"Bad luck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broadcast. Then maybe someday a ship that's run into bad luck'll have a straighter deal than we've had. You get on your post. And we'll have the play back on—remember that. If you don't give us a clear channel we'll know it. How about ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... best of his bad luck, he did not like his quarters at all; and the worst of it was, that more and more hay was always coming down, and the space left for him became smaller and smaller. At last he cried out as loud as he could, 'Don't bring me any more hay! Don't ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... is back at the bar. I said to myself jest last week, so I did, I said to myself, 'Jacob, you ought to get a sody-water fountain for the ladies what has the same right to thirst as a man.' And I will, too, if my bad luck just leaves me. How about a nice cool bottle of beer sitting ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... like it any better than you do," he said peevishly. "I expected to get killed in a space-battle—not very gloriously, but at least with self-respect. Unfortunately we had bad luck. We won the fight. I do not like what we have to do in consequence, but we have to ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... we had full and plenty. There was a bite and a sup for every stranger who came to the door, and no one talked of money, nor thought of it neither. The land yielded a good crop, and the potatoes—oh, dear! oh, dear! that was before the famine. The famine brought us a lot of bad luck, that ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... 'Bad luck,' said Allan when they had described the encounter with Andrew MacPeters. 'I'd back Neil against Andrew any day; he won't interfere with Neil himself, but then the fellow's quite capable of giving ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... "That really was bad luck for you," said Henri Verbier to the girl with a laugh, "and I quite understand that the magistrate ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... is summed up philosophically, there is no bad luck in the world except sickness. All other so-called hard luck is simply temporary. If you lose your money, don't worry about it, make some more. If you lose a friend, don't worry; show him his mistake. If you lose an opportunity, do not worry; be ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... after all, in spite of his daily murmurings against his bad luck, no help but to submit to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "It's bad luck to let another man in your shaft!" cried George. "I'm no high-brow on this mining proposition, but ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... course cannot doubt our zeal in striving to execute his orders, to the best of our ability," said Merindol, cringingly, "but this time we have had very bad luck." ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... little kindnesses stood out. A bad out on his foot once and how Buck had bathed it and bound it up in dirty rags, doing double duty with the newspapers for several days to save his friend from stepping. There was a bitter cold night way back as far as he could remember when he had had bad luck, and came among the others supperless and almost freezing. Buck had shared a crust and found a warm boiler-room where they crawled out of sight and slept. There were other incidents, still more blurred in his memory, ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... Sibby: Bad luck and bad cess to you! Torment and vexation on you! (Seizes him by back of neck and shakes him.) You dirty little scum and leavings! You puny shrimp you! You miserable ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... was cut out and treasured by her—and once when her father was grumbling and predicting bad luck to his evil genius, as he called him, she brought forth and displayed, with a grateful heart, this notice to prove she had ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... that life is just one thing after another," chuckled Jennie Stone. "Having struck a streak of bad luck, it must keep up." ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... opportunity for gaining a permission to join them. His intention was certainly good, but it lacked the bright crown of good intention—success. In the spring of 1828, much chagrined with his, so far, continued bad luck, and no prospect of gaining his object appearing, he again joined a homeward-bound party and with it, sorrowfully, started for Missouri. But, as on the former trip homeward, he met on the route a party bound for Santa Fe. That indomitable ingredient in his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... us!" Biddy exclaimed, crossing herself. "Don't ye ever be afther wishin' anybody bad luck, Miss Beth; shure ye'll bring it if ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it would be bad luck for a child to be born ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... decadence. Then suddenly there is talk of inspiration, or the lack of it. Mere imitators appear, and the historian who reviles them does not see that they have only practised, and refuted, his theory of art. They also have had the luck to be born later; but it has been bad luck, not good, for them, because to them their art has been all a matter ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... of bad luck had dogged the footsteps of Mrs. Emma McChesney, traveling saleswoman for the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, New York. It had started with a six-weeks' illness endured in the discomfort ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... and map-making when we had finished that already planned. On the 6th Clem and Bonnemort arrived from an expedition to make photographs down the Kanab Canyon, where the Major had been with Riley and Dodds. They had met with bad luck, and did not get a single negative. The silver bath got out of order, and the horse bearing the camera fell off a cliff and landed on top of the camera, which had been tied on the outside of the pack, with a result that need not be described. Bonnemort's ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... be on your p's and q's with him. Why wouldn't she have taken up with him? As far as money goes they could have rubbed along. He's not the man to starve when there are game-pies going. It's just bad luck." ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... know it was you, but there's no help for it; you must come and serve in the main-top along with me, and give up all chance of being a mate or captain of a merchant vessel. We're in bad luck, that's clear, but it can't be helped.' There was a good laugh on board of the man-of-war at Archy pressing his own brother, and the captain was very much amused. 'I'm very sorry ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... What had Peggy said? None of the anti or neobiotics had a positive reaction. Unknowingly she had let it slip. The reaction was negative; the bubble microbes actually grew faster in the medium that was supposed to stop them. It happened occasionally on strange planets. It was his bad luck that it ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace
... voice] Ladies and gentlemen, let me explain! I had the ace, king, queen, and eight of diamonds, the ace of spades and one, just one, little heart, do you understand? Well, she, bad luck to her, she couldn't make a little slam. I said one in ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... a while back and he'd struck bad luck, hurt his arm, for one thing. He'd been working among the breeds on the mole and living in their tenements, and couldn't strike another job. I reckoned he might want a few dollars, and I don't spend all ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... with confidence. The "Chevalier d'Harmenthal" is nearly (not quite) as good as "Quentin Durward." "Monte Cristo" has the best beginning—and loses itself in the sands. The novels on the Revolution are not among the most alluring: the famed device "L. P. D." (lilia pedibus destrue) has the bad luck to suggest "London Parcels Delivery." That is an accident, but the Revolution is in itself too terrible and pitiful, and too near us ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... and one sister, the boy drank in the air of Dartmoor, and grew to love Devonshire with an unalterable affection. He also continued his reading, and invaded theology. Newton on the Prophecies remarked that "if the Pope was not Antichrist, he had bad luck to be so like him," and Renan had not yet explained that Antichrist was neither the Pope nor the French Revolution, but the Emperor Nero. From Pearson on the Creed he learned the distinction between ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... that the fierce sun could not darken, was like the shining angel who walks at the right hand of a good Mohammedan. They saw no wrong in Ahmara's presence; but she was haughty and high-tempered, and took part against them with Stanton. The whisper ran that the dancing-woman had brought bad luck to the expedition for so long as she was with the caravan; whereas, if fortune were to come, it would come through the white girl who nursed the sick and had a smile or a kind word for the humblest porter. This whisper reached Ahmara's ears through the wives of the camel-drivers, and ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... run of extreme bad luck about this time, of which the adventure or misadventure of the Guru seemed to be the prelude, or perhaps the news of her want of recognition of the August moon, which Georgie had so carefully saluted, may have arrived at that satellite by October. For she had simply "cut" ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... lots of lucky things but doesn't remember them. "It's bad luck to carry hoes and rakes in the living house." "It's bad luck to spy the new moon through ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... I could believe that." Mrs. Donovan had lost control of herself and was sobbing bitterly. "Here it is after ten o'clock an' we don't know where the little thing is. Seems if bad luck was taggin' her. It isn't a week since her bird was stolen and now—" she shuddered and hid her face ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... water on a chalky plain, Or bitter cold from which you stiffly woke, Or deep wet mud that left you hardly sane, Or the tense wait for "Fritz's master stroke." You seldom hear them talk of their "bad luck," And suffering has not spoiled their ready wit, And oh! you'd hardly doubt their fighting pluck, When each new operation shows their grit; Who never brag of blows for England struck, But only yearn to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... arnr, sure some unasy divil drooped the port; and the lantern and me we had no foothold at all at all, and the lantern went into the say, bad luck to ut; and I went afther to try and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... what we get we take care of. To all this we add enterprise and intelligence—a feller who finds work too hard here, had better not go to the States. I met an Irishman, one Pat Lannigan, last week, who had just returned from the States. 'Why,' says I, 'Pat, what on airth brought you back?' 'Bad luck to them,' says Pat, 'if I warn't properly bit. "What do you get a day in Nova Scotia?" says Judge Beler to me. "Four shillings, your Lordship," says I. "There are no Lords here," says he, "we are all free. Well," says he, "I'll give you as much in one day as you can earn there in two; I'll ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Marmion and that of The Lady of the Lake Scott was very busy in bookmaking and bookselling projects. It was characteristic of the mixture of bad luck and bad management which hung on the Ballantynes from the first that even their Edinburgh Annual Register, published as it was in the most stirring times, and written by Scott, by Southey, and others of the very best hands, was a failure. He made some visits to London, and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... who had become Mrs. Moses Feldt had had little time for the support of the church; although Linda recalled that she had uniformly spoken well of its offices. To condemn Christianity, she had asserted, was to invite bad luck. She treated this in exactly the way she regarded walking under ladders or spilling salt or putting on a stocking wrong. Linda, however, had disregarded these possibilities of disaster and, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... some other island," Ned answered, "and be a war party, which has come on plundering purposes here. What a misfortune! What terribly bad luck! They have clearly never seen white men before, and regard us as superior beings; and so far as we are concerned, it is probable that our lives are safe. But what will the admiral think, when night comes on and we do not return? What will ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... said, and there was indeed time for little more; for as the visit was unexpected the Hudsons, by bad luck, appeared to take tea with Mrs. Dennistoun by way of cheering her in her loneliness, and were of course enchanted to see Elinor, and to hear, as Mrs. Hudson said, of all her doings in the great world. "We always look out for your name at all the parties. It gives one ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Uncle Dan Porter, and Miles Porter. Did we dance? Square dance. Then if somebody been wantin' to marry they step over the broom and it be nounced they married. You can't get nobody—colored folks I mean—to step over a broom; they say it bad luck. If it fall and they step over they step back. They say if somebody sweep under your feet you won't marry that year. Folks didn't visit round much. They had some place to go they went but they had to work. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... He commandeered the weapon in the name of the law. That being the case, Uncle John handed it up to him, with a word of affection for it, and a little swearing over his bad luck. ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... would say if, instead of working out such pleasant consequences to us, all these things had ended only in what we term disaster, and bad luck, and poverty, and death—as happens so ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... wedded wife." This was the chief point; and here is just where she failed. What was the cause of it? She was not too old—not near so old as Miss Longface, whom the youthful parson Barker lately wedded. "And besides," said she, in a soliloquy, "when I was young, it was just the same bad luck. Is it that men are less numerous than ladies? There might be something in that, for she had seen it stated in their newspaper, 'The Home Journal,' that female births exceeded that of males by forty thousand annually in certain ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... as pure as possible, and the color, which depends on the alloy used, should be unobtrusive, the pale gold being better liked now than the red gold. Many women never remove their wedding ring after it has been put on and believe it is bad luck to do so. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... tell you," she went on, "that I was rather unfair to you that day in talking about my cousin—in the taxi. You were quite right to refuse to go into partnership with her. She thinks so too. We've talked it over, and we're quite agreed. Of course it did seem hard—at the time, and her bad luck in America seemed to make it worse. But you were quite right. You can work much better alone. You must have felt that instinctively—far quicker ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... been for the old lady, I would have gone to the devil. I remembered her in time. Nothing like having an old lady to look after to steady a chap and make him face things. But as bad luck would have it, Captain Anthony has no mother living, not a blessed soul belonging to him as far as I know. Oh, ay, I fancy he said once something to me of a sister. But she's married. She don't need him. Yes. In the old days he used ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... that she was in the presence of somebody who had the singular bad luck to be unhappy changed Ellen on the instant to something soft as a kitten, incapable of resentment as an angel. "Well, I've got a habit of saying the things that will be found unpleasant," she said hopefully, in tones tremulous with kindness. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... But don't change the name of the Firm again. Don't do it, Young Master Wilding. It was bad luck enough to make it Yourself and Co. Better by far have left it Pebbleson Nephew that good luck always stuck to. You should never change luck ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... all, Mr Daly. I look upon that as done and gone; bad luck to Blake and McMahon, both. The truth is, between you and me, Daly—I don't mind telling you; as I hope now you will become my man of business, and it's only fair you should know all about it—the truth is, Blake was more interested on the other side, and he was determined the case shouldn't ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... believe it and stick to it. And yet these people really think that there is something miraculous about the book. They regard it as a fetish—a kind of amulet—a something charmed, that will keep off evil spirits, or bad luck, stop bullets, and do a thousand handy-things for ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of ye," said Biddy when we concluded this arrangement and were talking of the expected new comer, "I'll wish her all the bad luck in the world, for it's hot wather she'll kape us in all the time with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... brute, bad luck to her," replied his comrade. "She's on the wrong scent. Why they're over the ford by this, and we shall have the bloody thief-catchers here before we can open ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... thoughts, freeze to 'em, and later find that the hereditary appurtenances thereunto appertaining are private property of someone else, and there is nothing for me to do but to stand a lawsuit or vanish. I have had bad luck, lost my money, lost my friends, lost my conscience, lost everything, pretty near"—and here he turned his watery eyes on his friend with a saw-toothed smile and shook his depleted abdomen, that had been worn off climbing many hills—"I've lost everything, pretty near, but my vermiform ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... had been hoisted, the anchor broken out, and the Dazzler was leaping down the channel. Off a bleak piece of marshland Bill and the Cockney said good-by and cast loose in their skiff. French Pete, in the cabin, bewailed their bad luck in various languages, and sought consolation ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... and set up a coach and a good equipage, and if beauty and a good fortune won't make you a duchess, nothing will." But I had not fixed my measures yet. I had no inclination to be a wife again. I had had such bad luck with my first husband, I hated the thoughts of it. I found that a wife is treated with indifference, a mistress with a strong passion; a wife is looked upon as but an upper servant, a mistress is a sovereign; a wife must give up all she has, have ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... right," replied the Doctor. "Travers had bad luck. It must have been a stray bullet which slipped through that chink in the stones. For he could not ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... usual bad luck came to grief in pitching and catching the medicine ball, a large ball stuffed with yarn. The ball weighed ten pounds, and after catching it successfully once or twice Tommy failed to stop it with her hands. It struck her with considerable force and ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... then. There, Frank lad, I want to be true to my duty— don't tell upon me—but I can't help feeling that we had bad luck last night, or some one we know might have ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... again, but cheerlessly. "Oh, we ain't exactly broke; I've got the bank-roll on me and it 'll pull us through. We've had bad luck for a year or two, but it's bound to change. You cheer up—and come over to the stove. What you need is to warm up while I ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... I hate all card games,—even faro. When macco (or whatever they spell it) was introduced, I gave up the whole thing, for I loved and missed the rattle and dash of the box and dice, and the glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck or bad luck, but of any luck at all, as one had sometimes to throw often to decide at all. I have thrown as many as fourteen mains running, and carried off all the cash upon the table occasionally; but I had no coolness, or judgment, or calculation. It was the delight of the thing ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... and finally married agin. I wondered why she did. But she was such a quiet, home-lovin' woman, that it was s'posed she wanted to settle down, and be kinder still and sot. But of all the bad luck she had! She married on short acquaintance, and he proved to be a perfect wanderer. Why, he couldn't keep still. It was s'posed to be ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Louisiana, and when I went to examine my cocoons toward spring, to my horror I found the contents of the box chopped to pieces and totally destroyed. Pestiferous little 'clothes' moths must have infested the box, for there were none elsewhere in the Cabin. For a while this appeared to be too bad luck; but when luck turns squarely against you, that is the time to test the essence and quality of the word 'friend.' So I sat me down and wrote to my friend, Professor Rowley, of Missouri, and told him I wanted Promethea for the completion of this book; ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... knows," answered the man indifferently. "But he says very reasonably that he didn't order you to come up here, and he can't sacrifice twice the number of men here to get you down again. Unfortunate for you, of course; but we all have to swallow bad luck at one time or another. Make the best ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Bad luck! Of course, just when it's not wanted there's a breeze got up, blowing right down the field, and in the very teeth of the schoolboys, who have lost the toss, and have to play from the oak-tree end for the first half of ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Grace. "I fail to see why trying on one's wedding gown beforehand should bring bad luck. I am surely going to do it when it comes, just to prove the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... "Bad luck!" breathed Murphy; "'tis a rocky road to Dublin, but a shorter wan to hell! Did you want f'r to shoot, Jack? Look at Dave Elerson an' th' thrigger finger av him twitchin' all a-thremble! Wisha, lad! lave the red omadhouns go. Arre you tired ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... quarter to half a mile, he will find a cold mountain stream. Let him rig for brook-fishing and take to that stream. If he does not fill his basket in a little while, he may set it down to the score of bad luck, or some lack of skill on his part in taking them, for the brook trout are there in abundance. Across the lake from Long Island, to the right as you go up the lake, is a bay that goes away in around a woody point. ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... and Murfrey came. 'If you get a chance to make an end of that d—d fellow Gray, do so. I do not, want the two to begin coddling. He does not know her, I suppose, but if she found him with his handsome face, bad luck to it, likewise a captive, it would be "love at first sight" with ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... considered that it couldn't be done. He operated on the principle that you made your own luck. You kept your eyes open as things evolved and at the right moment you acted. If you acted fast enough, that was good luck. If you worried over the possibilities until the moment had passed, that was bad luck. ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... there yet, with God's help!' said he, turning the horse's head. 'Bad luck to them for the road-making, and it's a pity, after all, it goes nowhere, for it's the nicest bit to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... them." She would like to be by herself for a bit, but she did not want to come back to Ansdore, even if Arthur went away—"it would be very awkward after what has happened." She begged Jo to be generous and make her some small allowance—"Harry would provide for me if he hadn't had such terrible bad luck—he never was very well off, you know, and he can't manage unless we keep together. I know you wouldn't like me to be tied to him just by ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... no one else was small enough to slip through the narrow slits of windows, the conspirators could only curse their bad luck. ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... the King, shrewdly, 'the wisest are not always the safest. Have you never thought why it is "bad luck ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... circumstances; an endless chain of bad luck had followed us from Chartres—bad weather, torrents of rain, flooded roads, damaging delays on railways already overcrowded with troops and war material, and, above all, we encountered everywhere that ominous apathy which burdened the whole land, even those provinces most remote ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... match was perhaps the most searching and awkward time they annually went through together, for Jolyon had been at Eton. They would be particularly careful during that match, continually saying: "Hooray! Oh! hard luck, old man!" or "Hooray! Oh! bad luck, Dad!" to each other, when some disaster at which their hearts bounded happened to the opposing school. And Jolyon would wear a grey top hat, instead of his usual soft one, to save his son's feelings, for a black top hat he could not stomach. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bad luck, this queer affair has come up, and all my uncle's faith has returned. He wants to consult mediums, and all that ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... Billy, "and to top the bad luck, I left mine in the boat. I laid it on a seat after I had ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... care," said the uncouth scribe. "They didn't break in for that. They never thought of scragging her. The foolish old person would make a noise, and one of them tied too tight. I call it jolly bad luck on them." ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... she cried. "I brought you bad luck, and that wretch of a Landry knew well what he was about when he made me cut the cards ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... concerned, a pleasant picnic. Occasionally little shadows were thrown by the sight of corpses brought in, with ugly-looking bullet holes in head or breast, but these were always of the class he looked down upon, and he connected their bad luck in some way with their condition in life. Doubtless some one had to go where there was danger of being shot, as some one had to dig ditches and help to pry wagons out of the mud, but there was something rather preposterous in the thought ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... memory of St. Patrick, and long life to him!" exclaimed Patrick O'Shaughnessy. "If there did not exist but them two selves, bad luck to the spalpeen who will say that the Duke and my Lord Londondery would not be the greatest men in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... found? The Fleet was told at full length. Had a man hooked tobacco from a mess-mate? He was named in meeting; the name tossed from roller to roller. Disko's infallible judgments, Long Jack's market-boat that he had sold years ago, Dan's sweetheart (oh, but Dan was an angry boy!), Penn's bad luck with dory-anchors, Salter's views on manure, Manuel's little slips from virtue ashore, and Harvey's ladylike handling of the oar—all were laid before the public; and as the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the voices sounded like a ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... of the north wind.' I didn't dare to ask him what he meant, but I knew he was thinking of the evil which had come between you two. Who was to blame, or what separated you, he never told me. Well, his bad luck has changed, and yours, too; and I'm happy. Now then, the wireless. You can talk to ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... way that leads to eternal life, to level and lighten that way for each other through love, meekness, and long-suffering—for it is rough and thorny. Now when gloomy days come, when faults break out in one or the other, or both, then think not of bad luck, as if that made you unhappy, but of the dear God, who has long seen all these faults and who has brought you together just so that one should cure the other and help him to mend his ways; that is the purpose ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... to another man that what seems bad luck is in reality the voice of God making itself felt in his busy life, calling him to fuller sacrifice. But I am sure that we are right when we interpret it {180} thus for ourselves. I share your wish for 'some really strong man' to come as a prophet ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... "It's bad luck," said Emerson quietly; "but I shouldn't wonder if it is not the best thing that really could have happened. It finishes me cleanly, instead of letting me drag on and make both of us miserable. If this ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... three men hurt in the launch made some difference, too, and set as many oars catching crabs at a most critical instant. Everything depends on chance in these matters, you know, sir, and that was our bad luck." ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hand on the doctor's shoulder. "Because she's a fire-opal, and to the world at large they bring bad luck." ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Shorsha, for no one sent me to either. When we says at home a person is going to Paris and Salamanca, it manes that he is going abroad to study to be a saggart, whether he goes to them places or not. No, I never saw either—bad luck to them—I was shipped away from Cork up the straits to a place called Leghorn, from which I was sent to—to a religious house, where I was to be instructed in saggarting till they had made me fit to cut a dacent figure in Ireland. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... shell-fish—periwinkles, cockles, mussels, scallops, dolphins, besides crabs. On rare occasions a scrub fowl (the blacks had no reliable means of capturing that wary bird, and when fortune favoured, it was an instance of bad luck on its part), with pigeons, carpet snakes, and sea-birds' eggs ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... other animal of the north-eastern woods, it would not take six hungry wolves much more than six seconds to get over their suspicions and go in after him. What if it should be some half-starved old Indian, working his way into the Settlement after bad luck with his hunting and his trapping! Whoever it was, he had no gun, or there would have been shooting before this. Dave saw that he must go back and look into the matter. But he was angry at this new delay. Cursing the wolves, and the Indian who didn't ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... saying so loud that I had to listen to every word, 'A queen who does her duty stays in her own room and busies herself with her sewing and knitting.' I said within myself, 'Poor fellow, you are right, but you don't know my unhappy condition; I yield only to necessity, and my bad luck urges me forward." [Footnote: The queen's own words.—See "Memoires de Madame de Campan," vol ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... in her turn. "She and her musty wisdom that puts the Romans under the feet of the Gentiles. Are not three of our brothers in choky? have we not been turned off common and out of field? Isn't the fire low and the pot empty, and every purse without gold? Bad luck she has brought us," snarled the girl, pointing an accusing finger. "And bad luck we Romans will have till she is ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat,—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along, you're all right. For," added the gambler, with ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... with a dish of hot sausages; but though a relief, it was not a diversion; the conversation proceeded. Two persons did not like it; Freeborn, who was simply disgusted at the doctrine, and Reding, who thought it a bore; yet it was the bad luck of Freeborn forthwith to set Charles against him, as well as the rest, and to remove the repugnance which he had to engage in the dispute. Freeborn, in fact, thought theology itself a mistake, as substituting, as he considered, worthless intellectual notions for the vital ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... speaking comparatively, that it is part of the bad luck of Japan that her proximity to China, and the opportunity the war gave her to outdo the aggressions of European powers, have made her the first victim of this disconcerting change. Whatever the ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... depths of misfortune. Sorra a soul but himself and a boy escaped by climbing to a ledge on the topmost peak of one of the icebergs just in the nick of time to see the ship cracked like a walnut between your fingers. And the worst was to come, bad luck!" ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in bad luck; he hain't any outfit, and wants to go to the gold fields, but will have to git some one to stake him. Obsarving the same, I made bowld to remark that it would give me frind Jiff the highest plisure to do it for him, not forgetting to obsarve that I knew his company would ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... "Bad luck to him, Misthress Burke, agra, in troth I was jist awond'ring what keeps Tom Daly and the b'ys out—and them were to have had the red-coat these three ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... But in proportion as he is a thoroughbred, he seems to lose power to take care of himself—loses heart. Our Ewe-neck bay had a trace of racer in him, and being weakened by poor food, it was his bad luck to slip over the bank into a quicksand creek. Having found himself helpless he instantly gave up heart and lay out with a piteous expression of resignation in his big brown eyes. We tugged and lifted and rolled him ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the championship till next summer, and to not going out to-day, and to sitting stuffing here and moaning our bad luck, and feeling as cross as a bear with a toothache—at least, that's how I feel: I don't know what ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... have been its effect) on his feelings toward her—was never spoken of. Lady Tristram thought that the effect was nothing, and the revelation not very surprising to her son. He accepted without argument her own view—that she had done nothing very strange but had fallen on very bad luck. But he told her at once that he was not going back to Harrow. She understood; she agreed to be watched, she abdicated her rule, she put everything in ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... had certainly experienced a run of bad luck since the inauguration of the strike, which was to have brought their rivals down on their knees and secured for the Modern side ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... the elder man at length, "d—d bad luck! In this country the less you find, the less you see, the less you understand, the simpler is your existence. Those Nihilists, with their mysterious ways and their reprehensible love of explosives, have made honest men's lives ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... 'Bad luck, Biddy,' McKeith said behind her. 'If there had been the proper amount of rain in these last three or four months, we'd have had the one thing that's wanting now to make this the ideal camp I've had on the top of my fancy—a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... very angry, and he prayed that the gold might never bring any but bad luck to all the men who might ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... wouldn't let us show for love or money. A man in the drug store told me, Mister. We certainly are in a hole now, for sure! If we could give a benefit for something or somebody. Those men back there said you're so popular in this town, I believe I've got an idea. Mister, couldn't you have bad luck, or be sick or something, so we could give a benefit for you? People certainly would turn out good for a man that's liked the way they say you are. I'd just love to put on a show for you. Couldn't we fix ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... good time of his herder, and again in front of the post-office, where another group of loiterers had to be listened to; and finally, having made his escape when he felt that it was high time to go, he had the bad luck to run into Judge Tillotson, whose propensity to talk was such that he could not be denied a hearing without ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... deal of luck attached to any adventure in the field, and ill-luck had pursued General Gatacre persistently. But undoubtedly where bad luck pursues a commander on more than one occasion it is not only expedient but necessary to dismiss such an officer, because his troops lose confidence in him, and their spirit is undermined. It has occurred in this War that incapable officers with good men and much ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... then as the sinner kisses the saint who has wrought a miracle of salvation for him. 'We've had bad luck,' he murmured. 'You've had the worst of it.' He stroked ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... "That's bad luck," he said, with a laugh. "The fellow who wins at the start usually loses at the finish, so I may as well consider my fortune yours. Some of you will become enormously wealthy in about fifteen minutes, for I won't last longer than that if my ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... myself giving my friends two hours as a minimum before they could return to me. At the worst they should be here within four, unless my messenger met with bad luck. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... me stockins, and that am excadingly will proportioned all over to match? And it is ralelly more than three fut and a bit that there is, inny how, of the little ould furrener Frinchman that lives jist over the way, and that's a oggling and a goggling the houl day, (and bad luck to him,) at the purty widdy Misthress Tracle that's my own nixt-door neighbor, (God bliss her!) and a most particuller frind and acquaintance? You percave the little spalpeen is summat down in the mouth, and wears his lift hand in a sling, and it's for that same thing, by yur lave, that I'm ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... French and German Fleets. The Britain, as though glorying in her strength and speed, steamed ahead in solitary pride right into the midst of the Allies, thundering and flaming ahead and from each broadside. The Braunschweig had the bad luck to get in her way. She made a desperate effort to get out of it; but eighteen knots was no good against twenty-five. The huge ram crashed into her vitals as she swerved, and reeling and pitching ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith |
