"Worst" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that is to be obtained and found at this throne of grace, and of what advantage it is to us in this our pilgrimage. Now, from all this it follows, that sin is a fearful thing: for all this ado is, that men might be saved from sin! What a devil then is sin? it is the worst of devils; it is worse than all devils; those that are devils sin hath made them so; nor could anything else have made them devils but sin. Now, I pray, what is it to be a devil, but to be under, for ever, the power and dominion of sin, an implacable ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Mugwambas! And the Bulanga—that tribe whom Mr. Keith seemed to know so well! Really, the Bulanga were the worst of the lot. Not fit to be talked about. And yet, somehow or other, one could not help liking them. . ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... think she did. She was large, and she came at me with a good deal of force. The last I remember, I felt the crash, and I knew I had had the worst of it." He rubbed his arm sympathetically ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled; They're not epics, but that doesn't matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing's to begin; A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak, If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, The something pervading, uniting, the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... It was the worst thing she could have done for her cause. It was her custom to stand over Lena "till hevery drop of that beef-tea is taken," knowing, as she did, that her young charge was averse to the process; and, had she stood her ground she might have evaded or parried questions, and perhaps have ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... of wardrobe. Oh, ye wretched, foolish women! why will ye forever sew? "We must not only sew, but be thankful to sew; that little needle being, as the sentimental Curtis has said, the only thing between us and the worst that may befall." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... herself in either light; for, though to some extent ridiculed and mimicked in West Kensington like everybody else there, she was accepted as a rational and normal—or shall we say inevitable?—sort of human being. At worst they called her The Pusher; but to them no more than to herself had it ever occurred that she was pushing the air, and pushing it in a wrong direction. Still, she was not happy. She was growing desperate. Her one asset, the fact that her mother was what the Epsom greengrocer ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... wound from the notice of his Poems in the Monthly Review, the writer of which, not satisfied with saying that the production did not "justify any sanguine expectations," selected four of the worst lines in support of his opinion, and showed himself insensible of the numerous beauties scattered through the various pieces. Writing to a friend soon afterwards, he thus spoke of himself; and more mental wretchedness has seldom ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... seems always to have remembered a pleasant remonstrance once addressed at the Salon by the worthy Chardin to himself and Grimm: "Gently, good sirs, gently! Out of all the pictures that are here seek the very worst; and know that two thousand unhappy wretches have bitten their brushes in two with their teeth, in despair of ever doing even as badly. Parrocel, whom you call a dauber, and who for that matter is a dauber, if you compare him to Vernet, is still a man of rare ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... kind of search. He was the worst scattered of men. But I will throw the weight of this introduction upon one very peculiar feature of Mr. Stanley's character, and that is his indestructible Americanism —an Americanism which he is proud of. And in this day and time, when it is the custom to ape and imitate English methods ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the sidewalk, in a pitiless indifference to the season and the weather, which you could not realize without seeing it, and which is incredible even of plutocratic nature. Of course, landlordism, which you have read so much of, is at its worst in the case of the tenement-houses. But you must understand that comparatively few people in New York own the roofs that shelter them. By far the greater number live, however they live, in houses owned by others, by a class who prosper and grow rich, or richer, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... worst Things that crowded up and scoffed and gibed were not Things that had to do with enemies. The worst-of-all Things had to do with a little, tender woman with glasses on—whose hair didn't curl. Those Things ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... elance beauty a perfect match for her, so that the eighteenth century might have painted them as two young deities from the Court of Olympus, come down to earth to show mortals a vision of the ideal! And General Ratoneau, the ponderous bully in uniform, the incarnation of the Empire's worst side! ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... do they meet at Fretly for!" Maurice Kynaston had exclaimed last night to young Guy, as the morrow's plans had been discussed in the smoking-room; "it's the worst country I ever was in, all plough and woodlands, and never a fox to be found. Your uncle ought to know better than to go there. I certainly shan't take the trouble to get up early to go ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... For now the movement which had begun in the early years of the century was entering upon a new phase. The change came during the decade 1750-60, when, on the one hand, it had become obvious that all the worst features of the old regime were to be perpetuated indefinitely under the incompetent government of Louis XV, and when, on the other hand, the generation which had been brought up under the influence of Montesquieu and Voltaire came to maturity. A host of new writers, eager, positive, and resolute, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... at the door by which he had gone in amazement. He had never calculated on this. This was the worst thing yet. It showed Yorke had been right, and ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... were less guarded, or, perhaps, knew they had less to fear. Most of the female opinion I heard was not alone unfavourable but actively and viciously hostile to the rising. This was noticeable among the best dressed class of our population; the worst dressed, indeed the female dregs of Dublin life, expressed a like antagonism, and almost in similar ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... beware of a horse that is naturally of a nervous temperament. An over-timorous animal will not only prevent the rider from using the vantage-ground of its back to strike an enemy, but is as likely as not to bring him to earth himself and plunge him into the worst of straits. ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... crushing the sick man; but at other times he bent every energy toward a discovery of some means to check the affliction, some hand more skilled than those he knew of. In time, however, he recognized the futility of his efforts, and resigned himself to the worst. He had a furious desire to acquaint Marmion Moore with the truth, and to tell her, with all the brutal frankness he could muster, of her part in this calamity. But Austin would not ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... "you are taking the very worst view of it. There certainly are plenty of such outposts in the country, but you know very well that young fellows like you are seldom sent to ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... her explanation. He remembered how that to save Iver, she had thrust the muzzle of the gun against her own side, and had done battle with him for mastery over the weapon. Incapable of conceiving of honor, right feeling, in any breast, he attributed the worst motives to Mehetabel—he held her to be ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... time more loudly. Then the madman stretched his limbs, and uttered his moaning cry, and his eyes slowly opened— very slowly opened and met mine. The girl waited a while ere she knocked for the third time. I trembled lest she should open the door unbidden—see that grim thing, and bring about the worst. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... production for the consumption of the other islands, and the only island of the Archipelago that sends rice abroad. The rice of the eastern districts is generally superior to that of the western. The worst rice is that of Indramayu, which is usually discolored. The subdivision of the province of Cheribon, called Gabang, yields rice of fine white grain, equal to that of Carolina. The rice of Gressie preserves best. All Indian rice ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Mr. Slick, "that's what Brother Eldad used to say. 'Sam,' said he, 'a man with an alias is the worst character in the world; for takin' a new name, shows he is ashamed of his old one; and havin' an old one, shows his new one is ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... from the spectacle, but was told by his servant that this was the tenth man who had undergone the same punishment that morning. The offence was, that they had not begun work at sunrise. Of course a peasantry so treated could have no affection for their masters. All the work was done in the worst manner, while the lord was plundered in every way by his servants. Of the supplies for the family, more than half were regularly stolen, there being no supervision in the household. The extravagance of the masters was boundless, and when they got out of money they resorted ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... avoid this danger, the worst of all, during their return to the coast. Harris and Negoro had not led them a hundred miles into the interior of Angola without a secret design to gain possession ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... been so well in the spring (it was the worst time of the year for him), he decided to start for England early in June to see the Paris Salon and the English Academy. He did not ask me to go with him, for our daughter had had quite recently a bad attack of bronchitis—at one time we had even feared inflammation of the lungs—and the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... his eyes toward the ceiling, "Great Caesar," he murmured. He came to his feet and looked around at the rest of them. "Let us go over there and learn the worst," he said. ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... had done, and he was too sure of his own hold upon the hearts of the people, to be in the least disturbed by the attacks of hostile editors. But the extracts are of interest as showing that the opposition party of that time, the party organized and led by Jefferson, regarded Washington as their worst enemy, and assailed him and slandered him to the utmost. They even went so far as to borrow materials from the enemies of the country with whom we had lately been at war, by publishing the forged letters attributed to Washington, and circulated by the British in 1777, in order to discredit ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... own mind a sort of rough calculation as to the chances, and finding them rather in favour of the scheme, he determined on making trial of it, by erecting a mast upon the raft, and to this bending a sail. At the worst, their chances of being picked up would be quite as good while sailing with the wind, as if they allowed themselves to ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... ladies put their heads together and picked out the model child of the neighbourhood to come and play with their niece. But Ariadne Blish was the worst failure of all, for Rose could not bear the sight of her, and said she was so like a wax doll she longed to give her a pinch and see if she would squeak. So prim little Ariadne was sent home, and the exhausted aunties left Rose to her own devices ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... to say it, yet I do not know but that you are right, my dear," agreed Mrs. Blake. "Strong men, if unhampered, have a chance to fight their way up out of the social pit. But women and girls, even when they escape the—the worst down there, can hardly hope ever to attain—And of course those that fall!—Our dual code of morality is hideously unjust to our sex, yet it still is the code ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... framework and controlling inference of Northern sentiment is Puritanic, the old Roundhead rebel refuse of England, which has ever been an unruly sect of Pharisees, the worst bigots on earth and the meanest tyrants when they have the power to ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... she speaks when she is in earnest. She has not chosen to do so. She has preferred to make demands in St. Petersburg and in Paris which no Government could entertain, and to defeat by irrevocable acts the last efforts of this country and of others for mediation. She has lived up to the worst principles of the Frederician tradition—the tradition which disregards all obligations of right and wrong at the bidding of immediate self-interest. She believes that her admirable military organization has enabled her to steal ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... reserved man, whose head is so taken up with little philosophic studies, that I admire how I found a room there. 'Twas sure by chance; and unless he is pleased with that part of my humour which other people think the worst, 'tis very possible the next new experiment may crowd me out again. Thus you have all my late adventures, and almost as much as this paper will hold. The rest shall be employed in telling you how sorry I am you have got such a ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... that is feeding on the vitals of the country, while smiling in its face and tearing at its heart, yet cherished by it, as the Lacedemonian boy cherished the wolf that devoured him. I am an enemy to all monopolies," said Principal, "and this is one of the worst the country is infested with. "A private or exclusive market, that is, a market 131into which the public have not the liberty or privilege of either going to make, or to see made, bargains in their own persons, is one where the most sinister arts are ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the mouth of one of them. All the rest was dreadful. I was rushed through the streets to the police station. They kicked me with their knees; they twisted my arms; they taunted and insulted me; they called me vile names; and I told them what I thought of them, and provoked them to do their worst. Theres one good thing about being hard hurt: it makes you sleep. I slept in that filthy cell with all the other drunks sounder than I should have slept at home. I cant describe how I felt next morning: it was hideous; but the police were quite jolly; and everybody said it was a bit of English ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... consider, on the other hand, that it would be more decent to forsake Caesar in success than when beaten and in difficulties. The victory of Caesar means massacre, confiscation, recall of exiles, a clean sweep of debts, every worst man raised to honor, and a rule which not only a Roman citizen but a Persian could not endure.... Pompey will not lay down his arms for the loss of Spain; he holds with Themistocles that those who are masters at sea will be the victors in the end. He has ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... before him at once: that hearing them equally, they might speed best, and go out most chearfully from his Majesties face, who had the best cause. When your Majesties wisedome hath searched all the secrets of this Assembly, let us be reputed the worst of all men, according to the aspersions whith partialitie would put upon us, let us be the most miserable of all men to the full satisfaction of the vindictive malice of our adversaries, let us by the whole world bee judged of all men the most unworthie to breath any more in this your Majesties ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... who have delighted in tormenting the persons, and stealing the properties of their unhappy subjects. But the third sort, viz. prescribing and dictating to the mind, may be called ecclesiastical tyranny: and this is the worst kind of tyranny, as it includes the other two sorts; for the Romish clergy not only do torture the bodies and seize the effects of those they persecute, but take the lives, torment the minds, and, if possible, would tyrannize over the souls ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... some modern epoch with a Grecian portico,—good in itself, but absurdly out of keeping with the edifice which it prefaces. This being a Protestant country, the doors were all shut,—an inhospitality that made me half a Catholic. It is funny enough that a stranger generally profits by all that is worst for the inhabitants of the country where he himself is merely a visitor. Despotism makes things all the pleasanter for the stranger. Catholicism lends itself ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one day, bending her face upon the bed in an excess of emotion. 'How you have suffered! It has been too cruel. I am more glad you are getting better than I can say. I have prayed for it—and I am sorry for what I have done; I am innocent of the worst, and—I hope you will not think ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... upon winning her—he had vowed that nothing should stand in the way of her becoming his wife, and now this—the worst of all things—had happened, to compromise him in her eyes, and he secretly breathed the fiercest anathemas upon the head of the marplot who had ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... gave the scum. But there's no need for you to be angry with me. I'm an Irishman myself, and not a Yankee. I fought in North Carolina, under General Nathaniel Greene, but I fought with Irishmen beside me, men from County Antrim and County Down, and they weren't the worst men in the army either. When I fight again it'll be in Ireland, and not in America. If I riled you I'm sorry for it, for you're an Irishman as ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... I serve as an interpreter between the minds of the workers and your mind as Director of the Works. As for the muscles developed in the gymnasium, those were developed for sport and not for labour. But that is not the worst of it; you have designed the new benches so low that the mixers must stoop at their work. It is ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... "That is not the worst," said Beatrice. "There—hold him toward the wind." She raised his head, untied his handkerchief, and hung over him; but there was not a sound, not a breath; his head sank a dead weight on her knee. She locked her hands together, and ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I've anything against her personally— Pious belief in democracy, with a firmer determination to get on top Riddle he could not solve—one that was best left alone Stray from the political principles laid down by our forefathers That which is the worst cruelty of all—the cruelty of selfishness The home is the very foundation-rock of the nation The old soldier found dependence hard to bear The one precious gift of life They don't take notice of him, because he don't say much Though his heart was breaking, his voice was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wounded, eh? And a regular fight—French and English too. Well, of all the shabby mean beggars that ever lived, you and old Bigley are about the two worst." ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... go with her husband; but as that could not be, "My lady," said Gardiner, "taking me by the hand, for that my lord would not take her himself, said that, forasmuch as she could not sit down with my lord whom she loved best, she had chosen me whom she loved worst."—Holinshed.] ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... thrown upon Ijurra's designs by his own menacing confession, I knew other particulars of him. Holingsworth had helped me to a knowledge of this bad man, and this knowledge it was that rendered me apprehensive. From a nature so base and brutal, it was natural I should dread the worst. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... time, and a troubled time," sighed the judge. "I could wish that I might see this unhappy land at peace with itself before I die. Things are in a sad tangle; I can't see the way out. But the worst enemy has been slain, in spite of us. We are well ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... affair is ended. The Indians have been swept away like chaff; the field and the wounded they have abandoned are in the hands of the troopers; the young commander's life is saved; and then, and for long after, the hero of the day is Buxton's bete noire, "the worst man in the troop." ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... such as the Monstrosities of 1827; A Dandy Fainting, or an Exquisite in Fits; The Broom Sold (Lord Brougham); Household Troops (a skit on domestic servants); and A Tea-party, or English Manners and French Politeness, all of which may be dismissed with the remark that they are the worst specimens of Robert's work which could probably have ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... reached its numerical maximum. But in degree the evil may then be much less—even upon Mr. Malthus's own showing: for he does not fix any limit to the increase of moral restraint, but only denies that it will ever become absolute and universal. When the principle of population therefore has done its worst, we may be suffering the same kind of evil—but, in proportion to an indefinitely increasing moral restraint, an indefinitely decreasing degree of that evil: i. e. we may continually approximate to the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... at the altitude of 2000 feet above the sea. The view is finer in its kind than I have elsewhere seen, even in Tuscany, that land of panoramic prospects over memorable tracts of world-historic country. Such landscape cannot be described in words. But the worst is that, even while we gaze, we know that nothing but the faintest memory of our enjoyment will be carried home with us. The atmospheric conditions were perfect that morning. The sun was still young; the sky sparkled after the night's thunderstorm; ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... from all those bodies which lay around us and rattled in their throats. Kneeling at my feet to arrange his things, he gave me some advice, "No need to get a hump, mind. Nothing ever happens here. Getting here's by far the worst. On that job you get it hot, specially when you've the bad luck to be sleepy, or it's not raining, but after that you're a workman, and you forget about it. The most worst, it's the open crossing. But nobody I know's ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... and they learnt that they had retired to a place called Schwartzenau, near Berlenburg, a small town at the eastern end of the barren hilly region known as the Sauerland. The distance of this place from Neuwied is considerable, and the roads amongst the worst in Germany; but John Yeardley and Martha Savory apprehended they could not peacefully pursue their journey without ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... Chicago, after nightfall, that loneliness again assailed her. She was within nine hours—so the timetable said—of St. Louis! Of all her trials, the homesickness which she experienced as she drove through the deserted streets of the metropolis of the Middle West was perhaps the worst. A great city on Sunday night! What traveller has not felt the depressing effect of it? And, so far as the incoming traveller is concerned, Chicago does not put her best foot forward. The way from the station to the Auditorium Hotel was hacked and bruised—so it seemed—by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the worst, I'm generally out by noon, and get a walk. I'm rather dependent on exercise, and then I lunch with ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... wonderful Confessions, to John Bunyan in his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. And then prosaic men have said, 'What profligates they must have been, or what exaggerators they are now!' No. Sewer gas of the worst sort has no smell; and the most poisonous exhalations are only perceptible by their effects. What made Paul think himself the chief of sinners was not that he had broken the commandments, for he might have said, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not knowing where to turn next, he halted and lingered, and showed him nothing but the stony Alpine void—nothing so human even as death. At noon he paused in his quest and sat down on a stone; the conviction was pressing upon him that the worst that was now possible was true. He suspended his search; he was afraid to go on. He sat there for an hour, sick to the depths of his soul. Without his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten, became vividly ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... and passion, of crime and agony and greed, ever swelling and ebbing upon the shores of humanity. He had a mind of psychological cast, although it had been turned of a necessity into other channels. Finally he turned wholly to himself and his own difficulties, which had reached possibly the worst crisis of his life. He had never been in such a hard place as this. He had heretofore seen a loop-hole out, into another labyrinth in the end, it is true, still a way out. Now he saw none except one; that was into a fiery torture, and whether it was or was not the torture ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sadly; "he has too good reason to fancy his business is going to wreck, with or without his attendance, for I find that very little is doing, and you can see that the entire stock isn't worth fifty pounds—if so much. The worst of it is that his boy, who used to assist him, absconded yesterday with the contents of the till, and there is no one now ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... plead'st in vain; And though I feel soft pity throbbing here; Though each emotion prompts the gen'rous deed, I must not yield; it were assur'd destruction! Farewell, despatch a message to the Greeks; I'll to my station; now thou know'st the worst. ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... lay dying in that house in the Calle San Gregorio—what he was trying to carry out—why he made that will. He sent for Leon, you see, and must have seen at a glance that he had for a son—a mule, of the worst sort. He probably saw that to leave money to Leon was to give it to the Church, which meant that it would be spent for the further undoing of Spain and the propagation ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... "That's the worst of it. They'll take orders from no one. Once they'd caught sight of it, you would have been blindfolded and led back to the village ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... an excellent adviser, something like Moliere's servant. I pull back and I cut down; and I dress the whole in the best words and sentences that I can find and make; I hold the pen, too; and I do the sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it; and when all is done, I make up the manuscript and pay for the registration; so that, on the whole, I have some claim to share, though not so largely as I do, in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eve, is rice. The rice crop seldom fails, not merely to support the population, but to leave a large margin for export. Famine, that hideous shadow which broods over so many a rice-subsisting population, is unknown here. Even scarcity is of rare occurrence. In the worst of years hardly a sack of grain has to be imported. It is this very abundance which stands in the way of what the world calls progress. The Malay, like other children of the tropics, limits his labour by the measure of his requirements, and that measure ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... professor, on the other hand, has at least one enemy and that the worst a man can have, namely himself. The evening before he went away he took me into his confidence and consulted me about his future and his prospects. He is married, but his wife is out of her mind, and he has three sons, all doing badly, one ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... and got me a clean shave twice over? He ain't got no idea what I look like under the whiskers. He wasn't living in Farewell before I went north, so all he knows about me is my voice and my hoss. It will shore be the worst kind of luck if I can't keep Peaches from hearing the one and seeing the other until after I'm ready. You leave it to yore uncle, Chuck. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... to have any Utopia at all, we must have a clear common purpose, and a great and steadfast movement of will to override all these incurably egotistical dissentients. Something is needed wide and deep enough to float the worst of egotisms away. The world is not to be made right by acclamation and in a day, and then for ever more trusted to run alone. It is manifest this Utopia could not come about by chance and anarchy, but by co-ordinated effort and a community of design, and to tell of just land laws and wise government, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... give one poor Creole the puzzle which belongs to your whole Congress; but you may depend on this, that the worst thing for all parties—and I say it only because it is worst for all—would be a feeble and dilatory punishment of ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... warm afternoon he raced about the city and suburbs, growing wearier and more empty with every step. The worst of it was the orders were beginning to assume the form of a schedule, and commanded that he be here at 3:15, and there at 4:05, and so on, which forbade loitering had he been inclined to loiter. In it all he could see no purpose, ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... it you are keeping from me? What is it you are trying to hide? I implore you to tell me the worst, whatever it may be! Do not keep me any longer in suspense; you do not know what I already have endured. Mr. Dacre, is my ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... without them, but when we thought of our Baganda prisoner, and the almost certainty that both he and Coutlass would race to give our game away to Schillingschen if let out of sight for a minute, the necessity of making the best, not the worst, of the Greek ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... made a noise that sounded like a cluck. "And he fixed it so we were to go over to his mother's," she said. "Oh, it's perfectly clear. And he brought whisky here and got Jasper drunk. I do think this is the worst community the Lord ever saw. Talk about churches and school-houses, when such things are allowed to ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... authority of the executive department is an evil that will inevitably sap the foundations of our federal system; but it is not the worst evil of this legislation. It is a great public wrong to take from the President powers conferred on him alone by the Constitution, but the wrong is more flagrant and more dangerous when the powers so taken from the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... the superior. This only solves one of the points in which the official letters of the two commanders differ: after every meeting each one insists that he was inferior in force, that the weather suited his antagonist, and that the latter ran away, and got the worst of it; all of which will be ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... do condemn as absurd, unnecessary, and foolish in the highest degree, this perpetual worry about trivial symptoms of health. Every truthful physician will frankly tell you—if you ask him—that worrying is often the worst part of the trouble; in other words, that if you never did a thing in these cases that distress you, but would quit your worrying, the discomfort would generally ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... of the Moors will probably be disappointed in all but the cathedral." Cook's Guide, latest but not least commendable of the authorities, is of a more divided mind and finds the means of trade and industry and their total want of visible employment at the worst anomalous. ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Said the worst he could and ended with a curse! The blood boiled in me. The old Nance never stood that; she used to sneer at other ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... accept, O Prince. As for Nehesi I fear him not at all, since at the worst I can write a story about him at which the world will laugh, and rather than that he will pay me ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... again you mean to say! Why am I sick? Yes, doctor, hand me the drink that shall make me well! Your brother is the worst of sons; be you the best of daughters! Like a worthless bankrupt I stand before the eyes of the world! I owed it a fine man to take the place of this weak invalid, and I cheated it with a scoundrel! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... along Victoria Street—a new street, penetrating through what was recently one of the worst parts of the town, and now bordered with large blocks of buildings, in a dreary, half-finished state, and left so for want of funds—till we came to Westminster Abbey. We went in and spent an hour there, wandering ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wa'n't in his family. He just grew weaker and weaker, and went almost bent double when he tried to wait on Luella, and he spoke feeble, like an old man. He worked terrible hard till the last trying to save up a little to leave Luella. I've seen him out in the worst storms on a wood-sled—he used to cut and sell wood—and he was hunched up on top lookin' more dead than alive. Once I couldn't stand it: I went over and helped him pitch some wood on the cart—I was always strong in my arms. I wouldn't stop for all he told me ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... yours. Hamil, I hope you gave her a few points on grassing a bird. She's altogether too conceited. Do you know, once, while we were picking up singles, a razor-back boar charged us—or more probably the dogs, which were standing, poor devils. And upon my word I was so rattled that I did the worst thing possible—I tried to kick the dogs loose. Of course they went all to pieces, and I don't know how it might have fared with us if my little daughter had not calmly bowled over that boar at ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... old woman!" cried the marquis, losing his temper, discretion and manners all together. "Go and do your worst, and be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... on with her food. Her father tore open the covering of the letter. She was watching him covertly and silently whilst he read page after page. She was searching for confirmation of her worst fears. She was ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... not suffer that any others should have a share with Him in the possession of His servant. If you are His servants you are free from all besides; if you give yourselves up to Jesus Christ, in the measure in which you give yourselves up to Him, you will be set at liberty from the worst of all slaveries, that is the slavery of your own will and your own weakness, and your own tastes and fancies. You will be set at liberty from dependence upon men, from thinking about their opinion. You will be set at liberty from your dependence upon externals, from feeling as if you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... efforts to draw his taciturn housekeeper out did not succeed very well. She had that unsocial failing of reserved natures, silence habitually; and her reserve was always at its worst in the presence of the Captain's brilliant daughter. That youthful beauty fixed her blue eyes now and then on the dark, downcast face with an odd look—very like a ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... I would beg for air. Of all the horrors of such places, the worst seems to me the want of air ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... he be poor and inexperienced, not if he be rich and skilful; besides, the worst that could happen to him would be the punishment of which we have already spoken, and which the philanthropic French Revolution has substituted for being torn to pieces by horses or broken on the wheel. What matters this punishment, as long as he is avenged? On my word, I almost regret that in ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of hurried alarm, giving place ere long to terrified despair. Parnham mounted a horse and set off at a wild gallop to Swanage to fetch Dr. Bruton; but an hour before he returned we knew the worst. My brother was beyond the aid of the physician: his wrecked life had reached ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... 'egregious' and 'fanatic?' 'Egregious' is chosen, e-grex—out of the flock, i. e., the best sheep, etc., selected from the rest, and set aside for sacred purposes; hence, distingue. This word, though occupying at present comparatively neutral ground, seems fast merging toward its worst application. Can it be that an 'egregious' rogue is an article of so much more frequent occurrence than an 'egregiously' honest man, that incongruity seems to subsist between the latter? 'Fanatic,' again, is just the Roman ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... something about your being 'strong' and knowing just how to handle her. Well, it can't be helped now. I think I came in time for the worst of it and have drawn their fire. Don't do it again. The next time a woman with a cut head and long hair tackles you, fill up her scalp with lint and tannin, and pack her off to some of the big shops and make THEM pick it out." And with a good-humored nod he started off to finish ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... well and good; but the worst was to come. With his heart beating in his bosom like a trip-hammer, and his eyes dilated with fear, he stepped to the door between the two rooms, and opened it softly. Two thundering snores, pitched ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not be made better without a special assessment upon the property owners of the vicinity, and paying more taxes is exactly what his constituents do not want to do. In reality, "getting them off," or at the worst postponing the time of the improvement, is one of the genuine favors which he performs. A movement to have the paving done from a general fund would doubtless be opposed by the property owners in other parts of the ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... few days' experience in my new position satisfied me that Doctor Dulcifer preserved himself from betrayal by a system of surveillance worthy of the very worst days ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the scream, and Professor Porter and Mr. Philander, and in a few minutes they came panting to the cabin, calling out to each other a volley of excited questions as they approached. A glance within confirmed their worst fears. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... distinction; for one stormy day he had saved twenty-two individuals buried in their snowy envelope. Unfortunately, he met, at a subsequent period, the very fate from which he had rescued so many persons. At the worst season an Italian courier was crossing the pass, attended by two monks, each escorted by a dog (one being the wearer of the medal), when suddenly a vast avalanche shot down upon them with lightning speed, and ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... fire upon some one else's target is the gravest crime in musketry. In the first place, it counts a miss for yourself. In the second, it may do a grievous wrong to your neighbour; for the law ordains that, in the event of more than five shots being found upon any target, only the worst five shall count. Therefore, if your unsolicited contribution takes the form of an outer, it must be counted, to the exclusion, possibly, of a bull. The ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... to prepare you for the worst. I may get well; and for your sake, I have prayed that I may. And, Katy, I have never before felt prepared to leave this world, full of trial and sorrow as it has been for me. Whatever of woe, and want, and disappointment it has been my lot to confront, has been a blessing in disguise. ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... the first time, and shall be the last, that I wish to see you on the stage, dear little daughter. It is too painful for me, and what is worst of all I fear it will take you away ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... underwent such cruel treatment and misery in their passage, as would shock the humane reader should he peruse the particulars. At Maxadavad they were led through the city in chains, as a spectacle to the inhabitants, lodged in an open stable, and treated for some days as the worst of criminals. At length the suba's grandmother interposed her mediation in their behalf, and as that prince was by this time convinced that there was no treasure concealed at Calcutta, he ordered them to be set at liberty. When some of his sycophants ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... worst of allowing yourself to plan far ahead for the future; you are sure to contemplate the death of some one, and to reckon upon ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... expect him. One day we heard of him attacking a garrison at the other end of the country, and the next night he would fall upon our camp. We never marched through a ravine, without expecting to see him and his men appearing on the hills, and sending the rocks thundering down among us; and the worst of it was, do what we would, we could never get to close quarters with him. His men could march three miles to our one; and as for our Arabs, if we sent them in pursuit, they would soon come flying back to us, leaving a goodly portion ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... presumptive heiress to the Throne of Spain. The King departs from his principle, for he insisted on a Bourbon, because he declared he would not marry one of his sons to the Queen; and now he effects the Queen's marriage with the worst Bourbon she could have, and marries his son to the Infanta, who in all probability will become Queen! It is very bad. Certainly at Madrid [Palmerston] mismanaged it—as Stockmar says—by forcing Don Enrique, in spite of all Bulwer could say. If our dear Aberdeen was still ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... The worst of it, too, was that he appeared so far over from where the Shawanoe stood that lines connecting the three would have made almost a right angle. It looked as if the youth must be exposed to the enfilading fire of one of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... sprinkled doubtless here and there with honest zealots, but composed for the most part of the very scum and refuse of London, whose growth was fostered by bad criminal laws, bad prison regulations, and the worst conceivable police, such of the members of both Houses of Parliament as had not taken the precaution to be already at their posts, were compelled to fight and force their way. Their carriages were stopped and broken; the wheels wrenched off; the glasses shivered to atoms; the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... settlement on the River Nashwaak founded by the disbanded soldiers of the 42nd regiment. Not having been visited by a minister of their church for many years, a few of them had turned Baptists and Methodists, but "the best and worst of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... something so fruitful and divine in this principle, that it sometimes forces to good the worst ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the sergeant was determined to hold the boy, I went to the man for whom he works—his name is Len Dardus—and made inquiries about him. Mr. Dardus is his guardian, and though it was evident that he had no love for the boy, the worst he could say about him was that he took a half hour to deliver an order that should have been delivered in twenty minutes. As to his associating with bad companions, that is not so, for his guardian said he was never out at night, always ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... worst part of the adventure was yet to come; for as the night was now fast approaching, and the rain still pouring down incessantly, it was impossible to think of returning to the ship; "and we were therefore," continues Nicholas, "obliged ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... so hard to write things, Mr. Tavernake," she said, "but, of course, it is something to know that if the worst happens I can send her a letter. I shall think about that for a short time. Meanwhile, there is so much about her I would love to have you tell me. She has no money, has she? ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... letters. But it was no abstraction which carried a man with honour to the fevers and privations of Botany Bay, when he might have sought safety and fame in Paris. The English reformers were resolved to brave the worst that Pitt could do to them, and challenged the fate of their Scottish comrades. They prepared in their turn to hold a "Convention" for Parliamentary Reform, and showed a doubtful prudence in keeping its details secret while the intention was boldly avowed. The counter-stroke ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Roumania are in the worst condition. Practically all the animals in those countries have been killed or confiscated by the invading German and Austrian armies. This is one cause ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... a bit of use to try. That's the worst of Picotee—there's no getting rid of her. The more in the rough we be the more she'll stick to us; and if we say she shan't come, she'll bide and fret about it till we be ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy |
