"Luckless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is not possible to escape these "winged reptiles." They abound exceedingly in all sunny spots; nor in the shady lane do they not haunt every bush, and lie perdu under every leaf, thence sallying forth on the luckless wight who presumes to molest their "solitary reign;" they hang with deliberate importunity over the path of the sauntering pedestrian, and fly with the flying horseman, like the black cares (that is to say, blue devils) described by the Roman lyrist. Within doors they infest, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... by all the refuse of Hindustan—that she must eat gali [abuse] as men eat ghi. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue—a word or two well spoken that serves the occasion. And still am I without my tobacco! Who is the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... returned home, where his first act was to smash the luckless hat and replace it with another. But it was some time before he recovered from the horrors of that near approach to extermination, and he passed a very ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... their emprise A peril lurked—Burleigh's emissaries, The smooth-tongued Thomas Doughty, who had brought His brother—unacquitted of that charge Of poisoning, raised against him by the friends Of Essex, but in luckless time released Lately for lack of proof, on no strong plea. These two wound through them like two snakes at ease In Eden, waiting for their venomous hour. Especially did Thomas Doughty toil With soft and flowery tongue to win ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... certain uneasiness which it baffled my efforts to conceal, he paused for an instant one evening in the midst of these melancholy perambulations and asked me how he struck me as to health. More frankly than judiciously I answered promptly, Less well than formerly. It was a luckless remark, for Rossetti's prevailing wish at that moment was to conceal even from himself his lowered state, and the time was still to come when he should crave the questionable sympathy of those who said he looked even more ill than he felt. Just before this, my second visit, he had completed his King's ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... to the power that enforced it, than the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. In folly and perversity the last transaction has pre-eminence. Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, when he and his empire were at the summit of their power; but Philip III. chose the luckless moment for expatriating the most energetic and industrious of the inhabitants of Spain, when the virtual acknowledgment of the independence of the Dutch, and the concession to them of free trade to India, now assailed the prestige of Spanish supremacy in Europe, and the commerce of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... The wayward lady of this wicked world, That leads in luckless triumph wretched men, My Roman friends, hath forced our desires, And fram'd our minds to brook too base relief. What land or Lybian desert is unsought To find my father Marius and your friend? Yea, they whom true relent could never touch— These fierce Numidians, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... you playing at?" laughed the luckless officer, feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... evacuating personnel. In general, this is *not* something you {frob} lightly; these often initiate expensive events (such as Halon dumps) and are installed in a {dinosaur pen} for use in case of electrical fire or in case some luckless {field servoid} should put 120 volts across himself while {Easter egging}. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... word. Still ignoring his obvious hint, Ethel Dent supplied the word, without charity for her luckless chaperon. "Horridly seasick." She pointed out to the level steely-gray sea. "And on this ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Western telegraph circles of Charlie Moore's great exploit. The candidate was in grand form that night, and his speech came rushing forth in a torrent. The missing Wymond was still missing, and the luckless Barr was still ill, but the fledgling sat alone in the box, his face bent over the key, oblivious of the world around him, and sent it all. Through him ran the fire of battle and great endeavor. He heard the call and replied. He never ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... place of the babe she had stolen. But it was more as an enchantress that she was dreaded. By a stroke of her magic wand she could transform the leafy fastnesses in which she dwelt into the semblance of a lordly hall, which the luckless traveller whom she lured thither would regard as a paradise after the dark thickets in which he had been wandering. This seeming castle or palace she furnished with everything that could delight the eye, and as the doomed wretch sat ravished by her beauty and that of ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... perpetrators of the deed drove off, leaving the luckless postboy to protest, loudly and vainly, to "the dull, cold ear of death," against the loathsome companionship. When the first market-gardener's cart passed by, most lustily did he call for help; but every effort to get free only tended to prolong his suspense. What could the carters ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... that first induced some luckless mortal to give to certain mysterious compounds the appellation of cosmetics! But here is an atonement; for even in our unmythical, unbelieving days, the god 'Terminus' is made to stand guard over every railway station! Again, how finely did the Roman call his heroism ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... servants had during his first absence done him and his people so much harm that he thought he had better not go away again. Indeed it would be displeasing to God, "qui mit son corps pour son peuple sauver," if he, Joinville, abandoned his people. And he reports only in the briefest abstract the luckless "voie de Tunes," or expedition to Tunis. But of the earlier and not much less unlucky Damietta crusade, in which he took part, as well as of his hero's life till all but the last, he has written very fully, and in a fashion which is very interesting, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... de Lorraine, who in that illustrious and luckless household was omnipotent, insulted the Princess in the most outrageous manner. Finding such daily slights and affronts unbearable, Madame complained to the Kings of France and England, who both exiled ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; 330 Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, 335 She left her wheel and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Early Worm is up to Catch the Fish;" the worm, caught as bait, will in turn serve as captor for some luckless fish. This, possibly, is the Bornese version of our own proverb, "The ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... resources, and with flushed cheek and knitted brow she moved about among her willing assitants with all the importance of a Bechamel, a Felix, the maitre-d'hotel of Cardinal Fesch with his two turbots, or luckless Vatel who fell upon his sword and died because he had no turbot at all; or even, rising in the grandeur of the comparison, we may liken her to Domitian, who, weary of persecuting Christians, one day called the Roman Senate together to decide with him upon the sauce with ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Ah, luckless speech, and bootless boast! For which he paid full dear; For, while he spake, a braying ass Did sing ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... be said that South African politicians as a whole were indifferent to the suffering of the luckless victims of the Land Act, but they eased their consciences with the palliative thought that the sufferers were not so many. However this blissful though erroneous self-satisfaction was nailed to the counter by the Rev. A. Burnet of Transvaal, when he said: "I have yet to learn ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... returned Woodburn, "and I will see that it is followed, as soon as I can find some one to dispose of the body of my luckless pony; for then I propose to throw the harness into some sleigh, and join such of the company here as are on foot on their way ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... well, with a lodging-house in a seaside place. There they had prospered, not as they had hoped to do, but still pretty well; and then had come an epidemic of scarlet fever, and that had meant ruin for them, and for dozens, nay, hundreds, of other luckless people. Then had followed a business experiment which had proved even more disastrous, and which had left them in debt—in debt to an extent they could never hope to repay, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... to note the forms it assumes with different people. In many it is shown by excessive irritability and the disposal to pick quarrels with anyone who comes in contact with them. This is an unhappy time for the luckless "dressers," wig man and stage hands, or even fellow artists who encounter such singers before their first appearance in the evening. Trouble is the portion ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... the successive purchases by which the Government freed Iowa soil from Indian domination would be wearisome. The Treaty of 1842 with the Sauks and Foxes is typical. After a sojourn of hardly more than a decade in the Iowa country, these luckless folk were now persuaded to yield all their lands to the United States and retire to a reservation in Kansas. The negotiations were carried out with all due regard for Indian susceptibilities. Governor Chambers, ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the last ditch." With the spring of 1673 the tide began to turn. Holland was saved, and province after province won back from the arms of France by William's dauntless resolve. Like his great ancestor, William the Silent, he was a luckless commander, and no general had to bear more frequent defeats. But he profited by defeat as other men profit by victory. His bravery indeed was of that nobler cast which rises to its height in moments of ruin and dismay. The coolness ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... take another view: "Pity so sweet a lass will nothing learn Of household cares,—for what can beauty earn By those small arts which they at school attain, That keep them useless, and yet make them vain?" This luckless Damsel look'd the village round, To find a friend, and one was quickly found: A pensive Widow, whose mild air and dress Pleased the sad nymph, who wish'd her soul's distress To one so seeming kind, confiding, to confess. "What Lady that?" the anxious lass inquired, Who then beheld the one ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... as helpless as an infant. However, the accident (something, I fancy, had gone wrong with the engines) appeared to be treated as more amusing than important. Still, perhaps, it would be better were the name of this luckless boat changed to Le Farceur; then travellers would know what to expect. But I must confess that my experiences were perfectly pleasant. The steamer in which I journeyed crossed the Channel in the advertised ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... things more dismal than the sunless canons which in Chicago are called streets; and the luckless being who is concerned there with retail trade is condemned to pass the greater part of his life in unrelieved ugliness. Things, however, are rather better in the "office" quarter; and he who is ready to admit that exigency of site gives some excuse for "elevator architecture" ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... from his kneeling posture Kit Hatton blew his horn, and at the signal his huntsman entered the room, bringing with him a fox, a cat, and ten couples of hounds. Forthwith the fox was released from the pole to which it was bound; and when the luckless creature had crept into a corner under one of the tables, the ten couples of hounds were sent in pursuit. It is a fact that English gentlemen in the sixteenth century thus amused themselves with a fox-hunt in a densely crowded dining-room. Over ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... heath. The only way to get over them, unless you stop and walk, is to jump boldly into the middle like the man in the nursery rhyme, and then jump out again: horses that have been in the country for a while soon learn to do this. But some luckless ensign who has lately joined his regiment at Aldershot comes down bodily, and horse and man roll and struggle in the deep ruts which William the Conqueror's pack-horses helped to tread out as they came from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Therefore, for the luckless Montalvo, when the case had been proved to the hilt against him by the evidence of the priest who brought the letter, of the wife's letters, and of the truculent Black Meg, who now found an opportunity of paying back "hot water for ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Constable of the Tower'; 'The Lord Mayor of London'; 'Cardinal Pole,' which deals with the court and times of Philip and Mary; 'John Law,' a story of the great Mississippi Bubble; 'Tower Hill,' whose heroine is the luckless Catharine Howard; 'The Spanish Match,' a story of the romantic pilgrimage of Prince Charles and "Steenie" Buckingham to Spain for the fruitless wooing of the Spanish Princess; and at least ten other romances, many of them in three volumes, all appearing between 1840 and 1873. Two of these ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... poor shaven-pated and blind shampooers of Japan drive a thriving trade as money-lenders. They give out small sums at an interest of 20 per cent. per month—210 per cent. per annum—and woe betide the luckless wight who falls into ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... much heralded in France. The French declared that Jumonville, the leader, who fell at the first fire, was foully assassinated, and that he and his party were ambassadors and sacred characters. Paris rang with this fresh instance of British perfidy, and a M. Thomas celebrated the luckless Jumonville in a solemn epic poem in four books. French historians, relying on the account of the Canadian who escaped, adopted the same tone, and at a later day mourned over this black spot on Washington's character. The French view was simple nonsense. Jumonville and his party, as the papers ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... all for thy locks so bright, And 't was all for thine eyes so blue, That on the night of our luckless flight Thy brother bold ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... making great lamentation. King Arthur saluted her courteously, and asked for whom she was weeping. She prayed him to speak softly, for "Yonder," said she, "is a monstrous giant that will come and destroy you should your voice reach his ears. Luckless wretch, what brings you to this mountain?" asked the widow. "Fifty such knights as you could not hold their ground ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... forthwith produced and delegated to accompany me into the interior of the city and find me a suitable hotel. The streets of Paris, like the streets of other large cities, are paved with various compositions, and they have just been sprinkled. French-like, the luckless Jean is desirous of displaying his accomplishments on the wheel to a visitor so distingue; he circles around on the slippery pavement in a manner most unnecessary, and in so doing upsets himself while crossing a car-track, rips his pantaloons, and injures his wheel. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... bird,[6] and she perched on the standing-stone in Temair of Cualnge giving the Brown Bull of Cualnge warning [7]and lamentations[7] before the men of Erin. Then she began to address him and what she said was this: "Good, now, O luckless one, thou Brown Bull of Cualnge," so spake the Morrigan; "take heed; for the men of Erin. [8]are on thy track and seeking thee[8] and they will come upon thee, and [9]if thou art taken[9] they will carry thee away to their camp [10]like ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... ask me, Gastrogogue, to dine (Unless to praise your rascal wine) Yet never ask some luckless sinner Who needs, as I do ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... oh better, cancel from the scroll Of universe one luckless human soul, Than drop by drop enlarge the flood that rolls Hoarser with anguish as the ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the 'boy Caesar' who 'wears the rose of youth' (Antony and Cleopatra, III., ii., 17 seq.). Spenser in his Astrophel apostrophizes Sir Philip Sidney on his death near the close of his thirty-second year as 'oh wretched boy' (l. 133) and 'luckless boy' ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... voice complaining of the dog, of Gavrila, and of her fate, declaring that she was a poor old woman, and that every one had forsaken her, no one pitied her, every one wished her dead. Meanwhile the luckless Mumu had gone on barking, while Gerasim tried in vain to call her away from the fence. 'There ... there ... again,' groaned the old lady, and once more she turned up the whites of her eyes. The ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... an old English country home, a fastness still piled up against time; whose stately walls and halls within, and beautiful century-old trees in the park without, record great times and striking figures. The manor was a part of the dowry of Henry the VIII.'s luckless queens. The modern house was built by Clarendon, and the old church among the elms dates from 1200, with carved signs and symbols and brasses of knights and burgesses, and names of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... free, As if with fearful spell they'd long been curst, Now vented all the power of stifled birth Upon the luckless unoffending earth. The waves around the cliff's low base sprang high And madly dashed their spray in furious rage; The maid, howe'er, looked down with scornful eye, As if she could their mighty power assuage. She gloried in that strange, ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... disappeared mysteriously,—supposed to be rats; and one falling into the duck-pond, Melindy began to dry it in her apron, and I went to help her; I thought, as I was rubbing the thing down with the apron, while she held it, that I had found one of her soft dimpled hands, and I gave the luckless turkey such a tender pressure that it uttered a miserable squeak and departed this life. Melindy all but cried. I laughed irresistibly. So there were no more turkeys. Peggy began to wonder what they should do for the proper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... all right," assented Joe warmly. He recalled an occasion when a muff by a luckless center-fielder had lost a World Series and fifty thousand dollars for the team, and yet McRae had "stood the gaff" and never said a word, because he knew the man was trying ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... has been prosperous, as he well deserved it should be. He has commanded the largest ships, and, when I last saw him, was going to the Pacific coast of South America, to take charge of a line of mail steamers. Poor, luckless Foster I have twice seen. He came into my rooms in Boston, after I had become a barrister and my narrative had been published, and told me he was chief mate of a big ship; that he had heard I had said some things unfavorable of him in my book; that he had just bought it, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... had a luckless son, Who, rushing to obtain the foremost seat, In imitation of th' ambitious great, High from the gallery, ere the play begun, He fell all plump into the pit, Dead in a minute as a nit: In short, he broke his pretty Hebrew neck; Indeed and very ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... put him down this instant! Thomas! Davy! Here, hang him up, I say," cried this over good-natured lady, interspersing her commands with a volley of sixteenth century Billingsgate, and ending by declaring that nothing fared well without her, and hurrying off to pounce down on the luckless damsels who had let their dog play with the embroidery yarn destined to emblazon the tapestry of Chatsworth with the achievements of Juno. The good nature was so far veritable that when she found little harm done, and had vented her wrath in strong language and boxes ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Goodenough and Firmin, with the Little Sister (out of Philip) and Miss Evangeline to take care of the patients, besides cells for Charles Reade's heroes and heroines, and the apothecary (out of Romeo and Juliet) to mix more honest doses than he gave to luckless Romeo. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... this was sharpened by the certainty that the mineral was only valueless pyrites, and the prescience of Nate's anger when this fact should come to his knowledge, and prudence no longer restrain him. His rage would vent itself on his luckless victim for every cent, every mill, that the discovery of the "fools' ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... luckless catechumen was required to answer truly, and in a loud, distinct voice, amid the most embarrassing cheers and jeers and hootings of ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... bitter end of the high-spirited captain of this luckless expedition; an almost solitary death on the wide western plain, after enduring weeks of hunger and starvation. What must have been King's feelings at finding himself thus left without a companion to cheer his last hours when his turn, as he then thought, must inevitably ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... him to bring folk around his standard. Earl Hakon and Ragnfrod sighted one another off the northernmost part of South More, & straightway Hakon gave battle, he that had most men but withal smaller ships. Hard was the struggle & therein waxed Hakon luckless; men fought from the prows and sterns, as the custom was in those times. Now there was a current in the sound, and all the ships were driven into shore, so the Earl bade his folk rest on their oars, and drift to land at such place where he should ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... be exiled—sent where his power or riches could not be used to the detriment of his fellow-citizens. Should such a rule be applied to-day, society in every land could disgorge with much advantage the men who ride the people as the Old Man of the Sea rode Sindbad the luckless sailor. But our civilization is built upon a higher conception of individual right and immunity; there is now no limit to the right of one man to rob another of the produce of his labor or his natural and conferred rights. Not only may individuals rob ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... bloody star reached the zenith; but the same hatred was there years later, when he turned the governor sent to the colony by the Dominion out of the territories, and set up an authority of his own. Well might the French historian, cognisant of the fate of the luckless suitor, and the consequences of the rejection, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... trees, in rear by a sunken coal-barge, and surrounded, by a large force of rebels with an abundant supply of artillery, but wisely keeping their main force out of range of the admiral's guns. Every tree and stump covered a sharp-shooter, ready to pick off any luckless marine who showed his head above-decks, and entirely preventing the working-parties from ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... of Kidd proved a scandal, for someone had to suffer as scapegoat for the aristocratic company privateers, and the lot fell to the luckless Kidd. Kidd was charged with piracy and with murder. The first charge of seizing two ships of the Great Mogul could have been met by the production of two documents which Kidd had taken out of these ships, and ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... "but also we might very well find, that the Good we can attain is so small, and the Evil so immensely preponderant, that we ought to labour rather to bring to an end an existence so pitiful than to perpetuate it indefinitely in the persons of our luckless descendants." ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... world; attended my mother in her time of trial and trouble, and nursed me with the gentlest care. Yet Sue had a tongue, and could use it too when occasion, in her judgment, required its employment. But she always took the side of right and virtue against wrong and vice, and woe betided the luckless wight who fell under the ban of her just displeasure. She would belabour him, not with her hands, but by word, look, and gesture, till he shrieked out for mercy and promised never again to offend, or took to ignominious flight ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... face lighted curiously. The others, closely watching him, afterwards agreed that he reminded them of a greyhound straining after a luckless hare. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... bungled in handling them; they evidently belonged to the castle, not to the troop. When they finally rose into the air, Pere Azuli, the veteran blue pigeon, and Rien-du-Tout, the little dun-colored stray Peirol had trained, were almost out of sight. The luckless Blanchette was lagging, and despite her frantic attempts to escape her enemy she was soon struggling in the falcon's grip. Clair de la Lune, the other white pigeon, seemed about to meet the same ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Fomorians had arrived,[159] and they and their chief Cichol Gricenchos fought Partholan at Mag Itha, where they were defeated. Cichol was footless, and some of his host had but one arm and one leg.[160] They were demons, according to the chroniclers, and descendants of the luckless Ham. Nennius makes Partholan and his men the first Scots who came from Spain to Ireland. The next arrivals were the people of Nemed who returned to Spain, whence they came (Nennius), or died to a man (Tuan). They also were ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... mind travels rapidly. I shall not attempt to record the thoughts that chased one another through the mind of the luckless adventurer. But they were ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a writer or a romancer," said Monsieur Gravier, "I should take the side of the luckless husbands. I, who have seen many things, and strange things too, know that among the ranks of deceived husbands there are some whose attitude is not devoid of energy, men who, at a crisis, can be very dramatic, to use one of your words, monsieur," ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... XB]. 14. ed. Bekker) reports this brutal gibe of Nero's; Rubellius Plautus was the luckless victim:—[Greek: "ho de dae Neron kai gelota kai skommata, ta ton syngenon kaka hepoieito ton goun Plauton apokteinas, hepeita taen kephalaen autou prosenechtheisan oi idon, 'ouk haedein,' hephae 'oti megalaen rina eichen,' osper pheisamenos an ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... through it. There is such a deadly silence as ever presages a storm, when by some luckless chance her eyes, that seldom wander, fall full on Luttrell's upturned, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... for possession of luckless Ken. Both sides were linked together by gripping hands. Ken was absolutely powerless. His clothes were torn to tatters in a twinkling; they were soon torn completely off, leaving only his shoes and socks. Not ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... growing fainter and fainter in the distance, and, after half a century had passed, he was still to her the young soldier in his brave, blue coat, who had kissed her for that long farewell. All that is left on Canadian soil to recall this gallant though luckless soldier is the low-ceiled cottage where his body was laid out, a small tablet on the precipice, which reads, "Here Montgomery fell, 1775," and another of white marble, in the courtyard of the military prison in the Citadel, recently erected by two patriotic American girls in memory ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... stripped from his fore arms, they are seen to be of great size, with muscles as firm to the touch as so much rubber. Long practice has made him immensely strong, and quick as a flash to ward and strike. Woe be to the luckless dog, however large, that ventures in the excitement of the hunt within reach of his paw. A single swift stroke will generally put the poor brute out of the ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... in short, I imagine was then a general custom among housekeepers. I went to the dining-room closet, intending to give Charlotte a glass of wine or brandy and water. My "cupboard" proved to be in the state of the luckless "Mother Hubbard's"—nothing of the kind could I find but a bottle ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... what merited your esteem in his character and conduct and forget that which estranged your hearts from so honorable a man. But should you not, you are too just to visit what you deem the sins of the father upon his luckless daughter. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... easy to give than to obey. Wolseley decided to send a flying column across the desert from Korti to Metammeh and thence to Khartoum; and a second up the Nile. With the luckless flying column went part of the 19th Hussars, under Lieutenant-Colonel Barrow. Major ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... Thus the host would murmur "Biscuits!" which was not heard or not heeded; then louder and more sharply, "BIScuits!" then a roar that made all start, "BIScuits!!" Poor Mrs. Forster's agitation was sad to see, and between her and the butler the luckless lad was somehow got from the room. This attendant was an admirable comedy character, and in his way a typical servant, stolid and reserved. No one could have been so portentously sagacious as he looked. It was admirable to see his unruffled calm during ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... the luckless wretch might shriek, Well might her paleness terror speak! 435 For there were seen in that dark wall, Two niches, narrow, deep, and tall;— Who enters at such grisly door, Shall ne'er, I ween, find exit more. In each a slender meal was laid, 440 Of roots, of water, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... toilers by furnaces, factories, shafts, The thrall of the mine, and the swart stithy slave, The boys of the bench, and the sons of the wave, Are not quite so easy to "size up" all round To that comfortless bed where you'd have them all bound, As the travellers luckless who fell in the way Of the old Attic highwayman THESEUS did slay. Though your voice may sound loud and your thews look immense, You may fall to the THESEUS—of Free Common Sense! As BURT says—and his eloquence moves ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... seen him first months since when he had entered the headquarters of the German high command in East Africa and carried off the luckless Major Schneider, of whose fate no hint had ever reached the German officers; and she had seen him again upon that occasion when he had rescued her from the clutches of the lion and, after explaining to her that ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the fight, the delight of the ambush skilfully laid, to see the decks of the enemy a dreadful shambles, with the Crescent of the Prophet above the detested emblem of the Cross. Then the return to Algiers laden with spoil: to tow behind him some luckless Christian ship, while aboard his own war-worn galley the drums beat and the trumpets sounded, and the banners floated free to the stainless Mediterranean sky. Then the procession of the captives through the crowded streets ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... accompany her to Windsor Castle, to which she consented, and they quitted the cottage together. My sister and I were left—truly like two fools, who fancied that they had obtained a golden treasure, till daylight shewed it to be lead—two silly, luckless flies, who had played in sunbeams and were caught in a spider's web. I leaned against the casement, and watched those two glorious creatures, till they disappeared in the forest-glades; and then ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... on the luckless Jemima, who, in her usual mean attire, was sitting in the background with her head drooping helplessly, for it had been loosened by ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... been running a long time, for he seemed overcome with fatigue. Seeing that he slackened his speed, his tormentors formed a circle around him, and began pelting him with stones. The luckless creature bowed his head, and, recognizing that he was surrounded by none but enemies, resigned himself to his hard fate with the heroism of a Roman senator. Several stones had already reached him, when Madame de la Grenouillere, seized with deep compassion, ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... element is slighter than in "Kings in Exile;" the subject is not so striking; and the movement of the story is less straightforward. But what a panorama of Paris it is that he unrolls before us in this story of a luckless adventurer in the city of luxury then under the control of the imperial band of brigands! No doubt the Joyeuse family is an obtrusion and an artistic blemish, since they do not logically belong in the scheme of the story; and yet they (and their fellows in other books ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... than the common dreams of sleepers to them, and the travel of its meditations is daily and customary; insomuch that the very thought of all others which one was born to utter he may forget to mention, as presuming it to be no news. Indeed, if a man of fertile soul be misled into the luckless search after peculiar and surprising thoughts, there are many chances that be will be betrayed into this oversight of his proper errand. As Sir Martin Frobisher, according to Fuller, brought home from America a cargo of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... luckless friends. You must raise money for yourselves, after all; which, since the departure of my nation, will be a somewhat more difficult matter than ever. The over-ruling destinies, whom, as you all know so well when you are getting ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... luckless ones hung about in vain. For Tom's progress was intercepted by other candidates for the same favour, amidst whom the young diplomatist played fast and loose in ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... every few moments, small squads pushed in, then a running band of infantry, and lastly a solitary horseman, reeling in his saddle, dripping with gore. Madly his wounded horse sprung on, when just as the fort was gained, his luckless rider rolled senseless at the entrance. One deep groan was echoed from church to fortress. Victory, which had hovered doubtful o'er the bloody field, settled at last on the banner of the "Lone Star." Against what fearful odds is victory ofttimes won! The intrepid Texans, assaulted ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... agitation, or the luckless mention of the gold-pieces sent a sudden dismayed suspicion ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... sailors, who appear to have been serving as a mercenary troop of artillery in the French army, heard of the Chancellor's arrival. The drunken crowd got out of hand, and vague memories of the naval pay of which they had been bilked prompted them to take vengeance for old arrears upon the luckless Chancellor, whom they deemed responsible for all the misdeeds of the Admiralty. Old echoes of "Dunkirk House," and the ill- gotten gains of Ministers who fattened on the plunder of poor men, were doubtless ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... in some trouble again, if they could judge from the noise he was making. Immediately visions of rattlesnakes, and all manner of dangers connected with the forest trails, flashed into the mind of Thad. What could the luckless fat boy have stumbled into now? That bump of curiosity which he was pleased to term his "investigating spirit," must have led him ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... shouted and waved his hat and with the soft grey dawn gradually growing brighter, and a speck or two of orange appearing high up in the east, the line went slowly onward towards Lenby, pausing from time to time for pools to be examined and for the more luckless of the party to struggle out ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Now touchy Tories are angry with it for showing too strong a tendency to what Mr. GLADSTONE once sarcastically called "a policy of examination and inquiry"—into the case of Evicted Tenants, Poor-Law Relief, &c. This is a fault of (Royal) Commission. Luckless Government! The verdict upon it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... was centered so much on the luckless Martian that its control slipped from Forepaugh. Seizing his flash pistol, he set the localized for a small area and aimed it at the thing, intent on burning it into nothingness. But again his hand was stayed. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... on hard luck at the very beginning of his college career. Half a dozen ruthless Sophs, who were among his fellow-boarders, swooped down upon him one night and shaved half of his head. In this guise the luckless Moody Spurgeon had to go about until his hair grew again. He told Anne bitterly that there were times when he had his doubts as to whether he was really called ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the long, hot afternoon had she vouchsafed him the minimum of a show of interest, curiosity, or even consciousness of his presence. Then the train made its second stop on account of the fires, and Bre'r Rabbit his luckless break into the long monotony of the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... circumvolving heels, and vainly imploring assistance. Again and again she would dash by the applauding groups, adding the aggravation of her voice to the danger of her heels, until suddenly wheeling, she would gallop to Carter's Pond, and deposit her luckless freight in the muddy ditch. This practical joke was repeated until one Sunday she was approached by Juan Ramirez, a Mexican vaquero, booted and spurred, and carrying a riata. A crowd was assembled to see ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... to speak of his past. He told me of Hungerford's kindness to him on the 'Dancing Kate', of his luckless days at Port Darwin, of his search for his wife, his writing to her, and her refusal to see him. He did not rail against her. He apologised for her, and reproached himself. "She is most singular," he continued, "and different from most women. She never said she loved me, and she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... now and then, and once, when I climbed a high rock, I caught sight of the glow of their bivouac fires. Imagination conjured up the shrieks of tortured victims, for we had all seen enough of late to know what would happen to any luckless straggler they might have caught and brought to make sport by the fires. But there was no imagination about the calls of Kagig's men, posted above us on invisible dark crags and ledges to guard against surprise. We slept in comfortable consciousness ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... custom, the ballet was not much attended to. In every box the only subject of conversation was Genovese's strange behavior, and the luckless manager's speech. Those who were admitted behind the scenes went off at once to inquire into the mystery of this performance, and it was presently rumored that la Tinti had treated her colleague Genovese to a dreadful scene, in which she had accused ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... crew, who had all, excepting the two Kanakas, aged perceptibly during that night of torment. But we lost no time in getting back to the ship, where I fully expected a severe wigging for the scrape my luckless curiosity had led me into. The captain, however, was very kind, expressing his pleasure at seeing us all safe back again, although he warned me solemnly against similar investigations in future. A hearty meal and a good rest did wonders in removing the severe effects of our ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... ecstasy. As Conti sang the first words of the cavatina, he looked intently at the marquise, giving to those words a cruel signification which was fully understood. Camille, who accompanied him, guessed the order thus conveyed, which bowed the head of the luckless Beatrix. She looked at Calyste, and felt sure that the youth had fallen into some trap in spite of her advice. This conviction became certainty when the evidently happy Breton came up to bid Beatrix good-night, kissing her hand, and pressing it ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... demoralised by the boatmen of the Loire, still edifies and scandalises the lover of happy badinage in verse; one is the young and unfortunate NICOLAS-JOSEPH-LAURENT GILBERT (1751-80), less unfortunate and less gifted than the legend makes him, yet luckless enough and embittered enough to become the satirist of Academicians and philosophers and the society which had scorned his muse; and the third is JEAN-PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN (1755-94), the amiable fabulist, who, lacking La Fontaine's lyric ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... The luckless Cynthia, instantly conscious that her act had been misconstrued, retired with less grace than she had come forward, and spent most of the lecture in surreptitiously mopping her eyes. As she walked dejectedly down the corridor ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... a heavy heart that I trudged off next day to see my luckless acquaintances. I secretly hoped—such is human weakness—that I should not find them at home, and again I was mistaken. Both were at home. The change that had taken place in them during the last three days must have struck any one. Punin looked ghastly white and flabby. His talkativeness ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Manoel had not been long in bringing the luckless wight to life again, and he opened his eyes and gave an "ahem!" so vigorous and unexpected that Lina, frightened, replied to ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... it; but it would appear that there was something like rivalry among you gentlemen chasseurs on that luckless morning, and that while you paid the penalty of a broken head, he was destined to lose his horse ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... pleasure. Women are the slave drudges, the men spending their hours in eating, drinking, and sleeping. Cannibalism in its worst features prevails. Young women are prized as special delicacies, particularly girls' ears prepared in palm oil, and, in order to make the flesh more palatable, the luckless victims are kept in water up to their necks for three or four days before they are ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... is, as we luckless English people speak it. Perhaps you will more easily pardon their seminary Italian. See there,' Captain Gambier pointed at some trotting squadrons; 'these Austrians have certainly a matchless cavalry. The artillery seems good. The infantry are fine men—very fine men. They have a "woodeny" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The luckless Tom found his own feet beautiful on the mountains, and, treading the heights with airy steps, appeared to himself wonderful and glorified—he was waltzing with Miss Betty He breathed the entrancing words ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... laugh so, have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is like a College-Tutor, whose whole world is forms, College-rules; whose notion is that these are the life and safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought to go by the old decent regulations; nay that their salvation will lie in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, he drives with spasmodic ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... gained, permission to enter having been readily given by the owner. It was thought afterward that there was detected in the man's face a dry sense of humor, provoked, no doubt, by the experience of many a luckless traveler who had gone that way before. No sooner had the shelter of the building been obtained and these same grateful travelers ensconced themselves in comfortable positions on the cushions of the car when from the right ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the iron nerve which good women have, she made him give her every detail of Lucy Passmore's story and of all which had happened from the day of their sailing to that luckless night at Guayra. And when it was done, she led Ayacanora out, and began busying herself about the girl's comforts, as calmly as if Frank and Amyas had been sleeping in their cribs ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... loungers had disposed of themselves, some on the long piazza of the hotel, and others in front of the principal store, where, with elevated heels and busy jackknives, they whittled out shapeless things, or made remarks concerning any luckless female who chanced to pass. While thus engaged they were startled by a loud, sharp ring from the belfry of the Methodist church succeeded by a merry peal, which seemed to proclaim some joyful event. It was ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... precious carnation-bed. Slipping in a cartridge, he fired; and the skill which had deserted him during the day came back to him. There was a yelp; then silence. And Sylvia, rushing out from the house, found the luckless Thomas breathing his last on a heap of ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... mischances; but his time had found him at last; the evil day had come. Indian Summer was Indian for him, indeed: sweet death were welcome; no charity was left in him. He leaped no more, but walked broodingly and sought the dark places. And yet it could not be said that times were dull for him: the luckless picket who finds himself in an open eighty-acre field, under the eye of a sharpshooter up a tree, would not be apt to describe the experience as dull. And Cora never missed a shot; she loved the work; her pleasure in it was ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... those enormous habiliments, that were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen-out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of Bran,—our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood there diminished to a spindle, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... moderate number of sheep, his workmanship could be good. But he must needs try and keep up with Billy May or Abraham Lawson, who can shear from 100 to 130 sheep per day, and do them beautifully. So in "racing" he works hastily and badly, cuts the skin of his luckless sheep nearly as often as the wool, and leaves wool here and there on them, grievous and exasperating to behold. So sentence of expulsion goes forth fully against him. Having arrayed himself for the road he makes one more effort for a settlement and some money wherewith to pay for board ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... at Balta had made the highest Government spheres realize that the previous policy of connivance at the pogroms, which had been practised for a whole year, could not but disgrace Russia in the eyes of the world and undermine public order in Russia itself. As soon as this was realized, the luckless Minister, who had been the pilot of Russian politics throughout that terrible year, was bound to disappear from the scene. On May 30, Count Ignatyev was made to resign, and Count Demetrius Tolstoi was appointed ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... really worried over Elizabeth's prospects, but her luckless remark upon the marriage of farmers cut into his raw, quivering consciousness of personal failure like a saw-bladed knife, torturing the flesh as it went. His failure to place her where her own natural characteristics and attainments deserved had eaten ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... The worst thing against them is the fact, that they are never in tune, and therefore never worth the hearing. After grinding for twelve or fourteen hours a day for four or five years, they become perfect abominations; and luckless is the fate of the poor little stranger condemned to perpetual companionship with a villainous machine, whose every tone is the cause of offence to those whose charity he must awaken into exercise, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... in a most remarkable fashion, for the top of the head is not only innocent of feathers but also destitute of skin—"Flintheads," the people call the bird. Its bill is nearly ten inches long, slightly curved and very massive. Woe to the unlucky fish or luckless rat upon whom a blow falls from the Flinthead's heavy beak! There were probably one hundred thousand of these birds inhabiting Corkscrew Rookery at the time of my visit. There were also large colonies of the smaller White Ibis and several varieties of Heron. Eight of the almost ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... not say so much. Meg had a touch of Hal, too. 'Twas ill turning her down one road an' she took the bit betwixt her teeth, and had a mind to go the other. There was less of it in Mall, I grant you. And as to yon poor luckless loon, Mall's heir,—if he wit his own mind, I reckon 'tis as much as a man may bargain for. England ne'er loveth such at her helm—mark you that, Robin. She may bear with them, but she layeth ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... the new purpose which was to give life another colouring, if possible. They were but one day out from San Francisco when he found the opportunity to converse with her as she passed through the quarters of the luckless ones. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... letters of his day, was the special friend of Pope. His early work, 'The Shepherd's Week', was planned as a parody on the 'Pastorals' of Pope's rival, Ambrose Philips, and Pope assisted him in the composition of his luckless farce, 'Three Hours after Marriage'. When Gay's opera 'Polly' was forbidden by the licenser, and Gay's patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, were driven from court for soliciting subscriptions for him, Pope warmly espoused his cause. Gay died in 1732 and was ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... it was cruel to laugh, but laugh I did with a few others. Never has a man been so abused as was that luckless English Consul who penned such a fatuous message. The spy had already marched our troops half way and more; even the pessimistic allowed that they must have started; an authentic message showed clearly ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... cautiously put the sword's point in his throat, and there was an end of his dreams. Four other sleepers were despatched in like manner, without time given them to utter a syllable. After them went another, who had entrenched himself between two horses; then the luckless Grill, who had made himself a pillow of a barrel which he had emptied. He was dreaming of opening a second barrel, but, alas, was tapped himself. A Greek and a German followed, who had been playing late at dice; fortunate, if they had continued ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... point of the knife, and in its struggles to free itself it attracted the attention of a creeper—the larva of one of the aquatic flies called drakes (Ephemerae)—which pounced upon it as fiercely as the water staphylinus does on the luckless tadpole, but, fortunately for the Minnow, either the glittering of the knife-blade or the motion of my hand, scared it away again ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... to get his coat which hung under Jamie's, just as Jamie reached his little hands up to get his. Fred gave a tremendous flirt and pull at his coat which overbalanced his little brother and down came the high chair and Jamie plump upon the luckless Fred, whose angry squeals and kicks, mingled with Jamie's loud shrieks of terror made a commotion that brought Anna, the housekeeper, to ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... generally speaking, the contestant conspicuously devoid of moral worth and the verdict singularly unrighteous; but as long as some testators really are daft, or subject to interested suasion, or wantonly sinful, they should be denied the power to stifle dissent by fining the luckless dissenter. The dead have too much to say in this world at the best, and it is monstrous and intolerable tyranny for them to stand at the door of the Temple of Justice to drive away the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... great liking to my lore And great disliking to my luckless lot, That banisht had myself, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where I was quite forgot The which to leave thenceforth he counselled me, Unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful, And wend with him his Cynthia to see, Whose grace was great and ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... that break upon a stony shore they were forced to roll back again. Like the naked minions of Montezuma, who hurled themselves against the armored army of the Spaniards, the strikers and their abetters were invariably beaten back with bruised heads and broken bones. If a luckless striker fell he was trampled upon by the horses of the mounted police or kicked into unconsciousness by the ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman |
