it against all approaches? Why should I seal my soul away in endless gloom, because one man, out of all Adam's race, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... no one can blame you for granting such an indulgence, while all must admire the goodness of heart which dictates that sentiment." Would to God, thought I, that all workhouses were governed by matrons as capable of sympathizing with the feelings of the unfortunate inmates; and that all those who embitter poverty by directing the separation of parents from their children, and husbands from their wives, may themselves become the object of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... under the ban of his displeasure; but from the moment his condition was reported, Jackson forgot everything but the splendid services he had rendered on so many hard-fought fields; and in his anxiety that every memory should be effaced which might embitter his last moments, he had followed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... would be of consequence to him; for even after all hope was gone and the disorder increased rapidly, I felt that if by agitating him I should afterwards imagine I had shortened his life by one hour, that reflection would embitter my whole life. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I succeeded even better than I could have hoped; for toward the end of the week, when every symptom was bad, the surgeon (probably because I desisted from enquiring and did not appear agitated) doubtful what I thought, yet, judging ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... excuse yourself to me, unless you wish to embitter my shame. I'm obliged to you for offering to share your destitution with me. I must try to run my face with the landlord," ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Government to take, and it is, as the Chief Secretary said, a courageous one. But with all its difficulties and dangers it is the right course. We who have been through the mill know what the effect of coercion is. We know that you do not put down Irishmen by coercion. You simply embitter ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... Let us not embitter the discussion.... From a certain point of view, you are both of you right.... There is something to be ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... which he had vowed to carry out, were not even discussed at the Conference. The outcome of this attitude—one cannot term it a policy—was to leave the best of the ideas which he stood for in solution, to embitter every ally except France and Britain, and to scatter explosives ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... best and most exemplary of mothers, entirely from anxious solicitude about a son, who, in spite of all admonition and remonstrance, had allowed the growth and practice of disobedience for several years to embitter his kind parents' lives; and whose headstrong violence and self-will at last brought the being whom he most loved on earth to ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... restoration if Charles would take an active part in the war. But the negotiations were suddenly cut short by the daring of the Dutch. In spite of the king's threats they attacked the Spanish fleet as it lay in English waters, and drove it broken to Ostend. Such an act of defiance could only embitter the enmity which Charles already felt towards France and its Dutch allies; and Richelieu grasped gladly at the Scotch revolt as a means of hindering England from joining in the war. His agents opened ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... who still renews The hope, from Error's deeps to rise forever! That which one does not know, one needs to use; And what one knows, one uses never. But let us not, by such despondence, so The fortune of this hour embitter! Mark how, beneath the evening sunlight's glow, The green-embosomed houses glitter! The glow retreats, done is the day of toil; It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring; Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... wind up harsh to embitter to outflank a riot to hiss thanks to his efforts I cannot bear it any longer in ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... dreadful brother uterine, This kinsman feared, Tellus, behold me come, Thy son stern-nursed; who mortal-mother-like, To turn thy weanlings' mouth averse, embitter'st, Thine over-childed breast. Now, mortal-sonlike, I thou hast suckled, Mother, I at last Shall sustenant be to thee. Here I untrammel, Here I pluck loose the body's cerementing, And break the tomb of life; here I shake off The bur o' the world, man's ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... remorse threw him into a serious illness, in which his strong constitution wrestled long with death. While he lay at Jericho near his end he gave orders for the execution of Antipater also; and to embitter the joy of the Jews at his removal he caused their elders to be shut up together in the hippodrome at Jericho with the injunction to butcher them as soon as he breathed his last, that so there might be sorrow throughout the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... was very unusual, and Nick chafed under it. It indicated that he was up against men as good as himself, and his vain work of the past ten days served only to aggravate him, and embitter his grim and inflexible determination to ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... your husband's fate not hard enough, That you embitter it by such reproaches? Have you not ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... an armed truce might still have been preserved, had Zut been content with the evil she had wrought, and not thought it incumbent upon her further to embitter a quarrel that was a very pretty quarrel as it stood. But, whether it was that the milk and fish of the Salon Malakoff lay sweeter upon her memory than any of the familiar dainties of the epicerie Caille, or that, by her unknowable feline instinct, she was irresistibly ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... sent, will sometimes embitter a life-time. We once saw an old gentleman, with a wise, fine head, calm face, and a most benevolent look, beg of a postmaster to return him a letter which he had dropped into the box. To do so, as everybody knows, is illegal; but won over by the old gentleman's ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... of the Village, Council it was determined that nothing at all should be said to Black Marianne about it. It would be wrong, they said, to embitter the last few years of her life by taking her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... which the Popular Tale shows itself most hostile is that of avarice. The folk-tales of all lands delight to gird at misers and skinflints, to place them in unpleasant positions, and to gloat over the sufferings which attend their death and embitter their ghostly existence. As a specimen of the manner in which the humor of the Russian peasant has manipulated the stories of this class, most of which probably reached him from the East, we may take ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... we are to see the drink-traffic abolished everywhere, it has never appeared to us to be desirable to join in agitations of a political kind on the subject. And the wisdom of this attitude has been shown, on both sides of the Atlantic, by the manner in which this question has been used to embitter party strife. But it was a puzzle at first to know by which course to steer. When a Licensing Bill was before the English House of Commons, The ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... and secure of the obedience of his people, Vasco Nunez liberated his prisoners, and resolved to sally forth into the environs and to occupy his men in expeditions and discoveries; but, while engaged in making his preparations, he received, to embitter his satisfaction, a letter from his friend Zamudio, informing him of the indignation which the charges of Encisco, and the first information of the treasurer, had kindled against him at court. Instead of his services being appreciated, he was accused as a usurper and intruder; he was made responsible ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... labored the first of the Maskilim, an idealist from beginning to end. Persecution did not embitter, nor poverty depress him. And when he passed away quietly (February 12, 1860) in the obscure little town in which he had been born, and which has become famous through him, it was felt that Russia had had her Mendelssohn, too. Strange to say, he little suspected ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Theology, all of which, however, had first been submitted to the test of that anxious maternal Index Expurgatorius, lest some drop of infidelity or impurity should trickle in unawares, to darken or embitter the pure crystal waters of his soul. Ah, thou poor fond mother, so unreasoningly ignoring the fact that each of us must somehow eat his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... train so numerous and sumptuous as totally to eclipse the imperial retinue; and deeply offended him by wishing to postpone the marriage, from his jealousy of creating for himself a rival in a son-in-law who might embitter his old age as he had done that of his own father. The mortified emperor quitted the place in high dudgeon, and the projected kingdom was doomed to a delay of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... be blotted out, that this kind poor soul might find love and peace in the kingdom of Heaven, and might not learn there what might make bitter the memory of his last year of rapture and love. She was so simple that she forgot that no knowledge of the past could embitter aught when a soul looked back ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... divinities, who could read the secrets of our hearts; we were less ashamed of committing faults, more afraid of being accused of them: we learned to dissemble, to rebel, to lie: all the vices common to our years began to corrupt our happy innocence, mingle with our sports, and embitter our amusements. The country itself, losing those sweet and simple charms which captivate the heart, appeared a gloomy desert, or covered with a veil that concealed its beauties. We cultivated our little gardens no more: ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... always going to be like this? You're widowed, I'll admit; but your married life lasted only a year, and your husband was much older than yourself. You were little more than a child at the time, and that one short year can't seem much more than a dream now. Surely that ought not to embitter ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... seals his fate; if he would not watch for me, he would be sent away, and go hunting with some happier master: but he watches, and is wise, and faithful, and miserable; and his high animal intellect only gives him the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and desire, and affection, which embitter his captivity. Yet of the two, would we rather be watch-dog ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... argument only that he made use of which had some weight with me, but yet it would not preponderate. He told me my brother was gone to a notorious and scandalous habitation of women, and that, if I left him to himself for ever so short a space longer, it might embitter his state through ages to come. This was a trying concern to me; but I resisted it, and reverted to my doubts. On this he said that he had meant to do me honour, but, since I put it out of his power, he would do the deed, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Ah, you know not what you are doing! You know not what a hell sisters can make for one another, if they cherish such tempers. You know not how bitterness and harshness may grow among you to a dreadful habit; how you may become tormenting spirits to each other, and embitter each others' lives. And it could be so different! Sisters might be like good angels the one to the other, and make the paternal home like a heaven upon earth! I have seen both the one and the other in families: a greater contrast is not to be found on earth. Ah, think, think only ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... ache can be without relief When Love Himself draws near; No cup can empty stand, no grief Embitter God's ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... aggravated the remorseless violation of Belgian neutrality have only aroused general indignation, and have at the same time exasperated the opposing nations and armies. Contrary to the tales which appear in the sensational journals, which are naturally as eager today to embitter the war as they were formerly to bring it about, I am assured that the German armies in France are repudiating the unworthy excesses of the beginning of the campaign and are respecting life and private property. This ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... food prices in Great Britain and France. The public was made to feel a personal pride in submarine exploits. And at the same time the Navy editorial writers brought up the old issue of American arms and ammunition to further embitter the people. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... to continue in serfdom, to use this form of address, and denounced its neglect as disrespectful to the "Master" or "Mistress." When these laws ceased to be operative, the custom of the white race generally was still to demand the observance of the form, and this demand tended to embitter the dislike of the freedmen for it. At first, almost the entire race refused. After a while the habit of generations began to assert itself. While the more intelligent and better educated of the original stock discarded its use entirely, the others, and the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... courts of law would never be so crowded with petty, vexatious, and disgraceful suits were it not for the herds of pettifoggers. These tamper with the passions of the poorer and more ignorant classes; who, as if poverty were not a sufficient misery in itself, are ever ready to embitter it by litigation. These, like quacks in medicine, excite the malady to profit by the cure, and retard the cure to augment the fees. As the quack exhausts the constitution the pettifogger exhausts the purse; and as he who has once ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... in its probable consequence, she could not reflect without the deepest concern. Her own situation gained in the comparison; for while she could esteem Edward as much as ever, however they might be divided in future, her mind might be always supported. But every circumstance that could embitter such an evil seemed uniting to heighten the misery of Marianne in a final separation from Willoughby—in an immediate and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the murder of those who hold him in bondage. Take away from him this cause of dissatisfaction, and this incentive to insurrection, and then these "impracticable hopes," which now sometimes flit before his imagination, will no longer embitter his hours of labor, and urge him to the commission of those horrid deeds of massacre, which, though they may glut a momentary revenge, must result disastrously, not only to the slaves engaged immediately in their perpetration, but to all that ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... confession of his anguish and despair. But the necessity of self-control, the necessity of concealing from her a knowledge which might only, by impressing her imagination, expedite her doom, while it would embitter to her mind the unconscious enjoyment of the hour, nerved and manned him. He checked by those violent efforts which only men can make, the evidence of his emotions; and endeavoured, by a rapid torrent ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mistake of believing a part of a mystery, while you hesitate about believing all. Were you to deny the merits of the atonement altogether, your position would be much stronger than it is in believing what you do. But, Roswell, we will not embitter the moment of separation by talking more on this subject, now. I have other things to say to you, and but little time to say them in. The promise you have asked of me to remain single until your return, I most freely make. It costs me nothing to give you this pledge, since ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... may abide in righteousness, and not fall from God's grace and from obedience to him into the service of the devil. By anger and revenge the devil tempts you, endeavoring to get you again into his toils and to embitter your heart and conscience until you shall ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect—a process which occurs in every dialectical victory—you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes,[1] all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one's own advantage. Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to punish me, but this instead of making me turn unto Thee, O my God, only served to afflict and embitter ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... thought she, "embitter his life; I will try and be cheerful. I must not think of myself so much. If I can but make him happy, what need I ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... behind. Affection also might have jealously deterred Jane from giving Lola her father's infrequent letters. But affection cannot excuse what is unworthy; and Lola's thoughts ran vaguely with a distrust which did something to embitter the ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... brother's face, sure of his approval but, waving his uplifted hand, he answered gravely: "No, Charmian! What I, a man, can assume, might be fatal to you, a woman. The present is not sweet enough for me to embitter it with wormwood from the future. And yet you must cast one glance into its gloomy domain, in order to understand me. You can be silent, and what you now learn will be a secret between us. Only one thing"—here he lowered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the friends and patrons of literature,—Maximilian, Henry VIII, Francis I,—on the thrones of Europe, and a humanist pope, Leo X, at the head of the Church, a very different revolution from that which he had planned, had begun and was to embitter ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... had envied. No one had ever told him that "Nathan der Weise" was thus afflicted. It was as soul that he had appealed to the imagination of the world; even vulgar gossip had been silent about his body. But how this deformity must embitter ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and not only pardons all the conspirators, but rewards Vitellia with his hand. The opera was produced at Prague on the 6th of September, 1791, and the cold reception which it experienced did much to embitter the closing years ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... they are but few on either side. It is a grave question for lovers of the union whether the final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these, and fatally increase the number ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... utterly destroyed in subsequent earthquakes; and that after the persecution of the archbishop the sardines in Manila Bay almost wholly disappeared. Even after the prelate's restoration, other controversies arise, which embitter his few remaining years; and he narrowly escapes capture by the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... had been in that company we pursued through the prairie fire. Altogether, I think Hamilton's coming made matters worse rather than better. That I had failed after so nearly effecting a rescue seemed to embitter him unspeakably. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... scolding wife Usurps a jolly fellow's throne; And many drink the cup of life, Mix'd and embitter'd by a Joan. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... been committed before he succeeded to power. But his readiness to follow in these rash footsteps, and to deepen every fatal impression which they had made;—his insulting reservation of the Tea Duty, by which he contrived to embitter the only measure of concession that was wrung from him;—the obsequiousness, with which he made himself the channel of the vindictive feelings of the Court, in that memorable declaration (rendered so truly mock-heroic by the event) that "a total repeal of the Port Duties could not be thought ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... man capable of conciliating the Dutch and bringing the war to a happy issue. Others asserted that his again taking up the reins of Government would be considered by the Afrikander Bond—which was very powerful at the time—as an unjustifiable provocation which would only further embitter those who had never forgiven Rhodes ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... me: she even reproached me with what I ate, and for the slightest fault I was unmercifully beaten. The neighbors, thinking to serve me, told my father of the treatment I experienced. He endeavored to protect me, but his interference only served to embitter her still ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... accept, and that of Palmerston, which they could—Sidney Herbert paid off some old scores in a speech full of fire and jubilation; Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, was elaborately pacific. He earnestly deprecated the language of severity and exasperation, or anything that would tend to embitter party warfare. His illustrious leader Peel, he said, did indeed look for his revenge; but for what revenge did he look? Assuredly not for stinging speeches, assuredly not for motions made in favour of his policy, if they carried pain and degradation ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... perfection. Like Imogen, she is not too inhumanly divine for the sense of divine irritation. Godlike though they be, their very godhead is human and feminine; and only therefore credible, and only therefore adorable. Cloten and Regan, Goneril and Iachimo, have power to stir and embitter the sweetness of their blood. But for the contrast and even the contact of antagonists as abominable as these, the gold of their spirit would be too refined, the lily of their holiness too radiant, the violet of their virtue too sweet. As it is, Shakespeare ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... indeed, and enough to harden and embitter the softest of hearts, but it was mild compared with the continuous suffering and torture imposed upon my mother during the years from 1862 ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... as Queensberry had always been to the cause of prerogative, he could not stand his ground against competitors who were willing to pay such a price for the favour of the court. He had to endure a succession of mortifications and humiliations similar to those which, about the same time, began to embitter the life of his friend Rochester. Royal letters came down authorising Papists to hold offices without taking the test. The clergy were strictly charged not to reflect on the Roman Catholic religion in their discourses. The Chancellor took on himself to send the macers of the Privy Council ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that our people South and North have entertained for more than two centuries, and to the laws of Nature herself. An agreement such as is desired by the discontented would only intensify our alienations, embitter the strife, and protract the war upon subordinate and insignificant issues. Separation does not settle one difficulty at present existing in the country; while it furnishes occasion, and necessity even, for other controversies and wars, as long as ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... gentleman is kind, but not wasteful; he burdens, but he does not embitter; he is covetous, but not greedy; high-minded, but not ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... laying down his pen, as M. Linders dictated these last words, "but you are about to recommend your child to your sister's care; of what use can it be to begin with words that can only embitter any ill-feeling there may have ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... one would a dreaded and ghastly concubine coming to embitter a husband's heart toward his young bride; in vain; she kept her sway over me for that night and the next day, and eight succeeding days. Afterwards, my spirits began slowly to recover their tone; my appetite ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... with his usual rapidity and his usual severities, adopting now, however, the interesting variation of remitting all other penalties if his prisoners would take the cross. If Richard was quickly master of the rebellion, it served on the one hand to embitter him still more against his father, from the report, which in his suspicious attitude he was quick to believe, that Henry's money and encouragement had supported the rebels against him; and on the other, to lead to hostilities with the Count of Toulouse. The ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... one man finds and another misses would not, had fortune been reversed, have transmuted each man into the other. So adventitious a circumstance seems easily transferable without undermining that personal distinction which it had come to embitter. Yet the incipient fallacy lurking even in such suppositions becomes obvious when we inquire whether so blind an accident, for instance, as sex is also adventitious and ideally transferable and whether Jack and Jill, remaining ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... deceptions into which everyone is driven who is unfortunate enough to have to seek relief, under the present disgraceful divorce laws, from a marriage that has failed. There are conditions which degrade and embitter and make ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... heartiness which should make a doubly pleasing impression, if we reflect how important it is in our days to preserve a mutual confidence and good-will between nations. When meddling persons make the perfidious attempt to embitter a friendly people by scoffing and abuse, there should be an end to forbearance, and it becomes a duty to strike in with soothing words. We must show the Swedes how such scribblings are appreciated in Germany, lest they should think we take a pleasure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... to perform," she said. "I hoped, when I gave you boys permission to have the snowball fight, that it would result in permanent peace among you. It has, apparently, served only to embitter you more deeply against each other. The school colors have been removed from the building without authority. With those guilty of this offense I shall deal hereafter. The flag has been abused and thrown into the slush of the street. As to this I shall not now decide ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... and at last his health failed under his labors at the newspaper desk, beneath the midnight gas, when he should long have rested from such labors. I believe he was obliged to do them through one of those business fortuities which deform and embitter all our lives; but he was not the man to spare himself in any case. He was always attempting new things, and he never ceased endeavoring to make his scholarship reparation for the want of earlier opportunity and training. I remember that I met him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as the Lower Fourth was concerned tended considerably to embitter the contest, is worthy of record as a notable feature of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... from such a man as Mr. Middleton. You have heard the audacious and insulting language he has held to them, his declining to correspond with them, and the mode of his doing it. There are, my Lords, things that embitter the bitterness of oppression itself: contumelious acts and language, coming from persons who the other day would have licked the dust under the feet of the lowest servants of these ladies, must have embittered their wrongs, and poisoned the very cup ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... it. How noble and great is his own remark at the close of his booklet on others' allusion to himself in print! "Whoever will, let him freely slander and condemn my person and my life. It is already forgiven him. God has given me a glad and fearless spirit, which they shall not embitter for me, I trust, ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... been for a long time deeply in love with this woman; you are merely indulging in a rural flirtation, a momentary caprice. In a little while, vain rivalry will make you blind, embitter your disposition, and deceive you as to the nature of your sentiments—believing yourself seriously in love you will be unable to withdraw. To-day your pride is not interested; wait not until to-morrow. Edgar is your friend, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... specimen of doctrinaire dogmatism run mad, and though it was not the fault of the Government so much as of the arid doctrines of ill-understood economics which then prevailed in the schools, it did more than anything to embitter the relations between the Irish people and the Imperial Government. The death-rate from famine and famine-fever was appalling. The poor law system—then a new experiment in Ireland—broke down hopelessly, and agitators were not slow ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... he said—"the one I had when I was a robin. A nice rage she'll be in when I don't come home to-night! She'll have to hustle around and pick up worms for herself, and for the children too, and it serves her right. She had a temper that would embitter the life of a crow, much more a simple robin. I wore myself to skin and bone taking care of her and her brood, and how I did hate 'em!—bare, squawking things, always with their throats gaping open. They seemed to think a parent's sole duty was ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... vagabond habits, this life in the open air among the armies, the white tents, the cannon, and the drums, they were my elysium, my heart! But to be driven away, as one who had broken his trust, forfeited favor and confidence, and that too on the eve of grand events, was something that would embitter my existence. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... that may be said on these grounds has been said, we do not attempt to deny that the Budget raises some of the fundamental issues which divide the historic Parties in British politics. We do not want to embitter those issues, but neither do we wish to conceal them. We know that hon. gentlemen opposite believe that the revenue of the country could be better raised by a protective tariff. We are confident that a free-trade system alone would stand the strain of modern needs and yield ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... died, and in five months Alexis Gordon followed him to the grave. The two brothers who had hated each other so unyieldingly in life slept very peaceably side by side in the old Gordon plot of the country graveyard, but their rancour still served to embitter the lives ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and joyously in the hour that was before us. Frank speaking, absolute candour, that would once have wounded, now only cheered and stimulated; the spirit of entire helpfulness drives out all morbid self-consciousness. Differences no longer embitter when courtesy and faith ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... so certain of the happiness of a state of wedlock as a couple courting. Some difference however must be made, between lovers who have never married, and lovers who, having made the experiment, find it possible that a drop of gall may now and then embitter the cup of honey. My aunt's first husband had been a man of an easy disposition, and readily swayed to good or ill. She had seldom suffered contradiction from him, or heard reproach. A kind of good humoured indolence had accustomed him rather to ward off accusation ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and French publications, beside his own productions, which culminated in "The Castle of Otranto," a departure in fiction beginning the modern romantic revival. In 1765 he visited Paris, where he went much into society, and when his celebrated friendship with Mme. du Deffand began. He helped to embitter Rousseau against Hume by the mock letter from Frederick the Great offering him an asylum in Germany. In 1789, nine years after Mme. du Deffand's death, he met the two sisters, Agnes and Mary Berry, who came to live near ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... of the master may not only excuse, but render laudable, the servant's officiousness. I therefore flatter myself that the congress will receive with indulgence and lenity the opinion I shall offer. The scheme of simply disarming the tories seems to me totally ineffectual; it will only embitter their minds and add virus to their venom. They can, and will, always be supplied with fresh arms by the enemy. That of seizing the most dangerous will, I apprehend, from the vagueness of the instruction, be attended with some bad consequences, and can answer no good one. It opens so wide a door ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... in God's name, is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I fear my anticipations are too brilliant. Something will occur to dreg my expected draught of happiness with sorrow. Thus it has ever been! Too well I know I shall return to become the bride of one I detest; but I will not let that thought embitter my enjoyment of the wonders and beauties I shall behold. Besides, in so long a time as I shall be absent, what may occur? Ah, I have written words that make me shudder! I fear I may return to find the snows covering my mother's grave. Why do I leave her? Is it not selfishness to allow her to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... error, whilst that of other men looks fair and ideal. Let any man go back to those delicious relations which make the beauty of his life, which have given him sincerest instruction and nourishment, he will shrink and moan. Alas! I know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in mature life the remembrances of budding joy and cover every beloved name. Every thing is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if seen as experience. Details ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him a brute, and she might accuse him of failing to be a kind and loving husband; but she could not, unless Joe told of his spree, say that she had ever heard of his carousing around. That it would be his own fault if she did hear, served only to embitter ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... sternly. "You forget, sir, that Rose de Beaurepaire is my sister, when you tell me you have no tie to life." He added, with wonderful dignity and sobriety, "Allow me to write to my wife, sir; and, while I write, reflect that you can embitter an old comrade's last moments by persisting in your refusal to restore his sister the honor you ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Count Guido Novello and his German horse were driven out of the city by the burghers; and though in the January following a treaty of peace was made, and cemented by various marriages between members of the leading families on either side—an arrangement of which the chief result was to embitter party spirit among the Guelfs who had taken no share in it—anything like a lasting reconciliation was soon found to be out of the question. Charles of Anjou, moreover, fresh from his victory over Manfred, was by no means disposed to allow the beaten Ghibelines ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... there should be found ONE who has not suffered aught, that was pure in the natural attraction which bound them together in this chain of glittering links, to fall into dull forgetfulness; one who allowed no breath of the fermentation lingering even around the most delicate perfumes, to embitter his memories; one who has transfigured and left to the immortality of art, only the unblemished inheritance of all that was noblest in their enthusiasm, all that was purest and most lasting of their joys; let us bow before him as before one of the Elect! Let us regard ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... other effect than to embitter the satisfaction she would otherwise have enjoyed during her stay among them;—the time of which began now to seem tedious, and she impatiently longed for the end of the campaign, which she expected would return her dear du Plessis to her, and she should ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... that a stranger will take your place at her bedside, that as she has lived without knowing you she will die without that knowledge, or that if through any weakness of yours it came to her then, it would embitter her last thoughts of earth and, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... incestuous adulterer, and a supposed issue of a guilty connection, was declared Naib. Yes, my Lords, this degraded, this wicked and flagitious character, the Rajah's avowed enemy, was, in order to heighten the Rajah's disgrace, to embitter his ruin, to make destruction itself dishonorable as well as destructive, appointed this [his?] Naib. Thus, when Mr. Hastings had imprisoned the Rajah, in the face of his subjects, and in the face of all India, without fixing any term for the duration of his imprisonment, he delivered ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "with the author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Remorse is the most painful sentiment that can embitter the human bosom; an ordinary pitch of fortitude may bear up admirably well, under those calamities, in the procurement of which we ourselves have had no hand; but when our follies or crimes have made us wretched, to bear ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Only from circles that touch each other can a tangent strike off from the same point. A man can only make enemies among his friends. A certain amount of opposition and enmity a man must be prepared for in this world, unless he live a very invertebrate life. Outside opposition cannot embitter, for it cannot touch the soul. But that two who have walked as friends, one in aim and one in heart, perhaps of the same household of faith, should stand face to face with hard brows and gleaming eyes, should speak ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... There he refused to take the oath of allegiance that was required of them and was condemned to be exiled to the Takoutsk Government, so that half his life since he reached manhood was passed in prison and exile. All these adventures did not embitter him nor weaken his energy, but rather stimulated it. He was a lively young fellow, with a splendid digestion, always active, gay and vigorous. He never repented of anything, never looked far ahead, and used all ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... good humour that the Duke's last jest could not embitter, I stood watching the scene. The play had begun now on a stage at the end of the hall, but nobody seemed to heed it. They walked to and fro, talking always, ogling, quarrelling, love-making, and intriguing. I caught sight ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... perhaps fraternal rapture? Had I a sister? Could I doubt it at that ecstatic moment? How I would love her! The fatted calf was not only killed, but cooked, to welcome the long lost. Nor Latin, nor French, nor Greek, nor Mathematics, should embitter the passing moments. This young summer, that breathed such aromatic joy around me, had put on its best smile to welcome me to my paternal abode. "No doubt," said I to myself—"no doubt, but that some one of the strange stories that I told of myself ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Commission found to be guilty of a criminal Conspiracy, and who invented, supported, and tried to justify the Land League, the Plan of Campaign, and boycotting—after this preamble, the Presbyterians declare that the bill is "calculated to embitter the hostility of conflicting creeds and parties in Ireland." The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland resolved at a meeting of its Irish Presbytery "that Home Rule would greatly intensify the antagonism now existing between the two peoples ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... conscious of being to agree with her. Hard as it was, however, Sir Claude had never shown to greater advantage than in the gallant generous sociable way he carried it off: a way that drew from Mrs. Wix a hundred expressions of relief at his not having suffered it to embitter him. It threw him more and more at last into the schoolroom, where he had plainly begun to recognise that if he was to have the credit of perverting the innocent child he might also at least have the amusement. He never came into the place ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... sail from Sydney this day week. I could not embitter my boy's wedding-day by letting him know that he was to lose me; better that he should come back and find me gone. I must go, and I foresaw it when that letter came; but I would not tell you, because I knew you would be so sorry to part. I have been inside and said farewell to Mrs. Buckley. ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Mellor must be hers some day; and before that day, whenever her father's illness, of which she now understood the incurable though probably tedious nature, should reach a certain stage, she must go home and take up her life there again. Why embitter such a situation?—make it more difficult for everybody concerned? Why not simply bury the past and begin again? In her restlessness she was inclined to think herself much wiser ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the clangour of trumpets and the acclamations of the multitude. Those scenes were too terrible to be renewed. The heart of man shrinks from liberty obtained by this dreadful violation of all its feelings. Like the legendary compacts with the Evil One, the fear of the Bond would embitter the whole intermediate indulgence; and even the populace would be startled at a supremacy, to be obtained only by means of such utter darkness, and followed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... close of the Civil War the Negro Question had brooded over the South. The war emancipated the Southern negroes and then politics came to embitter the question. Partly to gain a political advantage, partly as some visionaries believed, to do justice, and partly to punish the Southerners, the Northern Republicans gave the Southern negroes equal political rights with the whites. They even handed over the government ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... left my bleak home, and my visions are gone; The mountains are vanish'd, my youth is no more; As the last of my race, I must wither alone, And delight but in days, I have witness'd before: Ah! splendour has rais'd, but embitter'd my lot; More dear were the scenes which my infancy knew: Though my hopes may have fail'd, yet they are not forgot, Though cold is my heart, still it ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... that we do not waste our griefs and sorrows. They absorb us sometimes with vain regrets. They jaundice and embitter us sometimes with rebellious thoughts. They often break the springs of activity and of interest in others, and of sympathy with others. But their true intention is to draw back the thin curtain, and to show us 'the things that are,' the realities of the throned God, the skirts that fill ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... urine. It was after an attendance on one such case that required daily and frequent puncturings for its relief, but which, in spite of all care, finally became gangrenous, that a fellow practitioner cheerfully submitted to circumcision, to avoid the possibility of any such complication occurring to embitter ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... long life is everywhere considered as the highest blessing; and there is no one who is willing to die, no matter what his suffering may be. Riches also are desired by all, for poverty is the direst curse that can embitter life; and as to requited love, surely that is the sweetest, purest, and most divine joy that the human heart ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... me in this anxious state!—perhaps this is the last time we shall ever meet, and to part thus, would embitter every future moment of my life. Indeed, I have no hopes that concern not your happiness—no wishes that ...
— The Dramatist; or Stop Him Who Can! - A Comedy, in Five Acts • Frederick Reynolds
... boughs. It was a very peaceful existence, and I shall often look back with pleasure to our hermitage by the walls of the old monastery, which afforded a moral haven from all the storms and troubles that embitter life. On Sundays we sent a messenger for the post to the military camp at Troodos, about five and a half miles distant, and the arrival of letters and newspapers restored us for a couple of days to the outer world: after which we relapsed once more into the local quiescent state of complete ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... government that had been made by Diego Columbus, the arrest of Velasquez and his death in the gloomy dungeons of the Inquisition, the arrival of de la Gama as judge auditor and governor ad interim, and his subsequent marriage with Ponce's daughter Isabel, all these events but served to embitter the strife of parties. "The spirit of vengeance, ambition, and other passions had become so violent and deep-rooted among the Spaniards," says Abbad,[30] "that God ordained their chastisement ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... departed, leaving Penn alone in the fire-lit cave, waiting for their return, picturing to himself all the difficulties of their adventure, and thinking with warm gratitude and admiration of Pomp, whose noble nature not even slavery could corrupt, whose benevolent heart not even wrong could embitter. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... about the army, disputes about the police, disputes about the authority of Imperial legislation, disputes about the validity of Irish enactments, disputes about appeals to the Privy Council. To say that all these sources of irritation might embitter the relation between England and Victoria, and that, as they do not habitually do so, one may infer that they will not embitter the relation between England and Ireland, is to argue that institutions nominally the same will work in the same way when applied to totally different ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... taught the Chinese anew their helplessness before the modern equipment of western nations and the necessity of learning the methods of the white man if they were ever to hold their own against him. But defeat, while always hard to bear, does not always embitter the conquered against the conqueror. On the contrary, there are evidences that the Chinese respect and like the Japanese far more since they were soundly whipped by them in 1894 and 1895. In considering, therefore, the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... against me, and regard me as their enemy,—that people for whose welfare I had done it all,—still I would persevere, even though I might be destined to fall in the attempt. Though the wife of my bosom and the son of my loins should turn against me, and embitter my last moments by their enmity, still would I persevere. When they came to speak of the vices and the virtues of President Neverbend,—to tell of his weakness and his strength,—it should never be said of him that he had been deterred by fear of the people from carrying out the great measure ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... society, with a free press and high tone of moral and religions feeling, like those of England, if they deliberately perjure themselves in open court, whose proceedings are watched with so much jealousy. They learn to dread the name of 'perjured villain' or 'perjured wretch', which would embitter the rest of their lives, and perhaps the lives ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... how will the recollection of them embitter the future! Remember, my dear cousin, what our good chaplain often told us—'Time is but ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... what may, hold fast to love. Though men should rend your heart, let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. O, strive to enter into something of that large celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the overbearing world cannot withstand ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... word. Three months before and my father had been the happiest, free-from-care man in the city; now the little insight he had gained into domestic affairs—the peep behind the curtain given him by my mistaken maiden aunt, had served to embitter his existence, surrounding his path with those nettles of life, household trifles, vulgar cares and petty annoyances. I almost echoed Biddy's ejaculation as the carriage drove from the door with my aunt ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... battlements! In looking back upon the ancient days it is fortunate that the mellowing influence of time dims the vision, and we see as through a softening twilight; otherwise we should behold such harshness as would embitter all. The olden time, like the landscape, appears best in ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... baffles all description. Ignorant as yet who was the victim, her soul was harrowed up with the most fearful apprehensions, the reality of which would dash the cup of happiness from her lips, and embitter her future existence. This petrifying, this heart-rending suspense was happily but of short continuance. Theodora herself, with breathless anxiety, was the first to bring a torch, that might perhaps illume the pale ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio |
