"Misery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the words, and then we saw a dark smile upon the face of the cold-hearted commissioner, that told how keenly he enjoyed our misery. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... that the characters, minds, and dispositions of Maria Addolorata and of her aunt, the abbess, were wholly unsuited to one another. And this one fact became a source of life and death, of happiness and misery, of comedy and tragedy, to many individuals, even to ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... in this simple household: cook, maid-of-all-work, treasurer, dispenser. Her hands received with a respectful tremble these two little 'rouleaux' which represented so much misery ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... that which was mere enjoyment, to that which was apparently, though it may be only apparently, sanctioned by the law of God. And so it would carry with it all the disobedience, all the guilt, and all the misery which belongs to the doing of an act altogether wrong; or as St. Paul expresses it, the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... he had swallowed stuck in the jaws of a Wolf. Thereupon, overcome by extreme pain, he began to tempt all and sundry by great rewards to extract the cause of misery. At length, on his taking an oath, a Crane was prevailed on, and, trusting the length of her neck to his throat, she wrought, with danger to herself, a cure for the Wolf. When she demanded the promised reward for this {service}, "You are an ungrateful ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... sound of voices woke me. I heard Gilbert say, 'Babie is with your wife, her maid tells me; therefore we are alone here. What is this mysterious affair, Laroche?' That tempted me to listen, and then, Manuel, I learned all the shame and misery you so generously tried to spare me. How can I ever repay you, ever love and honor you enough for such care of one so helpless and forlorn ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... the small servant again, gave her some hard blows with her clenched fists. The victim cried, but in a subdued manner, as if she feared to raise her voice; and Miss Sally ascended the stairs just as Richard had safely reached the office, fairly beside himself with anger over the poor child's misery ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... not meant to be a bad father, but he had not felt like a father at all. He had supplied doctors and nurses and luxuries, but he had shrunk from the mere thought of the boy and had buried himself in his own misery. The first time after a year's absence he returned to Misselthwaite and the small miserable looking thing languidly and indifferently lifted to his face the great gray eyes with black lashes round them, so like and yet so horribly ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... banyan tree. He rose up in soul. He saw before him images long forgotten of those who suffer in the sorrowful earth. He saw the desolation and loneliness of old age, the insults of the captive, the misery of the leper and outcast, the chill horror and darkness of life in a dungeon. He drank in all their sorrow. From his heart he went out to them. Love, a fierce and tender flame, arose; pity, a breath from the vast; sympathy, born ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... you can save the niggers, save your conscientious scruples, and save me from a future life of misery, by ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... cliff-bound Sound. The wooded peninsula in front that stretches to the north, forming the eastern shore of Port Jefferson Bay, was named by the old Puritan settlers—for what reason it would be hard to divine—Mount Misery. It is now, fortunately, more generally known in the neighborhood by the name of the Strong estate of Oakwood. Sea, shore, woods and valleys make up a picturesque scene of peaceful beauty, and one forgets in the presence of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... regard to Mabel's marriage, and this would lead him on to the full discovery of his wrongs. In his mad determination to win her at all costs, Mark had disregarded everything but the immediate future. If shame and misery were to come upon him, he had told himself, he would at least have the memory of a period of perfect bliss to console him—he might lose all else, but Mabel could not be taken from him. But now, as she took no pains to hide the content which ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... recently, an appeal has been made to statistics for the profoundly foolish purpose of showing that education is of no good—that it diminishes neither misery, nor crime, among the masses of mankind? I reply, why should the thing which has been called education do either the one or the other? If I am a knave or a fool, teaching me to read and write won't make me less of either one or the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... men in all times have bewailed the great amount of human misery which we see with our eyes before we pass into eternity—diseases, death, want, our own errors, by which we bring harm and punishment on ourselves, hostile men, unfaithfulness on the part of those with whom we are ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... came towards the gate of Whitehall, I was riding very carelessly and heavily, paying little attention to anything, for I was thinking, as it happened, of Dolly, with an extraordinary misery in my heart, and of how I should ever tell her (unless matters mended soon) of what her father had done; and whether in some manner he would not yet contrive to separate us. My horse swerved a little, and I pulled him up, for ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... that covered her clothes melted it fell in heavy drops. Through the holes of her great shoes they could see her little bruised feet, whilst the thin woollen dress designed the rigidity of her limbs and her poor body, worn by misery and pain. She had a long attack of nervous trembling, and then opened her frightened eyes with the start of an animal which suddenly awakes from sleep to find itself caught in a snare. Her face seemed to sink away under the silken rag which was tied under ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... controlled. Similia similibus curantur may be a dangerous principle to be applied by everybody, but thousands of men and women mulling away on their lives and worrying themselves with themselves, cutting a wide swath of misery wherever they go, have suddenly stopped in a book—have purged away jealousy and despair and passion and nervous prostration in it. A paper-person with melancholia is a better cure for gloom than a live clown can be—who merely goes about reminding ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... distance, awesomely vast and ruddy columns of fire rose and fell with monotonous regularity. For the first time, Luke experienced something of the superstitious fear exhibited by even the most hardened criminals when faced with a term at Vulcan's Workshop. That term, to them, meant horror and misery, torture and swift death. And he, too, was ready to ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... however, the place was malodorous and the work dirty, I cannot claim so much for Malcolm as may at first appear to belong to him, for he had been accustomed to the sight and smell from earliest childhood. Still, as I say, it was work the men would not do. He had such a chivalrous humanity that it was misery to him to see man or woman at anything scorned, except he bore a hand himself He did it half in love, half in ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... a great genius, with his own words in our ears: "Have no care of my misery, reader; let me bear my burden myself. I have two failings: my poverty and my piety. My poverty was thrown in my face by a Burgomaster who had perhaps only seen doctors attired in silken robes, never basking in tattered rags in ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... right which would have been in his mind. It was instantaneous, it was involuntary, it made her smile against her will; but the smile recalled her to herself, and overwhelmed her with compunction and misery. Smile—when it was he who lay there in the coffin, under that black pall, expecting from her the last observances, and that homage which ought to come from ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... miserable by desiring them? Was ever man the better for having coffers full of gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is incurred to fill them? Look into the history of any civilized nations; analyze, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the lives and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this: pride, and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... something which made her change colour, and dropping the paper on the ground, she rose from her seat, exclaiming: "Miserable must she be who trusts any of your faithless sex! never, never, never, will I endure such misery twice." And she vanished up the stairs. Mr. Chainmail was petrified. At length, he cried aloud: "Cornelius Agrippa must have laid a spell on this accursed newspaper;" and was turning it over, to look for the source of the mischief, when Mrs. ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... awakened and crawled out of Iye's hut into the yard crying in sleepy misery. Jean and Annie carried them to the Mission House and put them to bed, and brought back some hot food for the patient, who was constantly moaning, "Cold, cold; ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Nana perfected her education in nice style in the workroom! No doubt she was already inclined to go wrong. But this was the finishing stroke—associating with a lot of girls who were already worn out with misery and vice. They all hobnobbed and rotted together, just the story of the baskets of apples when there are rotten ones among them. They maintained a certain propriety in public, but the smut flowed freely when they got to whispering ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... think of seizing the ship; and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he expostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him, and at length upon the further wickedness of their design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows. They all appeared very penitent, and begged hard for their lives. As for that, he told them they were not his prisoners, but the commander's of the island; that they thought they had set him on shore in a barren, uninhabited island; but it had ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Guy across the Sea, And the "Devil's own" is he. Death! Destruction! Misery! That's the Kaiser. Don't you fancy he's a fool. Satan ne'er had such a tool— Whether demon, fiend or ghoul ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... appeared to have conspired against her, and this final and most crushing blow was the last straw. Gipsy clenched her fists in an agony of hopelessness. "Oh, Dad, Dad! why don't you come back?" she moaned, and the utter futility of the question added to her misery. Outside the sun was shining and the birds were singing cheerily—they had their mates and their nests, while she had not even a relation to claim her. She could hear the voices of the girls as they took their eleven o'clock recreation; each one had a joyful home to ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Her life was to be in no real danger. The body was to disappear, and hence she was to escape a trial. But the horror and condemnation of the whole world were to be turned upon her, and then, in her hour of blackest misery, I was to come forward and say: "I love you still. I believe in your innocence. Come with me to a foreign land as my wife, and I will make ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... brotherliness with the sons of Pandu!" Having disregarded those counsels, my child is certainly repenting now. That has now come to pass which Bhishma of great foresight said. As regards myself, O Sanjaya, I am destitute of counsellors and reft of sons! In consequence of gambling, I am fallen into great misery like a bird shorn of its wings! As children engaged in sport, O Sanjaya, having seized a bird and cut off its wings, merrily release it, but the creature cannot achieve locomotion in consequence of its winglessness; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... rice-fields—which the government contemplated prior to the outbreak of the distress, been completed, probably no reckless, sensational reports of "a disaster which had no parallel in the history of human misery" would have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... eyes of the public, if the person lacks the proper perspective, the proper vision and the right understanding, his success is an empty thing. Wealth and success are considered synonymous, but I have found more misery in the homes of the rich than among the poor. Physical wants can be supplied and the suffering is over, but mental wants can only be satisfied through understanding, which should be cultivated ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... ultimately disproved, by one of the tricks in which Sardou delighted; but that does not here concern us. Artificial as are its causes and its consequences, the "scene of the three men," while it lasts, holds us breathless and absorbed; and Andre's fall from the pinnacle of happiness to the depth of misery, is a typical peripety. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... demonstration that there was and could be none! They equally served also to stifle the sage's claims to be considered God's messenger, for, unhappily exhorting a large crowd to believe that he was the cause of all the misery and terror which they had suffered, they were so exasperated that they took summary vengeance on him: upon which the sun resumed his wonted quiet pace again through the heavens, and every thing fell into the old harmonious jogtrot of uniformity. Philosophers who lived at a distance ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... nervous quivering of the paddles, as they lost their hold of the water, were in full vigour, the mate crossed the deck with a large white basin in his hand, the sight of which turned the stomachs of half the passengers. Who shall describe the misery that ensued? The groans and moans of the sufferers, increasing every minute, as the vessel heaved and dived, and rolled and creaked, while hand-basins multiplied as half-sick passengers caught the green ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... a great pity, wouldn't it? I wish that girl could stay here one winter and enjoy the picturesqueness of a Hopi Indian girl's life. I wonder if she has any little thought of the real life of these 'nature children'? Of its misery, its impurity, its dreadful sin and superstition and darkness; its infant mortality; its pain and disease due to the absence of any sanitary or medical skill. But most of all its ignorance of Jesus Christ and his love. 'Picturesque!' I grant you it is. But Christianity would not destroy ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... father's fearful end, and the more fearful accident at the funeral—then his mother's illness, nigh to death—how nigh to death by this time God alone could tell him here—all, all, with this last misery of his own banishment, seemed somehow to centre in himself. Yes, yes, sin and its wages must be in this thing; but what sin, what sin? What was the crime that cast ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... bitter note. Tira could not remember ever having heard him laugh with an unstinted mirth. At first, when he came courting her, he was too worn with the years of work that had brought him to her, and after that too wild with the misery of revolt. She was sorry for that, with an increasing sorrow. Tira could bear no unhappiness ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... physical misery which he endured numbed the more unendurable agony of the soul; certain it is that a kind of torpor gradually invaded his brain, leaving within it only the sensation of a terrible longing to drop down on the wet ground and to yield to the unconquerable desire ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and draw his sword. Balin, however, was little behind him, and was ready with his weapon to meet the onset. Balan was first to strike, and though Balin put up his shield the sword passed through it and cut through his helm. Balin returned the blow with that unhappy sword that carried so much misery with it, and well-nigh killed his brother, but both recovered themselves and fought together, charging back and forth until ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... of some evil design, Mr. Waters?" said the woman, with an accent of reproach. "I thought you might, and yet nothing can be further from the truth. My sole object is to obtain the reward, and escape from this life of misery and degradation to my own country, and, if possible, begin the world respectably again. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... postponed until his evening round of visits a number of calls that were not pressing. When he came out to his buggy, Harry Aldis stood at the horse's head, at the carriage steps beside the driveway, his chin sunk on his breast, in an attitude of hopeless misery. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... misery; it is picturesque to read about, but it is a sorry state in reality to be very poor. Some poets have been scamps. I shall not start as the prodigal son, Bessie, for I love not swinish company nor ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... respected title of husband?-No, you disclaim it!-the father of my infant?-No, you doom it to infamy!-the lover who rescued me from a forced marriage?-No, you have yourself betrayed me!-the friend from whom I hoped succour and protection?-No, you have consigned me to misery and destruction! ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... entering the sea once more at Tientsin, to the great loss of the regions of Honan and Anhui. In these two central provinces the peasant rising of the so-called "Nien Fei" had begun, but it only became formidable after 1855, owing to the increasing misery of the peasants. This purely peasant revolt was not suppressed by the Manchu government until 1868, after many collisions. Then, however, there began the so-called "Mohammedan risings". Here there are, in all, five movements to distinguish: (1) the Mohammedan ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... Miser; 'you are only mocking my misery now, and even if what you say is true, it is too ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... life would make a family, a parish or a town happy, employed upon a larger scale and in support of the great principles of virtue and freedom of political regulations, might secure whole nations and generations from misery, want ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... settle with Reade in some fashion," boasted Evarts with a leer. "I don't know that I want to kill him. I'd rather cripple him and let him live a life of misery." ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... was much pleased with them when he found that they were from this country, and that they had intended to come to his. He was greatly pained to learn of their captivity and loss, and had much pity for them when he found what misery and hardship they had endured. For their coming was a thing which he desired much on account of the many things which I often told him, because he had always been interested in them, and because of the many ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often and too long, from the thoughts of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered what the man was doing who ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... last of December, when the snow had covered with its thick, white mantle all his imitative preparations, he recognized the Beresina. This false Russia was so terribly truthful, that several of his army comrades recognized the scene of their past misery at once. Monsieur de Sucy took care to keep secret the motive for this tragic imitation, which was talked of in several Parisian circles as a ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... any of his plans for their advancement, he told them that, unless they consented, their names should be blotted out from the Book of Life,—which was but a coarse way of stating a great truth, after all; telling them, too, that God must be an unjust Judge should he mete out happiness or misery to them without consulting him,—that his power over their fate stretched over this life and the next,—which, considering the limitless influence of a strong mind over a weak one, was not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... amuse Amy, who must not be scared or led to suppose that anything was amiss, and to the outward view seemed a very merry party, they were privately quaking in their shoes all the way, and enjoying a deal of highly superfluous misery. And after all they reached Sorrento in perfect safety; and the driver, who looked so dangerous, turned out to be a respectable young man enough, with a wife and family to support, who considered a plateful of macaroni and a glass of sour red wine as the height ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... children well and sleeping soundly in baby abandon upstairs, the debts were being paid. They laughed, did this mother and son, really laughed aloud, when only a month before they had thought that only gloom and misery ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... in the belief that I might be getting eloquent, I appealed to his manliness. Why should he take advantage of a couple of boys? I struck the key of his possible fatherly feelings: What misery were not our friends suffering now. ('Ay, a bucketful now saves an ocean in time to come!' he flung in his word.) I bade him, with more pathetic dignity reflect on the dreadful hiatus ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to this account with the utmost terror and misery; the suspicions of Delvile would now be aggravated, and the message he had left for Belfield, would by him be regarded as a defiance. Again, however, to the * * coffee-house she instantly ordered the coach, an immediate explanation from herself seeming ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... stones. This was in summer. But when winter came on, they saw the people running naked in the snow, or huddled in caves of the rocks, and most miserable. The Boy noticed this, and was very unhappy for the misery ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... to obtain a reform in the atrocious abuses which then existed in prison discipline. In the present half-century there has been great progress made in the improvement of prison discipline, health, and economy. Where formerly existed notorious and disgraceful abuses, the most abject misery, and the very depth of dirt, we find good management, cleanliness, reformatory measures, and firm steps taken to reclaim both the bodies and souls of the erring. It is a most strange circumstance that the once gross and frightful abuses of the prison system did not force themselves ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... bequeathed to us a land of marvellous resources still unexhausted. Shall we conserve those resources, and in our turn transmit them, still unexhausted, to our descendants? Unless we do, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day. When the natural resources of any nation become exhausted, disaster and decay in every department of national life follow as a ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... serious and moral. For they consisted chiefly of the praises of heroes that had died for Sparta, or else of expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the glorious opportunity, and rather chose to drag on life in misery and contempt. Nor did they forget to express an ambition for glory suitable to their respective ages. Of this it may not be amiss to give an instance. There were three choirs on their festivals, corresponding with the three ages of man. The ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... he had been bidden. She shrieked in agony and jerked the foot away, and he stood up, his face reflecting some of the pain and misery that shone ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not admit the force of his friend's arguments. He allowed, indeed, that war was a great work, inasmuch as it was a great evil, whereas lighthouse-building was a great blessing; and he contended, that while the first was a cause of unmitigated misery, and productive of nothing better than widows, orphans, and national debts, the second was the source of immense happiness, and of salvation ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... ends,—to the connection of good with evil, and the union of the supreme with nature. Nothing came out of these speculations but an occasional elevation of mind among the learned, and a profound conviction of the misery of man and the obstacles to his perfection. [Footnote: See Archer Butler's fine lecture on the Indian Philosophies.] The Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series of inquiries, until they elevated themselves above matter, above ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... die slowly in misery,' replied the keeper. 'If ye like I'll put him out of his pain before I go on, but I can't stay long, for I've got to meet someone in Hayton Spinney, and I ought to be ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... of pain and bitterness filled her heart—pain, new-born and insistent, for her mother, her father, and herself. Ever since Aldous Raeburn's hesitating revelations, she had been liable to this sudden invasion of a hot and shamed misery. And to-night, after her talk with her mother, it could not but overtake ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... truck-horses. These were the carmen of the town. Their clean, healthy, happy faces, with their glossy horses, decorated with ribbons, made me regard them as the best and proudest cavalry a nation could have. These are all men who, a very short time since, landed from the Old World—fugitives from misery and starvation. ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... Benedictine convent on Montecassino. The monks retired to Rome and established themselves in a convent near the Lateran, which they named after S. John Baptist, whence the basilica of Constantine or the Saviour subsequently took its name.... The misery of the Romans was aggravated by some natural calamities. Towards the end of 589, several temples and other monuments were destroyed by the flooding of the Tiber, and the city was afterwards ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... through an accident, although I believe God was at the bottom of it, something which has saved me from committing a great wrong, which has saved your son from becoming an absolute scoundrel, which has saved us both from a life of misery." ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... find forage enough, being zealous for Queen and creed. Pandours spread themselves all over this Sazawa-Elbe country; endanger our subsistences, make our lives miserable. It is the old story: Friedrich, famine and mud and misery of Pandours compelling, has to retire northward, Elbe-ward, inch by inch; whither the Austrians follow at a safe distance, and, in spite of all manoeuvring, cannot ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to do this, but Miss Squeers was as good as her word; and poor Nicholas, in addition to bad food, dirty lodging, and the being compelled to witness one dull unvarying round of squalid misery, was treated with every special indignity that malice could suggest, or the most ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... square, white, and with flat roofs. They are almost totally without glass in the windows; but the climate is generally so dry and delightful, that glass perhaps would rather be an annoyance. We are apt to attach ideas of comfort or misery according to circumstances peculiarly belonging to ourselves. Tell an English peasant that a Frenchman has neither glass to his windows, nor sheets to his bed, and he will conclude him to be miserable ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets before our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the father are most to be lamented. A language not understood can never be so read as to give pleasure, and, very seldom, so as to convey meaning. If ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... with an adequate derision:—Could I but say I was descended from honest, tho' mean parents, I would not murmur at my fate, but I have none,—none to own me;—I am a nothing,—a kind of reptile in humanity, and have been shewn in a genteel way of life only to make my native misery more conspicuous. ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... say you are right,' said Mrs Todgers with a sigh. 'I feared it all along. But the misery we have had from that match, here among ourselves, in this house, my dear ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Practical principles, derived from nature, are there for operation, and must produce conformity of action, not barely speculative assent to their truth, or else they are in vain distinguished from speculative maxims. Nature, I confess, has put into man a desire of happiness and an aversion to misery: these indeed are innate practical principles which (as practical principles ought) DO continue constantly to operate and influence all our actions without ceasing: these may be observed in all persons and all ages, steady ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... what are you saying!" broke out the young girl, surprised, and even horrified. "Do not say so, Aunt, for heaven's sake! I do dislike Col. Bancker; I cannot marry him without misery; but his life! You do not know what words ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... heavy grey clouds, with no form or beauty in them; there was nothing in the heavens or earth which seemed to have any relationship with man or to show any interest in him. Tom was not a philosopher, but some of his misery was due to a sense of carelessness and injustice somewhere in the government of the world. He was religious after his fashion, but the time had passed when a man could believe, as his forefathers believed, that the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... boomers who mean to stay long enough to play off their misery on someone else before they ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... with true and grave terrors. [For the preaching of repentance, or this declaration of the Gospel: Amend your lives! Repent! When it truly penetrates the heart, terrifies the conscience, and is no jest, but a great terror, in which the conscience feels its misery and sin and the wrath of God.] In these, hearts ought again to receive consolation. This happens if they believe the promise of Christ, that for His sake we have remission of sins. This faith, encouraging ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... of misery, of battling for breath, hideous to suffer and heart-breaking to witness, he would attempt to talk, irrationally at times, but now and again with a startling coherence. His mind ran on that gift of a hundred pounds. He sent message after message to the little shop-girl for whom, with ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... to the highest degree had been run through my body constantly they could not have hurt me worse. I would spring up in bed, sometimes as much as three feet, cry out in my agony and long for death. One night the misery was so intense that I arose and attempted to go into the next room, but was unable to lift my swollen feet above the little threshold that obstructed them. I fell back upon the bed and gasped in my agony, but felt unable even to breathe. It seemed ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... back with an indescribable shudder at the scenes which we were compelled to witness from day to day during that month of misery; for the march, which began in the first days of October, was protracted till its end. I had kept up my spirits when many a more vigorous frame had sunk, and many a maturer mind had desponded; but the perpetual recurrence of the same dreary spectacles, the dying, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... had much sleepless misery. In the day life was tolerable, but in the night—unless he defended himself by working, the losses and cruelties of the war came and grimaced at him, insufferably. Now he would be haunted by long processions of refugees, now he would think of the dead lying stiff and ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... sincere nor dignified on my part to do so. The person who claims counsel owes absolute frankness to his adviser. I will speak to you as if I were communing with my own soul. I will tell you what no person has ever known—no one, not even Pascal. And believe me, my past life was full of bitter misery, although you find me here in this splendid house. But I have nothing to conceal; and if I have cause to blush, it is for ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... known only to that small and somewhat suspect minority of human beings who are also capable, by the operation of the divine mercy, of dwelling in the glory of the Uncreated Light. The swing of the pendulum is equal to right as to left. He was staggered by the misery of his own isolation—a stranger, as he suddenly realised, by temperament and ideals, as well as by race! Then resolutely he turned his back on this, with an instinct of self-preservation directing his thought to things practical ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... me," he thought. "Kill me, right out, with a shot aimed from behind, so that I should feel nothing. What nonsense, isn't it? Why must somebody else do it? and not I myself? Am I really such a coward that I cannot pluck up courage to end this life which I know to be nothing but misery? Sooner or later, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... their extreme necessity. He obtained twenty barks, laden with all manner of provision, and himself brought it to their places of retreat, where the poor Paravas, as many as were left alive of them, were languishing without hope of comfort, and expecting death to end their misery. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... oxen was found to be mortally hurt, and a bullet ended its misery. Will then took his first lesson in the gentle art ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... concentration, and these are the things that contribute to success in any field of life. Christianity is the perfection of common sense. Men become mature Christians by no other means than those by which they become good artisans, ripe scholars, or the like. But the misery is that, though people know well enough that they cannot be good carpenters, or doctors, or fiddlers without certain habits and practices, they seem to fancy that they can be good Christians ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shopped, Ricca and I. Fifth Avenue enchanted us. All misery was forgotten in the magic of that ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... to tell how the horror of the thing dulled the men, how they stood about the Dawson streets helpless as cattle, paralysed by the misery that had overtaken them. All very well for Hansen to try to relieve the congestion at the Klondyke—the poor devils knew that to go either way, up or down, as late as this meant death. Then it was whispered how Captain Constantine ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... so that he is not able to stir; but is in great pain. I would to God that he were in town that I might have what help can be got for him, for it troubles me to have him live in that condition of misery if I ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... a wail of misery, they came to the Great Place and entered it, preceded by the locusts which already were heaped up in the streets like winter leaves, and for lack of other provender gnawed at the straw of the huts, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... sacrifice, at one time, that he would not have willingly made for her sake. His later sentiment for her had been a disgracing and a disgraceful thing, and he was glad to think of this boyish love, since it carried him back to a time before he had wrought only misery for himself. She misunderstood his reticence, she could not realize that she had lost the power that had ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... Have you had your supper?" Charley turned to look at him. His own eyes filled at the glimpse he got of the misery ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... religion; and it is by holy laws that a political association can alone be bound. You should be to your people an example of piety and of virtue, but without pride or ostentation.... Remember, my son, that it is the prosperity or adversity of the ruler which forms the happiness or misery of his subjects, and that the fate of the nation depends on the conduct of the individual who fills the throne. The world is exposed to constant vicissitudes; learn, therefore, to meet the frowns of fortune with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... with sudden ebullitions, Flashes of fun, and little bursts of song; Petulant, pains, and fleeting pale contritions, Mute little moods of misery and wrong. Only a girl of Nature's rarest making, Wistful and sweet—and ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... about the floor, and felt the cankerous worm of remorse seize upon and gnaw at his heart, and bite its way ever further and further into that heart so defenceless against its ravages, until he made up his mind that, should he have to suffer another twenty-four hours of this misery, there would no longer be a Chichikov in the world. Yet over him, as over every one, there hung poised the All-Saving Hand; and, an hour after his arrival at the prison, the doors of the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... sometimes stood at fifty below, and how we would plan for our great expedition to El Dorado, when our fortunes should be made, comforting ourselves for our present privations with thoughts of the land which Raleigh described. Those, despite their misery, were my best days—I had hope then. Little Mordaunt would sit beside us, with his face in his hands and his eyes opened wide with wonder, listening to what we said; when we had finished he would beg us to take him also, offering as his share, if he should ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... did his best to amuse her. The laird did his endeavour with his lordship, but with small success. And so the morning crept away. It might have been a pleasant one to the rest, but for the caged lord's misery. At ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Presidente boldly; he had transmuted conjecture into reality; he had made assertions right and left, all to the end that she might authorize him to protect her interests and win her influence. As he stood there, he represented the infinite misery of two lives, and the no less boundless desires of two men. He spurned the squalid horrors of the Rue de la Perle. He saw the glitter of a thousand crowns in fees from La Cibot, and five thousand francs from the Presidente. This meant an abode such ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... found himself, in his aimless wandering, drawing near to Fern's Hollow, where she had lived. The outer shell of the new house was built up, the three rooms above and below, with the little dairy and coal-shed beside them, and Stephen, even in his misery, was glad of the shelter of the blank walls from the cutting blast of the north wind; for he felt that he could not go home to the cabin where the dead child—no longer darling little Nan—was lying. Poor Stephen! He sat down on a heap ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... Prussians perhaps the deluge; but as long as they are before Paris, and the Provisional Government does not capitulate, I do not dread any political disorders. What we may come to, are bread riots. There is already an immense deal of misery, and, as the siege continues and provisions rise in price, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... would gladly offer his life, and his tenderest feelings derided, and he was so nearly ready to cry, that Albinia pitied him, and said, 'I'll laugh no more if I can help it, Gibbie, but indeed you are too young for all this misery to be real. I don't mean that you are pretending, but only that ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more than once, while threading his way through the wilderness with his friends, to appeal to Mrs. Ripley; but with a natural shrinking he held back, fearing that with his broken words he could not make her understand his misery. ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... kind stepmother to Abraham who became strongly attached to her. In the rough and nondescript community of Pigeon Creek, a world of weedy farms, of miserable mud roads, of log farm-houses, the family life that was at least tolerable. The sordid misery described during her regime emerged from wretchedness to a state of by all the recorders of Lincoln's early days seems to have ended about his twelfth year. At least, the vagrant suggestion disappeared. Though the life that succeeded was void of luxury, though it was rough, even brutal, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the fortresses, are garrisoned by French troops, keeping down the national spirit of the population, and rendering any attempt at insurrection an utter impossibility, even though the people should intend to strike. But they think no longer of rising. They are exhausted in their misery, and have lost their energy. They feel only that they are suffering, but they inquire no more for the cause. And thus Prussia will perish, unless some powerful impetus from abroad, some dispensation ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... it is said, have declined the laureateship. Referring to the office, the Daily News has a very prosy simile: "A dog, of any sense or self-respect, with a tin-kettle tied to his tail, acutely feels the misery and degradation of the music he is compelled to make. What the tin-kettle is to the dog, the yearly Ode is to the muse. The board, if you please, but not the annoyance and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... yielding to the subtle and insidious influence of the tropics, inflict the most outrageous abuses upon the natives, and even kill them on slight provocation. The natives in turn hate their oppressors, and when the chance comes betray them or leave them to perish in sickness and misery. The upper Mississippi, on the other hand, comes from a plain where agriculture is carried on with more labor-saving devices than are found anywhere else in the world. There States like Wisconsin and Minnesota ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... bent and kissed my mouth. The room whirled about me. Strange sounds were in my ears; for one moment he loved me again. I threw myself in a chair, and buried my face in my hands. I cried out to God in my desperate misery. It was over, and he was gone—he who begged once for a kiss, as a slave ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... The misery on his handsome young face touched her a little, and she had to remind herself that she was doing all she did for ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... What a Cabinet! 'Misery,' says Trinculo, 'makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows'—so, it seems, does unlooked-for prosperity. Only fancy Granville, Clarendon, and the rest, pigging heads and tails with John Bright in the same truckle bed! I am very thankful that I have an opportunity of conversing in quiet ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... was a success. Somewhere in the big, busy world perhaps, crime, and misery, and shame, and sorrow, and starvation, and all the catalogue of earthly horrors, were rife, but not at Danton Hall. Time trod on flowers; enchanted music drifted the bright hours away; the golden side of life was uppermost; and if those gay dancers knew what tears and trouble meant, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... rushed tumultuously upon me. Oh! the misery of it would have slain me there, a rebel picket, but that balance was ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... Resignation which I have made of my Heart to your Chains, since the secrets of it are no longer in my power. I confess I only took Florence in my way, not designing any longer Residence, than should be requisite to inform the Curiosity of a Traveller, of the rareties of the Place. Whether Happiness or Misery will be the Consequence of that Curiosity, I am yet in fear, and submit to your Determination; but sure I am, not to depart Florence till you have made me the most miserable Man in it, and refuse me the fatal Kindness of Dying at your Feet. I am by Birth a Spaniard, of the City of Toledo; my ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... or an ache, a misery in yuh back, if yuh suffah from stomach-ache or tooth-ache, or an ache in the head; if yuh feet burn and blister; if yuh tongue evah feels thick; if yuh feel a leetle inclined to dizzyness—in fact, if yuh have any ache or trouble in the world, this medicine will ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... suffrage, we might peacefully and gradually raise up the working class, proceeding from one 'positive result' to another, has been completely destroyed. In Austria, also, the road leads to the increase of class oppositions, to the heaping up of wealth on the one side, and of misery, revolt, and embitterment on the other, to the division of society into two hostile camps, arming and preparing themselves ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... and abuses from any and all its members, and often upon the slightest provocation. Should she fall ill, no physician is consulted and no effort is made to restore her health or to prolong life." "The expression of utter hopelessness, despair, and misery" on such a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... exceptions to this, as to every general rule, which a person of discretion can determine. But the practice so common among benevolent persons, of giving at least a trifle to all who ask, lest perchance they may turn away some who are really sufferers, is one which causes more sin and misery than ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... grasping a thunderbolt and about to hurl it against the comune, Venus anxious to overthrow the city, and Saturn whetting his golden scythe. The Sun is obscured, the Four Winds blow terribly, the Four Elements assist in the work of desolation, the Four Seasons threaten misery and affliction. Mount Eryx being convinced by this display that it is in a great danger, the Genius of the city appears next, bearing in his hand a figure of the Madonna di Custonaci. He calls to his assistance Divine Counsel, Devotion, Beneficence and Piety, and the procession closes ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... crops of 1869 and 1870, and to assure cash payments for future harvests. "This is the only possible mode of preventing the decay of the tobacco cultivation in the different provinces, as well as relieving the misery of the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... which had been thrashing her way into the teeth of the wind, was allowed to go free, and reached swiftly towards Ilaun More. The change of motion completely finished Simpkins, but the period of his extreme misery was short. The yacht rounded up into the wind in a sheltered bay, and Meldon let go the anchor. The boom, swinging rapidly from side to side, swept Simpkins' hat (a stiff-brimmed straw hat) into the ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... guile in thy heart, then the curse of Menkau-ra be on thee! On thee be the curse that shall smite him who breaks in upon the dead! On thee be the curse that follows the traitor! On thee be the curse that smites him who outrages the Majesty of the Gods! Unhappy shalt thou live, in blood and misery shalt thou die, and in misery shalt thou be tormented for ever and for ever! For, Wicked One, there in Amenti we shall come face ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... the House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, with a tale called Carola, published as the work he was engaged on at the time of his death, constituted the whole of these literary remains; and the poet's last hours, full of misery and despair, could not fail to wring the hearts of the feeling public of the Nievre, the Bourbonnais, the Cher, and the Morvan, where he died near Chateau-Chinon, unknown to all, even to ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... were at one in the plunder of the land. Towns were put to ransom. Villages were sacked and burned. All who were deemed to have goods, whether men or women, were carried off and flung into dungeons and tortured till they yielded up their wealth. No ghastlier picture of a nation's misery has ever been painted than that which closes the English Chronicle whose last accents falter out amidst the horrors of the time. "They hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... both because they leave the work undone which was appointed for them, and because they necessarily think wrongly, whenever it becomes compulsory upon them to think at all. The greater portion of the misery of this world arises from the false opinions of men whose idleness has physically incapacitated them from forming true ones. Every duty which we omit obscures some truth which we should have known; and the guilt of a life spent in the pursuit of pleasure ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... poor one! Ah, the misery of men! May Allah heal him!' cried the women, as the group of villagers moved off, contented. Just when the last of them passed out of sight the longest tongue I ever saw in man emerged from the cook's mouth, and the rascal put his finger to his nose in a derisive gesture. Those portents ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... other hand, the class-conscious worker reads the statistics of the wealthy classes, knows what their incomes are, and how they get them. True, down all the past he has known his own material misery and the material comfort of the dominant classes, and often has this knowledge led him to intemperate acts and unwise rebellion. But today, and for the first time, because both society and he have evolved, he is beginning ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... ould Ireland, is it? That helps you to face out the misery and the poverty and the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... terrible curse on the ring. To every one who shall ever gain it, he swears, shall come ill luck, misfortune, sorrow, terror, and death; let him rule the world if he will, never shall he be happy; everyone shall long for the ring, and to him who gets it, it shall bring misery and ruin. Truly the dwarf has gained little by stealing the gold from the river nymphs, but the gods have done wrong as well in stealing it from him, and they are doing wrong still in not giving it back to the nymphs; so they must ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost |
