"Wretched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been of low character at any rate. Elizabeth had admitted illicit amours, and Elleine may very well have been guilty on the same count.[11] All of the women involved in the two trials were in circumstances of wretched poverty; most, if not all, of them were dependent upon begging and ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... miserably, sorrowfully, and vncomfortably, all alone, who shal bee a woorthie successour of so precious a gemme? And who shal be the possor of such a treasure of so inestimable valure? And what faire heauen shal shew so cleare a light? Oh most wretched Poliphilus, whether dost thou go vnfortunate? whether dost thou hasten thy steppes? hopest thou euer to behold againe any desired good? Behould all thy gratious conceits and pleasant highe delyghtes builded in thy apprehensiue thoughtes, through the sweetenes of loue, are deadly shaken, and abruptlie ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... tack out, all that could be done was to let go the anchor to save running ashore, and wait until they sent out a small boat to fetch us. This took some little time during which we pitched and tossed about in a very disagreeable fashion. When the boat did at last arrive she turned out to be a wretched little skiff, rowed by two men, with very indifferent oars, and only capable of taking three passengers at a time. Tom went first, taking with him the two children, and the two poor sea-sick maids, and the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... jelly or complete change and rest for six months. I might as well order my people a slice of the moon. And the worst of it is, I'm too poor to keep well myself on the cooking I have to put up with. Ive such a wretched digestion; and I look it. How am I to inspire confidence? [He sits disconsolately on ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... ten thousand years ago you went from this horrible forest down to that wretched village yonder, to those huts that make your London, you went to buy you ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... wretched to think on the past— Even hope now my peace cannot save; Thou hast given to my rival thy hand, But me thou hast doom'd ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver from the body of this death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... 'Memoirs' (1815) describe his literary undertakings, one at least of which was of a blackmailing kind, and are interspersed with protestations of his desire for independence, and of regrets for the wretched stuff ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... cold it was!—looking up drearily into the drifting heaps of gray. What a wretched, paltry balk the world was! What a noble part he played in it!—taking out his pistol. Well, he could pull a trigger, and let out some other sinner's life; that was all the work God thought he was fit for. Thinking of Dode all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... leg! Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg! Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping? The lonesomest leg? In fear perhaps before a Furious, yellow, blond and curled Leonine monster? Or perhaps even Gnawed away, nibbled badly— Most wretched, woeful! woeful! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... After two wretched hours in which the only alleviating feature was her heroic resolve that her suffering should affect no one but herself Ruth fell asleep. And almost immediately, as she thought with indignation, she was waked ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... acknowledged as constitutional, or is already so acknowledged. My father never could endure newspapers—I mean the system of newspapers; he said it was a new power in the State. I am sure I am not defending what he was thinking of, the many bad proceedings, the wretched principles, the arrogance and tyranny of newspaper writers, but I am trying the subject by the test of your theory. The great body of the people are very imperfectly represented in parliament; ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... period of wretched health compelled me for several years to consume what strength I had left in the ordinary routine of daily business. And it was not until 1852 that any further intercourse of any kind took place between us. In that year ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... you gave me of this wretched interview. Explain yourself, Mr. Steele. Don't you see that your silence at such a moment, to say nothing of the attitude you at present assume, is ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... he will every moment wound, because he is a stranger to, all the fine feelings of a heart like hers; she will seek in vain the friend, the lover, she expected; yet, scarce knowing of what to complain, she will accuse herself of caprice, and be astonish'd to find herself wretched with the best ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... average reader of culture—the person who is honestly moved by good poetry and goes from time to time to his bookshelves for an antidote to the common cares and trivialities of this life—seems to neglect Daniel almost utterly. I judge from the wretched insufficiency of his editions. It is very hard to obtain anything beyond the two small volumes published in 1718 (an imperfect collection), and a volume of selections edited by Mr. John Morris and published by a Bath bookseller in 1855; and even these are only to be picked up here ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of Bras Coupe is true as belonging to the time and the situation. So is that of Palmyrea the Octoroon, or of Honore Grandissime's "f. m. c." the half-brother, or of the pitiful voudou woman Clemence, the wretched old marchande de calas. Had he produced nothing more than his first small volume of seven tales, he would have made for himself ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... draft of only eight feet, can easily make a landing there. We scrambled over the side and secured a seat in the mail boat. Before we knew it four hearty sailors were sweeping us along towards the little dock. Here, absolutely wretched and forlorn, painfully conscious of crumpled and disordered garments, I turned to face the formidable row of Mission staff drawn up in solemn array to greet us. As the doctor-in-charge stepped forward and with a bland smile hoped I had had a "comfortable ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... that Con burst forth in that quick flashing English temper that was always aroused at the sight of injustice, of unmanliness, or of underhand dealings. He was so furious that he took his temper out in cleaning up the shack, and cooking some soft foods for the patient, and every time the wretched man begged him to go away he got so indignant and abusive that the sick one finally laughed outright, thereby lifting them both out of the depths of ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... taking aboard a lot of kids and freewillers out of the cook houses, where some of them had been shut up for weeks. I cried and begged for my father, but the captain only kicked and cuffed me. It was a long and wretched voyage, as I have told you often. I was brought here and sold to work with negroes and convicts. I don't so much mind the beatings I got, or the hard living, but to think of all my mother has suffered, and that I shall never see her or my father again! If I ever lay eyes on that Captain Lewis, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... meant what I said. I love you. I'm wretched without you. I want you to marry me, career ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... ever pretended to believe in marriage? Marriage is a crime! Think of the wretched folly of those who talk of the holiness of love's being protected by the sanctities of marriage. If love is holy, let it have way; if it is not, all the sacraments priests can devise cannot ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... appointment by being of rope. Small wooden pegs supplied, by some ingenuity I could not fathom, the absence of buckles. The carriole itself had not even a piece of iron to act in any way as a spring, and the agony we suffered when this wretched machine creaked, and squeaked, and jolted over the stones, is indescribable; and, to the eye, it was one of the clumsiest pieces of carpentry I ever met with; nor do I hesitate in saying, that an approximation to a civilized ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... in the couldn't," said Hautboy. "As for hunting, those Braeside fellows go out two or three times a week. But it's a wretched sort of affair. They hunt hares or foxes just as they come, and they're always climbing up a ravine or ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... that the majority of the prostitutes of this country are mere children, between the ages of fifteen and twenty. That the lives of these poor, wretched, degraded creatures, last on an average about four years. Now, when we hear of slaves used up in six years on a sugar plantation, we think it horrible; but here are these poor girls killed in a more dreadful way, in a shorter time. And he adds ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... novelist's heart was so wrung with pity for the poor creatures he saw there condemned to years of absolute silence and loneliness, that he protested vehemently against the system in his "American Notes." He took the case of this wretched German as his text. Probably thousands of kind eyes, all over the world, have filled with tears at ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... tone to what I felt and saw in that place. The civil war had come and gone, and that order accepted the result if not with faith, then with patience. There were two young English noblemen there that night, who had been travelling in the South, and whose stories of the wretched conditions they had seen moved our host to some open misgiving. But the Englishmen had no question; in spite of all, they defended the accomplished fact, and when I ventured to say that now at least ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and grossly assaults a lady; therefore a public meeting is called, the mayor of the town is placed in the chair, resolutions are adopted, providing for the summary and lawless punishment of the wretched woman. In the progress of the affair, hundreds of citizens assemble at her house, and raze it to the ground. The unfortunate creature, together with two or three men of like character, are committed, in an open canoe or boat, without ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... man is not man. Duty is more important than being. Nearly everything in our life is fixed by fate; there may seem to be exceptions, because some wicked men are prosperous and some righteous men are wretched, but these are not real exceptions to the general rule that we are made for our environment and fitted to it. And then, again, it may be that our judgments are not correct. Let the heart be right and all is well. Let man be obedient and his outward circumstance ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... thirty-six years old or thereabouts: nothing in his looks betrayed his connection with the police; he wore any kind of dress with equal ease and grace, and was familiar with every grade in the social scale, disguising himself as a wretched tramp or a noble lord. He was just the right man, so his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... aunt's sorry, for I seemed to have been largely the cause of Molly going astray, and did not know then that a gay life is as happy as that of the wife of a farm-laborer. Restless I went again to London, saw Molly who looked fearfully wretched, would neither let me fuck, nor feel her, and then broke out in an agony of tears, saying she was ill, something was the matter with her. "With your cunt?" "Yes," said she, "do look." Poor Molly opened ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... market was foreign to him; as also was the affectation which had made Hortensius sacrifice his career to the enjoyment of his pets. There is something almost terrible in the thought that the costly luxuries of which these haughty nobles talk with so much urbanity, were wrung from the wretched provincials by every kind of extortion and excess; that bribes of untold value passed from the hands of cringing monarchs into those of violent proconsuls, to minister to the lust and greed, or at best to the wanton luxury, of a small ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... filled the court. Her husband ruled the king. If crime be measured by its relentless purpose, if the guilt of crime be heightened by its amazing success, then no woman that ever stood in the dock was a greater criminal than the wife of Rochester. Nor was this all. The wretched agents in her crime were sent pitilessly to the gallows. The guilt of two of them was at least technically doubtful, but the doubt was not suffered to interfere with their punishment. Only in the one case where no ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... had to walk one by one through lines of wall perforated with holes for dead bodies. Once in a while we would come to a small chapel, for miserable variety's sake, and be told to admire some very old, very wretched painting. Jonah and the whale were represented in a double-barreled miracle picture. Not only was the whale about to swallow Jonah, but he was only as large as a good-sized brook trout, while Jonah towered away above him like a Goliath. I found myself wondering if the guide had convulsions, ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... others the next day to see the King; the old man looked most wretched, and as he evidently disliked intensely being stared at by Europeans, I quickly took my departure. On my way back I was rather startled to see the three lifeless bodies of the King's two sons and grandson lying exposed on the stone platform in front of the Kotwali. On enquiry ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the boys, every hair of their heads had been plastered securely into place, and blistered with scrubbing, they stood wretched but hopeful in a row waiting with patience the moment when clean shirts, creased trousers, and sparkling boots might be forgotten in the delights the ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... coming than that of his friend, and not until November 1684 was the warrant for his apprehension issued. He, good man, had no desire for martyrdom; moreover, at that time he already possessed ten children, whose future as orphans was likely to be wretched, and so Sir Patrick sought concealment from the hounds of the law. Foiled in laying hold of him, the law seized his eldest son, Patrick, and cast him into prison. Two days after Jerviswoode's death, the lad petitioned the Privy Council for release. He ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... jars and rest your minds in peace: Let's to the altar: heralds, wait on us: Instead of gold, we'll offer up our arms; Since arms avail not, now that Henry's dead. Posterity, await for wretched years, When at their mothers' moist eyes babes shall suck, Our isle be made a marish of salt tears, And none but women left to wail the dead. Henry the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate: Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils, Combat with adverse planets in the heavens! A ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... seems to have been overrun with wandering portrait painters, whose only equipment for the art was some paint and a bundle of brushes. They had, for the most part, no training, and that anyone, in a time when money was scarce and hardly earned, should have paid it out for the wretched daubs these men produced is a great mystery. But they did pay it out, and, as we have seen, Harding earned no less than twenty-five hundred dollars in ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... her son Cupid. "Wound that proud, impertinent girl with your arrows, and see to it that she falls in love with some wretched, depraved human being. She shall pay for attempting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hole, old jackal. He who calls himself a king is gone, taking with him those whom he thinks faithful, most of whom are but waiting a chance to betray him. What did I say, a king? Nay, in all Africa there is no slave so humble or so wretched as this broken man. Oh! feather by feather I have plucked my fowl and by and by I shall cut his throat. You will be there, Macumazahn, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... either, Willis. I was just thinking whether you couldn't manage this wretched man rather better alone. I—I'm afraid I confuse you; and he gets things out of me—admissions, ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... pounds, and it was insinuated that all the comforts of the family must be stopped because of this lavish extravagance. Her father sat still and bore it, almost without a word. Both Dolly and Kate were silent and wretched. Mrs. Masters every now and then gurgled in her throat, and three or four times wiped her eyes. "I'm better out of the way altogether," she said at last, jumping up and walking towards the door as though she were going to leave the room,—and ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the woman who, in any state of life, hath a cheerful good-natured companion to support and comfort her! But why do I reflect on happy situations only to aggravate my own misery? my companion, far from clearing up the gloom of solitude, soon convinced me that I must have been wretched with him in any place, and in any condition. In a word, he was a surly fellow, a character perhaps you have never seen; for, indeed, no woman ever sees it exemplified but in a father, a brother, or a husband; and, though you have a father, he ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... thrushes, what tasted so sweet Will be turned into bile, and ferment, not digest, in Your stomach exciting a tumult intestine. Mark, from a bewildering dinner how pale Every man rises up! Nor is this all they ail, For the body, weighed down by its last night's excesses, To its own wretched level the mind, too, depresses, And to earth chains that spark of the essence divine; While he, that's content on plain viands to dine, Sleeps off his fatigues without effort, then gay As a lark rises up to ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... A few years hence and the sea-coast from Marseilles to Mentone will be one unbroken line of hotels and villas. The process is proceeding at a rapid rate. When Arthur Young made this journey a century ago, he described the country around Toulon thus: "Nine-tenths are waste mountain, and a wretched country of pines, box, and miserable aromatics." At the present time, the brilliant red soil, emerald crops, and gold and purple leafage of stripped vine, make up a picture of wondrous fertility. At every point we see vineyards of recent creation; whilst not an inch of soil between ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of such worthy merchants, was now the "unfortunate Roguin." Cesar had become "that wretched Birotteau." The one seemed to them excused by his great passion; the other they considered all the more ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... her happiness and wished her joy! It is said there is one spectacle which, whether the spectators own it or not, hardly ever palls entirely even on the most hardened and worldly, the most weary and wayworn, the poorest and most wretched—perhaps, least of all on the last. It is a bridegroom rejoicing to leave his chamber, and a bride blushing in her sweet bliss. There are after all only three great events in human history which, projected forward or reflected backward, colour all the rest—birth, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... There are words and sentences, but not the slightest sense in them. Your whole letter is exactly like the conversation of two boys: 'We had pancakes to-day! And we had a soldier come to see us!' You say the same thing over and over again! You drag it out, repeat yourself . . . . The wretched ideas dance about like devils: there's no making out where anything begins, where anything ends. . . . How can ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... child. Come, brother, take the knife; taste the flesh and drink the blood of thy son: the Bald Eagle shrank not when you bade him partake of the feast that was prepared from his young warrior's body." The wretched father dashed himself upon the earth, while his cries and howlings rent the air; those cries were answered by the war-whoop of the ambushed Ojebwas, as they sprang to their feet, and with deafening yells attacked the ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... VIII has done it, by the hands of his faithful allies, the Swiss. It was well known that Melchior was away, and that I was living alone with a few wretched servants; so they came and broke in the doors, as though they were taking Rome by storm, and while Cardinal Valentino was making holiday with their master, they pillaged his mother's house, loading her with insults and ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... writers in prose and verse that have ever lived! Who, that is competent to judge, doubts the result?—And ask your own hearts—ask your own common-sense—to conceive the possibility of this man being—I say not, the drunken savage of that wretched sciolist, whom Frenchmen, to their shame, have honoured before their elder and better worthies,—but the anomalous, the wild, the irregular, genius of our daily criticism! What! are we to have miracles in sport?—Or, I speak reverently, does God choose idiots by whom to convey ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... kirk of St. Ronan's, a little old mansion with a clay floor, and an assemblage of wretched pews, originally of carved oak, but heedfully clouted with white fir-deal. But the external form of the church was elegant in the outline, having been built in Catholic times, when we cannot deny to the forms of ecclesiastical architecture that grace, which, as good Protestants, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of the shop-bell. With this class, nothing has importance but the street, the street with its passing purchasers and idlers, and its overflowing holiday crowd, that on Sundays throng the side walks and pavements. And how bored she was, wretched creature, in the country, how she regretted the Paris life! Heurtebise, on the contrary, required the country for his mental health. Paris still bewildered him like some countrified boor on his first visit. His wife could not understand it, and bitterly complained of her ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... Territory of Utah. I have dozens of wives whose numbers, even, I do not know without looking in the family Bible. They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and valleys of my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear of this wretched breast pin, and every last one of them will have one or die. No. 6's breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before I see the end of it. And these creatures will compare these pins together, and if one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all be thrown on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a wretched cabin of mud and turf,—such a one as Irish folk live in to this day; and Hereward said to himself, "This is bad enough to ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... shall he deplore your perfidy, and the altered gods; and through inexperience be amazed at the seas, rough with blackening storms who now credulous enjoys you all precious, and, ignorant of the faithless gale, hopes you will be always disengaged, always amiable! Wretched are those, to whom thou untried seemest fair? The sacred wall [of Neptune's temple] demonstrates, by a votive tablet, that I have consecrated my dropping garments to the powerful god of ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... consolation of her society was considered too great to be continued. Her fate had no doubt been predetermined; and, unwilling to await the slow proceedings of a trial, which it was thought politic should precede the murder of her royal mistress, it was found necessary to detach her from the wretched inmates of the Temple, in order to have her more completely within the control of the miscreants, who hated her for her virtues. The expedient was resorted to of casting suspicion upon the correspondence ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... all of mud, and now dismantled, had a wretched appearance;[5] and the town which is contained within them is, though very populous, a mere collection of wretched hovels; the only respectable habitation within is the palace, which consists of three detached buildings—one for the chief, another for the females of his ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to crowds, scorch'd with the summer's heats, In courts the wretched lawyer toils and sweats; While smiling Nature, in her best attire, Regales each sense, and vernal joys inspire. Can he, who knows that real good should please Barter for gold his liberty and ease?" This Paulus preach'd:—When, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... a single added drop of uneasy leaven. He tumbled out of his cradle when he was a baby to see what lay beyond. He was thin, wizened, restless as a strange beast in a cage, though his brothers tirelessly puzzled their slow brains to soothe and satisfy him. When he was a boy he was wretched because he was not taken down into the valley or to far-off towns. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... By a legislative hocus-pocus, known as the Compromise Measures of 1850, Congress, contrary to the uniform tendency of bodies entrusted with a discretion, vacated instead of enlarging its powers. Its sovereign function of territorial legislation was abdicated, in favor of that wretched and ragged pretender, Squatter Sovereignty; and silly or misguided people everywhere, who professed to regard as dangerous that political excitement and agitation which are the life of republics, hailed the accession of King Log as a glorious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... retreat From all th' immoderate Heat, In which the frantick World does burn and sweat! This does the Lion Star, Ambitions rage; This Avarice, the Dog-Stars Thirst asswage; Every where else their fatal Power we see, They make and rule Man's wretched Destiny: They neither set, nor disappear, But tyrannize o'er all the Year; Whil'st we ne'er feel their Flame or Influence here. The Birds that dance from Bough to Bough, And sing above in every Tree, Are not from Fears and Cares more free, Than we who lie, or walk below, And ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... be cast on the person upon whom it should fall for the sickening defeat at Bull Run was found to be in such wretched condition at the time these lines were written that it was decided to go on without casting it. The writer points with pride to the fact that in writing this history fifteen cents' worth of odium will cover the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... toward the crude and wretched life man everywhere lives to-day, but with pity and tenderness for all sorrow, suffering and struggle, she yet believed that the world is being shaped to a glorious and a mighty destiny. This faith finds full and clear expression in the concluding ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... cafe's cheer, Sad of heart am I to-night; Dolefully I drink my beer, But no single line I write. There's the wretched rent to pay, Yet I glower at pen and ink: Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray, It is later than ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... up the struggle in despair, and not daring to return to her people, sunk lower and lower until she reached the depths of poverty. At last, in a wretched quarter in the East End, she came to the end of her resources. Ill and almost dying, the people from whom she rented her one miserable room determined to send her to the workhouse. A crowd collected to watch her departure. She was just about to be carried to a cab, when a man ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... arrangements, on which the comfort of a few and the gratification of many thousands of persons depended. Prince Albert, never strong, was always liable to trying attacks of sleeplessness and sickness. In the course of the night he had been "very unwell, very sick and wretched for several hours." "I was terrified for our Manchester visit" wrote the Queen in her journal. "Thank God! by eight o'clock he felt much better, and was able to get ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... understand Percy. This was one of those awful moments, which she had been destined to experience once or twice before, when the whole personality of her husband seemed to become shadowy before her, to slip, as it were, past her comprehension, leaving her indescribably lonely and wretched, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to his side, and rolled his eyes agonizingly towards his mother, but she took no notice. She got some paper out of the cupboard, and Ephraim sat down and began quirling it into long spirals with a wretched sulky air. ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... glorified saints, and on the lowest men who had not yet passed from life. On one side of the lowest platform was hell's mouth, a dark pitchy cavern, whence issued the appearance of fire and flames, and sometimes hideous yellings and noises in imitation of the howlings and cries of wretched souls tormented by relentless demons. From this yawning cave the devils constantly ascended to delight the spectators and afford comic relief to the more serious drama. The three stages were not always used. Archdeacon ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... head directs her steps no more She, who late told her pedigree divine, And drove the Thebans from Latona's shrine, How strangely chang'd!—yet beautiful in woe, She weeps, nor weeps unpity'd by the foe. On each pale corse the wretched mother spread Lay overwhelm'd with grief, and kiss'd her dead, Then rais'd her arms, and thus, in accents slow, "Be sated cruel Goddess! with my woe; "If I've offended, let these streaming eyes, "And let this sev'nfold funeral suffice: "Ah! ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... succeed to the title; he was born Earl of Cairnforth, his father having been drowned in the loch a month before, the wretched countess herself beholding the sight from her castle windows. She lived but to know she had a son and heir—to whom she desired might be given his father's name: then she died—more glad than sorry to depart, for she had loved her husband all her ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... down his head with an air of resignation; and Monsieur de Lamotte, seeing in this attitude a silent confession of crime, exclaimed, "Wretched man! what have you done with my wife ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... eloquence in silence; and Jin Vin, whether desirous of stopping the flow of words—crammed thus into his ear, "against the stomach of his sense," or whether confiding in Richie's protestations of friendship, which the wretched, says Fielding, are ever so ready to believe, or whether merely to give his sorrows vent in words, raised his head, and turning his red and ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... caught and dragged up to the Black Tor for that wretched boor, Mark Eden, to triumph over me," thought Ralph; and he pushed boldly on, forced his way a dozen yards, and then made a step, to find no bottom, and ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... I am tired with this cold, but chiefly because when I write only for the mail I send you such wretched scrawls, just business letters, or growls about something or other which I magnify into a grievance. But really, dear Joan and Fan, I do like much writing to you; only it is so very seldom I can do so, without leaving undone some regular part of the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... neighborhood. At the age of nineteen he unaccountably became furiously mad, from which condition he gradually settled down into harmless insanity. When, as I told you in my other letter, I visited my old home in the fall of 1844, I found him still lingering in this wretched condition. In my poetizing mood, I could not forget the impression his case made upon ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... at New Market and the column on its way to Morristown. We overtook it in the afternoon and occupied the town that evening. As so often happens in war, our movement had hardly begun when the fine weather ended, and we marched from Strawberry Plains in pouring rain, over wretched roads which rapidly became worse. This delayed the troops and only part were at Morristown when darkness fell. These were disposed so as to cover the town in front with pickets well out, and a detachment of cavalry a mile or two farther forward. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... presumptuous expectations which the luckless exile might have cherished, exerted the influence procured by his wealth to form an alliance with the most peerless beauty which the city boasted. A new source of anguish added to the misery already sustained by the wretched Gonzago; his arm was paralyzed by the utter hopelessness of any attempt to emerge from the obscurity to which fate had condemned him; he brooded over the dismal futurity which opened before him; and, as a solace to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... retrospections on the past, and painful meditations on the present, continued to occupy his mind, until crossing over from Piccadilly to Coventry Street, he perceived a wretched-looking man, almost bent double, accosting a party of people in broken French, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... left the Spaniard and the Englishman that were killed behind them: and the savages, when they came up to them, killed them over again in a wretched manner, breaking their arms, legs, and heads, with their clubs and wooden swords, like true savages; but finding our men were gone, they did not seem inclined to pursue them, but drew themselves up in a ring, which is, it seems, their custom, and shouted twice, in token ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... And the wretched girl strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... proved very disadvantageous at the present juncture and for a long time afterwards. To Friedrich disadvantageous and surprising; and to Saxony, in the end, ruinous; poor Saxony having got its back broken by them, and never stood up in the world since! Ruined by this wretched little Bruhl; and reduced, from the first place in Northern Teutschland, to a second or third, or no real ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... even more," she answered simply, "for I thought that you did not love me, and I was helpless. I couldn't come to you and demand that my love be returned, as you have just come to me. Just now when you went away hope went with you. I was wretched, terrified, miserable, and my heart was breaking. I wept, and I have not done that before since my mother died," and now I saw that there was the moisture of tears about her eyes. It was near to making me cry myself when I thought of all that poor child had been through. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... downwards to the floor. Is the last convulsion o'er? And will that length of glorious tresses, So laden with the soul's distresses. By those fair hands in morning light, Above those eyelids opening bright, Be braided nevermore! No, the lady is not dead, Though flung thus wildly o'er her bed; Like a wretched corse upon the shore, That lies until the morning brings Searchings, and shrieks, and sorrowings; Or, haply, to all eyes unknown, Is borne away without a groan, On a chance plank, 'mid joyful cries Of birds that pierce the sunny skies With seaward dash, or in calm bands Parading o'er the silvery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, For all the blooming flush of life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; She, wretched matron—forced in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed and weep till morn— She only left of all the harmless train, The sad historian of the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... he goes to the owner and declares the price offered; the owner then decides if he will sell or not; if he sells, the money is paid immediately, but if not, he takes his slave away with him, and tries him again the next market-day, or waits in expectation that this wretched article of trade will ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... replied, gravely; "but it will be a mock ceremonial, like the last. Do not attempt to deceive me. I am fully aware of your intentions, and after the awful fate of the wretched instrument of your purposed criminality, you will not readily get another person to tempt in like manner the vengeance of Heaven. I have had a severe struggle with myself. But at length I have triumphed over my irresolution. I will not ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... myrtle on thy banks delight; But willows pale, the leads of spite and blame, Crown thy ungratefull shores with scorn and shame: {150} Let dirt and mud thy lazie waters seize, Thy weeds still grow, thy waters still decrease; Nor let thy wretched love to Gripus ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... separately pub. appeared in magazines, and in 1879 he brought out Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. In that year he went to California and m. Mrs. Osbourne. Returning to Europe in 1880 he entered upon a period of productiveness which, in view of his wretched health, was, both as regards quantity and worth, highly remarkable. The year 1881 was marked by his unsuccessful candidature for the Chair of Constitutional Law and History at Edin., and by the publication ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... a fortune let every dollar of it be clean. You do not want to see in it drunkards reel, orphans weep, widows moan. Your riches must not make others poorer and more wretched. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... cannot be considered otherwise than as a call to enemy countries to continue the struggle solely in order to support their own political efforts, and ever anew kindle the expiring war spirit in London, Rome and Paris. The wretched and miserable Masaryk is not the only one of his kind. There are also Masaryks within the borders of the monarchy. I would much rather have spoken on this sad matter in the delegations, but, as I have already mentioned, the convoking of the committee has at present proved to ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... followers, was obliged to conceal himself in stables and caves. In all his misfortunes he never gave up the cause of his country, and he sacredly devoted his life to the freedom of Scotland. After one of his defeats he was lying one night on a wretched bed in a rude hut, while debating in his own mind whether it were not best to enlist in a crusade, when his attention was directed to a spider on the rafters overhead. He saw that the little spinner was trying to swing from one rafter to another, so as to fix his thread across ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... passed, each day dragging on as its predecessor, a wretched, hopeless, despairing existence to a girl so full of life and vitality as Gabrielle. Though she had written several times to her father, he had sent her no reply. To her mother at San Remo she had also written, and from her had received ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... upon the mob of cannibals. A moment more, and they must have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly have perished. But Heaven had designed to save me. The silence of these wretched men was not yet broken, when there arose, in the empty night, a sound louder than the roar of any European tempest, swifter to travel than the wings of any Eastern wind. Blackness engulfed the world; blackness, stabbed across from every side by intricate and blinding lightning. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... daughter, I would gladly serve him, and make his declining years as happy as I could. It was all over, when I heard that you were alive, afflicted, and poor. I longed to come and live for you. My new bonds became heavy fetters then, my wealth oppressed me, and I was doubly wretched—for I dared not tell my trouble, and it nearly drove me mad. I have seen you now; I know that you are happy; I read your cousin's love and see a peaceful life in store for you. This must content me, and I must learn to bear it ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... died at Sydney. One of them, John Durham, had been for upwards of two years a venereal patient in the hospital; and died at last a wretched but exemplary spectacle to all who beheld him, or who knew his sufferings. There died, during the year 1795, one assistant to the surgeons; one sergeant of the New South Wales corps; two settlers; thirteen male convicts; seven female convicts ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... letter, Miles went out with a feeling of lightness about his heart that he had not felt since that wretched day when he ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... it was only by constant encouragement he got them along, and when forcing their way through the matted scrub, he often threw himself bodily on it, breaking a bath through for his weakened followers by the sheer weight of his body. They reached Western Port in a most wretched condition, having subsisted latterly ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... that's the explanation?' I asked. 'Certainly,' he answered, in a tone as if he was rather disgusted at my stupidity. 'How else could you account for the seeming ability of that wretched ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... was on our right, still glittering in the distance, and behind us lay the plains of Jericho and the wretched collection of huts which still bears the name of the ancient city. Beyond that, but still seemingly within easy distance of us, were the mountains of the wilderness. The wilderness! In truth, the spot was one which did lead ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... wanting. It was necessary to organize some columns of militia, to pursue those who pillaged, and protect the peaceful inhabitants. Our soldiers were ordered to look after the burial of the dead. From the reports of chiefs of divisions the emperor was fully informed of some of the wretched consequences. The Duke of Trevisa wrote:—"From the Niemen to the Vilia I saw nothing but houses in ruins, wagons and carriages abandoned; we found them scattered on the roads and in the fields; some upset, others open, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... shall be at home soon after your receiving this, or at most three weeks after. I hope to write to you again from Corfu, which is a British island with a British garrison in it, like Gibraltar; the English newspapers came last week. I see those wretched French cannot let us alone, they want to go to war; well, let them; they richly deserve a good drubbing. The people here are very kind in their way, but home is home, especially such a one as mine, with ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the rate of one penny each hour; and even this labour is mortgaged! How is this to end? Is it rather not ended?" And he looked around him at his chamber without resources: no food, no fuel, no furniture, and four human beings dependent on him, and lying in their wretched beds because they had no clothes. "I cannot sell my loom," he continued, "at the price of old firewood, and it cost me gold. It is not vice that has brought me to this, nor indolence, nor imprudence. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the public had attained to such a degree of sophistication that the slightest slip on the part of the wretched actor was greeted by a storm of popular disapproval. "Histrio si paulum se movit extra numerum, aut si versus pronuntiatus est syllaba una brevior aut longior, exsibilatur, exploditur," says Cicero.[53] The actor dare not even have a cold, for on the slightest manifestation ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... perhaps still very ill in the hospital? She got up and began to walk to and fro. Suddenly she paused in her even march across the room. Unless she steadied her fluttering, stinging nerves, she'd never be able to still the wretched boy. There's an old saying that when one tries to help others, winged aid will come to the helper. And so it was with Jinnie. She had only again taken Bobbie close when there came to her Lafe's old, old words: "He hath given his angels charge ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Wollaston responded, quietly. "But I give you my word of honor that I will make no claim upon you, that I will resign my position when you say the word, that I will keep the wretched, absurd secret until you yourself tell me that you wish for—an annulment of ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... not rain at once, and they reached Tourmaline's wretched hut in safety. There they found quite a number of Pinkies assembled, and a spirited discussion was taking place ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... as 1907 Galds was deeply interested in the life of this wretched Queen: "No hay drama ms intenso que el lento agonizar de aquella infeliz viuda, cuya psicologa es un profundo y tentador enigma. Quin lo descifrar?"[14] In his interpretation of her last moments, Galds has made the figure of the Queen vaguely symbolic of present-day ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... placed at the disposal of Franklin; among these were some volumes of poetry, which fired his emulation, and he began to compose little pieces in verse. Two of these were printed by his brother and sold as street-ballads, but they were, as he informs us, wretched doggerel, and the ridicule thrown on them by his father deterred him from similar attempts. But though he laid aside poetry, he did not abandon his ambition to become a good English writer; he studied the art of composition with great labor, being rewarded ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... sickness caused by insanitary conditions, he quoted the remark of an East London clergyman that the "poor go on living in wretched places, but have much ill-health." He showed from Mr. Burdett's figures that the London voluntary hospitals and dispensaries cost nearly L600,000 a year to administer—an expenditure incurred mainly for the purpose of "patching up" the wretched poor who had been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... exclaimed, after the first bewildering shock. "A trick— and I have killed—oh, it cannot be true!" He leaped to his feet, allowing her to fall from his side to the ground, where she lay, a wretched, shivering heap. With a ferocious oath he snatched the big sword from the ground and turned upon her, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the bishop at length, irritated at his failure, concluded the process with an arbitrary sentence of excommunication. From this sentence, whether just or unjust, there was then no appeal, except to the pope. The wretched man, in virtue of it, was no longer under the protection of the law, and was committed to the Tower, where he languished for three years, protesting, but protesting fruitlessly, against the tyranny which had crushed him, and clamouring ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Juniper's Magpie or Town Hall[4] repairs. Meanwhile he smokes and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous or conumdrum quaint; But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And hunger sure attendant upon want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff (Wretched repast!) my meagre corps sustain: Then solitary walk or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff. Regale chilled fingers, or from tube as black As winter chimney, or well polished jet ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... unutterably forlorn and wretched. If only she could do something! She told herself, with a sensation of recoil and revolt, that she could never face another day of suspense and waiting spent as had been the whole of ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... their lives were often threatened by the borderers, but that "our guard behaved very well, protected us, and hunted for us." At the Falls he found "a number of settlers who lived in log-houses, in eternal apprehension from the Indians," and he adds: "The people at the forts are in a wretched state, obliged to enclose the cattle every night within the fort, and carry their rifles to the field when they go to plough or cut wood." He speaks of Boon's kindness in his short printed narrative in the Royal Gazette.] save only by Boon—for the kind-hearted, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the world to fear, that it can be undermined, or hurt in the least. To believe so would be I conceive to doubt the Providence of God. For it cannot be supposed, that a religion really given by the Almighty and All wise can be undermined by a wretched mortal, a child of dust and infirmity; the supposition is monstrous, and therefore no examination of its claims ought to be deprecated, or frowned at by those who think it "founded on adamant," for no man shrinks at having that ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... everything almost that is dear to man, I was also condemned to lose my health, my limb, to be deprived of my only means of future subsistence, and to endure more years of degradation and suffering in prison than many of my wretched companions, who had committed heinous crimes and to whom penal servitude was ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... degraded and wretched tribe, live in this desolate region, and, it is said, have sometimes been so reduced for want of game as to resort to cannibalism. We heard that they had recently been obliged to resort to this practice. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... of secrecy, what the item she wanted hidden, what the errand that had made her sail on the vessel a week after the spectacular torpedoing of a sister-ship? Did she know this Van Blarcom or did she merely dread any notice? And above all, who was the man and had he been watching when I tossed that wretched extra across ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the delicious honey she was reminded of her own upset hive; and the crispred radishes brought thoughts of the weedy garden at home; so that, on the whole, her visit, she said, made her perfectly wretched, and she should have no heart for a week; nor did the little basket of extra nice fruit which Mrs. Hill presented her as she was about to take leave heighten her spirits in the least. Her great heavy umbrella, she said, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... not equal, and all living is not life; Sick men live; and he who, banished, pines for children, home, and wife; And the craven-hearted eater of another's leavings lives, And the wretched captive waiting for the word of doom survives; But they bear an anguished body, and they draw a deadly breath, And life cometh to them only on ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... in perfect health when I entered the army," he answered quickly, divining the fear that prompted the question; "but bad air, foul water, wretched and insufficient food, rapidly and completely undermined my constitution. Yet it is sweet to die for one's country! I do not grudge the price I pay to ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... them perhaps in his way, and then separated from them. On Monday he kissed and fondled poor Perdita, and on Tuesday he met her and did not know her. On Wednesday he was very affectionate with that wretched Brummell, and on Thursday forgot him; cheated him even out of a snuff-box which he owed the poor dandy; saw him years afterwards in his downfall and poverty, when the bankrupt Beau sent him another snuff-box with some of the snuff he used to love, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thought too about that little lost girl. If that father loved his daughter so as to search and seek for her, and expend money, and travel by land and sea for years, in trying to find her, and when at length he found her, so forlorn and wretched and degraded, yet loved her still because she was his daughter, do you not think that Jesus loves us even more? We were lost and wretched and forlorn. A worse being than Bedawin gypsies has put his mark on our hearts and our natures. We have wandered far, far away. We have ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... you poised on one leg for an hour like a heron, afraid to put down the other foot lest you should scare some wretched pollywog. Why?" ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... instructions given him by the Secretary of the Treasury, at once assumed charge, in the name of the Government, of the camp and locality of Point Barrow, and he and Dr. Call devoted themselves with intelligent energy to correcting the wretched conditions found to exist. Order was at once inaugurated. Fresh meat from the reindeer herd was supplied, the sanitary conditions were improved, and the general health and comfort of the whalemen received immediate attention. Lieutenant Jarvis and Dr. Call remained at ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... weeks, he was a devoted husband, and showed her every attention and respect. He then grew cool, and began to use her with much cruelty. His treatment made her wretched and dull. ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... "Who is most wretched in this dolorous place? I think myself; yet I would rather be My miserable self than He, than He Who formed such ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... goblin; "I spoke of meaner animals—your wretched tenants. Did you not order, yesterday, that Wilhelm and Friedrich, if they did not pay their rent to-morrow, should be turned out to sleep on the snow? A snug bed for the little ones, and a nice white coverlet, eh? Ha! ha! twenty florins or so is ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... Suvaroff, "I shall suffer in silence no longer. Nobody in this city, much less in these wretched lodgings, has an ear for anything but the clink of money and the shrill laughter of women. If fifty men were to file saws in front of the entrance of any one of these rooms, there would be not the slightest concern. Every one would go on sleeping ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,—life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... and numbers of the crew were going about with their heads and limbs bound up with handkerchiefs, while several bodies lay stretched out on the deck, a flag hastily thrown over them, partly concealing their forms. On one side stood a wretched group, their arms lashed behind them with ropes, and stripped to the waist, covered with smoke and blood. They were some of the survivors, it was evident, of the pirate crew. Captain Dinan, accompanied by Wenlock went aft to speak to the captain. The countenance of the ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... religious, floating as they are at random in the atmosphere, cannot fail, when breathed by our youth to develop into substance with their growth, and to manifest their poisonous influences later, in the lives of their wretched victims. After pondering over such reminders for a moment or more, there will be no call for surprise, when our young men are pictured in their true colors. The mind need not hesitate to enquire, when it views youth and manhood, beautiful and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the star-like face will suddenly be seen issuing from the earth, resplendent on the horizon! Over all that snow, over all that ice, over that hard, white plain, over that water become rock, over all that wretched winter, thou wilt cast thy arrow of gold, thy ardent and effulgent ray! light, heat, life! And then, listen! hear you that dull sound? hear you that crashing noise, all-pervading and formidable? 'Tis the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... woman was not dead. She was lying on her back, on her wretched bed, her hands covered with a pink cotton counterpane, horribly thin, knotty hands, like strange animals, like crabs, and closed by rheumatism, fatigue, and the work of nearly a century which she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant |
