"Embitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without relief When Love Himself draws near; No cup can empty stand, no grief Embitter ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... be deceitful nor untruthful, which will eventually benefit your moral character. Such is the impression you have made on my mind—for what avail even the most gentle reproofs? They merely serve to embitter you. But do not be uneasy; I shall continue to care for you as much as ever. What feelings were aroused in me when I again found a florin and 15 kreutzers charged in ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... will, I suppose, discuss the matter with her. She is not unlikely to side with you—not for your reason, however—but because of some silly nonsense about politics. If she does, I beg she will not write to me. It could only embitter matters." ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... permitted him to repine at fortune, but rendered its possessor happy, when a prince of keener feelings would have died of despair. This insouciant, light-tempered, gay and thoughtless disposition conducted Rene, free from all the passions which embitter life, to a hale and mirthful old age. Even domestic losses made no deep impression on the feelings of this cheerful old monarch. Most of his children had died young; Rene took it not to heart. His daughter Margaret's marriage with ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... brilliant. Something will occur to dreg my expected draught of happiness with sorrow. Thus it has ever been! Too well I know I shall return to become the bride of one I detest; but I will not let that thought embitter my enjoyment of the wonders and beauties I shall behold. Besides, in so long a time as I shall be absent, what may occur? Ah, I have written words that make me shudder! I fear I may return to find the snows covering my ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... and barbaric enactments can serve but to embitter, and further degrade, the unfortunate victims of ignorance and stupidity. The latter has reached its highest expression in the proposed law to make humane treatment of prostitutes a crime, punishing ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... vented her discontent and ill-humor upon me: she even reproached me with what I ate, and for the slightest fault I was unmercifully beaten. The neighbors, thinking to serve me, told my father of the treatment I experienced. He endeavored to protect me, but his interference only served to embitter her ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... You have now known me sufficiently for years, and you feel what all that talk is worth. But if you would learn what I have suffered, read my 'Xenien', and it will be clear to you, from my retorts, how people have from time to time sought to embitter ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sufferings by telling him of his sister's disgrace. Should he be acquitted, it would then become a question whether or no he might still be suffered to live in ignorance of that which, if known, would so deeply embitter the remainder ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... quarrelling, as their custom was, in the drawing-room of the great house in Belgrave Square, but the Angel in the nursery upstairs knew nothing at all about that. She was eight years old, and was, at that critical moment when her father and mother were having words which might embitter all their lives, and perhaps sever them for ever, unconsciously and happily decorating herself ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... years of her widowhood, she had gained a calmer and serener atmosphere, in which she was raised above the possibility of humiliation from the dwarfed natures and malicious hearts in the midst of which she lived. They could hurt her feelings, they could embitter her days no longer. To the hopes and pleasures of earth she had bidden farewell. Still young, still beautiful, she had reached the full maturity of Christian life, meekly bearing the load of scorn, and disappointment, and poverty, looking only for that rest which remaineth to ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... unwound and flung from them with rage, as a rag that defiled them The imperial gains of the age which their forefathers piled them. They ran panting in haste to lay waste and embitter for ever The wellsprings of Wisdom and Strength which are Faith and Endeavour. They nosed out and digged up and dragged forth and exposed to derision All doctrine of purpose and worth and restraint and prevision: And it ceased, and God granted them all things ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... in a good humour that the Duke's last jest could not embitter, I stood watching the scene. The play had begun now on a stage at the end of the hall, but nobody seemed to heed it. They walked to and fro, talking always, ogling, quarrelling, love-making, and intriguing. I caught sight here of great ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... too, which was afterwards fatally realized, that many of us should never meet again, was calculated to embitter my leave-taking, even more poignantly. Of the friends who were then around me at Sierra Leone, the greater number are now no more; the principal persons amongst whom are the following: Colonels Lumley and Denham; Mr. K. Macauley (member of council); ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... course was open to him, and that was to go away. BEI NACHT UND NEBEL, if it could not be managed otherwise, but, however it happened, he must go. More wholly for her sake than Madeleine had dreamed of: unless he wanted to be led into some preposterous folly that would embitter the rest of his life. Who could say how long the wall he had built up round her—of the knowledge he shared with her, of pity for what she had undergone—would stand against the onset of this ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... themselves in trouble and were shunned by the better class of citizens. In a case against the younger of the two, Frank Mogan, a young lawyer, C. W. Barnes, was employed as opposite counsel. This seemed to embitter both men against Barnes and some threats were made against him. No attention was paid to the matter by Barnes, but he kept a watch on them when in ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... the man he had envied. No one had ever told him that "Nathan der Weise" was thus afflicted. It was as soul that he had appealed to the imagination of the world; even vulgar gossip had been silent about his body. But how this deformity must embitter his success. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... its probable consequence, she could not reflect without the deepest concern. Her own situation gained in the comparison; for while she could esteem Edward as much as ever, however they might be divided in future, her mind might be always supported. But every circumstance that could embitter such an evil seemed uniting to heighten the misery of Marianne in a final separation from Willoughby—in an immediate and irreconcilable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... When a German goes to Sweden he is received as a brother, with a warmth and heartiness which should make a doubly pleasing impression, if we reflect how important it is in our days to preserve a mutual confidence and good-will between nations. When meddling persons make the perfidious attempt to embitter a friendly people by scoffing and abuse, there should be an end to forbearance, and it becomes a duty to strike in with soothing words. We must show the Swedes how such scribblings are appreciated in Germany, lest they should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... others' allusion to himself in print! "Whoever will, let him freely slander and condemn my person and my life. It is already forgiven him. God has given me a glad and fearless spirit, which they shall not embitter for me, I trust, not in ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... a departure in fiction beginning the modern romantic revival. In 1765 he visited Paris, where he went much into society, and when his celebrated friendship with Mme. du Deffand began. He helped to embitter Rousseau against Hume by the mock letter from Frederick the Great offering him an asylum in Germany. In 1789, nine years after Mme. du Deffand's death, he met the two sisters, Agnes and Mary Berry, who came to live near him at little Strawberry, which he left them at his death. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... disgraceful suits were it not for the herds of pettifoggers. These tamper with the passions of the poorer and more ignorant classes; who, as if poverty were not a sufficient misery in itself, are ever ready to embitter it by litigation. These, like quacks in medicine, excite the malady to profit by the cure, and retard the cure to augment the fees. As the quack exhausts the constitution the pettifogger exhausts the purse; and as he who has once been under the hands of a quack is for ever ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... we lose the present happiness in the pursuit of greater: I look forward with impatience to that moment which will make Emily mine; and the difficulties, which I see on every side arising, embitter hours which would ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... afraid for their lives. "Her poor soul is so troubled for the preservation of her silly Mass that she knoweth not where to turn for defence of it," says Randolph. {223a} These persecutions may have gone far to embitter the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... his face, he could scarce refrain from pouring out to her the confession of his anguish and despair. But the necessity of self-control, the necessity of concealing from her a knowledge which might only, by impressing her imagination, expedite her doom, while it would embitter to her mind the unconscious enjoyment of the hour, nerved and manned him. He checked by those violent efforts which only men can make, the evidence of his emotions; and endeavoured, by a rapid torrent of words, to divert her attention from ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... certainly have no such fear if we have done our best to make others happy; to promote "peace on earth and goodwill amongst men." Nothing, again, can do more to release us from the cares of this world, which consume so much of our time, and embitter so much of our life. When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace; content, as Epictetus says, "with that which happens, for what God chooses is better than what ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter his future life;—but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He had told Mrs Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... wretch, with a serious turn of mind and no sense of the ridiculous, takes all this talk about Christianity in sober earnest, and tries to act upon it? Into what misery may he not easily fall, and with what life-long errors may he not embitter the lives ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... think that we have been always so," cried the noble Pauline. "Why disturb her last years with a narrative of what may embitter them? Shall it not be so, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... Titus, however, escapes by means of a disguise, and not only pardons all the conspirators, but rewards Vitellia with his hand. The opera was produced at Prague on the 6th of September, 1791, and the cold reception which it experienced did much to embitter the closing years of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... is an utter heathen!' interjected the Countess. 'An infidel can be no friend. She is therefore the reverse. Her opinions embitter her mother's last days. But now you will consent to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in God's name, is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest to the world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand fall, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sing, the disgrace and calamity of his family, an incestuous adulterer, and a supposed issue of a guilty connection, was declared Naib. Yes, my Lords, this degraded, this wicked and flagitious character, the Rajah's avowed enemy, was, in order to heighten the Rajah's disgrace, to embitter his ruin, to make destruction itself dishonorable as well as destructive, appointed this [his?] Naib. Thus, when Mr. Hastings had imprisoned the Rajah, in the face of his subjects, and in the face of all India, without fixing any term for the duration of his imprisonment, he delivered up ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... those ideas that our people South and North have entertained for more than two centuries, and to the laws of Nature herself. An agreement such as is desired by the discontented would only intensify our alienations, embitter the strife, and protract the war upon subordinate and insignificant issues. Separation does not settle one difficulty at present existing in the country; while it furnishes occasion, and necessity even, for other controversies and wars, as long as ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... suddenly cut short by the daring of the Dutch. In spite of the king's threats they attacked the Spanish fleet as it lay in English waters, and drove it broken to Ostend. Such an act of defiance could only embitter the enmity which Charles already felt towards France and its Dutch allies; and Richelieu grasped gladly at the Scotch revolt as a means of hindering England from joining in the war. His agents opened communications with the Scottish leaders; and applications for its aid were forwarded by ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... paths which we should not have chosen, it is to bring us, at the last, into a condition which will make us happy chiefly from the reflection that God himself appointed it. Disappointments, of which we were forewarned, and which we had every reason to expect, embitter that life whose only sources of happiness are confined to this world, and do not relate to God. Making him the supreme source of our happiness, we give up undue sorrow for departed friends, feeling that they are removed from all ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... in the City upon the broiled leg of a goose and a bit of brawn, with my printer. Did I tell you that I forbear printing what I have in hand, till the Court decides something about me? I will contract no more enemies, at least I will not embitter worse those I have already, till I have got under shelter; and the Ministers know my resolution, so that you may be disappointed in seeing this thing as soon as you expected. I hear Lord Treasurer is out ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... meantime, envy, which ever comes to embitter human happiness, particularly in the French colonies, spread some reports in the island which gave Paul much uneasiness. The passengers in the vessel which brought Virginia's letter, asserted that she was upon the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... that we do not waste our griefs and sorrows. They absorb us sometimes with vain regrets. They jaundice and embitter us sometimes with rebellious thoughts. They often break the springs of activity and of interest in others, and of sympathy with others. But their true intention is to draw back the thin curtain, and to show us 'the things that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the locket, the ring, your letters, and the tie that you worked. We discussed this matter the other day, but I cannot believe that you will still hold to a determination that can serve no purpose, except perhaps to embitter feelings on both sides. From what I have known of you I cannot believe that you are indulging motives of revenge—but, otherwise, I must confess that I am at a loss.—Expecting to receive the letters by return, I am, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... leave his child behind. Affection also might have jealously deterred Jane from giving Lola her father's infrequent letters. But affection cannot excuse what is unworthy; and Lola's thoughts ran vaguely with a distrust which did something to embitter the ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... too would be all right in their place, no doubt. That place, if they find it, will be one in which they do not greatly intensify and so embitter the struggle for existence of the white man. The difficulty is that the Japanese is still less disposed than the Negro or the Chinese to submit to the regulations of a caste system and to stay in his place. The Japanese ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of a certain vicar, or clergyman, Dr. Primrose and his family, who pass through heavy trials and misfortunes. These might crush or embitter an ordinary man, but they only serve to make the Vicar's love for his children, his trust in God, his tenderness for humanity, shine out more clearly, like star's after a tempest. Mingled with these affecting ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... passages of his present work cost him! Happy should we be, could we persuade him, in the bare anticipation of such a change, even now to contrive for his future happiness, by expunging sentiments that would then so much embitter it. Should he never change; yet, such an act would prove, that, at least, he meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... in bondage. Take away from him this cause of dissatisfaction, and this incentive to insurrection, and then these "impracticable hopes," which now sometimes flit before his imagination, will no longer embitter his hours of labor, and urge him to the commission of those horrid deeds of massacre, which, though they may glut a momentary revenge, must result disastrously, not only to the slaves engaged immediately ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... mean to say that there are not innumerable claims for acknowledgment of merit and service made by rampant vanity and egotism, which claims cannot be satisfied, ought not to be satisfied, and which, being unsatisfied, embitter people. But I think your word Vanity will not explain all the feelings we have ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... bureau pointed to the rise in food prices in Great Britain and France. The public was made to feel a personal pride in submarine exploits. And at the same time the Navy editorial writers brought up the old issue of American arms and ammunition to further embitter the people. ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... must become a ward of Chancery and take his chance. Only be careful that the iron chest is passed on to him by your will. Listen, Holly, don't refuse me. Believe me, this is to your advantage. You are not fit to mix with the world—it would only embitter you. In a few weeks you will become a Fellow of your College, and the income that you will derive from that combined with what I have left you will enable you to live a life of learned leisure, alternated with ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a few months: yet, unmoved by Pole's entreaties, the pope refused to permit him to resume his legatine functions, except so far as they were inherent in the archbishopric. The odious accusation of heresy was not withdrawn; and the torturing charge was left to embitter the peace of mind, and poison the last days of the most faithful servant of the church who was ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... his people, Vasco Nunez liberated his prisoners, and resolved to sally forth into the environs and to occupy his men in expeditions and discoveries; but, while engaged in making his preparations, he received, to embitter his satisfaction, a letter from his friend Zamudio, informing him of the indignation which the charges of Encisco, and the first information of the treasurer, had kindled against him at court. Instead of his services being appreciated, he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Moluccas had for some years been one of continual bickering and strife; the chief scene being in the little group known as the Banda islands. The lucrative spice-trade tempted both companies to establish themselves by building forts; and the names of Amboina and Pulo Rum were for many years to embitter the relations of the two peoples. Meanwhile the whole subject of those relations had been in 1619 discussed at London by a special embassy sent nominally to thank King James for the part he had taken in bringing the Synod of Dort to a successful ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... return, and had walked over to the tannery house, full of fears, the remembrance of those expressions of simple faith in Jethro coming back to his mind. Had the revelation which he had so long expected come at last? and how had she taken it? would it embitter her? The good man believed that it would not, and now he saw that it had not, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... There was a difference. She might think him a brute, and she might accuse him of failing to be a kind and loving husband; but she could not, unless Joe told of his spree, say that she had ever heard of his carousing around. That it would be his own fault if she did hear, served only to embitter his mood. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... forget, sir, that Rose de Beaurepaire is my sister, when you tell me you have no tie to life." He added, with wonderful dignity and sobriety, "Allow me to write to my wife, sir; and, while I write, reflect that you can embitter an old comrade's last moments by persisting in your refusal to restore his sister the honor ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... say that carelessly, indifferently, madman! Did you never think of the grief Count Claudieuse would feel if he should learn the truth? And even if he merely suspected it! Can you not comprehend that such a suspicion is quite sufficient to embitter a whole life, to ruin the life of that girl? Have you never told yourself that such a doubt inflicts a more atrocious punishment than any thing ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... harsh to embitter to outflank a riot to hiss thanks to his efforts I cannot bear it any longer ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... knew what women were. She even admitted (since he was so insistent in his protestations of innocence) that there was nothing between them. But if so, it was due solely to Concha—she had plenty of admirers and, besides, her old time friendship would impel her not to embitter Josephina's life. Concha was the one who had resisted ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... various intrinsic characters, the fitness we know to exist in them will lend them some added charm, or their unfitness will disquiet us, and haunt us like a conscientious qualm. The other interests of our lives here mingle with the purely aesthetic, to enrich or to embitter it. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality which it never can remove, and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an humble state as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition more splendid but ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... of the happiness of a state of wedlock as a couple courting. Some difference however must be made, between lovers who have never married, and lovers who, having made the experiment, find it possible that a drop of gall may now and then embitter the cup of honey. My aunt's first husband had been a man of an easy disposition, and readily swayed to good or ill. She had seldom suffered contradiction from him, or heard reproach. A kind of good humoured indolence had accustomed him rather to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... fractional portion of so great an area. England, however, was unaccustomed to defeat; her spirit in those days was proud and high; and by a large majority Parliament voted for the continuance of the war. The next step taken was one unworthy of the country. It tended still further to embitter the war, and it added to the strength of the party in favor of the colonists at home. Attempts were made by the government to obtain the services of large numbers of foreign troops. Negotiations were entered into with Russia, Holland, Hesse, and other countries. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... woman, and the future is not hers to make at will. She is not the conqueror, the lord and king of her own destiny; there are so many difficulties in the path of her life which she would like to forget at this moment, so as not to embitter the happiness which has come to her; there is her shiftless mother and vagabond father, there is the pressure of poverty and filial duty—it is easy ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... doing! You know not what a hell sisters can make for one another, if they cherish such tempers. You know not how bitterness and harshness may grow among you to a dreadful habit; how you may become tormenting spirits to each other, and embitter each others' lives. And it could be so different! Sisters might be like good angels the one to the other, and make the paternal home like a heaven upon earth! I have seen both the one and the other ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... tone so unlike that of many of those who have taken the same step with himself. It is not that every provocation—and how many they have been!—every misunderstanding—and they have been all but universal; every unworthy charge or insinuation—down to those of Professor Kingsley, failed to embitter his feelings against the communion he has deserted and the friends whom he has left. It is not this to which we refer, for this is personal to himself, and the fruit of his own generosity and true greatness of soul. But we refer to his calm, deliberate estimate of the forsaken ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... President's Fourteen Points, which he had vowed to carry out, were not even discussed at the Conference. The outcome of this attitude—one cannot term it a policy—was to leave the best of the ideas which he stood for in solution, to embitter every ally except France and Britain, and to scatter explosives all over ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... his money. I have earned a competence of my own—enough to live on comfortably. We will go away where you and your father and mother will make their home with us. Do not let the sins of the fathers embitter the lives ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... of doctrinaire dogmatism run mad, and though it was not the fault of the Government so much as of the arid doctrines of ill-understood economics which then prevailed in the schools, it did more than anything to embitter the relations between the Irish people and the Imperial Government. The death-rate from famine and famine-fever was appalling. The poor law system—then a new experiment in Ireland—broke down hopelessly, and agitators were ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... cruelty, indeed, and enough to harden and embitter the softest of hearts, but it was mild compared with the continuous suffering and torture imposed upon my mother during the years ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... amassed amidst the ruin of the national finances, and the palace—now known as Somerset House, London—which was rising before the eyes of the world amidst the national defeats and misfortunes, combined to embitter the irritation with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... again overcome them and overwhelms them with numbers, they become still more maladroit, and conduct the defense much less efficiently than the attack. "In the Assembly," says one of them, "they do not listen, but laugh and talk aloud;" they take pains to embitter their adversaries and the galleries by their impertinence. "They leave the chamber when the President puts the question and invite the deputies of their party to follow them, or cry out to them not to take part in the deliberation: through this ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... neglect and condemnation. Men seek to make good their claims for things which they think belong to them, they fight for them, gain them or lose them, fight again or are fought, and in consequence race hatred, class and industrial hatred embitter the hearts of men. ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... house-top, and not go in and out constantly without letting the servants know. This is about the twentieth time I've had to scamper up those countless stairs to that painting-room of yours, all to no purpose, because your people thought you were at home. Such incidents embitter friendship." ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... hard to bear, for as all the world knows the Pennington family is one of the best in the county, but I saw that he wanted to embitter her ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... want of trust in God and of a hope of immortality tends to darken earth, and to embitter life. When men are severed from God and Christ, they suffer loss both in character and enjoyment. We can speak from experience. We never ruined our health by vicious indulgence. We never became the slave of intemperance or licentiousness. We never dishonored our family, or ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... character, from the same hand, have not been composed without a deep sense of responsibility. The author regards children as sacred, and would not, for the world, cast any thing into the fountain of a young heart, that might embitter and pollute its waters. And, even in point of the reputation to be aimed at, juvenile literature is as well worth cultivating as any other. The writer, if he succeed in pleasing his little readers, may hope to be remembered ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Roswell, but you commit the, to me inexplicable, mistake of believing a part of a mystery, while you hesitate about believing all. Were you to deny the merits of the atonement altogether, your position would be much stronger than it is in believing what you do. But, Roswell, we will not embitter the moment of separation by talking more on this subject, now. I have other things to say to you, and but little time to say them in. The promise you have asked of me to remain single until your return, I most freely make. It costs me nothing to give you ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... nothing of each other save in the presence of their parents, for Mr. Deane only snatched a few hours' sleep at early dawn, and awoke just in time to prepare for breakfast. They were estranged, and circumstances to embitter the sad state of affairs ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... reverence, that among all their numbers, none seemed to have repented their chosen manner of existence; none perish by melancholy or suicide; their self-adjudged sufferings are never inflicted in the hope of shortening the lives they embitter or purify; and the hours of dream or meditation, on mountain or in cave, appear seldom to have dragged so heavily as those which, without either vision or reflection, we pass ourselves, on the ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... given it. Its clear but dark current, flows rapidly between banks often shaded with ashes, alders, and other trees, and sometimes overhung by precipices of a reddish-colored rock. A little below the bridge it falls into the sea, but the tide comes not up to embitter its waters. From the west bank of the stream the land rises to hills of considerable height, with a heathy summit and wooded slopes, called Brown Carrick Hill. Two high cliffs near it impend over the sea, which are commonly called the Heads of Ayr, and not far from these stands a fragment ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... excuse yourself to me, unless you wish to embitter my shame. I'm obliged to you for offering to share your destitution with me. I must try to run my face with the landlord," ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... for ignorant and unintentional injustice! How differently, again, will the several parties to any transaction construe the rights of the case! Discussion, without rules for guiding it, will but embitter the dispute. And in the absence of all guidance from the intellect, gradually weaving a common standard of international appeal, it is clear that nations must fight, and ought to fight. Not being convinced, it is base to pretend that you are convinced; and failing to be convinced ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... kiss me with parental, perhaps fraternal rapture? Had I a sister? Could I doubt it at that ecstatic moment? How I would love her! The fatted calf was not only killed, but cooked, to welcome the long lost. Nor Latin, nor French, nor Greek, nor Mathematics, should embitter the passing moments. This young summer, that breathed such aromatic joy around me, had put on its best smile to welcome me to my paternal abode. "No doubt," said I to myself—"no doubt, but that some one of the strange stories that I told of myself at Root's, is ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... village concentrated itself most harmoniously upon this favorite feature of their common life. Political strife might rage in the grocery-stores, religious differences flame high in the vestibule of the church, and social distinctions embitter the Ladies' Club, but the library was a neutral ground where all parties met, united by a ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... take a serious view of things, having caught something of her mother's gloomy Puritanism, which her own unhappy disposition and contracted life had done nothing to sweeten, and not a little to embitter. She was not, perhaps, incapable of improving the occasion for her brother's benefit even then, by warnings against devotion to perishable idols, and hints of chastenings which ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... I stood on the defensive, hoping that the provisions made for the growth of religious life among the students might show that we were not so wicked as we were represented; but, as all this seemed only to embitter our adversaries, I finally determined to take the offensive, and having been invited to deliver a lecture in the great hall of the Cooper Institute at New York, took as my subject "The Battle-fields of Science.'' In this ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... fit that we so comport ourselves as not to embitter our present happiness with prospects too gloomy—but bring our minds to be cheerfully thankful for the present, wisely to enjoy that present as we go along—and at last, when all is to be wound up—lie down, and say, "Not mine, but ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... also, that because Abelard, in the warmth of honest indignation, had reproved the monks of St. Denis, in France, and St. Gildas de Ruys, in Bretagne, for the horrid incontinence of their lives, they joined his enemies, and assisted to embitter the life of this ingenious scholar, who perhaps was guilty of no other crime than that of feeling too sensibly an attachment to one who not only possessed the enchanting attractions of the softer sex, but, what indeed is very unusual, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... A nice rage she'll be in when I don't come home to-night! She'll have to hustle around and pick up worms for herself, and for the children too, and it serves her right. She had a temper that would embitter the life of a crow, much more a simple robin. I wore myself to skin and bone taking care of her and her brood, and how I did hate 'em!—bare, squawking things, always with their throats gaping open. They seemed to think a parent's sole duty was to ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... differences of ideas arising from differences of race, training, occupation, country, fling us apart. Our differences of wealth and position alienate us. Our differences of conception of Christianity often separate and embitter us. But do these not crumble when we say ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... perhaps, in that remote corner of Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But there is a revolution in our affairs, which makes it prudent to be just. In our late awkward contest with Ireland about trade, had religion been thrown in, to ferment and embitter the mass of discontents, the consequences might have been truly dreadful. But, very happily, that cause of quarrel was previously quieted by the wisdom of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... are perhaps raised above the weakness of a heart like mine. You will not comprehend how an unrequited passion can ever give place to rage and revenge and how the merits of the object preferred to me should only embitter that revenge. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... able to get work," said the Kingston magistrate to a man summoned for income-tax. This is the sort of thoughtless remark that tends to embitter the unemployed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... alas! a scolding wife Usurps a jolly fellow's throne; And many drink the cup of life, Mix'd and embitter'd ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... a rueful thought to Jack Tosswill. Miss Pendarth had been right, after all. That sort of experience might well embitter the whole of the early life of such a priggish, self-centred youth; and while he was chewing the cud of these painful, troubling thoughts there came a woman's voice out of ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... army, disputes about the police, disputes about the authority of Imperial legislation, disputes about the validity of Irish enactments, disputes about appeals to the Privy Council. To say that all these sources of irritation might embitter the relation between England and Victoria, and that, as they do not habitually do so, one may infer that they will not embitter the relation between England and Ireland, is to argue that institutions nominally the same will work in the same way when applied to totally different circumstances. Victoria ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... A gentleman is kind, but not wasteful; he burdens, but he does not embitter; he is covetous, but not greedy; high-minded, but not proud; stern, but ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... sing?"—"What has she done, except rock herself?" But such expressions, if allowable, are too unfrequent to be noticed in any general Rule of syntax. In the following example, the word of pretty evidently governs the infinitive: "Intemperance characterizes our discussions, that is calculated to embitter in stead of conciliate."—CINCINNATI HERALD: ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and showing that they believe, in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest in good women's eyes. If it is a feminine delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would embitter all our hopes of the brave, tenderhearted little lads, who still love their mothers better than themselves and are not ashamed ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... live fearlessly and joyously in the hour that was before us. Frank speaking, absolute candour, that would once have wounded, now only cheered and stimulated; the spirit of entire helpfulness drives out all morbid self-consciousness. Differences no longer embitter when courtesy and faith are ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... without in the least breaking his spirit. I knew of course that he would have to be conquered, and conquered completely, or become an outlaw against whom every one would turn; but the punishment would have to be more vital and less humiliating than a beating. It won't do to embitter an animal any more than it will a person. You have to leave a certain self-respect and give him ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... for me, he would be sent away, and go hunting with some happier master: but he watches, and is wise, and faithful, and miserable; and his high animal intellect only gives him the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and desire, and affection, which embitter his captivity. Yet of the two, would we rather be ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... responsibilities, there should be found ONE who has not suffered aught, that was pure in the natural attraction which bound them together in this chain of glittering links, to fall into dull forgetfulness; one who allowed no breath of the fermentation lingering even around the most delicate perfumes, to embitter his memories; one who has transfigured and left to the immortality of art, only the unblemished inheritance of all that was noblest in their enthusiasm, all that was purest and most lasting of their joys; let us bow before him as before one of the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... lord? And they that found A conqueror less glorious, shall they find More courtesy in him? In vain, we asked Our freedom of your soldiers—no one durst Dispose of us without your own assent, But all did promise it. "O, if you can, Show yourselves to the Count," they said. "Be sure, He'll not embitter fortune to the vanquished; An ancient courtesy of war will never Be ta'en away by him; he would have been Rather the first to ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... persons were badly hurt; but the painful impression wrought upon the national conscience was well worth the price. British blood has never since been shed by British hands in any civic contest that rose above the level of a lawless riot. The immediate result, however, was to concentrate and embitter party feeling. The grand jury threw out the bills against the yeomen, and found true bills against the popular orators who had called the meeting together. The Common Councilmen of the City of London, who had presented an Address to the Prince Regent reflecting upon the conduct of the Government, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... sought to continue in serfdom, to use this form of address, and denounced its neglect as disrespectful to the "Master" or "Mistress." When these laws ceased to be operative, the custom of the white race generally was still to demand the observance of the form, and this demand tended to embitter the dislike of the freedmen for it. At first, almost the entire race refused. After a while the habit of generations began to assert itself. While the more intelligent and better educated of the original stock discarded its use entirely, the others, and the children who had ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... the company. Unlike many professionals who have achieved greatness, Mr. Southard was thoroughly democratic, and displayed none of the snobbish tactics with his company which so often humiliate and embitter the lesser lights ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the attractive boughs. It was a very peaceful existence, and I shall often look back with pleasure to our hermitage by the walls of the old monastery, which afforded a moral haven from all the storms and troubles that embitter life. On Sundays we sent a messenger for the post to the military camp at Troodos, about five and a half miles distant, and the arrival of letters and newspapers restored us for a couple of days to the outer world: after which we relapsed once more into the local quiescent state ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... is our intent Fairly to state the argument) 200 A man should want an eye or two, The remedy is sure, though new: The cure's at hand—no need of fear— For proof—behold the Chevalier![253]— As well prepared, beyond all doubt, To put eyes in, as put them out. But, argument apart, which tends To embitter foes and separate friends, (Nor, turn'd apostate from the Nine, Would I, though bred up a divine, 210 And foe, of course, to Reason's Weal, Widen that breach I cannot heal) By his own sense and feelings taught, In speech as liberal as in thought, Let every man enjoy his whim; What's ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... story, you will no longer ask me the reason of my melancholy, but permit me to brood upon it as I may. There is, surely, in the above narrative, enough to embitter, though not to poison, the chalice, which the fortune and fame you so often mention had prepared to regale ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... mellower as he advanced in years. There is a marked change in the tone of the Diary dating from the very time when he himself suffered financial reverses. It was the test of the man that misfortune did not embitter him, but made him more kindly in his judgments of those about him. The smug self-satisfaction belonged to the early days. In the closing years of his useful life there was but one thing that disturbed him greatly. He foresaw the Deluge that was to come. December 12, 1850, was ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... which as far as the Lower Fourth was concerned tended considerably to embitter the contest, is worthy of record as a notable ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... take part in this happy hour; not to mix in the general gayety, but to contemplate it. If the enjoyments of others embitter jealous minds, they strengthen the humble spirit; they are the beams of sunshine, which open the two beautiful flowers called trust ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... from Sydney this day week. I could not embitter my boy's wedding-day by letting him know that he was to lose me; better that he should come back and find me gone. I must go, and I foresaw it when that letter came; but I would not tell you, because I knew you would be so sorry to part. I have been inside ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... she might keep them in her memory forever. Besides all the education she received in this way, she also enjoyed a great happiness, of which she had as yet known nothing, the happiness of living in a loving family, where there was no terrible sorrow or fear to embitter tender hearts. She felt how fondly the king loved his only son, and how sweet it was to the king to know that his boy loved him. When the young prince leaned against his father's knees and told him all about his sports, Pet would remember that she also had had a father, and that he ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... motherhood? Did I not make you see by what I owned just now, the three children to whom I am bound, to whom I shall never fail, on whom I strive to shed a healing dew and the light of my own soul without withdrawing or adulterating a single particle? Do not embitter the mother's milk! though as a wife I am invulnerable, you must never again speak thus to me. If you do not respect this command, simple as it is, the door of this house will be closed to you. I believed in pure friendship, in a voluntary ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Burns, "with the author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Remorse is the most painful sentiment that can embitter the human bosom; an ordinary pitch of fortitude may bear up admirably well, under those calamities, in the procurement of which we ourselves have had no hand; but when our follies or crimes have made us wretched, to bear all with manly ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... it was from the perusal of these comforting and pellucid contributions to American literature that Mr. GREELEY caught the spirit and the style which distinguish his thrilling work on Political Economy. But something too much of this. We would not embitter the life of Mr. GREELEY, at present, by any farther revelations, and therefore we ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... the practice of inflicting, or of sporting with pain, to a degree that is either cruel or absurd; others regard every prospect of bodily suffering as the greatest of evils; and in the midst of their troubles, embitter every real affliction, with the terrors of a feeble and dejected imagination. We are not bound to answer for the follies of either, nor, in treating a question which relates to the nature of man, make an estimate of its strength or its weakness, from the habits or apprehensions ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... all these years. I admire him for that; but he has sacrificed himself long enough. Your mother's recent death renders her prosecution impossible. It is time the truth prevailed. In simple justice I will not allow this old man to embitter further his life, just to protect his grandchild from a knowledge of ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... in the latter is left in some uncertainty. Doctor Anderson tells us, that he undertook the chief direction; and Mr. Nichols,[2] that he assisted Archibald Hamilton the printer. Whatever his part might be, the performance of it was enough to waste his strength with ignoble labour, to embitter his temper by useless altercation, and to draw on him contempt and insult from those who, however they surpassed him in learning, could scarcely be regarded as his superiors in native vigour and fertility of mind. "Sure I," said Gray, in a letter to Mason, "am something ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... brigadier, it appears, had lately fallen under the ban of his displeasure; but from the moment his condition was reported, Jackson forgot everything but the splendid services he had rendered on so many hard-fought fields; and in his anxiety that every memory should be effaced which might embitter his last moments, he had followed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... remained with them at the cottage—I had tried hard not to embitter the happiness of my return to THEM as it was embittered to ME. I had done all man could to rise after the shock, and accept my life resignedly—to let my great sorrow come in tenderness to my heart, and not in despair. It was useless and hopeless. No ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... unpleasant duty to perform," she said. "I hoped, when I gave you boys permission to have the snowball fight, that it would result in permanent peace among you. It has, apparently, served only to embitter you more deeply against each other. The school colors have been removed from the building without authority. With those guilty of this offense I shall deal hereafter. The flag has been abused and thrown into the slush of the street. As to this I shall not now decide whose was the greater ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... constant companions. My mother—she and my father —they were not altogether companionable—in short, they were ill-mated, and, being wise enough to find it out, and having no desire to longer embitter each other's lives, they agreed to separate when I was only four. They parted without the slightest ill-feeling, and I remained with father. He was very fond of me, and would permit no one else to teach me. At seven I was drawing and painting under his guidance. At eight the violin was put ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... to foresee the confusion, discord, and disruption that may await us. There is, and can be, but one safe principle of government—equal rights to all. And any and every discrimination against any class, whether on account of color, race, nativity, sex, property, culture, can but embitter and disaffect that class, and thereby endanger the safety of the whole people. Clearly, then, the National government must not only define the rights of citizens, but it must stretch out its powerful hand and protect them in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ordeal of African warfare. It was cruelly hard that now when he had obtained serenity, and more than half attained forgetfulness, these two—her face and his—must come before him; one to recall the past, the other to embitter the future! ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee] |
