"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a moment it seemed as if the labour of those patient months had been dashed to the ground, and his guardian's bitter words branded themselves on his heart as he paced on out of the shadow of the noble minster into the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... all, the beautiful summer days glided away unappreciated, and there were many bitter groans over what might have been had they been alone. They thought longingly of the excursions and picnics, the drives, and the free happy days in the open that they ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... clear day; and I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.' All which he explaineth in the next words, for 'Behold the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord; and they shall wander from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bitter cold, and Pilar shivered in her cloak, which was not made for motoring. When Dick saw this, before I could speak he had his own fur-lined coat off, insisting that she should put it on. "I can take Casa Triana's," said he, "since he's still posing ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... nothing in this world can make me joy: Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man; And bitter shame hath spoil'd the sweet world's taste, That it yields nought ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... both tasted the bitters, as well as the sweets of love; with this difference only, that you always prepared the bitter cup ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... of India carry these devout people at a most trifling charge, aggregating but about a half penny per mile. And yet we were told that it paid the companies very well, besides making good friends of the natives, who were originally opposed to the laying of railroad tracks; indeed, so bitter and superstitious were they, that for a long time it was necessary to guard the track by a military force, especially in these very districts of central India. It was amusing to watch the expression upon the countenances of some of these pilgrims, who stood on the platform of the depot, watching ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... mind, that does not feel An anxious interest in the public weal! Is there a heart that pities not the brave! To whom luxuriant laurels hide the grave! A grief unwing'd, yet unconsol'd by pride! A tongue that said not, when our hero died, While bitter tears that glorious loss deplore, The man who lov'd his country is no more? No! in each eye the glowing trophies fade; Each sign of triumph seems a vain parade! The aching sigh to conquering shouts succeeds, And Victory ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... are right, and that it is a serious business after all," said she. "Mamma is ever either a good friend or a bitter enemy; but all must depend on my uncle, so do not lose a moment, my good cousin, but be off to Beaujardin at once. In the meanwhile I will do what I can to soothe mamma and comfort Marguerite. Yes, sir, although it is so very absurd to think of any one ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... with grave, staring eyes, and a beard somewhat foreign. His clothes were black; respectable and yet casual; those of a man who dressed conventionally because it was a bore to dress unconventionally—as it is. Attracted by this and other things, and wanting an outburst for my bitter social feelings, I tempted him into speech, first about the cold, and then about the General Election. To this the respectable ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... two little trollies, just to hold a tin jug and some tin cups hung round, with one oil-lamp to keep the jug hot. The weather will be bitter soon, and only ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia. Following World War II, Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. Under UN supervision, the last Serb-held enclave in eastern Slavonia was returned to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to Mr. Burke, he would have shown distinctly, and in detail, that what the Assembly calling itself National had held out as a large and liberal toleration is in reality a cruel and insidious religious persecution, infinitely more bitter than any which had been heard of within this century.—That it had a feature in it worse than the old persecutions.—That the old persecutors acted, or pretended to act, from zeal towards some system of piety and virtue: they gave strong preferences to their own; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Murgh the Messenger sailed forth into that uttermost sea, a young man and a maiden met together at the Blythburgh marshes, near to Dunwich, on the eastern coast of England. In this, the month of February of the year 1346, hard and bitter frost held Suffolk in its grip. The muddy stream of Blyth, it is true, was frozen only in places, since the tide, flowing up from the Southwold harbour, where it runs into the sea between that ancient town and the hamlet of Walberswick, had broken up the ice. But ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... steeled, that after pumping out all the sustenance of vitality from one of the fairest islands under the sun, they can discourse calmly upon its depopulation as proof of the success of the experiment, can talk with bitter irony of 'that strange region of the earth where such a people, affectionate and hopeful, genial and witty, industrious and independent, was produced and could not stay,' and can gloat in the anticipation that prosperity ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... oriental—were either strangers to jealousy of any kind, or else knew it only as a species of anger, hatred, cruelty, and selfish sensuality; never as an ingredient of love. Australian women, Lumholtz tells us (203), "often have bitter quarrels about men whom they love[19] and are anxious to marry. If the husband is unfaithful, the wife frequently becomes greatly enraged." As chastity is not by Australians regarded as a duty or a virtue, such conduct can ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of Sperver was an expression of suppressed wrath, on that of his companion bitter irony. This worthy sportsman, whose woeful physiognomy had struck me on my first arrival at Nideck, was as thin and dry as a lath. His hunting-jacket was girded tightly about him by his belt, from which hung ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... decide between them, she liked both of them so immensely, especially as she herself was the champion basket-ball player among the girls at her seminary. Each of the Twins resolved that he would not only outdo all the rest of the players upon the gymnasium floor, but also his bitter rival, ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... noon, or twilight, draweth near When one shall smite me on the bridge of war, Or with the ruthless sword, or with the spear, Or with the bitter arrow flying far. But as a man's heart, so his good days are, That Zeus, the Lord of Thunder, giveth him, Wherefore I follow Fortune, like a star, Whate'er may wait me ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... but that peace, individual liberty, and great commercial prosperity now reign in Poland is equally obvious. In the days which are popularly denominated those of Polish independence the nobility were always divided into bitter factions. Revolutions were as frequent as they are to-day in South America or Mexico, and the strongest party disposed of the crown, ruling ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... was the back of Kloon's bushy head. One shot!—and fear, which had shadowed him from birth, was at an end forever. Ended, too, privation,—the bitter rigour of black winters; scorching days; bodily squalor; ills that such as he endured in a wilderness where, like other creatures of the wild, men stricken died or recovered by ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... narrative, which are very few and of but melancholy interest, became known to me in the precise order in which they are laid before the reader. They were forced upon my observation rather than sought out by me; and they present, to my mind at least, a touching picture of the bitter conflict industrious poverty is sometimes called upon to wage with 'the thousand natural shocks which flesh ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... hold of his son on his return. Reproaches were perhaps to be expected, but, alas, the poor, sore-hearted father tried sneers as well. A sneer is like a flame; it may occasionally be curative because it cauterizes, but it leaves a bitter scar. Of his dreadful anxiety in these seven or eight weeks of absence, of his sleepless nights, of his self-accusings, of his anguished affection, the senior warden could find nothing to say; but for anger and disappointment and contempt he had fluent and searing words. Such words were only the ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... every-day life? It would be a tremendous experiment, but she could not let him enter on that close union in ignorance of the blot on her scutcheon, and then the door would be closed on the earlier half of her life, which had been so bitter-sweet. How little peace she had known since her mother's death! how heavenly sweet her life had been when she knew no deeper care than to shield that dear mother from anxiety and trouble! and now there was no one belonging to her on whose wisdom ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... lower and lower. Soon they would be below the clouds, and soon after that, landing so far inside the German lines that by no possibility could they hope to regain their own. It was a bitter time for Bob. Dicky, curiously enough, took the first realization of their predicament less hard. He was all eyes to see what fate had in store for them in the way of a ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... said before, we have reached our present happy condition through many bitter experiences. We read that at one time people had so much work to do and were so thoughtless as to what was good for their physical welfare that they began to rob themselves of their proper rest. Others found it convenient to follow occupations which obliged ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... principles which I learnt from thee in leisured seclusion. Thou art my witness and that divinity who hath implanted thee in the hearts of the wise, that I brought to my duties no aim but zeal for the public good. For this cause I have become involved in bitter and irreconcilable feuds, and, as happens inevitably, if a man holds fast to the independence of conscience, I have had to think nothing of giving offence to the powerful in the cause of justice. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... all he had said. My mistress had been surprised in her own house between two lovers, and a scene that all Paris knew by heart ensued. She was disgraced, obliged to leave Paris or remain exposed to the most bitter taunts. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... answered the ram. "We have good fodder up here on the mountain, all the year around." "I think it sounds as if you might have it better than other sheep," said Akka. "But what is the misfortune that has befallen you?" "It was bitter cold last winter. The sea froze, and then three foxes came over here on the ice, and here they have been ever since. Otherwise, there are no dangerous animals here on the island." "Oh, oh! do foxes dare to attack such as you?" "Oh, no! not ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... be named: Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed. Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus; When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as eve, High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea. Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd, When all church bells were silent our ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... grave you have prepared, when she lies languid and exhausted before you, her dim eyes raised to heaven, and the damp of death upon her pallid brow, there you stand at her bedside like a condemned criminal, with the bitter feeling that your whole fortune could not save her; and the agonising thought wrings you, that all your efforts are powerless to impart even a moment's strength to the departing soul, or quicken her with ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... wrestled, Until on Friendship's lap I fluttering nestled, And bent my weary head for her caress.... With wistful prayers, with visionary grieving, With all the trustful hope of early years, I sought new friends with zeal and new believing; But bitter was their greeting to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... by the long process of time, and won to give His blessing in one age, to that which He hath cursed in another. Wherefor those that are wise, or whose wisdom if it be not great, yet is true and well grounded, will be able to discern the bitter fruits of irreligious policy, as well among those examples that are found in ages removed far from the present, as in those of latter times. And that it may no less appear by evident proof, than by asseveration, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... fitted together as parts of a malignant plan, that he replied, "I cannot consent to the renewal of a friendship I had prized so highly till I can see deeper into the diabolical plot than I now do." [Footnote: Ibid.] His words were all the bitter expression of a heart wounded beyond endurance by wrongs which seemed too palpable and plain for discussion or explanation. In the distribution of commands on the peace establishment made soon afterward, Halleck went to the Pacific coast and did not live ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of wealth? He could not eat gold, nor drink jewels. What was the use of his power? He could not command the smallest cloud to rise up off the sea, and pour down one drop of water to quench their thirst. Yes, Obadiah was in bitter misery that day, no doubt; and all the more, because he felt that all was God's judgment on the people's sins. They had served Baalim and Ashtaroth, the sun and moon and stars, and prayed to them for rain ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Dear Blair, you cannot be a true patriot without God's grace to help you rule your heart, guard your lips, and purify your life. May you this day begin, for your own sake as well as for that of your country, to serve the God of our fathers. He has mercifully spared you the bitter self-reproach to which you might have been doomed. Go in repentance to his footstool, and he will abundantly pardon. Resolve henceforward to walk humbly before him, trusting in his grace and striving to do his will, and you shall count this day the ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... real, instead of a mock trial by jury. These are the traits of Napoleon's character, which, as an Englishman, I admire; had I been a Frenchman, I should have adored him. He is dead and gone, and John Gull is beginning to reap the bitter fruits that were sown to procure Napoleon's destruction. John is now grumbling, because he is called upon by the despots to pay the bill, to discharge the expenses which they incurred in dethroning and destroying NAPOLEON, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... father's pride in her; to tell them that their Ruth was not the frank, open, truth-loving girl they had always believed her; to prove to them that one of their children could stoop to equivocation and deceit. Yes, it was a hard and bitter task, and she shed a good many tears over it as she wrote, almost oblivious of everything else in the little study, where the traces ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... passage on the scene of action at the same time. And now the cruellest thing of all was that Ruby in the complaints which she made to the policemen said not a word against Sir Felix, but was as bitter as she knew how to be in her denunciations of John Crumb. It was in vain that John endeavoured to make the man understand that the young woman had been crying out for protection when he had interfered. Ruby was very quick of speech and John Crumb was very slow. Ruby swore that ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... is a wonder that the mechanical disturbances and conflicts of an empty belly, interpreted by an empty head, should be mistook for workings of a different kind from what they are?" Other sermons reflect the singularly bitter anti-Catholic feeling which was characteristic even of indifferentism in those days—at any rate amongst Whig divines. But in most of them one is liable to come at any moment across one of those strange sallies to ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had strong objections to Nance's drastic measures. Her innovations met with bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor, who refused absolutely to sleep with ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... very brief note which this is to obey. Still I watched for you to come, believing it still and trusting to silence on my part to bring you more certainly than any more words could do. And at last either you came to me, or I came to you: a bitter last meeting. Perhaps your mind too holds what happened, if so I have got truly at what your will is. I must accept it as true, since I am not to see you again. I cannot tell you whether I thought it or dreamed it, but it seems still quite real, ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... gambling-houses, and the brothels, beg at the feet of each individual fisticuff of his constituency to give the noble, educated, native-born, tax-paying women of the State of New York as much right as he has, that would be too bitter a pill for a native-born woman to swallow ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... if the bread Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod To meet the flints? At least it may be said, Because the way is short, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... slayer. I hastened on the death of Feodor; I gave my sister, the Tzaritza, poison; I poisoned her, the lovely nun,—still I! Ah, yes, I know it: naught can give us calm, Amid the sorrows of this present world; Conscience alone, mayhap: Thus, when 'tis pure, it triumphs O'er bitter malice, o'er dark calumny; But if there be in it a single stain, One, only one, by accident contracted, Why then, all's done; as with foul plague The soul consumes, the heart is filled with gall, ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... table and the sitting room. Old Man Hooper offered me a cigar, and sat down deliberately to entertain me. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was also amusing himself, as though I were being played with and covertly sneered at. Hooper's politeness and suavity concealed, and well concealed, a bitter irony. His manner was detached and a little precise. Every few moments he burst into a flurry of activity with the fly whacker, darting here and there as his eyes fell upon one of the insects; but returning always calmly to his discourse with an air of never ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... she ran, notwithstanding he repeatedly charged her to stay. He followed them, however, to the coach, with bitter revilings that every body was to make more of his ward than himself, and with the most virulent complaints of his losses from the blanket, the breast of mutton, the crabs ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... in these contests. Boys on such subjects are very reticent; they hardly understand their own feelings enough to speak of them, and are too much accustomed both to ridicule and censure to look anywhere for sympathy. A favourite sister may perhaps be told of the hard struggle and the bitter failure, but not a word is said to any one else. His father, so thinks the boy, is angry at his failure; and even his mother's kisses will hardly be warmed by such a subject. We are too apt to think that if our children eat pudding and make a noise they require no sympathy. A boy may fail ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... and especially because we are critically aware of all our deficiencies, too cognizant of all that is greatest to pass willingly and humbly through the stages that rise to it, and oppressed in every honest effort by the bitter sense of inferiority. In every previous development the power has been in advance of the consciousness, the resources more abundant than the knowledge—the energy irresistible, the discipline imperfect. The light that led was narrow and dim—streakings of dawn—but ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not present in the Senate on either day; what he might have said or done, had he been there, can only be conjectured. The immediate replies from Douglas and others were very bitter. Among pro-slavery members of both Houses there was an under-current of revengeful murmurs. It is possible that this hostile manifestation may have decided a young member of the House, Preston S. Brooks, a nephew of Senator Butler, to undertake retaliation ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... she not always eluded your grasp, and when you have reached your hand to take the cup she extends to her deluded votaries, have you not found the long-expected draught strongly tinctured with the bitter dregs of disappointment? I know you have: I see it in the wan cheek, sunk eye, and air of chagrin, which ever mark the children of dissipation. Pleasure is a vain illusion; she draws you on to a thousand follies, errors, and I may say ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... Clyde. They were soon dispersed; and Monmouth showed a more humane character towards them, than he had shown towards that Member of Parliament whose nose he had caused to be slit with a penknife. But the Duke of Lauderdale was their bitter foe, and sent ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... head close and compact; the leaves clean, crisp, and sweet. When it is too young or running to seed the taste is bitter. Pale patches on the leaves are caused by mildew and are a sign ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... in popular government. One does not find in his letters the bitter references to democracy and to the populace which can be discovered in the writings of so many of his party friends, legacies of pre-revolutionary ideas inflamed by hatred of Parisian mobs. He always spoke of the people at large with a simple ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... sun's face, but none were possible upon her country's escutcheon. So she had dreamed and had fondly pictured herself as doing both a patriot's and a Christian's duty in the work in which she had been engaged. She felt less of anger and apprehension with regard to the bitter and scornful whites than of pity and contempt for them, because they could not appreciate the beauty and grandeur of the Nation of which they were an unwilling part, and of the future that lay just before. She regarded all there had been of violence and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... and romantic poetry which at first exasperated the French critics, but, in a very short time, won for him the European appellation of "the French Schiller." His first poems, "Meditations Poetiques," which appeared in Paris in 1820, were received with ten times the bitter criticism that was poured out on Byron by the Scotch reviewers, but with a similar result; in less than two months a second edition was called for and published. The spirit of these poems is that of a deep but undefined ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... principally from imagining them deprived of the conveniences of life? Take away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief; for no one is afflicted merely on account of a loss sustained by himself. Perhaps we may be sorry, and grieve a little; but that bitter lamentation and those mournful tears have their origin in our apprehensions that he whom we loved is deprived of all the advantages of life, and is sensible of his loss. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Middlemas, with a bitter smile—"it would be difficult to most men to keep up their spirits, after gaining and losing father, mother, and a good inheritance, all in the same day. But I had always a turn ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... open woodlands where the fine white flowers of the Canada anemone blow, and slough grass in the marshy meadows where the white-crossed flowers of the sharp spring are fading, and the woolly stem of the bitter boneset is lengthening; reed grass and floating manna grass in the swamps where the broad arrow leaves of the sagittaria fringe the shore and the floating leaves and fragrant blossoms of the water lilies adorn the pond. The ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... penetrating as its companion piece. Time's Revenges may perhaps be classified with these utterances of individual passion, though in form it is more closely connected with the poems I shall touch on next. It is a bitter and affecting little poem, not unlike some of the poems written many years afterwards by a remarkable and unfortunate poet,[26] who knew, in his own experience, something of what Browning happily rendered by the instinct of the dramatist only. It is a powerful and literal rendering ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... an effect of tropical brilliancy, by reason of the red frock with which Jane had provided her. There were red ribbons also in Lola's braided hair; and the girl, although still aware of bitter wrongs, was sensible of being pleased with her raiment. More than once on her way to school that first day she looked at the breadths of her scarlet cashmere with a gratified eye; and catching her at this, Ana Vigil had sighed disapprovingly, saying, ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... With bitter tears Ellen mingled as eager prayers for forgiveness and help to be faithful. She resolved that nothing, come what would, should tempt her to swerve one iota from the straight line of truth; she resolved to be more careful of her private hour; she thought she had scarcely ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... my words to you appear bitter and harsh. But, first of all, reflect that physicians, too, treat many patients by burning when they can not recover health in any other way. In the second place, it is not my wish or my pleasure to speak them; and hence it is that I have this further reproach to bring against you, that you have ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... mighty good and kind when deir slaves got sick. Old Marster sont for Dr. 'Pree (DuPree) and when he couldn't git him, he got Dr. Brown. He made us swallow bitter tastin' powders what he had done mixed up in water. Miss Polly made us drink tea made out of Jerusalem oak weeds. She biled dem weeds and sweetened de tea wid syrup. Dat was good for stomach trouble, and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... Tretoire the battle was sanguinary; the British (reenforced on September 7, 1914, by some French divisions) swept through the terrain in widely extended lines, for close formation was not to be thought of with artillery and machine guns in front. It was bitter fighting, and the German right contested every inch of ground stubbornly. Once, indeed, it seemed that General von Kluck would turn the tables. He rapidly collected his retreating troops, and with unparalleled suddenness hurled them back upon the advancing ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Assembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the Cafe Foy made a complete volte-face, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... In these bitter minutes some sensations ran through Dol Farrar which he had never known before; and, as he afterwards expressed it, "they were enough to cover any fellow ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... lieutenant, "that is a bitter fact. We have fired our last shots, and we must fall back now upon ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Natal put a new complexion on affairs. The British Government began to open its eyes to the value of a seaport, with two good harbours on the South African coast, as a colonial possession. It could not fail to recognise also that the members of the new State were already bitter foes to the British and their ways; and that it would be dangerous to allow them to establish themselves as an independent power on the coast, and entirely throw off their duty of allegiance. Accordingly Sir ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of course, had very little practice. The appointment, therefore, to which a fair salary was attached, was eagerly sought by him. His reports, however, were so defective that an effort was made by the judges to get the law repealed and have the appointment restored to the court. This led to a bitter feeling on his part towards the judges, and in a conversation with Mr. Fairfax he gave vent to it in violent language. Mr. Fairfax resented the attack and an altercation ensued, when Lee, who carried a sword-cane, drew the sword and ran it into Fairfax's body. Fortunately ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... that night without shelter under the falling snow. Exhausted, bespattered, in rags, they were dolefully crouched around their meagre green-wood fires; the poor creatures were to be pitied. Underneath their misshapen caps they all showed yellow, wrinkled, and unshaven faces. The bitter, cold wind that swept over the plain made their thin shoulders, stooping from fatigue, shiver, and their shoulder-blades protruded under their faded capes. Some of them were wounded, too slightly to be sent away in the ambulance, and wore about their wrists and foreheads ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... DWARF ELDER, OR DANEWORT. The Root, Bark, and Leaves.—These have a nauseous, sharp, bitter taste, and a kind of acrid ungrateful smell: they are all strong cathartics, and as such are recommended in dropsies, and other cases where medicines of that kind are indicated. The bark of the root is said to be strongest: the leaves the weakest. But they are ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... so constituted that they cheerfully give the efforts of a lifetime to the attainment of a brilliant social position. No fatigue is too great, and no snubs too bitter to be willingly undergone in pursuit of the cherished object. You will never find such an individual, for instance, wandering in the flowery byways that lead to art or letters, for that would waste his time. If his family are too ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... from end to end of it, and back again, one Sunday afternoon of last May, trying to conjecture what had made this especial bend and ford of the Thames so important in all the Anglo-Saxon wars. It was one of the few sunny afternoons of the bitter spring, and I was very thankful for its light, and happy in watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the classical river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out of some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet; watching, as I ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... contest had hitherto raged were exhausted; while the House of Austria, safe in its more distant territories, felt not the miseries of the war under which the rest of Germany groaned. Torstensohn first furnished them with this bitter experience, glutted his Swedes on the fertile produce of Austria, and carried the torch of war to the very ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... her like some bad-faced stranger surprised in one of the thick-carpeted corridors of a house of quiet on a Sunday afternoon; and yet, yes, amazingly, she had been able to look at terror and disgust only to know that she must put away from her the bitter-sweet of their freshness. The sight, from the window, of the group so constituted, TOLD her why, told her how, named to her, as with hard lips, named straight AT her, so that she must take it full in the face, that other possible relation to the whole ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... with a burst of laughter. 'Now I know what you mean, and what has caused this misunderstanding! How good of you, Viviette, to come at once and have it out with me, instead of brooding over it with dark imaginings, and thinking bitter things of me, as many women would have done!' He succinctly told the whole story of his little adventure with Tabitha that morning; and the sky was clear on both sides. 'When shall I be able to claim ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... governor and legislature were very frequent indeed, except in Connecticut and Rhode Island. The royal governors, representing British imperial ideas rather than American ideas, were sure to come into conflict with the popular assemblies, and sometimes became the objects of bitter popular hatred. The disputes were apt to be concerned with questions in which taxation was involved, such as the salaries of crown officers, the appropriations for war with the Indians, and so on. Such disputes bred more or less popular discontent, but the ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... song; an' orl them bitter things That chewin' over lovers' quarrils brings Guv place to thorts of sorrer an' remorse. Like when some dilly punter goes an' slings 'Is larst, lone deener on some stiffened 'orse, An' learns them vain regrets wot 'urts ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... you," said Holmes, unlocking and throwing open the door, "yet there never was a man who deserved punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove!" he continued, flushing up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man's face, "it is not part of my duties to my client, but here's a hunting crop handy, and I think I shall just treat myself to—" He took two swift steps to the whip, but before he could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the prayer, and seemed to join earnestly in the petitions it contained. With his more devout companion, he felt that God was able to save them, to blunt the edges of the weapons raised to destroy them, or to transform their savage and bitter foes into the warmest and truest ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... death, although preaching this gentle creed of love and simple truth, Akhnaton waged a bitter and stern war against the priesthoods of the old gods. It may be that the priesthoods of Amon had again attempted to overthrow the new doctrines, or had in some manner called down the particular wrath of the Pharaoh. He issued an order that the name of Amon was to be erased and obliterated ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... of Huntsville have settled down to a patient endurance of military rule. They say but little, and treat us with all politeness. The women, however, are outspoken in their hostility, and marvelously bitter. A flag of truce came in last night from Chattanooga, and the bearers were overwhelmed with visits and favors from the ladies. When they took supper at the Huntsville Hotel, the large dining-room was crowded with fair faces and bright eyes; but ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... "but still, mundane or not we cannot but offer mundane kindness, and what this world, or rather what this ship, affords. I long now to talk with him to see if I can produce any effect upon his ice-like frame. Shall I make love to the ghoul?" And Amine burst into a bitter laugh. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... from the sharp stones, how I comforted you with my love, and you found it warm and pleasant lying on my breast? The sea will not comfort you in that way; it will clasp you to a cold, cold breast, and kiss you with bitter salt lips, and carry you down where it is always dark, where you will never never see the blue sky and sunshine and ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... presence of the oil springs, when the law discriminating in favor of oil works and similar interests would later make the way thither a public thoroughfare at all events. He cried out upon his hard fate, when money might mean life to him; upon the bitter dispensation of the mysterious kindling of those hidden secluded waters to blazon his secret to the world, to enrich others through his discovery which should have made him ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... appeared very different to when we passed up. It then had a stream of water running along its channel, but was now almost dry, except that water appeared at intervals upon the surface of the white and sandy bed, which, however, was generally either salty or bitter; others, again, were drinkable enough. Upon reaching the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... lead a peaceful, happy life, though not without dangers. The bitter cold of their northern home is nothing to them, for are they not snug in a deep blanket of blubber? To obtain food, they merely swim along with open mouth. These peaceful giants do not know how to fight for their lives, like the Sperm Whales. So, when man came, hunting the Greenland Whale for oil ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... been an implacable foe of debts; she would not make them. But after all, the people could not starve, and so she had to contract debts now. Bitter humiliations were unavoidable; she looked into the future with untempered dread. She racked her brain trying to devise plans, deplored her weakness and the gaps in her training, bemoaned the neglect both she and Daniel were suffering, and was quite disturbed to see ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... could, which was a box of homoeopathic medicine mamma brought from home. We laughed in the morning, because they thought, no doubt, it was something valuable, and it will be worse than nothing to them; but papa says we will cry when we are sick, and have to take bitter medicine instead of little ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... A bitter smile, almost ghastly, passed over her face, as she muttered these words. She took up a splendid bouquet of greenhouse flowers that had been prepared for her, and were placed on the table, almost mechanically, and looking like one in a dream, left ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... "Your words are bitter, Rebecca," said Bois-Guilbert, pacing the apartment with impatience, "but I came not hither to bandy reproaches with you.—Know that Bois-Guilbert yields not to created man, although circumstances ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... see if any would be likely to suffer in the storm; and finding all in comfortable quarters, he returned, saying, "I wish I could know that everybody in the world had as happy a home as we have to-night. I could then rest more warmly and sweetly. It is bitter cold night, and I fear many will suffer. I am glad I made the wood-bee for poor Troffater. His family can have the comfort of warm fires this winter. The neighbors turned out well, and a good big pile of beech and ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... first nine days after a death, the house is invariably crowded with friends and acquaintances, and the widow, or orphan, or childless mother must receive the condolences of all and sundry, in the midst of her first bitter sorrow. There seems to be no idea of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... his face, then receded before the tide of Mohammedan fanaticism and fury which welled up from his bitter heart. Stepping backward, he kept his eyes fastened upon Terry till he had passed through the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... amidst all this variety of conflicting passions no feeling bordering upon despair or even terror found room. Even among the private soldiers no fear was experienced; for if you attempted to converse with them on the subject of the late defeat, they would end with a bitter curse upon those to whose misconduct they attributed their losses, and refer you to the future, when they hoped for an opportunity of revenge. To the Americans they would allow no credit, laying the entire blame of ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... morning; the light crept slowly through bitter rain, and when Lisle and his companions had breakfasted sumptuously for the first time during several days it was with reluctance that they broke camp. Indeed, Nasmyth would have suggested remaining ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Charles, appealingly, "there 's a white frost this morning, and 't is bitter outside. Let me ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... our company would not accept an order for $15,000,000 worth of shrapnel! The war itself is a bitter shame. It is something that does not belong in the general scheme of enlightened humanity. If men would only think in unison, and think purely and strongly for the abolition of war, it would stop. There should be a general movement in the United ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... "We all have bitter, disappointing things to meet. I shall expect my daughter to meet them with a fine ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... is a question whether he would have felt much easier in his mind if he had known why it was that his cousin was so anxious to find Bud Goble. Rodney did not want to put any more mischief into the man's head; he wanted to take out some he had put there two days before. He did not feel as bitter toward Marcy and Dick Graham as he did when he slipped away from his friends on the evening that Confederate flag came to him through the post-office, and wrote that letter calling Bud's attention ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... of his popularity, whilst Matilda on the other hand injured her cause by marrying an Angevin. On the continent a bitter feud existed between Norman and Angevin; in England the Norman had steadily increased in favour, and England's crown was Stephen's if he had courage ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... fireworks are about to bear fruit, this likely to be bitter. As the sky, darker after the lightning's flash, a cloud is collecting over the new settlement, which threatens to sweep down upon it in a rain storm of ruin. What but they could have caused this cloud; or, at all events, given a cue for ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... for nothing. On getting to the kind of little platform at the bifurcation of the two precipitous streets, I found, to my surprise, that the windows of the church or oratory were not lighted, and that the door was locked! So this was the precious joke that had been played upon me; to send me on a bitter cold, sleety night, to a church which was shut up and had perhaps been shut up for years! I don't know what I couldn't have done in that moment of rage; I felt inclined to break open the church door, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... regret what you are doing. I am a person of some quality, and you will be held to a bitter responsibility." ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... slightly menacing even in the eyes of the daughter, whose horizon was wider. Sommers had noticed the little signs of this heated family atmosphere. A mist of undiscussed views hung about the house, out of which flashed now and then a sharp speech, a bitter sigh. He had been at the house a good deal in a thoroughly informal manner. The Hitchcocks rarely entertained in the "new" way, for Mrs. Hitchcock had a terror of formality. A dinner, as she understood it, meant a gathering of a few old friends, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... penetrating, shrewd, astute, discerning; piercing, poignant, excruciating, a crimonious, mordacious, bitter, intense, severe; eager, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... poems. He was one of the most popular of the Roman poets, because he possessed those qualities which the literary society at Rome most valued, polish and learning, and because, although an imitator, there was a truly Roman nationality in all that he wrote. His satire was the bitter resentment of a vindictive spirit; his love and his hate were both purely selfish, but his excellences were of the most alluring and captivating kind. He has never been surpassed ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... century will be a very different thing from the "cossaque" of the days of Paul. It now means little more than conservatism, and this, too, a conservatism that is not absolutely without that principle of concession to the spirits and wants of the passing moment. These quarrels and bitter conflicts of which we hear so much in the Old World, like some of our own, have their rise in abstractions quite as much as in actual oppression; and the alternative offered by change half the time amounts to but little more than the substitution of King Stork for King Log. It may not be ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... growing bolder, advanced out into the open aisle, and, following the preacher's gestures, reproduced them all exactly. It was a moment of tension; but if ever a child had a good angel in attendance, Chellalu has, for something always stops her before the bitter end. I forget what stopped her then; something invisible, and so, doubtless, the angel. But we did not breathe freely till we ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... There has been a bitter north-easter all day here, and if the like has prevailed at Ham I am glad I kept out of it, as I am by no means fit to cope with anything of that kind to-day. I do not think I was bound to offer ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... human. You have me at advantage. What woman could reply unkindly to a speech like that? I admit I thought you held me utterly bad and heartless, and it made me bitter. . . . I had no heart—once. I had only a wrong, an injury, which was in my mind; not mine, but another's, and yet mine. Then strange things occurred. . . . At last I relented. I saw that I had better go. Yesterday ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Greece was now to be decided. Xerxes, seated on a jewelled throne that he might witness the victory of his arms, to his bitter dismay saw the terrible and overwhelming rout of his entire army, and returned to Persia with only a ragged remnant of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... for him by the Radicals was intense, owing to his most vigorous repression of all anti-dynastic tendencies, and the bitterer for his having once been himself a Radical leader; but, what was at first sight inexplicable, the hostility to him of the Conservatives was scarcely less bitter than that of the Republicans,—the former because he had once been a Republican, and the latter because he had ceased to be one. The leading chiefs of groups among the politicians were afraid of him on account of his strength, and the court had the most cordial hatred of him, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... easily family quarrels arise, how bitter they may be while they last, and how readily, withal, they may be accommodated by tactful handling. The sister had done wrong; the brother had lost his temper; in what family has not such an outbreak occurred? But because the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... who had first inspired him with love; but O, what would he not have given for such an opportunity as Fitzgerald had! He was obliged to confess to himself that the utter annihilation of his hope was more bitter than he had supposed it would be. He no longer doubted that he would have married her if he could, in full view of all her antecedents, and even with his mother's prejudices to encounter. He could not, however, help ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child |
