"Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried, beating the air with her hands, 'these moods, these follies! they are my own fault I am dividing myself from you. I am breaking my own heart; I am miserable for no reason. Help me, Paul, help me! Be ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... us; so now began the most serious time when we could not get rest day nor night except under incessant fire. The left of our brigade rested on the Norfolk railroad, and we held this position in the open fields under a July sun for six weeks, the regiments changing position every week. Our food was miserable—musty meal and rancid Nassau bacon. Our bread was cooked at the wagon yard on canal, west side of Petersburg. When the bread had been cooked twelve hours it would pull out like spider-webs. We were on picket or fatigue duty nearly every night. One-third had to stand ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... reside at his estate at Blakesley, in Northamptonshire, when he died, leaving Dryden two-thirds of a property, which was worth, in all, only L60 a-year. The other third was bequeathed to his mother, during her lifetime. With this miserable modicum of L40 a-year, the poet returned to Cambridge, and continued there, doing little, and little known as one who could do anything, till the year 1657. The only records of the diligence of his college years, are the lines on the death of Lord Hastings, and one or two other inconsiderable ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... promises of plunder to the wild llaneros. Even a Monterist press had come into existence, speaking oracularly of the secret promises of support given by "our great sister Republic of the North" against the sinister land-grabbing designs of European powers, cursing in every issue the "miserable Ribiera," who had plotted to deliver his country, bound hand and foot, for a prey ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... in a terrible rage. His clerks could not imagine what had happened. He looked pale, worried, anxious and miserable. "I should not think," he said to himself, "that such a thing ever happened in the world before." His clients thought him bad tempered; he had the air of a man with whom everything had gone wrong—out of sorts with all ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... 'Maugher, thus justly deposed, was banished to the island of Guernsey, near Coutances, where, says Walsingham, he fell into a state of madness, and had a miserable end. Others affirm that during his exile he gave his mind to the black arts (sciences noires) and that he had a familiar spirit, which warned him of his death, while he was taking his recreation in a boat, on which he said to the boatman: ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... habitual took its place—that shielding, solacing thought, which was in truth all the world to him, and was going to make up to him for Eliza's death, for getting old, and the lonesomeness of a man without chick or child. He would have felt unutterably forlorn and miserable, he would have shrunk trembling from the shapes of death and pain that seemed to fill the darkness, but for this fact, this defence, this treasure, that set him apart from his fellows and gave him this proud sense of superiority, of ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made of wild flowers and who had the ploughshare for his arms, spake to the lotuseyed one, saying, 'O Krishna, I do not see that the practice of virtue leads to any good or that unrighteous practices can cause evil, since the magnanimous Yudhishthira is in this miserable state, with matted hair, a resident of the wood, and for his garment wearing the bark of trees. And Duryodhana is now ruling the earth, and the ground doth not yet swallow him up. From this, a person of limited sense would believe a vicious course of life is preferable to a virtuous one. When ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... to public buildings, and to the houses and warehouses of the rich, but the poorest families displayed their bit of crape. Outside of a miserable shanty in Brooklyn was displayed a cheap print of the President, framed in black, with these words written below, "We mourn our loss." Even as I write, the insignia of grief are still to be seen in the tenement-house districts on the East Side of New York, and ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... school days were over, I married and went to Oklahoma, where I found the most miserable wild nuts imaginable. However, I stayed but a short time and returned to my native state where the wild nuts were reasonably good. In 1935, I made a trip to California and visited the Persian walnut orchards at harvest time. As if that were not enough ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... run down to Cowes, anchor the yacht in the night; and an hour before daylight have you in my boat with all my men. I will take care that you are in perfect safety, depend upon it, even if I run a risk. I should, indeed, be miserable, if, through my wild freaks, any accident should happen to Mrs ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Sakuntala and others, who, having united themselves with lovers of their own caste and their own choice, were ever happy afterwards in their society. And she should also tell of other girls who married into great families, and being troubled by rival wives, became wretched and miserable, and were finally abandoned. She should further speak of the good fortune, the continual happiness, the chastity, obedience, and affection of the man, and if the girl gets amorous about him, she ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... state of affairs during the Sixteen States of the Five Dynasty-Period and the Ten States of the Five Successions as deplorably miserable and disastrous as the state of affairs now prevailing in Mexico, although there was no election of Presidents then? In quoting objective facts as illustrations the critic should not allow his choice to be ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Pekinese, the Chinese Manchus, Mongols, and the rest mixed together, though the Chinese are confessedly the workers in wood, iron, and everything else. The Manchus are mostly hangers on of the government, living mainly upon a miserable monthly stipend. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... elephant, I might save the life of the unhappy being who seemed to be courting his fate. I pulled the trigger. I could hear the ball strike, but what was my horror to see the animal rush forward, and the next moment trample Hans Scarff beneath his feet. A single shriek escaped the miserable man, and then all was silent. Excited as I was, I did not notice that Harry fired at the second elephant at the same moment. His bullet must have entered the animal's brain, for it sank a helpless ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... Van, thank you," interrupted Miss Zaidie, bringing her daintily-shod foot down on the deck this time with an unmistakable stamp. "We'll consider that incident closed if you please. It was a miserable, mean, sordid business altogether; I am utterly, hopelessly ashamed of it and myself too. Just to ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... combination of Retribution and Salvation, was pictured in various ways and with some elaboration of detail. Paradise and Hell were mapped out, and the comfortable compartments to be occupied by the saints and the miserable quarters of sinners were specified with the precision of an Ordnance Survey. Purgatory was an institution not limited to the Roman Catholic Church; it had a strong hold on the mediaeval Jewish mind. The intermediate state was ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... whether he merely regarded them without emotion, has been debated. It seems more probable that he thought they carried their own moral. It is the most sympathetic touch in Roderick's character, that he writes thus of his miserable crew of slaves: "Our ship being freed from the disagreeable lading of negroes, to whom indeed I had been a miserable slave since our leaving the coast of Guinea, I began to enjoy myself." Smollett was a physician, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... or land, Her house of bondage worse than that of old Which God avenged on Pharaoh—the Bastille! Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts, Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair, That monarchs have supplied from age to age With music such as suits their sovereign ears, The sighs and groans of miserable men! There's not an English heart that would not leap To hear that ye were fallen at last, to know That even our enemies, so oft employed In forging chains for us, themselves were free. For he that values liberty, confines His zeal for her predominance ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... so much to heart—it's miserable to bring you such bad news," said Phil; but he knew the sickly smile was on his lips still, and he hated himself for the sound of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... strength for exertion of any kind; and worse than that, he had no motive, and in his weakness he was most miserable. It was a change he needed, they all knew, and when the days began to grow long and warm, something was said about returning to ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... is no guarding against them. I am never safe, even in my grotto; for that can be no security against such beings as can sail on the water in no boats, and fly in the air on no wings, as the case now appears to me, who can be here and there and wherever they please. What a miserable state, I say, am I fallen to! I should have been glad to have had human converse, and to have found inhabitants in this place; but there being none, as I supposed hitherto, I contented myself with thinking that I was at least safe from ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... your senses?" she asked with tyrannous passion. "Or do you think that I have not borne insults enough, that you strive to invent new ones to heap upon me? How can you mention the name of that miserable girl in my hearing? Has she not occasioned me and all my family sufficient wretchedness? Are you mad enough to imagine that I will allow you to bring her here that she may triumph over me in the face of the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... cuites of Blasius date from 1560). Well, he was put under glass in a museum that shall be nameless, and he found himself set next to his own imitation born and baked yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you the miserable creature said to him, with a grin? 'Old Pipeclay,'—that is what he called my friend,—'the fellow that bought ME got just as much commission on me as the fellow that bought YOU, and that was all that HE thought about. You know it is only the public money that goes!' ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... leave matters where they are,' said Bob impetuously. 'You have made me miserable, and all for nothing. I tell you she was good enough for me; and as long as I knew nothing about what you say of her history, what difference would it have made to me? Never was there a young woman ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... earth history of the visible Church is predicted to be a condition in which the Church is saying, "I am rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing." The passage continues, "and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thy eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... ourselves. We must cease to be consumed by a cancerous anxiety to endure in time and be permanent in space. In the order of Nature our own particular lives are of no especial importance. And unless we recognize this, we are necessarily doomed to a miserable fate. We must recognize that our mere selves can never give us ultimate fulfillment or blessedness of soul. Only by losing ourselves in Nature or God can we escape the wretchedness of finitude and find the final ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Proculeius fixed his scaling-ladders in the window through which the women had pulled up Antony. And so entering, with two men to follow him, he went straight down to the door where Cleopatra was discoursing with Gallus. One of the two women who were shut up in the monument with her cried out, "Miserable Cleopatra, you are taken prisoner!" Upon which she turned quick, and, looking at Proculeius, drew out her dagger, which she had with her to stab herself. But Proculeius ran up quickly, and, seizing her with both ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the poor little worm, so she took up the leaf, carried it out into the wood and hid it under a raspberry bush where the greedy sparrow could not find it. Yes, and what more is there to tell about a raspberry worm? Who would give three straws for such a miserable little thing? Yes, but who would not like to live in such a pretty home as it lives in; in such a fresh fragrant dark-red cottage, far away in the quiet wood ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... glorious deeds of his Cimbrian victories, was not contented to retire upon his honors, but out of an insatiable desire of glory and power, even in his old age, headed a political party against young men, and let himself fall into miserable actions, and yet more miserable sufferings. Better, in like manner, they say, had it been for Cicero, after Catiline's conspiracy, to have retired and grown old, and for Scipio, after his Numantine and Carthaginian ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... unfortunate lack of coordination of religious agencies in Negro colleges. Frequently we find several organizations attempting to do the same thing and each makes a miserable failure in the attempt. More than that, this lack of coordination and correlation results in duplications which surely mean wasted energy and non-effectiveness. If all of the religious agencies were supervised in such a way that each would know his specific task and would not overlap that of other ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... illness, offered my father to accompany me; and Clara was anxious that he should go, as she was determined not to listen to any thing he could say during my affliction; she could not, she said, be happy while I was miserable, and gave him no opportunity of conversing with her on the subject of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... while there are voluminous layers of literary lead, whose weight and dulness render the working of them tedious;—but this need not, and does not, dishearten the digger, for in all mines the poor and worthless material is ever in excess of that which is valuable, and miserable indeed must be the spirit of him who should refuse to manipulate the "dirt" because the large nuggets and gems are few and far between. Throughout all the cuttings flow glittering brooks of knowledge, and also many crystal ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... rain, always swinging his big stick. Perhaps, after all, the worst of it was over with him, when he could argue with himself in this way. It is the first plunge into the cold water that gives the shock. We may almost say that every human misery will cease to be miserable if it be duly faced; and something is done towards conquering our miseries, when we face them in any degree, even if not with due courage. Herbert had taken his plunge into the deep, dark, cold, comfortless pool of misfortune; and he felt ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... that these sixty thousand people, fellow-creatures of ours, who are known as the lazaroni of Naples, whom we half pity and altogether despise, and look upon as lowest members of the Caucasian race, are not altogether very miserable. On the contrary, taken as a whole, they form the oiliest, fattest, drollest, noisiest, sleekest, dirtiest, ignorantest, prejudicedest, narrow-mindedest, shirtlessest, clotheslessest, idlest, carelessest, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... miserable change now at my end, Lament nor sorrow at: but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former Fortunes Wherein I liued. The greatest Prince o'th' world, The Noblest: and do now not basely dye, Not Cowardly put off my Helmet to My Countreyman. A Roman, by a Roman Valiantly vanquish'd. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... king!' but as he listened to the cries, a vision, swifter than lightning, flashed across his brain. He saw himself seated on a throne, spending his life trying, and never succeeding, to make poor people rich; miserable people happy; bad people good; never doing anything he wished to do, not able even to marry the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... had been abed an hour last night, I was forced to rise and call to the landlady and maid to have the fire removed in a chimney below stairs, which made my bed-chamber smoke, though I had no fire in it. I have been twice served so. I never lay so miserable an hour in my life. Is it not plaguy vexatious?—It has snowed all night, and rains this morning.—Come, where's MD's letter? Come, Mrs. Letter, make your appearance. Here am I, says she, answer me to ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... miserable household here. Mr. Malden had in no way reformed. When did marriage ever reform a bad man? On the contrary, he was more dissipated than ever; and whenever he came home, the welcome that waited for him was one little calculated to make home ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a miserable business it all is! I am so worried I cannot sleep. Right and wrong, right and wrong, like the pendulum of the clock the two sides of the matter swing in my mind till I'm half-distracted. I hardly know ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... himself in those same details which during the lifetime of the late King we had both so often reproached him with. Questions he might have decided in half an hour he prolonged, sometimes from weakness, sometimes from that miserable desire to set people at loggerheads, and that poisonous maxim which occasionally escaped him or his favourite, 'divide et impera'; often from his general mistrust of everybody and everything; nothings became hydras with which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... hallowed associations, touches the tender feelings of our hearts. These colloquies often ended with the good old hymn, "Home, sweet home," and with the sound of the last bugle-call we hastened to our rest, to spend, it may be, a miserable ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... miserable, stood in the shadow near the oak on the farther side of the lawn. He did not want to play with those little girls, and yet he was hurt because he had not been asked. The party had been a most miserable failure, and a year ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... something beyond. If Christ is not God, the man who denies him to be God is certainly prima facie right, though it may perhaps be possible to show that such a denial cannot be made in practice without attacking a belief in morality. We may, or it is possible to assert that we may, be under this miserable necessity, that we cannot speak undiluted truth; truth and falsehood are, it is perhaps maintainable, so intricately blended in the world that discrimination is impossible. Still the man who argues thus is bound to assign some grounds for his melancholy ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!" ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... and another one of maize, and he kept this also for seed; and in the course of five or six years he had taken all their high lands to sow his seed in and in a few years more he had taken all their rice lands too. Then his master was very miserable but he saw that it was useless to make any complaint and the master became so poor that he had to work as a servant to Kora. At last the miser called the heads of the village together and wept before them, and they had pity on him and interceded for him; but Kora said "It is ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... like to know how we dispensed the clothes and quilts so kindly sent us. During the winter months very many needy refugees came to our dispensary daily for treatment. Of course we did not have enough clothes to distribute indiscriminately, but only for those who were the most helpless and miserable. We received them by hundreds, and not only had we to give out medicine, but rice, ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... Effie's getting something in her eye. It hurt very much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark—only it seemed to have legs as well, and wings like a fly. Effie rubbed and cried—not real crying, but the kind your eye does all by itself without your being miserable inside your mind—and then she went to her father to have the thing in her eye taken out. Effie's father was a doctor, so of course he knew how to take things out of eyes—he did it very cleverly with a soft paintbrush dipped ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... went to see Santiago. He lay on a bench in a miserable hut, where several wounded officers had been brought for shelter. Two small earthen lamps gave a feeble light, barely sufficient for us to see each other's faces. I bent over him, and choked back the sob that would rise in my throat. We neither of us tried to gloze over ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... thort at fust Ide pollish him orf ar-lar the Beneshy Boy, but on reflectin that he cood pollish me much wuss in his paper, I giv it up. & I wood here take occashun to advise peple when thay run agin, as thay sumtimes will, these miserable papers, to not pay no attenshun to um. Abuv all, don't assault a editer of this kind. It only gives him a notorosity, which is jest what he wants, & don't do you no more good than it wood to jump into enny other mud puddle. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... may change. Haven't I waited? Haven't I walked the floor night after night! when you haven't been here? Bear with you—yes, yes! Who's to bear with me when my heart is breaking? Oh, God!" she suddenly added, with passionate vigor, "I'm miserable! I'm miserable! ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... inquired the parson with an air of exegetical candour, "that no man can be miserable because some woman or other has flirted his friend? That's the one trouble that every man laughs at—when it happens in his neighbourhood, not in his ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Barnavelt passe with 'em and glide away Like a spent exhalation? I cannot hold; I am crackt too deepe alredy. What have I don I cannot answeare? Foole! remember not Fame has too many eares and eyes to find thee! What help, o miserable man? none left thee. What constant frends? 'tis now a cryme to know thee ... ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... enough from outside," says Frau Buchholz, when she went to see a girl who had just married a poor man; "but oh! those steep narrow stairs that I had to mount, those wretched entrances on each floor, the miserable door handles, the sickly bluish-grey walls, the shaky banisters! It was easy to see that the outside had been devised with a view to investors, and the inside for poverty." In houses of this class there are often three courtyards, one ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... family circle, into which she had forced her way, she was an unwelcome stranger; and such homage as she received was conceded to her rank and not to herself. "Of all princesses," she once wrote to a friend, "I really think I am the most miserable." ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... body, which he might destroy at a shot!" However, that no imputation might rest on his courage, he consented to meet his adversary—for whom, by the way, he expressed the most thorough contempt—next morning, at the Bois de Boulogne. They met; and this miserable man received the reward of his perfidy and malice, by a ball ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... great many times; and Martin pulled the cotton wool out of her two little pink ears, and told her all that had happened, and how miserable he had been because he could not keep his promise to her, and how dreadfully tired he was ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... his arms with vigour and trying to beat some sort of circulation into his frigid fingers; then, picking up the basket as if to increase the warmth of his body by added effort, he went off beside Henri, Jules marching on the farther side, his teeth still chattering, utterly cold and miserable. However, the sharp walk to the farm made them feel warmer, so that they had almost stopped shivering by the time they reached the yard. From outside the window of that front room, which was still illuminated, they listened to the sound ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... ago a handbill was distributed in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials, inviting the public to visit a "wonderful animal fed with ants, and possessing strength to kill the lion, tiger, or any other animal under its claws." We entered the miserable apartment where it was exhibited, and any spectator must at once have been struck with the creature's want of resemblance to any other he had ever seen. Its head so small, so long and slender; the straight, wiry, dry hair with which it was covered, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... came right after us—I don't know how many strong, but too strong for us. Grant would never let us alone. He was there at our heels all the time, and Sheridan kept galloping around us, lopping off every straggling regiment and making our lives miserable. When we got to Appomattox we found the Yankees were so thick that we stayed there. We couldn't move. There weren't more than fifteen thousand of us left, and we were starved and barefoot. The firing around us never stopped. Grant kept pressing and pressing. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... before. Too miserable for words, he seized her and turned her about. He was amazed to find no tears ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... image of that animal [the ass], by whose indication they had escaped from their vagrant condition in the wilderness and quenched their thirst. They abstain from swine's flesh as a memorial of the miserable destruction which the mange brought on them. That they stole the fruits of the earth, we have a proof in their unleavened bread. They rest on the seventh day, because that day gave them rest from their ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... work as this. She cared for no one, and no one cared for her. Well, she must go through with it now; but another time she would know better. With her own book and a fireside she never felt herself to be miserable as she was now. She had turned her back to the music for she was sick of seeing Lord Lufton watch the artistic motion of Miss Grantly's fingers, and was sitting at a small table as far away from the piano as a long room would permit, when she was suddenly roused from a reverie ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... heard of Juno, and was as miserable and heavy hearted a woman as dwelt in Nimes, a flush of pleasure rose to her cheeks. She too was a child of the South, and female children of the South love to be admired, no matter how frankly. I have heard ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... are most single-minded, can never take its line absolutely from one impulse; but Klesmer's was, as far as possible, directed by compassion for poor Gwendolen's ignorant eagerness to enter on a course of which he saw all the miserable details with a definiteness which he could not if he would have ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... gone to her room, and had changed her wet clothes, she was thoroughly miserable. For some time she sat on the side of her little cot, unwilling to go out, on account of a nervous fear that she might meet Mr. Raybold. Of course, if he should again speak to her as he had done, she would immediately ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... the lock he turned. The gaoler had left him with no light but the rays of the moon, which, shining through a barred window some eight or ten feet from the ground, shed a gleam upon a miserable truckle-bed and left the rest of the room in deep obscurity. The prisoner stood still for a moment and listened; then, when he had heard the steps die away in the distance and knew himself to be alone at last, he fell upon the bed with a cry ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and the different ways in which they are produced, that authors have since divided it into several classes." But I beg, at first, that the reader will reflect seriously, if it is credible, that as soon as some miserable woman or unlucky knave have a fancy for it, God, whose wisdom and goodness are infinite, will ever permit the demon to appear to them, instruct them, obey them, and that they should make a compact with him. Is it credible that to please a scoundrel he would grant the demon power ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... nourished their minds otherwise than with frivolous thoughts: finding neither in themselves nor in society any means to dispel the gloom that envelops them, and not being able to enlist the sympathy of the world which abandons and despises them, they are condemned to eke out a miserable existence in the disgust and ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... have received some long communication which I feel I must answer. Indeed I have nothing to write; and in these days I find it the most difficult of duties. Writing to you and to my dearest Tullia I never can do without floods of tears. I see you are utterly miserable, and I wanted you to be completely happy. I might have made you so. I could have made you had I been less timid.... My heart's delight, my deepest regret is to think that you, to whom all used to look for help, should now be involved in such sorrow, such distress! and that I should be to ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... It is here in the form of the great military chieftain of that new heroic line, who found himself, with all his strategy, involved in a single-handed contest with the state and its whole physical strength, in his contest with that personal power in whose single arm, in whose miserable finger-joints, the state and all its force then lay. Under that old, threadbare, martial cloak,—under the safe disguise of martial tyranny in 'the few,'—whenever the business of the play requires it, whenever 'his cue comes,' he is there. Under that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... most of the ghosts I ever heard of; but it does appear to me somewhat inconsistent that when you have an opportunity of visiting the fairest spots of earth—for I suppose space is nothing to you—you should always return exactly to the very places where you have been most miserable.' 'Egad, that's very true; I never thought of that before,' said the ghost. 'You see, sir,' pursued the tenant, 'this is a very uncomfortable room. From the appearance of that press I should be disposed to say that it is not wholly free from ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... up, and said, "So, madam, I have the good fortune to find you again; I have been extremely miserable since I lost you." The lady answered in her masquerade voice that she did not know him. "I am Colonel James," said he, in a whisper. "Indeed, sir," answered she, "you are mistaken; I have no acquaintance with any Colonel James." "Madam," ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... sight; And when that peril ceased at night, The sky broke out in red dismay With signal-fires. Well, there I lay Close covered o'er in my recess, Up to the neck in ferns and cress. Thinking on Metternich, deg. our friend, deg.19 And Charles's miserable end, 20 And much beside, two days; the third, Hunger o'ercame me when I heard The peasants from the village go To work among the maize: you know, With us in Lombardy, deg. they bring deg.25 Provisions packed on mules, a string, With little bells ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... gleams of sense, is occasionally sprightly, and has perceptions of principle that might have made him a man—an individual being: but now, having neither firmness, resolution to carry out a good purpose, nor self-respect, he is a miserable and wretched cipher, whose whole value depends on the figure that is next him. Yes, I know—I feel—he will ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cruel!" Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic. She was too miserable to ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... a miserable day, some one having reported that the Departmental Battalion was cut to pieces in the battle. When I came in, she asked me if Custis and Thomas were alive, and was exceedingly glad to know not a man in the company ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... men—you cowards and bullies! And you!" he turned his blazing eyes upon Getz, "you would work off your miserable spite on a weak girl—who can't defend herself! Dare to touch a hair of her head and I'll break YOUR damned head and every bone in your Body! Now take yourselves off, both of you, you ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... where he is going or of his chances of pulling through, and having been told of what will be expected of him personally at the target, still has no picture of the support which will be grouped around him, he is apt to be as thoroughly miserable and demoralized as were the sailors under Columbus, when sailing on and on, they came to fear that they would override the horizon and go ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... to another, a hundred emotions tearing at my heart. I had seen enough to understand how these two stood to one another, and, utterly miserable at heart, I gave way. A sudden impulse, that carried me as like a wave, seized me, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... relate to the Indian country exclusively. In calling your attention to this subject, gentlemen, I am persuaded that it is unnecessary to remind you that the article of compact makes it your duty to attend to it. The interests of your constituents, the interests of the miserable Indians, and your own feelings, will urge you to take it into your most serious consideration and provide the remedy which is to save thousands of our fellow creatures. So destructive has been the progress of intemperance, that whole villages have been swept away. A miserable ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... in the summer-house over the river. Easter said she had been there for two hours. And I have never known Jinny to be such miserable company as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her face again in her hands; "I am so miserable—too miserable to be good, as I used to be when David ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... I might, with your kind recommendation, get a comfortable situation; but in that case mother must go to the house, and I could not bear to think of her there. She is very helpless, and of late she has come to look to me, and would be miserable among strangers. I could earn enough at a factory to keep us ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... admitted as his successor upon earth to be made his assessor in Heaven. Finally, let them pray God with holy prayers as well of body as of soul, that He will restore the spirit created in the image of the Trinity, after its sojourn in this miserable world, to its primordial prototype, and grant to it for ever to enjoy the sight of His countenance: through ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... of it!" I urged, forcing something like a lover's ardor into my voice. "I regret beyond measure that it is my misfortune to have hands like those of your late husband! I assure you I am quite miserable about it. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... which for nearly three quarters of a century, sometimes in the spirit of a narrow sectarianism, but not seldom in a more excellent way, devoted its main strength to missions in the American colonies. Its missionaries, men of a far different character from the miserable incumbents of parishes in Maryland and Virginia, were among the first preachers of the gospel in the Carolinas. Within the years 1702-40 there served under the commission of this society in North Carolina nine missionaries, in South ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... was full of a great battle that had been fought (Waterloo), which had just annihilated Bonaparte, and would restore the Bourbons. The French ambassador had told him only an hour before. A gleam of hope, turning the black board white, arose before the miserable man. He hurried off to a firm on the Stock Exchange, and offered most important news on condition that he should receive half of whatever profits they might realise by the operation. He told them ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Schuyler is in love with her and will marry her if she does not play the coquette with him. He has been to her house and her father already holds his head higher as he paces up and down the street. I am left in the lurch, and if I had not foreseen this end to my hopes, might have been a very miserable man to-night. For I was near obtaining the object of my heart, as I know from her own lips, though the words were not intended for my ears. You see I was the one who surprised him talking with her in the garden. I ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the visitors left, Mr. Hanbury-Green among them, the invalid was experiencing a sense of exasperating neglect. He felt extremely miserable. Life, and all he held good in it, seemed to be over for him, and his financial position was absolutely desperate—quite beyond any question of marriage it threatened to swamp his actual career. He felt impotent and beaten, lying there like a log ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... a miserable pause. "Without pictures of the jewels to put in the newspapers the sensation will be weak and ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... own personal interest, and overriding any sum that was entrusted to him, the Castle was enabled to hold him in check, no matter how he might be tempted, or where he chanced to move. With his activity and fidelity thus insured, this miserable wretch, who went in Dublin by the name of Philip the Spy, was despatched on his mission, and, in due coarse arriving at Quebec, set about it in his usual cautious and conning manner. He visited the Citadel as ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... really gone to. I passed a dreadful evening, half afraid that one tragedy might be followed by another. I think you might have telegraphed for me when you heard of it first. I read of it quite by chance in a late edition of The Globe, that I picked up at the club. I came here at once, and was miserable at not finding you. I can't tell you how heartbroken I am about the whole thing. I know what you must suffer. But where were you? Did you go down and see the girl's mother? For a moment I thought of following you there. They gave the address in ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... banishment, imprisonment, poverty, neglect, and a miserable death in an almshouse. 'Soon after, however,' says the record, 'many epitaphs honoured his memory: the greatness of his merit was universally confessed, and his Lusiad was translated into various ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... hand he was unable to give him a mortal wound, he then plunged his drawn sword into his own side. And by this unseemly kind of death that most just man departed from life, merely for having dared to interpose some delay to the miserable ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... satisfied? The bloody work is no sooner over than its traces are obliterated and the community restored to the appearance of inoffensiveness: the boats are pulled up on shore, the crews dispersed. Should an avenger arrive on the spot, he finds the miserable huts either deserted or tenanted by women and old men. How can these be made to suffer for other men's offences, or forced to give information which they declare ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... "Poor little miserable monster!" exclaimed Madame Patoux, as she peered into the pot where the soup for the Cardinal's supper was simmering—"He is arranging himself to become a thief or a murderer, be sure of that, Henri!—and thou, who art trained in all thy holy duties by the good ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... you had actually gone, I could not bear the thought of remaining behind; and I so worked upon my guardians to let me go to sea, by telling them that I should be miserable if I didn't, and fit for nothing else, that I succeeded. Moreover, at my urgent request, they, as you see, got me appointed to your frigate," he exclaimed in a tone of triumph. "I have my chest in the boat; what am I to do with it?" ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... shut out from the great world, certainly," wrote one of them, "but we have one within these walls, and a poor miserable, trivial, life-frittering, childish, querulous, useless, hopeless set of inhabitants it contains. This is not the house of Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus—this is not such an abode as Jesus would desire to ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... off-setting factors. After Mr. Nelson's exchange with the rector of St. Paul's Church, Rome, Italy in 1912, a certain dowager commented, "Mr. Lowrie's sermons made me feel comfortable, but Mr. Nelson makes me feel a miserable sinner!" A newcomer, on his first Sunday in Cincinnati, went to Christ Church intending to "sample" several churches before casting his lot with one. The choir came in, followed by a young, boyish-looking clergyman whom the man presumed to be the assistant. During the sermon Mr. Nelson continually ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... Miserable as the night was, and slow as the hours seemed to drag along, they at last passed away. We had no further visits from the bears, nor were we otherwise disturbed. When daylight came, there was nothing in the prospect to cheer our hearts. On one side there was a sheet ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... obtaining the largest possible amount of labor out of the domestic machine"; in addition she is "a kind of lightning conductor," to receive the ill-temper and morbid feelings of her mistress and the young ladies; so that, as some have said, "I felt so miserable I did not care what became of me, I wished I was dead."[206] The servant is deprived of all human relationships; she must not betray the existence of any simple impulse, or natural need. At the same time she lives on the fringe of luxury; she is surrounded by the tantalizing visions ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... him," she continued later, "still thinks he may induce my father to agree to a marriage between us. I think that he is working up some scheme now to get daddy too heavily involved, so that we may have to use him. The miserable hound!—as if my dad would think of coercing me ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... her clasped hands and regarding me with an inexpressibly mournful expression; and as I returned her gaze I felt my anger against her dying away, and a great pity for her taking its place in my heart. She looked so small, so frail, so utterly helpless and lonely and miserable that all the innate chivalry of my nature arose and clamoured that it was impossible she could be guilty of the crimes imputed to her; that I had judged her hastily and unfairly; that I had wronged her by ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... north told her the hour was at hand. The old King was come up with a host to drive his son to bed. Richard must go, and she woo him out. Son of a king, heir of a king, he must go to the king his father; and he knew he must go. Two days' maddening delight, two nights' biting of nails, miserable entreaty from Jehane, grown newly pinched and grey in the face, and he ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... her is the only thing to explain the harshness of his behaviour to her. Had he not loved her and not been miserable about her, he would have been as polite to her as well bred ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... sought by things within our reach, since God has given us them for this very end. He points out in what our freedom consists: goods, life, esteem are not in our power, and therefore do not lead to God; but none can force the mind to believe what is false, nor the will to love that which will make it miserable. These two powers are therefore free; and by these we can render ourselves perfect—know God perfectly, love Him, obey Him, please Him—vanquish all vices, acquire all virtues, and so make ourselves holy, and the fellows of God. These principles, truly diabolic ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... appeal to her, the slight habitual furrow on her own brow deepened. She saw that her husband held a newspaper crushed in his right hand, and that his whole air was excited and restless. A miserable, familiar pang passed through her. As the chief and trusted official of an old-established bank in one of the smaller cotton-towns, Mr. Morrison had a large command of money. His wife had suspected him for years of using bank funds for the purposes of his own speculations. She had never ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... happy!" said she. "It will do very well to-night." (She was talking of her wig.) "I was so wretched! If you had come this morning you would have found me absolutely miserable." ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Armstrong, "perhaps lost all your dear ones, and, in that, more miserable than I; for, have I not left my Faith? But the hand that inflicted the wound can heal, and I trust the balm has ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... was so crowded and haunted by miserable images, that she longed for day; and when day came, with its stinging realities, she wearied and grew sick for the solitude of night. For the next week, she seemed to see and hear nothing but what confirmed the idea of Mr Farquhar's decided attachment ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... which Cranmer had shown since the accession of Mary gave way the moment his final doom was announced. The moral cowardice which had displayed itself in his miserable compliance with the lust and despotism of Henry displayed itself again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. But pardon was impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weakness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... consider it comfortable;—it would be miserable to me. The old man appeared quite flattered this morning, when I got him to invest that money for me; and shook my hand warmly when I inveighed against the present mania for speculating in ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... too much forgotten,) to shew how dangerous it hath been for the best meaning person to write one syllable in the defence of his country, or discover the miserable condition it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... would cut off the heads of several of their old men and women. Frequent instances occurred of a man dressing himself in cotton-quilted cloths steeped in oil which he set on fire at the bottom, and thus danced against the person against whom traga was performed until the miserable creature dropped down and was burnt to ashes. On one occasion a Cutch chieftain, attempting to escape with his wife and child from a village, was overtaken by his enemy when about to leap a precipice; ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Jane Chester that she could neither see nor hear all this—that the fever had grown strong enough to shut out all the real world to her heated senses! As it was, the sight of these miserable objects did create some new and more harrowing pain. She began to murmur of the torment to which she had been consigned—of the strange, heavy fiends so unwieldy and coarse that had taken her in charge. Every event of that fearful day ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... gentlemen. Very well. 'Nothing in this world but that one thing can defeat my certain election and noth—'" Again he interrupted himself unexpectedly. In the middle of the word there came a catch in his voice; he broke off, and whirling once more upon the miserable Miss Lyston, he transfixed her with a forefinger and ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... not destined to end his orgy in the lurid glare of a tragedy, for, as the sun declined, the miserable day was brought to a wretched and fitting close. Unconsciously he had strayed to the saloon on whose low steps Messrs. Van Wink and Ketchem had left him on the memorable night from which he dated his downfall. Of course he did not recognize ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... unhappy man without considering his physical condition. It appears from the slight notices we have of this vital matter, that about the year 1807 the stock of vigor which his youth had acquired was gone, and he lived thenceforth a miserable invalid, afflicted with diseases that sharpen the temper and narrow the mind. John Randolph well might have outgrown inherited prejudices and limitations, and attained to the stature of a modern, a national, a republican man. John Randolph sick—radically ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... gentleman, a graduate of Yale. I had been under Mr. Huntington's instructions four years when the country began to be convulsed with the whispers of secession—one State after another passing that miserable ordinance—my grandfather said: ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... hold its ground, hastened to the rear to see that none of his men were straggling. He met a cowardly fellow trying to regain the camp. Turning upon him in a passion of disgust, he said, "What! Do you count your miserable little life worth more than that of this great army?" "Worth more to me, sir," the man replied. How sensible! How entirely just from his own point of view, that of the isolated self! Taking only this into account, he was but a moral child, incapable of ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... eyes—one hideous word ringing brutally, involuntarily, through her brain. By a kind of miserable obsession the talk in the village public-houses shaped itself in her mind. "Ay, they didn't hang her because she was a lady. She got off, trust her! But if it ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it without complaint. He did not even say a cross word to Molly. Molly, however, was not so patient. "You might be a little more gracious when he's doing the best he can for you. It is not every one who will lend you a horse to hunt for two months." Harry shook his head, and wandered away miserable through the fields, and would not in these days even set his foot upon the soil of the park. "He was not going to intrude any farther," he said to the rector. "You can come to church, at any rate," his father said, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... so ill that it was easy to see how miserable had been her night. It is unfortunately the unalterable opinion of Mrs. Schwellenberg that some latent conspiracy belongs to this attempt, and therefore that it will never rest here. This dreadful suggestion preys upon the mind of the queen, though she struggles to conquer ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the waste of mighty waters. Torn from its anchorage of inherited beliefs, it is sure to be tempest-tossed, rent and torn, buffeted by conflicting tendencies, cast upon many a desert island of unfaith, and haunted by miserable doubts and black despair, ere it hears and heeds the pilot of truth, the only guide to the peaceful haven of eternal life. Happy, indeed, are they who tarry not upon the weary way; but who have within them that aspiration, that endless ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... every valley a home of warriors dominated by a rath-fortress, bore abundant fruits of evil. Death in battle need not be reckoned, or may be counted as pure gain; but the fate of the wounded, maimed and miserable, the destitution of women and children left behind, the worse fate of the captives, sold as they were into exile and slavery,—all these must be ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... standards to me. That's all there is about it, I suppose," she said in a scornful sadness. He looked very miserable. Compassion, and the old odd attraction which he had for her, stirred in her mind. Her voice grew soft, and she held out her hand. "I'm sorry too, very sorry, that it should have to ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... a room alone, dear; I'm an awful coward to have come of a martial family, and I must have Pen with me nights. I'm nervous about cars, too; I want two of you to keep up a chatter; I should be miserable company for one, always distracted ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... put nothing worth calling an army in the field, and that it would be madness to send a fine regiment out of the country at the present moment. But everyone knows the lack of wisdom with which we are governed, and the miserable slowness of our military authorities. It is not likely even to occur to any one to countermand our orders, but it will certainly be disgusting in the extreme to have to start just at the ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... could find nothing, but that she would seek further, and went back along the lion's path until she could see the mound again, but she could not bring herself to take the meat; she had the brute's instinct of a snare. She felt very miserable. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... notion of doing away with the Sagamore. He studies him a bit, thinks there's enough devil in him yet to be tempted, and one evening he says to him . . . I suppose you wouldn't mind going to sea again, for a spell? . . . The other never raises his eyes; says it's scarcely worth one's while for the miserable salary one gets. . . Well, but what do you say to captain's wages for a time, and a couple of hundred extra if you are compelled to come home without the ship. Accidents will happen, says Cloete. . . Oh! sure to, says that Stafford; and goes on taking sips of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... strength returned his trade grew strangely distasteful to him. It was a miserable business, he said, roaming along gutters like a cat. In his opinion there should be a law which should compel every houseowner to tin his own roof. He wished he knew some other trade he could follow, something that was ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... time to consider her position. The day arrived when she told her husband that since everything was over between them, the only decent thing to do was to part. But that was more than he had bargained for; he was miserable; the cousin had better return to her parents, and he would prove to his wife that he ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... from an error in the accounts; and how can the poor, in their beggary, conceive that the proprietor possesses in good faith? To investigate the sufferings of the laborer is to the idler the most intolerable of amusements; just as to do justice to the fortunate is to the miserable ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... she said, and her clear hazel eyes brimmed over with tears as she spoke. "I am very, very miserable. Nobody loves me, and I have nobody to love except you, of course, Eleanor Humphreys, and sometimes I cannot make believe that you are ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... very low spirited in Berlin. I could almost have wished Commissioner Cerf back again. Miserable as had been the time I had spent here years before, I had then, at any rate, met one man, who, for all the bluntness of his exterior, had treated me with true friendliness and consideration. In vain did I try to call to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... mother-in-law, without feeling that life is not so miserable as some people would make it out. In the words of ALEXANDER SELKIRK'S man ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... door was open and the house was being quietly emptied of its human occupants. They came out one by one, shivering and complaining, with little bundles of their possessions hastily snatched up, and collected in a miserable group on the pavement. I opened my shop door and invited them to come in and rest while their messengers went to look for a harbor of refuge; but I stayed outside to see the upshot ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... with my glebe." "Go up," said the ambition of William the Conqueror. "Go up by conquest, go up by throne, go up in the sight of all nations, go up by cruelties." But one day God said, "Come down, come down by the way of a miserable death, come down by the way of an ignominious obsequies, come down in the sight of all nations, come clear down, come down forever." And you and I see the same thing on a smaller scale many and many a time—illustrations of the fact that God lets the wicked live that He may make their overthrow ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... publish a volume of poems by subscription and have to go round, hat in hand, begging five shillings' worth of patronage from every stupid country squire—intolerable! I must go! Shakespeare was never Shakespeare till he fled from miserable Stratford, to become at once the friend ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... established by the Reports, and deplored the fate of the Bill brought in by Lord Rutherfurd,[236] when Lord Advocate, which would, in his opinion, have remedied all the evils now complained of. It was "referred to a Select Committee, but the opposition roused to it in Scotland, on the miserable ground of the expense it would incur, proved fatal to the measure. I trust the disgrace that now attaches to Scotland in this matter will be removed, and that this and the other House of Parliament will cordially co-operate with the Government in the adoption of those measures that are necessary ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... brought up in fear of prison and punishment and they learn to do what they should. But Cousin Willie was brought up as a prince and was above imprisonment and things like that. And in any case he seemed, when the big men seized hold of him, such a paltry and miserable thing. ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... us, and he will walk about the streets with as erect a head and as smiling a countenance and as light a step as if he were an innocent child; while, lay half as much on his neighbour, and it will so bruise him to the earth that all men will take knowledge of him that he is a miserable man. Our Lord could no doubt have carried His cross from the hall of judgment to the hill-top without help had His back not been wet with blood. What with a whole and an unwealed body, a well-rested and well-nourished body, He could easily have carried, with His ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Mortality. Independently of this consideration, these civic feasts are symbols of those great old Saxon institutions which have made England the home and guardian of liberty. Our hearty and large-souled ancestors never dreamed of weighing every miserable coin, or of stinting the measure of their generous wines or foaming ale. They gave not less to the poor because they delighted to honour the brave and good, or to greet one another in the loving cup. Unlike the coldly intellectual reformers and theorists of the present day, ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... my loathsome role once more, bitter disappointment left me speechless. I hung my head, feeling his keen eyes upon me; I braced myself sullenly against the overwhelming rush of repulsion surging up within me. My every nerve, every fiber quivered for freedom to strike that blow denied me for four miserable years. Had I not earned the right to face my enemies in the open? Had I not earned the right to strike? Had I not waited—God! had ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... this, coal being the grand source of our national wealth, its sudden failure will entail national bankruptcy. The barbarians of Europe, taking advantage of our condition, will pour down upon us, and the last spark of true civilisation in our miserable world will be extinguished—the last refuge for the hunted foot of persecuted Freedom will be finally swept from the face of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... controversies precluded her from participating in them, and made it difficult if not impossible for her publicly to espouse the cause of the miserable creatures subjected to nameless sufferings in the laboratories of the scientific. But her sympathy with those who strove and still strive to end those sufferings could not always be concealed, and on a memorable occasion she expressed her concurrence in the ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... miserable Cockneys always do. It gives one the horrors when you can't go out. Is it ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... feelings, despite his miserable weakness, were becoming interested, and in this manner we reached the inn. Then I persuaded this strange person to sit down in my room, where I ordered something comfortable provided for supper. In fact, I thought it the best thing I could do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... uncomfortable thoughts were uppermost in her mind. Martie had never driven with a young man before, and so had no precedent to guide her, but she wondered if Rodney should not have gone with her to her own gate. Perhaps she had stayed too long—another miserable possibility. And how "snippy" Ida and May ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... is unruly in play, he leaves the circle and sits or stands by himself, a miserable, lonely unit until he feels again in sympathy with the community. If he destroys his work, he unites the tattered fragments as best he may, and takes the moral object lesson home with him. If he has neglected his own work, he is ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... late in the autumn of that year, and upon a lonely moor in Scotland, that a poor old woman stood shivering in the cold wind. She was outside of a miserable little hut, in the doorway of which stood ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... tumult, this miserable condition, I reached home, where, spreading my old calmness over my new agitation, I received, as best I might, the joyful greeting of Fanny, the heartfelt welcome of Aunt Huldah. I tried hard to be my own old self, and could not but hope that even my sharp-eyed sister was blinded. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... violence and robbed them of their fortune and laid waste their dwelling-place.' Then Ghanim's mother and sister wept sore, recalling their former prosperity and contrasting it with their present destitute and miserable condition and thinking of Ghanim, whilst Cout el Culoub wept because they did. And they exclaimed, 'We beseech God to reunite us with him whom we desire, and he is none other than our son Ghanim ben Eyoub!' When Cout ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... the sea by a fresh, steady breeze, during which time the sun shone out frequently, so that things seemed not so wretched as one might suppose to the shipwrecked mariners. Of course the poor cabin-boy was an exception. Although his feverish attack was a slight one he felt very weak and miserable after it. His appetite began to return, however, and it was evident that the short daily allowance would be insufficient for him. When this point was reached Dick Darvall one day, when rations were being served out, ventured to ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround him—the devils of a guilty heart that holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the features of an injured friend? What if the fiend should come in woman's garments with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not exciting any fresh suspicions. It was full time to show myself, quietly and unconcernedly, among the wretches who were at that very moment, perhaps, thinking of us and talking of us downstairs. I explained the miserable necessity to Laura, and prevailed on her to recognise it ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... generated by long indifference, Cowperwood sat up for a moment, and his eyes hardened with quite that implacable glare with which he sometimes confronted an enemy. He felt at once there were many things he could do to make her life miserable, and to take revenge on Lynde, but he decided after a moment he would not. It was not weakness, but a sense of superior power that was moving him. Why should he be jealous? Had he not been unkind enough? In a moment his mood changed to one of sorrow for Aileen, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... thousands, taking other thousands prisoner, and capturing a vast amount of war material, including many of the Austrian heavy-caliber guns. The entire Austrian, plan to advance into the rich Italian plains, where they hoped to find great stores of food for their hungry soldiers, resulted in miserable failure. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... declined the honour, but after being urged and browbeaten for three days by Mrs. Effie he somewhat sullenly consented, being shown that there were not many lines for him to learn. From the first, I think, he was rendered quite miserable by the ordeal before him, yet he submitted to the rehearsals with a rather pathetic desire to please, and for a time all seemed well. Many an hour found him mugging away at the book, earnestly striving to memorize the part, or, as he ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson |
