"Bane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so. Ambition is like to be Smellie's bane. He is jealous of sharing any credit with the Preventive crews, and is keeping them without information. On the other hand he delights in ordering about a military force; which, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... (4) Muchomor [fly-bane]. Amanita muscaria, or Agaricus muscarius (fly-agaric). This is the Siberian fungus, with remarkable ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... parting look before we part, * Nerving my heart this severance to sustain: But, an this parting deal thee pain and bane, * Leave me to die of love and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... he; but he denied that the Church had any prescriptive rights at all: all her privileges and property being held on sufferance of the State, which could withdraw its toleration when it chose. Illustrious Italians, from Dante downwards, denounced the love of power and money of the Church as the bane of Italy. Had not Machiavelli said, "If Italy has fallen a prey not only to powerful barbarians but to whatsoever attack, we Italians are indebted for it to the Church and to nothing else"? Respect ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the different men-of-war in company are sure to send boat-loads of visitors, or what are called "liberty men," on board one another's ships, to pass the afternoon of Sunday. This practice is the very bane of good discipline, and ought at all times to be discouraged in every way; for it almost inevitably leads to drunkenness, rioting, and bitter heart-burnings. It has, moreover, the effect of making the men discontented with their own ship and their own officers. The sailors are sufficiently sharp ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... fair free lady, is she not? But that was to be looked for in a high one Who counts among her fathers the bright Sigurd, The bane of Fafnir the Worm, the end of the god-kings; Among her mothers Brynhild, the lass of Odin, The maddener of swords, the night-clouds' rider. She has kept sweet that father's lore of bird-speech, She wears that mother's power to cheat a ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... thee, nor Phasis, a bird. But capers and onions, besoaking in brine, And brawn of a gammon scarce doubtful are thine. Of garbage, or flitch of hoar tunny, thou'rt vain; The rosin's thy joy, the Falernian thy bane." [Footnote: Martial, b. iii. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... since become the ideals of our school girls.... Referring to the fear some native Christians have shown of sending their girls to a school having manual labour in its curriculum, Dr. Ida exclaimed hotly, 'This fear of work is the bane of China.' Here are two doctors of exalted privileges, educated abroad, honoured alike by native and foreigner, and yet putting their hand to cooking and housework of every kind, as the need may be, without a thought of being degraded thereby; a glorious object-lesson ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... bane, - A harder case you never heard, My wife (in other matters sane) Pretends that I'm ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... set by Gladstone in the Land Act, and that was the path which further legislation ought to follow. So far there would not be much disagreement between Froude and most Irish Americans. Rack-renting upon the tenants' improvements was the bane of Irish agriculture, and the Act of 1870 was precisely what Froude described it, a partial antidote. Then the lecturer reverted to ancient history, to the Annals of the Four Masters, and the Danish invasion. The audience found it rather ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... child of thousand pagans twain; * Son of the Road to lasting sin and bane; The Lord of Ruth ne'er grew him e'en a hair * Was not with this or that of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to express the joy it gave him as a token of their affection. It is the least dogmatic of all his Epistles, and affords an example of the Apostle's statement of Christian truth to unbiased minds; one exhortation, however, shows he is not blind to the rise of an evil which has been the bane of the Church of Christ since the beginning, the spirit of rivalry, and this is evident from the prominence he gives in chapter ii. 5-8 to the self-sacrificing lowliness of Christ, and by the counsel he gives ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... you—little else—than debts—embarrassments, and the record of many failures. You must do—the best you can. I am not able to advise you. Only never love this world as I have. It will disappoint you. And, whatever happens, never lose faith in the goodness of God. This has been my bane. It has poisoned my life here, and, had it not been for this dear wife, it would have been my destruction here-after. For long years—only her patient love—has stood between me and a miserable end. Next to God—I commit her and your little sisters to ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... occurrence, John Massingbird would have already departed from Verner's Pride. The great bane of the two Massingbirds was, that they had been brought up to be idle men. A sum of money had become theirs when Frederick came of age—which sum you will call large or small, as it may please you. It would be as a drop of water to the millionaire; it would be ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was a very bad boy. At least his aunt, Mrs Dorothy Grumbit, said so; and certainly she ought to have known, if anybody should, for Martin lived with her, and was, as she herself expressed it, "the bane of her existence; the very torment of her life." No doubt of it whatever, according to Aunt Dorothy Grumbit's showing, Martin Rattler was "a remarkably ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... that easy journeys at first, and a light weight on his back, might gradually bring the ungainly beast into better form. It appeared that he was just recovering from the distemper and "sore tongue," which had followed each other in rapid succession. These two diseases are the terror and bane of Virginian and Maryland stables. An animal who has once surmounted them is supposed to be seasoned, and acquires considerable additional value, like a "salted" horse ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... annum, does not go to ruin in a day. There sat the earl, in his library now, in his nine-and-fortieth year, and ruin had not come yet—that is, it had not overwhelmed him. But the embarrassments which had clung to him, and been the destruction of his tranquility, the bane of his existence, who shall describe them? The public knew them pretty well, his private friends knew better, his creditors best; but none, save himself knew, or could ever know, the worrying torment that was his portion, wellnigh driving him to distraction. Years ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the more a sin is opposed to charity, the more grievous it is. Now covetousness is most opposed to charity: for Augustine says (QQ. 83, qu. 36) that "greed is the bane of charity." Therefore covetousness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... help from the Reichstag; the Liberals were bitterly opposed, the Socialists sceptical and suspicious, the Catholics cool and unstable allies; during these years the chronic quarrel between himself and Parliament broke out with renewed vigour. How bitterly did he deplore party spirit, the bane of German life, which seemed each year to ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... them. Thine ear Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen, In shattering the dark in evil's den, Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain Lost Paradise, or bane ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... are but as the snail to the swallow against the bright steel in the hands of Alan," said the other. "Before your jottering finger could find the trigger, the hilt would dirl on your breast-bane." ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to reflect how I had tended him in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost through his whole course; and what absurd nonsense it was to yield to that sense of horror. 'But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?' muttered Superstition, as I dozed into unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself with imagining some fit parentage for him; and, repeating my waking meditations, I tracked his existence over again, with grim variations; at last, picturing ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... time to repair; a time to be silent and a time to speak; 8. a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. VIII. 6. For every thing hath its season and its destiny,[270] for the bane of man presses heavily upon him. 7. Because he knoweth not what shall be; for who can tell him how it ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... husband of Queen Elionore, for he carries on his chace on the banks of the Gave of Pau, and still further into the Pyrenees. He was a very excellent and pious prince, valiant and courteous; but he had one great fault, an inordinate love of hunting, which in the end proved his bane. For once, on the occasion of some solemn fete, while he was in the church assisting at the mass, some mischievous friend brought him word, that a fine wild boar had just appeared at a very short distance from the holy precincts. In ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the second rank, however, that seemed most busy for good or mischief in human affairs: such gods as Pele, the spirit of the volcanoes, with her five brothers and eight sisters who lived in the flaming caverns of Kilauea; or as Kalaipahoa, poison-goddess of Molokai, and her two sisters, who put a bane on the trees so deadly that they rivalled the fabled Upas of Java, and birds fell lifeless as they attempted to fly above them (a volcanic sulphur vent was probably the origin of this tale); or, as Kuahana, who slew men for sport; or, as Pohakaa, who rolled ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... unparalleled since the Middle Ages, that Lord John wrote from Edinburgh his famous Free Trade letter to his London constituents, urging them to clamour for the only remedy, "to unite to put an end to a system which has proved to be the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... humour in another's person, (for we are more ready to see others evils than our own,) and how deformed is it? So vile is self-seeking and self boasting, that all men loathe it in others, and hide it from others. It disgraces all actions, how beautiful soever, it is the very bane of human society, that which looses all the links of it, and makes them ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Mr. Hathorn had laid the greatest stress Mr. Porson was indifferent—dates, which had been the bane of many a boy's life and an unceasing source of punishment, he regarded but little, insisting only that the general period should be known, and his questions generally took the form of, "In the beginning or at the end ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... "Bane of the North, its canker and its moth! These modern Esaus, bartering rights for broth! Taxing our justice, with their double claim, As fools for pity, and as knaves for blame; Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, within The fell embrace of Slavery's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to spare for repairs or improvements, and even the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to decent clothing for himself and wife and other dependants that is not to be thought of while he is loaded down with that bane of ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... rights. It was the bane of my life to be supposed to have them. Nothing but this could have made a ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fearless girl, And made her answer plain, Outspoken she to earl or churl, Kindhearted in the main, But somewhat heedless with her tongue, And apt at causing pain; A mirthful maiden she and young, Most fair for bliss or bane. 20 'Oh, long ago I told you so, I tell you so to-day: Go you your way, and let me go Just my own ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at present—a great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between that ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... "It is the bane of my existence," declared the lawyer, with exasperation. "Those women are determined to obtain a much greater share of the estate than belongs to them or than the testator ever intended. Their testimony, I believe, is false. But as ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... venom, virus, toxine, toxicant, irritant, taint, bane, ptomaine. Associated Words: toxicology, toxicophobia, toxicomania, toxiferous, toxicologist, antidote, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of the servants and courtiers of Solomon, with that of others in Pagan countries, we cannot help uniting in the congratulations of his noble visiter, and remarking the advantage of religious connexions in general. Wicked association is the bane of human society, and fatally conducive to the confirmation of evil habits and principles, or to the excitement of them. Such persons, therefore, as are connected with the people of God, who have pious parents or friends, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the education of a thankless son! Was it for this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with my friends, to become an example to the neighbourhood? The jovial good fellow has made a goose of himself. Oh! if I had to begin again! No, no! you see women and children are our bane. They soften our hearts; they lead us a life of hope and affection; we pass a quarter of our lives in fostering the growth of a grain of corn which is to be everything to us in our old age, and when the harvest-time comes—good-night, the ear ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... we would willingly wander any-whither with George Borrow. But, for the most part, the art of writing travels is lost—its imaginativeness, its credulity, its cherishing of mystery, and its proneness to awe. The old travellers are never sentimental—and sentiment is the very bane of road-books,—and they never describe for description's sake. The world was much too wonderful in their eyes for such unprofitable excursions of fancy. Beauty and danger, difficulty and strangeness, novel fashions and unknown garbs, were to them earnest and absorbing ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... cast their spell o'er the glen of Castlemaine; There is brooding wonder there, but no dream of blight or bane; Here, if you have loved and lost, you may find ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... so call you," answered Mauleverer, with an ardent gaze, "do not, I implore you, even for a moment, affect to mistake me! Do not for a moment jest at what, to me, is the bane or bliss of life! Dare I hope that my hand and heart, which I now offer you, are not deserving ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... qualities of mind and great beauty of person, and he returned only vanity and weakness for these gifts. Oh, how weak is man! Die of Beauty! Die a moral death, or live a useless, foolish life because he is wickedly vain of God's gifts! Beauty is full often the nurse of vanity, and vanity is the bane of womanhood. I am sorry to say it, and more sorry because it is so. It is a pity that so lovely a gift from the Hand Divine should be so wickedly perverted. Beauty ought to inspire rather than weaken ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... philosophy of agriculture. He owed his crops less to intelligent cultivation of the soil than to provident Nature in a new and untilled country. Both his methods and his implements were bad, and resulted in that land spoliation which has been the bane of American industry. "Agriculture in the South," said John Taylor, of Caroline, "does not consist so much in cultivating land as in killing it"; and the statement was scarcely less true when applied to the Northern farmer. The soil ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... passed the English shore, Yet fain would counted be a conqueror. His hair, French-like, stares on his frightened head, One lock amazon-like dishevelled, As if he meant to wear a native cord, If chance his fates should him that bane afford. All British bare upon the bristled skin, Close notched is his beard both lip and chin; His linen collar labyrinthian set, Whose thousand double turnings never met: His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings, As if he meant to fly with ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment, they thus become absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations, and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... they continue to this day without a thought of retreating, and trailing their colors in the dust. They are confident that Churches and nations will yet reach the heights of Covenant doctrine and fidelity under Jesus Christ. The bane of the Churches to-day is the slanting ground, adown which an evil influence is steadily drawing the people lower and lower. But in the last days the Holy Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh; then shall the world have a spiritual resurrection, and a ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... structure. Though they are full of genius, like everything he composed, he did not write them con amore. Concentration is one of Chopin's principal characteristics, and the sonata favors diffuseness. Too much thematic beating out is the bane of the sonata. A few bars of gold are worth more than many square yards of gold leaf; and Chopin's bars are solid gold. Moreover, there is no organic unity between the different parts of the sonata, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... quantity of acid. They dye black with an ink made of elder bark, and a little bog-iron-ore, dried and pounded, and they have various modes of producing yellow. The deepest colour is obtained from the dried root of a plant, which from their description appears to be the cow-bane (cicuta virosa.) An inferior colour is obtained from the bruised buds of the Dutch myrtle, and they have discovered methods ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... profound were his cogitations, the droller and more whimsical became the apparitions. They buzzed about him thick as flies, flapping at him, flouting him, hooting in his ear, yet with such comic appendages, that what at first was his bane became at length his solace; and he desired no better society than that of his merry phantasmata. We shall presently find in what way this remarkable phenomenon influenced his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... is, perhaps, the first link in a chain of thoughts and images which will be the torment of your conscience and the bane of your life. That sentiment to which you imprudently pandered is perhaps the source of countless fears, regrets, remorse and sorrows. That imprudent glance is perhaps the first spark of a conflagration which nothing can extinguish, and which ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... privative into a contrary, or a contradictory, has been the bane of metaphysical reasoning. From it has arisen the doctrine of the synthesis of an affirmative and a negative into a higher conception, reconciling them both. This is the maxim of the Hegelian logic, which ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... live in the greatest harmony.[5] In the laws, usages, and feelings of the people upon this subject we had the means of preventing that eternal subdivision of landed property, which ever has been, and ever will be, the bane of everything that is great and good in India; but, unhappily, our rulers have never had the wisdom to avail themselves of them. In a great part of India the property, or the lease of a village ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... came when the cherished secret was to be divulged. Don Roderic, who had seized the throne by violence, and bore in his heart the fatal bane of curiosity, determined to learn what had lain for centuries behind those locks. The whole affair, he declared, was the jest of an ancient king, which did very well when superstition ruled the world, but which was far behind the age in which he lived. Two ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... need. DERRIC. Money! that is eternally your cry. Your extravagances have almost ruined and soon will dishonour me. Oh! I am but justly punished for my mad indulgence of a son who was born only to be my bane and curse. HERMAN. If you could but invent some fresh terms for my reproach! such frequent repetition becomes, I assure you, very wearisome. DERRIC. You have caused me to plunge into debt, and I am now pursued by a host of creditors. HERMAN. We ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... in the tissue of their brains and the marrow of their bones that unrebelling habit of bending their backs daily to a regular burden of work not selected by themselves—which, according to one's point of view, is either the bane or the salvation of our modern ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... conviction of a special mission in life. Very well then! If you agree so far, let us proceed to consider the mission of a poet. There's only one justification for his existence—only one thing that distinguishes him from the professional rhymester whom nobody wants, and who is the bane and terror of society, and that is—that he has something to say! Now take your own case—a lad without as much as a moustache on his face; the son of a rich father, who has lain soft all his life, and had the bumps rolled ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... allow a failure in you,— You love his niece; and to a politician All passion's bane, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... in the house. On this day a man mounted on a black horse and armed with a spear and a short sword rode up to the door and asked her if she could find something for him to do. He was skilled in many things, he said, but his temper was hot, and had oftentimes been his bane. ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... the joy of my song, O see on the benches before us that countless and wonderful throng, Where wits by the thousand abide, with more than a Cleophon's pride— On the lips of that foreigner base, of Athens the bane and disgrace, There is shrieking, his kinsman by race, The garrulous swallow of Thrace; From that perch of exotic descent, Rejoicing her sorrow to vent, She pours to her spirit's content, a nightingale's woeful ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... here upon the soil that feeds man! You at least shall live no more to be a fell bane to men who eat the fruit of the all-nourishing earth, and who will bring hither perfect hecatombs. Against cruel death neither Typhoeus shall avail you nor ill-famed Chimera, but here shall the Earth and shining Hyperion ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... born from friction of the deodars, A scudding fire should prove the mountain's bane, Singeing the tails of yaks with fiery stars, Quench thou the flame with countless streams of rain— The great have power that they may soothe distress ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... is the bane of gardening. I knew, among our group of food producers, a party of young engineers, college men, who took an empty farm north of the city as the scene of their summer operations. They took their coats off and applied ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... large collection of tracts and printed volumes relating to the FAIR SEX: being, in fact, nothing less than a prodigious heap of publications "FOR and AGAINST" the ladies. M. Chardin will not separate them—adding that the "bane and antidote ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... but I had not a brass farthing. I was but half-way through the volume of Memoirs; I dared not beg for assistance of Finot, and Rastignac, my providence, was away. These constant perplexities were the bane of my life. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... dagger he wore by his side, Of many a man the bane; And he was clad in his capull[8] hide Top ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... boredom! stupefying Theme! Whereon with eloquence less deep than full, Still maundering on in slow continuous stream, All can expatiate, and all be dull: Bane of the mind and topic of debate That drugs the reader to a restless doze, Thou that with soul-annihilating weight Crushest the Bard, and hypnotisest those Who plod the placid path ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... scarcely distinguishable from that of the passive form; it often happens that this substitution of the imperfect participle passive for the simple imperfect in ing, is quite needless, even when the latter is not considered passive. For example: "See by the following paragraph, how widely the bane is being circulated!"—Liberator, No. 999, p. 34. Here is circulating would be better; and so would is circulated. Nor would either of these much vary the sense, if at all; for "circulate" may mean, according to Webster, "to be diffused," or, as Johnson and Worcester have ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Staple was not a happy man; university reform had long been his bugbear, and now was his bane. It was not with him, as with most others, an affair of politics, respecting which, when the need existed, he could, for parties' sake or on behalf of principle, maintain a certain amount of necessary zeal; it was not with him a subject for dilettante warfare and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... hearts like thine ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... quiet of my being, foes, If some lone shore, or fountain-head, or rill Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread, I find—my daunted soul doth there repose.... On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane.... Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade, I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink Her lovely face I picture from my mind.... Oft hath her living likeness met my sight, (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear, On beechen ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the face, like a scorpion whip; and then the scalding tears were sure to run in torrents down their silly, honest, burning cheeks. But this was not all; they had got a large tank in a flagged room, nominally for cleanliness and cure, but really for bane and torture. For the least offence, or out of mere wantonness, they would drag a patient stark naked across the yard, and thrust her bodily under water again and again, keeping her down till almost gone with suffocation, and dismissing ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of the most interesting of Milton's Latin poems, being rather less affected than most of them by that artificiality of classical allusion which is the bane of such productions. So far as we know, it was the last word on its subject. From henceforth no one questioned Milton's right to be a poet and himself. If he ever afterwards deserted his poetic vocation it was at what he believed to be a still higher call. For the present he lived on ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... his white hause-bane, And I'll pick out his bonny blue een: Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair We'll theek our nest when it ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... afternoon when we got away from Avignon. A mistral—the north wind that is the winter bane and summer blessing of Provence—was blowing briskly; the sun was shining; the crowded Cours de la Republique was gay with flags and banners and streamers, and with festoons of coloured lanterns which later would be festoons of coloured fire. We passed between the towers of the gateway, left the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... I:—'There's ever dearth of noble men!' Naught irks us we are few, while neighbour tribes * Count many; neighbours oft are base-born strain: We are a clan which holds not Death reproach, * Which A'mir and Samul[FN151] hold illest bane: Leads us our love of death to fated end; * They hate that ending and delay would gain: We to our neighbours' speech aye give the lie, * But when we speak ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... fabrick, it is certain that the City of London took every precaution to have the best Portland stone for it; but as this is to be found in the quarries belonging to the publick, under the direction of the Lords of the Treasury, it so happened that parliamentary interest, which is often the bane of fair pursuits, thwarted their endeavours. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, it is well known that not only has Blackfriars-bridge never sunk either in its foundation or in its arches, which were so much the subject of contest, but any injuries which it has suffered ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Macbeth pretended to be very much surprised and grieved at it, and although the people all thought he had done it himself, they were afraid to say so; and he was made king of Scotland. But wickedness is sure to be punished, as you shall hear; for the two young Princes, Malcolm and Donald Bane, as soon as they heard their father was dead, escaped from the castle, fearing that if they staid they ...
— More Seeds of Knowledge; Or, Another Peep at Charles. • Julia Corner
... than the cold seasons; and the explorer is often urged to take advantage of them. He must, however, consult local experience. Whilst ascending rivers in November, for instance, he may find the many feet of flood a boon or a bane, and his marching journeys are nearly sure to end in ulcerated feet, as was the case with poor Dr. Livingstone. The rains drench the country till the latter end of December, when the Nanga or "little ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... every turn," she writes, "that I have not the faculty to frame easy, polished sentences. If I could but do this, I would finish up the History without asking aid of anyone." And again: "It has been the bane of my life that I am powerless to put on paper the glimpses of thoughts which come and go like flashes of lightning." As has been said before in these pages, she is a perfect critic and delightful letter-writer, but finds difficulty in doing what is called "literary work." ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... woman at Houghton, had been the bane of her existence. Like an interdict of the Pope in olden times, it had kept her apart from the people of her own rank, as an excommunication would have done in past ages. But all this was removed. As it would seem by a miracle, the bitter prejudices ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... morals alike follow the Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them." Egotism and selfishness are the bane of both. True politeness consists in considering the pleasure of others as a thing in itself, without regard to your own advantage. If an attention is paid, a gift given, a service rendered, these should be done solely for the recipient's happiness, not with ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... witches use is reported to be made of the fat of children digged out of their graves; of the juices of smallage, wolf-bane, and cinque-foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat; but I suppose that the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it." See Sylva Sylvarum, cent. X, 975, in Works, ed. Spedding, II, 664. But even this passage shows Bacon a skeptic. His suggestion that the soporiferous medicines are likest ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... been no stepping-stone to such honour, and that his money had been spent for nothing, his mind reverted to its old form. Strikes became to him the work of the devil, and unions were once more the bane ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... wrinkled heart. His countenance was open, and his spirit was clear. He was a man of passions, my lord. He acted in every momentous concern, more from the dictates of his heart, than his head. But this is the key to his conduct; He kept a watchful eye upon that bane of every patriot minister, secret influence. If there were one feature in his political history more conspicuous than the rest, if I were called to point out the line of discrimination between his character and that of his contemporaries upon the public stage, it would be the hatred ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... sometimes milk, Sometimes apple-jack as fine as silk; But, whatever the tipple has been, We shared it together in bane or in bliss, And I warn you, friend, when I think of this: We have ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd
... a rivulet, on whose banks we loitered, observing at our leisure the products of these new fields. He who traverses the woodland paths, at this season, will have occasion to remember the small drooping bell-like flowers and slender red stem of the dogs-bane, and the coarser stem and berry of the poke, which are both common in remoter and wilder scenes; and if "the sun casts such a reflecting heat from the sweet fern," as makes him faint, when he is climbing the bare hills, as they ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... bane of all human society, which produces pride in some, debasement in others, corruption in all. And yet such a generous abandonment of every thing demonstrated that this excessive luxury, as yet however entirely borrowed, had not ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... No grass, no forests hide my misery bare; The reaches of the tyrannous poles consume Those gardens of delight we made so fair, And men lie dark in caves, a sullen race, Framed of ray daughter's flesh but now my bane, Yet shall I not withdraw my patient face, Nor tomb them in my hollow caves of pain. Soon shall I creep no more about thee, orb Of Heaven, for all my thews grow stark and dry. When the years drag me to my end—absorb, Embrace, enfold, caress ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... other, and this double strife was fiercer in the wilderness, just at that time, than almost anywhere else within the furthest reach of science. On first coming he had found more people being killed by calomel and jalap than by the plague. At every turn he encountered this bane of the country which was called callomy-jallopy, and at that moment he was utterly worn out, body and soul, by a struggle to save the life of a man who had ignorantly poisoned himself by drinking some acid after taking the ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... are headier than these, Master Silas! our new beer is the sweeter and clammier, and wants more spice. The doctor hath seasoned his with pretty wit enough, to do him justice, which in a sermon is never out of place; for if there be the bane, there likewise ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... who snare and stupify the mind, Sophists, of beauty, virtue, joy, the bane! Greedy and fell, though impotent and blind, Who spread your filthy nets in Truth's fair fane, And ever ply your venomed fangs amain! Hence to dark Error's den, whose rankling slime First gave you form! hence! lest ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... are insufferable. If one can be pardoned for the Irishism of such a saying, homes are their own worst "banes." If homes were what they should be, nothing under heaven could be invented which could be bane to them, which would do more than serve as useful foil to set off their better cheer, their ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... deadly flowers Refuseth beauty lest the vain Insects that hum through August hours With beauty should suck in their bane; But thou, as Rose or Lily fair, Art circled ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... Smith was much inclined to intemperance, though Mr. Oldisworth has glossed it over with the hand of a friend; nor is it improbable, that this disposition sunk him in that vis inertiae, which has been the bane of many of the brightest geniuses of the world. Mr. Smith was, upon the whole, a good natured man, a great poet, a finished scholar, and a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... gradually brought about a profound discontent, a grouping of classes. Among the comparatively prosperous there was set up a social competition in luxury that was the bane of large and small communities. Skilled labour banded itself into unions, employers organized to oppose them, and the result was a class conflict never contemplated by the founders of the Republic, repugnant to democracy which by its very nature depends for its existence on the elimination ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... should sleep almost all the time, and it will if intelligently cared for. Overfeeding is the bane of the baby's life and is the cause of most of its restlessness. The first few months the baby should be awake enough to take its food, and then go to sleep again. As it grows older it sleeps less ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... leave, we would admonish you, by all that you hold dear, beware of that bewitching evil, that bane of society, that curse of the world, that fell destroyer of the best prospects and the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... again: "Cousin, forsooth of this opinion Thou hast a vain imagination. This prison caused me not for to cry; But I was hurt right now thorough mine eye Into mine heart; that will my bane* be. *destruction The fairness of the lady that I see Yond in the garden roaming to and fro, Is cause of all my crying and my woe. I *n'ot wher* she be woman or goddess, *know not whether* But Venus is it, soothly* as I guess, *truly And therewithal on knees adown ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... that these varieties are not known in the cities should not preclude their popularity in suburban and town gardens and in the country, where every householder is monarch of his own soil and can satisfy very many aesthetic and gustatory desires without reference to market dictum, that bane alike of the ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... old herbalists, one would imagine that serpents (and those of the worst kind) abounded in "Merrie Englande," and that they were the greatest bane of our lives. It is {40} hard to stumble on a plant that is not an antidote to the bite of serpents. Our old herbals were compiled, however, almost entirely from the writings of the ancients, and from foreign sources. The ancients had a curious notion relative to the plant Basil (Oscimum basilicum), ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... bane, Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain! Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is In moral ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... association with his young companions in the profession, and daily contact with the racy personalities which traditionally haunt all courts of law, and particularly Scotch courts of law: the first association kept him from the affectation and sentimentality which is the bane of the youthful romanticist; and the second enriched his memory with many an odd figure afterward to take its place, clothed in the colors of a great dramatic imagination, upon the stage ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... chain, That does freeze my bones around! Selfish, vain, Eternal bane, That free love with ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... inferiors; shy, awkward and blushing with ladies or in refined society—distressing my feeble efforts to talk to them by their silly explosions of laughter when one of them was addressed. They formed the bane of ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the fire-guard in the absence of our nurses, we obtained some cinders, with which we repaired to our post at the window, thus illustrating that natural proclivity of children to places of danger which is the bane of parents and guardians. Here we fastened up little fragments of cinder in pieces of writing-paper, and having secured them tidily with string, we dropped these parcels through the iron bars as into a post-office. ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... know that the question he had so summarily disposed of had much excited and disturbed the legal world of Middle and Southern Ohio; that the best legal minds had been divided on it; and that a case had just been reserved for the court in bane, which ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... confirmed. When at Ceylon, I fell sick, and was left behind. The brig was lost, and as I had forgotten to insure my portion of her, I was ruined. I struggled long, but in vain—intemperance was my curse, my bane, the millstone at my neck, which dragged me down: I had education, talents, and energy, and at one time, capital, but all were useless; and thus did I sink down, from captain of a vessel to mate, from mate to second mate, until I at last found myself ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... flowers, retaining in summer the freshness of spring, the delicious purity of its atmosphere, and the brightness of its waters, render it most charming. The solitude here has no drawback; the strong currents of air by which it is encircled defy the powers of the musquito,—that bane to all thin-skinned people with pastoral inclinations, and not an insect in the least venomous or annoying is to be ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... The Latin teacher—the bane of all careless and ill-prepared boys and girls of the Latin class—was a slightly built, stoop-shouldered man who never seemed to own a new coat, and was as forgetful as a person really could be, and be allowed to go about without ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... their own union! Even with the best-hearted and most fondly attached, with those who will lavish every endearment, acknowledge their fault, and make every subsequent effort to compensate for the irritation of the moment, violence of temper must prove the bane of marriage bliss. Bitter and insulting expressions have escaped, unheeded at the time, and forgotten by the offending party; but, although forgiven, never to be forgotten by the other. Like barbed arrows, they have entered into the heart ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... welfare, and in some sense the honor of Germany are apparently involved in it. And yet it may be true, and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the German Empire. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Duke of Normandy has won The battle, to our bane. On the field of Hastings, where he fought, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... For sot, and seer, and swain, For emperors and for churls, For antidote and bane, There is but one refrain: But one for king and thrall, For David and for Saul, For fleet of foot and lame, For pieties and profanities, The picture and the frame:- 'O Vanity ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... close by, said, "'Tis the Lion's valor that leads him to the herds, and gets him killed by the hunters. 'Tis the Fox's cunning that brings him to the furrier at last. 'Tis the plumes of the Peacock that men covet; hence his ruin. The Elephant is hunted for his tusks, and they are his bane." In the mark of your ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... frontier of the kingdom and was carried by the nobles into Lithuania and Podolia that the entire Russian nation took up the struggle with passionate and vindictive ardour as one for life or death. It was the fatal bane of Polish nationality that the days of its greatness had left it a claim upon vast territories where it had planted nothing but a territorial aristocracy, and where the mass of population, if not actually ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... was my bane and admiration. He was presumed by the verdant patrons of the paper to be its owner and principal editor, its type-setter, pressman, and carrier. His hair was elaborately curled, and his ears were perfect racks of long and dandyfied pens; a broad, shovel-shaped gold pen lay forever opposite ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend |
