"Wretched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own and the present, thought Dickens to be vulgar; if the cause of that judgement was that he wrote about people in shops, the cause is discredited now that shops are the scenes of the novelist's research. "High life" and most wretched life have now given place to the little shop and its parlour, during a year or two. But Dr. Brown, the author of Rab and His Friends, thought that Dickens committed vulgarities in his diction. "A good man was Robin" ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... the youth who feigned His birth from Libyan Ammon, smitten yet The nations with a rod of iron, and driven Their chariot o'er our necks. Thou dost avenge, In thy good time, the wrongs of those who know No other friend. Nor dost thou interpose Only to lay the sufferer asleep, Where he who made him wretched troubles not His rest—thou dost strike down his tyrant too. Oh, there is joy when hands that held the scourge Drop lifeless, and the pitiless heart is cold. Thou too dost purge from earth its horrible And old idolatries;—from the proud fanes Each to his grave their priests go out, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... within sight of you than they begin to smile, with an uncertain movement of the mouth, which conveys the idea that they are thinking about themselves, and thinking, too, that you are thinking they are thinking about themselves,—and so look at you with a wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry off both, which are betrayed by the cowardly behavior of the eye and the tell-tale weakness of the lips ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Valliere was afraid of those faces, in which her ignorance of Parisian types did not permit her to distinguish the type of probity from that of dishonesty. The appearance of misery alarmed her, and all whom she met seemed wretched and miserable. Her toilet, which was the same she had worn during the previous evening, was elegant even in its careless disorder: for it was the one in which she had presented herself to the queen-mother; and, moreover, when she drew aside the mantle which covered her face in order to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... during the three hours and a half which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily life that this wretched numbness held possession of me. It went with me on my sea-shore walks and rambles into the country, whenever—which was seldom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature which ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his own times. No literary man of his day had more success, more flattering attentions from the great, or reaped more of the substantial fruits of popularity, in the form of worldly goods. While his contemporary, Ben Jonson, sick in a miserable alley, is forced to beg, and receives but a wretched pittance from Charles I., Shakspeare's fortune steadily increases from year to year. He buys the best place in his native town, and fits it up with great taste; he offered to lend, on proper security, a sum of money for the use of the town of Stratford; he added to his estate ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... sacred hymns." As Shakespeare was first an actor, then a tinkerer of other men's plays, then a playwright on his own account; so perhaps Homer, from a singer of the old hymns, became an improver and restorer of them, then a maker of new ones. He saw the wretched condition of his people, contrasted it with the traditions he found in the old days, and was spurred up to create a glory for them in his imagination. His feelings were hugely wrought upon by compassion working as yoke-fellow ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... cold and wretched to sleep, but they managed to keep from growing positively stiff with cold. The sun rose, but it did not for a long time make any impression on the fog. All at once, about seven o'clock, the fog vanished, and the boys ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... forget anything," retorted Agnes, becoming scornfully serious. "Not even that you count on me to settle your wretched financial difficulties out of poor ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... the Indians. What the native savages become when surrounded by a dense population and by mixing with the whites may be seen in the miserable remnants of a few Eastern tribes, deprived of political and civil rights, forbidden to make contracts, and subjected to guardians, dragging out a wretched existence, without excitement, without ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... so hard if you had seen him the other day down at the fishing village. One of the men of Peter Gautier's boat made a nasty remark about some girl along the shore. Captain Jim fairly scorched the wretched fellow with the lightning of his eyes. He seemed a man transformed. He didn't say much—but the way he said it! You'd have thought it would strip the flesh from the fellow's bones. I understand that Captain ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the other end of the table. "Take my place, John," he now said laughing, "I always was a most wretched carver." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... lives with the guilt of their parents? why should they hinder that trade to which they must owe all the comforts which plenty affords? why should they endeavour to intercept their existence, or suffer them to exist only to be wretched? ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... who would have thought himself damned had he worn a cassock instead of a short cloak, and have been glad to see one-half of mankind cut the other to pieces for the glory of God and the Propaganda Fide, took it into his head to write a most wretched satire against some pretty good comedies, which were exhibited very innocently every night before their majesties. He quoted the authority of the Rabbis, and some passages from St. Bonaventura, to prove that the "Oedipus" of Sophocles was the work of the evil spirit; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... out in the cold. He was very poor. Papa thought all evil of him. Violet had refused him over and over again. He quarrelled with you, and all the world seemed against him. Then of a sudden you vanished, and we vanished. An ineffable misery fell upon me and upon my wretched husband. All our good things went from us at a blow. I and my poor father became as it were outcasts. But Oswald suddenly retricked his beams, and is flaming in the forehead of the morning sky. He, I believe, has no more than he had deserved. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... tones of disgust, as they walked down towards the harbour under the lee of the houses. "There was no need to put on these wretched ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... self-crediting, the present writer happens to know. Once, after going through the great wine-cellar where millions were coined, I went through the barracks in the upper portion of the same building, where a wretched tenantry of the Devil's poor lived in squalor. Each of these families was required to pay room-rent to the millionnaire. As I passed along, I found one man and woman in wrathful distress. They must pay their rent, or be turned out of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... he says she is making a fuss over the wretched bits of jewellery she lost, things of no importance. She, too, slept through the affair, and knew what had happened only when she waked to see a safe she has in the wall of her bedroom ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... even in England be termed wealthy. The extreme of poverty or what may be designated misery is but little known; the traveller is deceived by the number of beggars which infest the high roads, and is induced to imagine that the lowest orders must be in a most wretched state, but the fact is otherwise, and begging is no other than a trade on the most frequented roads. Turn into the by-lanes, penetrate the interior of the country and in the villages distant from the highways and but few beggars are to be found, nor could I ever hear of an instance ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... cheer, Sad of heart am I to-night; Dolefully I drink my beer, But no single line I write. There's the wretched rent to pay, Yet I glower at pen and ink: Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray, It ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... where anything that is produced—milk and butter included—will find a ready market at no cost of transport; but in other circumstances the thing is almost hopeless. It is a notorious fact, that the most wretched of the rural population of this country are small cultivators, even if the land costs next to nothing. We are aware that the small-farm system is more successful in Belgium and Lombardy. On the reasons for this, it is here needless to enter. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... where he sent his sheep and cattle to graze; where a creek opened into this valley some free-settler, whose grandfather had fought at King's Mountain—usually of Scotch-Irish descent, often English, but sometimes German or sometimes even Huguenot—would have his rude home of logs; under him, and in wretched cabins at the head of the creek or on the washed spur of the mountain above, or in some "deadenin"' still higher up and swept by mists and low-trailing clouds, the poor white trash—worthless descendants of the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... good sense. It is easy to make a boy, who does not reason, repeat by rote any technical rules which a common writing-master, with magisterial solemnity, may lay down for him; but a child who reasons, will not be thus easily managed; he stops, frowns, hesitates, questions his master, is wretched and refractory, until he can discover why he is to proceed in such and such a manner; he is not content with seeing his preceptor make figures and lines upon a slate, and perform wondrous operations with the self-complacent dexterity of a conjurer. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... reported to be dead; but I can assure the reader that this, like many other reports, is not true. I have written these tales in anxiety, and in a wretched state of health; and if these formidable foes have not incapacitated me, but left me free to meet the public eye with any degree of credit, that degree of credit I am sure I ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... that I won't have anything further in any way whatever to do with you. I won't have you helping us with our mortgage; I won't have you advancing money to us; I won't stand one little minute for any of your—your wretched interference with our affairs! If you think you can—can butt in on our side of any ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... and indignation that I behold that divine science employing all her inexhaustible riches of wit and eloquence, either in the wicked and beggarly flattering of great persons, or the unmanly idolising of foolish women, or the wretched affectation of scurril laughter, or the confused dreams of senseless fables and metamorphoses. Amongst all holy and consecrated things which the devil ever stole and alienated from the service of the Deity—as altars, temples, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Last week I caught a liberty—a perfect Forty-three—and went to spend it with some cliff dwelling friends of mine who, heaven help their wretched lot! lived on the sixth and top floor of one of those famous New York struggle-ups. Before shoving off there was some slight misunderstanding between the inspecting officer and myself relative to the exact color of my, broadly ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... those Albino sisters with never an Albino beau, of the Circassian beauty with never a Circassian sweetheart, of the living skeleton with never another skeleton in his closet (how he can look so good-natured would be most mysterious, were not his digestion pronounced perfect), to think of the wretched What-is-it with never a Mrs. What-is-it, produces unspeakable anguish. May they meet their affinities in another and a more sympathetic world, where monstrosities are impossible for the reason that we leave our bones on earth. Since gazing at the What-is-it, I have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... Too wretched to allow herself the comfort of the window-seat in the bow, Elsie dropped down on the floor before one of the long, low windows of the adjacent side of the room, and gazing drearily out into the dusky street, tried to prepare herself ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... be a wretched life," the Spaniard said, "and would cut you off from all kindred, and friends. I can give you no advice. To me, I confess, death would be preferable, even in its worst forms. But to you, fond of exercise, and able to cause yourself to be respected, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... the Satyr girls, the Fauns and Nymphs, dragged out a wretched, wandering life. No more altars of meadow turf for them, no more wreaths of flowers, no more offerings of milk and wheat and honey. Only now and then at long intervals some goat-herd would furtively lay a tiny cheese on the threshold ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... said, "which thou hast closed, Daily this woman shall from henceforth come; Her kneeling form shall yet be interposed Till all thy wretched hours have told their sum; Shall yet be interposed by day, by night, Between thee, sinner, and the warmth ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... with the pulsations of the screw. The lights on shore were gliding by. The launch was leaving Fernando Noronha, and Iris was waiting in that wretched hut beyond the hill, waiting for the summons that would not reach her, for Marcel was dead, and Domingo, the one other man who could have gone to her, was lying in the cabin with three ribs broken and a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround him, the devils of a guilty heart, that holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the features of an injured friend? What if ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead; and I agreed, and forgave her for having admitted the attentions of Hulot. Whether the devil had her in hand I don't know, but from that instant that woman has humored my every whim, complied with all my demands —never for one moment has she ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... start for the Hills at dawn," he said slowly, and he watched their eyes gleam at the news. No caged tiger is as wretched as a prisoned Hillman. No freed bird wings more wildly for the open. No moth comes more foolishly back to the flame again. It was easy to take pity on them—probably not one of whom ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... she's gone to—I am-' the tears filled her shut eyes, and came softly overflowing down her cheeks; 'and yet it were true, what I said, I cannot forgive him; he's just spoilt my life, and I'm not one-and-twenty yet, and he knowed how wretched, how very wretched, I were. A word fra' him would ha' mended it a'; and Charley had bid him speak the word, and give me his faithful love, and Philip saw my heart ache day after day, and niver let on as him I was mourning for was alive, and had sent me word as he'd ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... The telephone! This wretched Edward with half his wits gave me more trouble than the Bishop and the Dowager put together. She jumped at the idea, and left the room, only to come back again to whisper ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... exemplary conduct there, and his wonderful and active conversion, he was compared to St. Paul. In quite another sense he resembled the great Apostle. The latter, when a Pharisee, had laboured to justify himself before God by the law and the prophets. 'O wretched man that I am,' Luther there must have exclaimed of himself, and afterwards looking back on his experiences, have counted all as 'dung and loss' in order to be justified rather by faith through the grace of God and the Saviour, and to become ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... still on them that go before, but not on those infinite numbers that come after. [3582]"Whereas many a man would think himself in heaven, a pretty prince, if he had but the least part of that fortune which thou so much repinest at, abhorrest and accountest a most vile and wretched estate." How many thousands want that which thou hast? how many myriads of poor slaves, captives, of such as work day and night in coal-pits, tin-mines, with sore toil to maintain a poor living, of such as labour in body and mind, live in extreme anguish, and pain, all ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... pretty sure that it was going to be a paying business. If he was only a young minister now, there'd be no difficulty about it. Let any man, young or old, in a clerical white cravat, step up to Myrtle Hazard, and ask her to be miserable in his company through this wretched life, and Aunt Silence would very likely give them her blessing, and add something to it that the man in the white cravat would think worth even more than that was. But I don't know what she'll say to Bradshaw. Perhaps he'd better have a hint to go to meeting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... memory—"something to draw us together, something to hold us together, something strong. Don't deny it even now. Don't deny it. Can't I be of some help, even now? Don't say I am utterly useless because I have been so useless to you, so damnably useless in the past. I see all that, my wretched uselessness to you through all these years. I am seeing it now while I am speaking. All the time I'm seeing it. What you have deserved and what you ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... and Cardinal-Princes of the Church, does not the need of your people for truth wring your hearts? Turn from your zealous dreams of world-conquest and see them, steeped in ignorance and superstition, wretched with poverty, war, and crime, extending their hands to you as their spiritual leaders—to you, Holy Father, who should be their Moses, to smite the rock of error, that the living, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... cohorts forced their way into the palace. They invaded the rooms of the king and queen. They struck at him with pikes, and forced upon his head the red bonnet of the Jacobins, while the most wretched of her sex encircled the queen with a living wall of vice, and loaded her with obscene execrations, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... 95 Some muttered words his comrades spoke: He placed me underneath this oak; He swore they would return with haste; Whither they went I cannot tell— I thought I heard, some minutes past, 100 Sounds as of a castle bell. Stretch forth thy hand," thus ended she, "And help a wretched ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fugitives, who, like themselves, were wandering near the sea coast seeking escape. These seldom stayed long, for it was felt unsafe to keep in parties of more than two or three at the utmost. Some of the fugitives were in wretched condition, having been wandering among the moors and forests for weeks, and as the fishing was very successful, Ronald and Malcolm were able to give them at parting a good supply of smoked salmon, and a portion of meal, of which Malcolm from time to time brought a fresh supply ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... of purely animal courage and keenness. Whips and rods used in a kind of monitorial system by themselves had a great part in the education of these young aristocrats, and, as pain surely must do, pain not of bodily disease or wretched accidents, but as it were by dignified rules of art, seem to have refined them, to have made them observant of the minutest direction in those musical exercises, wherein eye and ear and voice and foot all alike combined. There could be nothing paraleipomenon, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... your life is to be spent in such concrete pleasures of hope, as Janet's were over the crackly sheets of the printer of Drum. Finally the book was produced, a small rather thickish octavo, on sufficiently wretched gray paper which had suffered from want of thorough washing in the original paper-mill. It was bound in a peculiarly deadly blue, of a rectified Reckitt tint, which gave you dazzles in the eye at any distance under ten paces. Janet had selected this as the most appropriate ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... hands and exclaiming, 'Alas, that I did not listen to the wise man's advice!'" After some time, that which I had predicted from his dissolute conduct I saw verified. He was clothed in rags, and begging a morsel of food. I was distressed at his wretched condition, and did not think it consistent with humanity to scratch his wound with reproach. But I said in my heart: Profligate men, when intoxicated with pleasure, reflect not on the day of poverty. The tree which in the summer ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Jupitans.—Please don't laugh so hard; you'll get the atmospheric molecules all woozy.—Indeed, there's not the slightest danger here. Just fancy, if you please, beings who don't know when they are hungry without consulting a wretched little mechanism, and who measure their radius of conception by the length of their own feet.—Of course I shall be on hand for the Solstice! I wouldn't miss that for an asteroid!—Oh, did I really promise that? Well, I'll tell you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... exclaimed, "this is charming of you! Some one told me that you were not well,—our wretched climate, of course—and I was so afraid, every moment, that ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to build their houses. In a short time, however, all their bright prospects of rest and security were blighted by the breaking out of a dreadful pestilence among them. Many died; others who still lived, were utterly prostrated by the effects of the disease, and crawled about, emaciated and wretched, a miserable and piteous spectacle to behold. To crown their misfortunes, a great drought came on. The grain which they had planted was dried up and killed in the fields; and thus, in addition to the horrors of pestilence, they were threatened with the still greater horrors ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... man—when, directing his view to the intermediate spaces, to the windings of the valleys, or the expanse of plain beneath, he could only have distinguished a few insulated patches of culture, each encircling a village of wretched cabins, among which would still be remarked one rude mansion of wood, scarcely equal in comfort to a modern cottage, yet then rising proudly eminent above the rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his faithful cotarii, enjoyed a rude and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... can see nothing else in common between the "Origin" and Lamarck. I believe this way of putting the case is very injurious to its acceptance, as it implies necessary progression, and closely connects Wallace's and my views with what I consider, after two deliberate readings, as a wretched book, and one from which (I well remember to ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... I admit unavoidable, reply did not greatly please Doria. When she saw Barbara, to whom she related this conversation, she complained of Jaffery's unfeeling conduct. He had no right to hang up Adrian's great novel on account of his own wretched business. Letting the latter slide would have been a tribute to his dead friend. Barbara did her best to soothe her; but we agreed that Jaffery had made ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... revealed water-colours and drawing materials huddled together in a corner, and a heap of poor little conventional landscapes filling up the rest of the space. As works of art, they were wretched in the last degree; monuments of industry and application miserably and completely ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... defeats. If not all the men were "patriots;" if some lost faith in the cause; if others deserted it entirely and joined the enemy; if some entered the army from mercenary motives and proved cravens in the field; if still others who were honest enough in their intentions were found to be wretched material for the making of good soldiers—this was only the common experience of all popular struggles. As a body, it fairly represented the colonists in arms; and as an army, it did its share in bringing about ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... and can only be effected through violence and bloodshed. The more mature civilization becomes, the more difficult to effect disunion, the more terrible the penalty, and the more enduring, discordant, and wretched the consequences. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... coffee. Thea saw him sniffing the air greedily and walking slower and slower. He looked over the fence. She hoped he would not stop at their gate, for her mother never turned any one away, and this was the dirtiest and most utterly wretched-looking tramp she had ever seen. There was a terrible odor about him, too. She caught it even at that distance, and put her handkerchief to her nose. A moment later she was sorry, for she knew that he had noticed it. He looked away and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Willy had in her own possession more than enough money to pay that wretched Bullock bill. Mrs. Cliff made her no regular allowance, but she had given her all the money that she might reasonably expect to spend in New York, and Willy had spent but very little of it, for she found it the most difficult thing in the world to select what ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... moved the heart of His Majesty, and caused him to allow them to visit each other once with each revolving year,—on the seventh day of the seventh moon. But permission was not enough, for as they looked upon the foaming waters of the turbulent stream, they could but weep for their wretched condition, for no bridge united its two banks, nor was it allowed that any structure be built which would mar the contour of ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... hope! Here, to all the world, I am a murderer." He raised his head proudly. "This injustice restores to me my innocence. My life would always have been wretched; my death leaves me without reproach. But is there ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... meant? Was it all a mistake? Had his wretched days and wakeful nights been for nothing? Was there nothing for him to be grieved about? He knew now how much he loved her—and she? He was not a part of her life, at all. Would he dare speak the words he had ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... were ruined, imprisoned, and perished in dungeons. When Faithful passed they were asleep. It was a short cessation from persecution. In the Second Part, Great-heart slew Giant Bloody-man, who backed the lions; probably referring to the wretched death of that monster, Judge Jefferies. And in the experience of Mr. Fearing, it is clear that the Hill Difficulty and the lions were intended to represent temporal and bodily troubles, and not spiritual ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... visible to us. But in her dull soul lurks constantly the shadow of an ever present fear. The poor child is accountable to a cruel master, whether father or mother it matters little, who beats her each night that she returns to her wretched home with a scanty showing of nickels; and the consciousness of dull times and slow sales keeps her in a state of trepidation, which in you or me, my dear, would soon lapse into "nervous prostration," a big doctor's fee, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... this depth and strength of feeling that gave her a power over others, seldom surpassed, I believe, by any other mortal. In her the erring and the wretched found a sure refuge from themselves. The weakness that shrunk from the censure or the scorn of others, could be poured out to her as to one whose mission upon earth was to pity and to heal; for she knew the whole range of human ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... market-place, whether of apples, or of celebrity. But we see that at present they must do as they do for bread. Hundreds and thousands must step out of that hallowed domestic sphere, with no choice but to work or steal, or belong to men, not as wives, but as the wretched ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and on the lowest men who had not yet passed from life. On one side of the lowest platform was hell's mouth, a dark pitchy cavern, whence issued the appearance of fire and flames, and sometimes hideous yellings and noises in imitation of the howlings and cries of wretched souls tormented by relentless demons. From this yawning cave the devils constantly ascended to delight the spectators and afford comic relief to the more serious drama. The three stages were not always ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... shortly after dinner, was in a dangerous and reckless mood. He had had a wretched time all through the meal. The Blandings chef had extended himself in honor of the house party, and had produced a succession of dishes, which in happier days Mr. Peters would have devoured eagerly. To be compelled by ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... amuses me. You seem to forget I'm a dompteuse, a tamer of beasts; it's my profession, I was trained to it. It's the only thing I can do, and it's good to feel that I haven't lost my power. It's odd, but I feel a different woman when I'm impressing my will on these wretched cats. You must come one of these days and see a performance, when I've got them ship-shape. They'll astonish you. And then," she would add, "I can write to Anastasius and tell him how his beloved cats are ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the best customer of the United States, from which she purchases yearly over 1,000,000,000 marks in cotton, food, metal, and technical products. If Germany is economically ruined, which is the wish of Russia, France, and England and all allied friends of wretched Servia, it would mean the loss of a heavy buyer to America, and thereby cause a serious loss to America which could not easily be made good. It would be a great blow to American export trade, of which Germany handles not less than 14 ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... unmanned me. The eyes which looked into mine were so scared with terror, the lips—if I may say so—looked so speechless. The wretched man gazed long into my face, and then, still holding me by the arm, slowly, very slowly, turned his head. I had gently tried to move him away from the looking-glass, but he would not stir, and now he was ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... bore her through Stirling to the Highlands. Thence she was taken to St. Kilda's desolate island, far off in the Western Ocean, and there kept for the remainder of her days, scantily furnished with only the coarsest fare. Her condition was most wretched to the last. In those days, licentiousness and religious enthusiasm were not incompatible associates, and Lord Grange frequently spent his evenings with the Minister of Prestonpans, praying, and settling high points of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... its effect upon men than other young women had the nerve to adhere to. "But look there!" he cried: "see old Applegate" (one of our professors) "simpering over her bouquet and smiling into her eyes. Wretched old mummy! what does he want to go to parties for?" For we all held the ingenuous opinion that anybody, man or woman, ten years or more older than ourselves, ought to stay at home, eschew pleasure and devote their highest powers to keeping out of the way ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... is soul-dazed. One can never tell what a heart sorely perplexed will prompt its owner to do. Often in the night when I have got myself into a fever from thinking of my father's situation, I have had awful temptations. The agents of the devil seek the wretched when none of those they love are by. I have often thought some of the blackest tragedies of the earth might have been averted if there had been a true friend to stand at the wrung one's elbow at the fatal minute of decision and point ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... only to charm; I, who have seen everything that hath breath utter so many vows at my shrines, and by immortal rights have held the sovereign sway of beauty in all ages; I, whose eyes have forced two mighty gods to yield me the prize of beauty—I see my rights and my victory disputed by a wretched mortal. Shall the ridiculous excess of foolish obstinacy go so far as to oppose to me a little girl? Shall I constantly hear a rash verdict on the beauty of her features and of mine, and from the loftiest heaven where I shine ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... Jane; 'I was afraid he might speak to me; but then I knew I was too near friends for harm to come to me;' and she laughed at her own fears. 'How ragged and wretched he looks! Has ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stirring description of the boy nestling amid the roses, and the "passion-stained" horseman at the fountain. The alto proclaims the vesper call to prayer, and the tenor reflects upon the memories of the wretched man as he sees the child kneeling. The solo baritone announces his repentance, followed by a quartet and chorus in very broad, full harmony ("O blessed Tears of true Repentance!"). The next number is a double one, composed of soprano and tenor solos with chorus ("There falls a Drop on the Land ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... colonel, and which the abyss re-echoed with a hollow sound, as if it felt that its prey had escaped from it. I quitted the saddle, sat down between the wall and the body of my horse, and vigorously pushed with my feet against the carcass of the wretched animal, which rolled down into the abyss. I then arose, and cleared, at a few bounds, the distance which separated the place where I was from the plain; and, under the irresistible reaction of the terror which I had long repressed, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... all around before that wretched affair was explained. Gleason came within an ace of court-martial, but escaped it by saying that he knew of "Burnham's" threats against the life of Lieutenant Baker, and that he went to the ranch in search of the latter and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... very good style. With one or two little improvements, I hope to make it a capital thing. The end has just gone ashore in two boats, three out of four wires good. Thus ends our first expedition. By some odd chance a Times of June the 7th has found its way on board through the agency of a wretched old peasant who watches the end of the line here. A long account of breakages in the Atlantic trial trip. To-night we grapple for the heavy cable, eight tons to the mile. I long to have a tug at him; he may puzzle me, and though misfortunes or rather difficulties are a bore at the time, life ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... highest creative Brahman with all its perfections and exalted qualities, which cannot possibly be attributed to the individual Self whether in the state of Release or of bondage: 'Free from evil, free from old age,' &c. &c. In all those texts there is not the slightest trace of any reference to the wretched individual soul, as insignificant and weak as a tiny glow-worm, implicated in Nescience and all the other evils of finite existence. And the fruit of that knowledge of the highest Person the texts expressly declare, in many places, to be ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... watchfulness; and it was not difficult for each to read something of the other's thought. The King knew that behind all that aspect of deference and humility lay a sense of triumph, almost malignant in its intensity. He knew that circumstances had beaten him; and that the bomb of some wretched assassin had made his abdication impossible. The Prime Minister had said that he had no wish to press him; but what a pretense and hypocrisy that was, when that very night the Cabinet would have to meet and register its decision in one of two alternative ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... The wretched man's instinct of self-preservation was aroused. He saw from the looks of all about him that he was betraying himself—that he was wholly off his balance. While vividly and painfully aware of his danger, his enfeebled will and opium-clouded mind were impotent to steady and sustain ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, The apostle of affliction, he who threw Enchantment over passion, and from woe Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew How to make madness beautiful, and cast O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they passed The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... this wretched youth?" he continued. "Here, Momolo— Balbo," calling to some of his officers, "seize Signor Paolo, and drag him here. Take care that he does not leap overboard to avoid you. He has performed an act, by which he has well merited death, and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... aright they shall be Saints indeed. Their tender minds are instructed in this great truth that though they had the riches of Dives, and the glory and pleasures of Solomon, and yet fail to be righteous, they have missed their vocation, and are "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."(38) "For, what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"(39) On the contrary though they are as poor as Lazarus, and as miserable as Job in the days of his adversity, ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... rites are being prepared. There is no greater and no sadder life in all the history of the last century. The man himself was described in the very hours when he was most famous, most courted, most flattered, as the most unhappy man on earth. Indeed he seems to have been most wretched; he certainly {238} darkened the lives of the two or three women who were so unfortunate as to love him. But we may forget the sadness of the personal life in the greatness of the public career. Swift ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... stretch of dense grass jungle. Quail, partridge, and plover rose from the ground in coveys, as my horse cantered through; and an occasional peafowl or florican scudded across the track as I ambled onward. I asked at a wretched little accumulation of weavers' huts where the ghat was, and if my elephant had gone on. To both my queries I received satisfactory replies, and as the day was now drawing in, I pushed my nag into a sharp ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... was thrown at a wretched little girl, who had dived her hand deeply into a box or cask of garbage, and brought it forth reeking with rotten apples, pork fat, and any liquid horror which the name suggests to you. She had her hand uplifted ready to throw, and was evidently intending to give the strange lady the ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... constantly on the watch against them; and, in fact, there never was a reign so full of plots and conspiracies. The king never knew whom to trust: one friend after another turned against him, and he became soured and wretched: he was worn out with disappointment and guarding against everyone, and at last he grew even suspicious of his brave son Henry, because he was so bright and bold, and was so much loved. The prince was ordered home from Wales, and obliged to live at Windsor, with nothing ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... children who could love and respect their parents, who had a name, a fireside, and a family. He remembered, too, that his unhappy fate would prevent him from asking any woman to share his life. He was wretched without realizing that to regret these joys was in fact to be worthy of them, and that it was only the fall perception of the sad truths of his destiny that would impart the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... were many lights in sight, and how they cheered him, after his lonely ride along the wretched road from Stagers. He felt like shouting again, so buoyant had his feelings become. What would Bones say when he learned the truth; and doubtless Doctor Shadduck would be pleased at getting his new car back, damaged ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... they had burst forth in this festival. Now the rift was growing; it was crannying the house and announcing approaching downfall. Among drunkards in the slums it is black misery, an empty cupboard, which put an end to ruined families; it is the madness of drink which empties the wretched beds. Here the waltz tune was sounding the knell of an old race amid the suddenly ignited ruins of accumulated wealth, while Nana, although unseen, stretched her lithe limbs above the dancers' heads and ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... twelve and began at one, served equally well to cause her to retrace her steps and remain within doors as it did to reduce Hurstwood's spirits and give him a wretched day. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... 'Poor wretched weak creatures!' he said to himself, as he thought the traditions of Scottish heroic women in whose heroism he had gloated. And yet he was wrong: Madame de Bourke was capable of as much resolute self- devotion as any of the ladies on the other ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rents that they had paid for the ruinous ones, which I then had pulled down, as I found they were utterly unfit to be repaired. On their sites, after the ground had been drained, I erected others; and in the course of two or three years, no one would have recognised the place. Three or four wretched public-houses or beerhouses had existed in the village. I declined renewing the leases of the tenants of these, and got a respectable man to take a new and decent inn, which I had built for the purpose. That part of the parish had been noted for poachers, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'Yes; and I was wretched aboard simply because I met the free and hearty men around me in a spirit of sullenness and suspicion. But my sick misanthropy was not proof against the heart-quickening sunshine and the grand enthusiasm of those fine ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... she cried irritably. "It will be time enough when Monte is back again, and we can really 'live.' This wretched existence, with everything restricted and rationed, and all one's friends in Flanders or Mesopotamia or somewhere, drives me mad! I tell you I should die, Lucy, if I tried to ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... feel affectionate, I shall act affectionate! He will probably loathe it, so there's just as much chance of injuring one's chance as of bettering it. In fact, if we are to get on at all, we had better try to forget the wretched money, and behave as if it did not exist. If anyone had told us a month ago that we should be staying in a big house with two quite good-looking young men as fellow-guests, and carte blanche to enjoy ourselves ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... street, and in the centre of this bouquet was a slip of geranium which had been placed there because its crumpled young leaves were so fresh and green. A poor little girl passing by picked up this slip, and carried it to a wretched cellar, where she lived in the greatest untidiness with her mother—a poor, weak, complaining woman—and her two small sisters and eight-year-old brother. Here she found a battered tin pail, which she filled with dirt from the street, and in this dirt she planted the slip of ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said he, "who have a real cause for sorrow. There are some whose husbands do not earn money. There are others whose husbands do not love them. But you are making yourself wretched about nothing ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... answered slowly, "I did not. But do you know, Lady Killiow, that, without any consent of ours, you and I have nearly been in litigation over this same wretched ferry?" He smiled at her surprise. "Oh, yes, I could help the Radicals to make out a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which we find ourselves placed, when two nations are at daggers drawn over a wretched question of self-esteem, I should not shrink from a lie that appears to me a duty. But I have no need to resort to that expedient. I have truth itself on my ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... with the desolation around her, and which would never again be otherwise, though she lived to be an old woman.—How long she sat thinking things of this kind, she did not know. But all of a sudden she started up, frightened both by her wretched thoughts and by the loneliness of the wood; and she fled, not looking behind her, or pausing to take breath, till she reached the streets. Into the first empty droschke she met, she had sunk exhausted, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... and most authentic statement of the kind refers to a small tribe called Birhors, existing in the wildest parts of Chota Nagpur and Jashpur, west of Bengal, and is given by an accomplished Indian ethnologist, Colonel Dalton. "They were wretched-looking objects ... assuring me that they had themselves given up the practice, they admitted that their fathers were in the habit of disposing of their dead in the manner indicated, viz., by feasting on the bodies; but they declared that they never shortened life to provide ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... him therewith and waste his manhood and destroy him. Nor say I much of the strong-thieves that dwell there, since thou art a valiant sword; or of them who have been made Wolves of the Holy Places; or of the Murder-Carles, the remnants and off-scourings of wicked and wretched Folks—men who think as much of the life of a man as of the life of a fly. Yet happiest is the man whom they shall tear in pieces, than he who shall live burdened by the curse of the Foes ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... Jack. "I know a little what well-meaning relatives can do to make a young man's life miserable. I'm sorry, King," and he looked truly wretched over it. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... miserable hours of darkness I would steal from my lonely bed to the place where my dead wife and child lay, and, in agony of soul, pass my shaking hand over their cold faces, and then return to my bed after a draught of rum, which I had obtained and hidden under the pillow of my wretched couch. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... March 16, 1881.—A wretched night. A melancholy morning.... The two stand-bys of the doctor, digitalis and bromide, seem to have lost their power over me. Wearily and painfully I watch the tedious progress of my own decay. What efforts to keep ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... them the slightest real effect, for them the words are coming to an end; they will soon be released from the irksome bondage of hearing them; and another opportunity of grace will have been offered to them in vain. Tomorrow, and the day after, they will walk as they have walked before, the wretched slaves of folly and passion; half despairing prayer may be, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief;" but if any one is moved by Christ's call, and feels within himself that he should like to follow Christ, and to be with him always, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... or less aptness. When some one likened it to a potato, because it 'shoots from the eyes,' was it not Byron who was wicked enough to add, 'and because it becomes all the less by pairing'? One wretched swain tells us that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... commencing about half-past six, and terminating about seven o'clock; but, during that short period, it was sufficient nearly to drown the "unfortunates," who were travelling outside per coach from Sheffield, York, Leeds, &c., and who, on alighting, presented a most wretched appearance. The morning of Monday was dark and lowering, but towards eleven or twelve o'clock the weather cleared up and remained very fine. The course, notwithstanding the rain, was in the very best possible order, the attendance large, beyond any former example on the first day, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... mind that we met in the forest on our way a poor man who looked haggard and wretched, and begged us to give him something. But papa and I could not, for we had already distributed all our money among the unfortunate persons whom we had previously met. Why are there so many poor people, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... under ground, which contains another set of baths, and, besides apartments for other purposes, the lodging of the slaves. This was divided into little cells, scarcely the length of a man, dark and damp; and we can not enter into it without a lively feeling of the wretched state to which these ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... gave Luigi a sum on account of that which he promised to procure for him. The wretched man laughed convulsively as he grasped the gold, and ran with all his might, breathless, to his home, crying out ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... brine, whereby is no city of mortals that do sacrifice to the gods, and offer choice hecatombs? But surely it is in no wise possible for another god to go beyond or to make void the purpose of Zeus, lord of the aegis. He saith that thou hast with thee a man most wretched beyond his fellows, beyond those men that round the burg of Priam for nine years fought, and in the tenth year sacked the city and departed homeward. Yet on the way they sinned against Athene, and she raised upon them an evil blast and long waves of the sea. Then all the rest of his good ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... not treat you right, Maria. My wretched entanglement when I was a boy ruined everything. But when I persuaded you into a secret marriage with me, I meant to make it right when the other one died. And you found it out and left me. If I treated you badly, you treated me ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... that it should be so; but it is too often seen that there is a Pride mixed with the Impatience of the Creditor, and there are who would rather recover their own by the Downfal of a prosperous Man, than be discharged to the common Satisfaction of themselves and their Creditors. The wretched Man, who was lately Master of Abundance, is now under the Direction of others; and the Wisdom, Oeconomy, good Sense and Skill in human Life before, by reason of his present Misfortune, are of no Use to him in the Disposition of any thing. The Incapacity of an Infant or a Lunatick, is designed ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... bracing, mother; the sun shines bright and high; It is a pleasant day to live—a gloomy one to die! It is a bright and glorious day the joys of earth to grasp— It is a sad and wretched one to strangle, choke, and gasp! But let them damp my lofty spirit, or cow me if they can! They send me like a rogue to death—I'll meet it like a man; For I never murdered Allen Bayne! but so the Judge has said, And they'll hang me to the gallows, ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... glides away 'Mid mirth and music, flattery's whispered tone, Her dreary penance—ever to be gay, Yet longing, oh! how oft—to be alone; But when all other hearts seek needful rest, And heavy sleep the saddest eyelids close, Her dreams are those the wretched only know, As memory o'er ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the view commanded a great part of the island. One of the sightliest of these was situated on a little hillock, about half a mile from the sea, which we ascended. Its construction was such as evinced the poverty and wretched condition of its owners. The natives told us they passed the night in these huts; and we easily conceived their situation to be uncomfortable, especially as we saw so very few of them, that they must be crammed full, unless the generality of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... 'Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my wits like a good-for-nothing.... And yet the first few days I had done you good. You saw me and spoke to me.... Do you remember when you were lying down, and went to sleep ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... it. It upsets me too much.... No, that's silly, I've got to begin facing realities.... It was just when the Germans were taking Bruges, the Uhlans broke into this convent.... But I think it was in Louvain, not Bruges.... I have a wretched memory for names.... Well, they broke in, and took all those poor defenceless little ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... Heat, In which the frantick World does burn and sweat! This does the Lion Star, Ambitions rage; This Avarice, the Dog-Stars Thirst asswage; Every where else their fatal Power we see, They make and rule Man's wretched Destiny: They neither set, nor disappear, But tyrannize o'er all the Year; Whil'st we ne'er feel their Flame or Influence here. The Birds that dance from Bough to Bough, And sing above in every Tree, Are not from Fears and Cares more free, Than we who lie, or walk below, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... covering of earth and stone was 1 foot to 2 feet in depth; with steep slopes, the earth was kept from sliding by rough dry walls, or by cedar plank placed crosswise. The pipe was laid in 1878; the first year it broke twice, owing to the wretched quality of the iron; since then, it has given no trouble, and has required practically no attention. The cost of this work—ditch and flume 4,000 feet, and pipe 4,440 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... world and its intrigues, as she was, she could not fail to have seen that neither the earl nor the countess was happy; and that the endless work and excitement in which they endeavored to absorb themselves only left them dissatisfied and wretched. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... The wretched creature went slithering up the aisle, chuckling to himself. How miserable to be drunk at that early hour of the morning! Ronder shrugged his shoulders as though he would like to shake off from them something ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... at the backs, but I noticed, when I gave him some tobacco, which he very promptly asked for, that the palms were perfectly soft. He told us how long he had travelled, and how many years it was since he had done any work; and, finally rising, he picked up a wretched-looking blanket, and said, "Well, good-day, gentlemen. I'm off to call on the Mayor of Portland and a few rich friends of mine up there." He winked ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell; I took thee for thy betters—take thy fortune. Thou findst, to be too ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... great composure she laid before him an outline of the chief quarrels and grievances which had embittered the life of the Bruton Street house during the period she had named. It was a wretched story, and she clearly told it with repugnance and disgust. There was in her tone a note of offended personal delicacy, as of one bemired ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the case before us, men are going to murder and torture the famishing, and they admit that in the dispute between the peasants and the landowner the peasants are right (all those in command said as much to me). They know that the peasants are wretched, poor, and hungry, and the landowner is rich and inspires no sympathy. Yet they are all going to kill the peasants to secure three thousand rubles for the landowner, only because at that moment they fancy themselves not men but ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... after this a horseman dashed up to the spot, and only drew rein to give a glance at the lifeless form of the wretched Matteo. ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... around it. But Mother Ceres, the moment she saw her, knew that this was an odd kind of a person, who put all her enjoyment in being miserable, and never would have a word to say to other people, unless they were as melancholy and wretched as she herself delighted ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bread, cannot be taken from him so long as he can manage to live by the sweat of his brow. Many of these peasant proprietors can barely keep body and soul together; but when they lie down upon their wretched beds at night, they feel thankful that the roof that covers them and the soil that supports them are their own. The wind may howl about the eaves, and the snow may drift against the wall, but they know that the one will calm down, and that the other will melt, and that life will go ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Heaven-gifted faster is at length laid by the heels. The full blown imposition has exploded—the wretched cheat is consigned to merited durance; while the trebly-gammoned and unexampled spoons who were his willing dupes are in full possession of the enviable notoriety necessarily attendant upon their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... them suddenly in the mountains with not more than a hundred men. Many perished in battle, others of their exertions and hunger, and, when the intelligence of Masaniello's unfortunate end reached them, the wretched remainder of the troops ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... how pleadingly the name "Miggie" had been uttered, she half-resolved to demand of Arthur the immediate release of the helpless creature thus held in durance vile. But he looked so unhappy, so hopelessly wretched that her sympathy was soon enlisted for him rather than his fair captive. Still she would try him a little and when they were fairly at work she ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... grayish-looking clouds driven violently along by the east wind. The state of the earth, moistened by rain which had lasted twenty-four hours, rendered our progression very difficult, for we were traversing a ferruginous soil. Such wretched walking put the finishing-stroke to our ill-humor by smearing and soiling our clothes; for my part, I inwardly anathematized travelling in general, more ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... nature and a sense of humour. I realized that the worst was over, and that I was well out of my scrape. I therefore released the rope, and fell to examining my bruises. Will you believe it? Those wretched barrel-staves had no more consideration than to descend crushingly upon my unprotected skull, and to remove portions of my ears in ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... the hacienda, which were sent him with all convenient speed, that he might not, according to his usual plan, come and take them. In exchange for some half-dozen farm horses in good condition, he sent half a dozen lean, wretched-looking quadrupeds, the bones coming through their skin, skeletons ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... innocent child of a mobed or priest. No one, not even the chief watcher, is allowed to approach within a distance of thirty paces of these towers. Of all living human beings "nassesalars"—corpse-carriers—alone enter and leave the "Tower of Silence." The life these men lead is simply wretched. No European executioner's position is worse. They live quite apart from the rest of the world, in whose eyes they are the most abject of beings. Being forbidden to enter the markets, they must get their food as they ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... plan which protected the property of the rich English absentee, and threw the burden upon the resident landlords who cultivated their own land, and upon the farmer who rented land. The agents of these absentees exacted the rents with bitter severity, and often the dwelling of the wretched occupier was pulled down about his sick and starving children, who frequently perished within the roofless walls. It was civil war, without any of the redeeming manhood which strips even that of its aspects ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not know this sooner?" he thought. "More wretched than the blind, deaf, and paralysed who trust in me, I have lost all knowledge of things supernatural, and am more depraved than the maniacs who eat earth and approach dead bodies. I can no longer distinguish ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... E—— as he stood over the fellow with hands a-twitching to take hold of him. "You mean, skulking coward, to talk like that of men who have come over to fight in the place of wretched ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... if I am not, why do I not become so immediately with excess of joy, wretched, despicable creature that I am? I am no longer on the earth; look at me well, dearest, and tell me: Am I not perhaps standing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Richardson, put practical sanitation on a scientific basis. Even before the full demonstration of the germ theory, they had grasped the conception that the battle had to be fought against a living contagion which found in poverty, filth and wretched homes the conditions for its existence. One terrible disease was practically wiped out in twenty-five years of hard work. It is difficult to realize that within the memory of men now living, typhus fever was one of the great ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... say to you. It has been a mistake—a frightful mistake—and I don't know whether you'll let me explain. When I got downstairs I found this telegram and—for heaven's sake, let me tell you the wretched story. Don't turn away from me! You shall listen to me if I have to hold you!" His manner changed suddenly to the violent, imperious forcefulness of a man driven to ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... of this beggarly life, going about from pillar to post, living in wretched Continental hotels, with no ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... were again a little relieved about the woman: following her still, to a yet more wretched part of the city, they saw her knock at a door, pay something, and be admitted. It looked a dreadful refuge, but she was at least under cover, and shelter, in such a climate as ours in winter, must be the first rudimentary ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the lower classes in large towns. Along with prostitution, venereal disease and alcohol, the wretched dwellings in many places lead to infamous promiscuity. In factories and mines things are still worse. In these places there is a swarm of people continually engaged in most unhealthy occupations, and only leaving their work to indulge in the most repugnant sexual excesses. The rapacity, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... in its place stood a picture of his wretched victim and himself. Her fair, innocent face looked down upon him from the darkness, and he saw ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... month this intimacy went on, brightening daily in Roger's mind the ideal picture of his new friend, but creating in her only a deeper sympathy and a more devout compassion for his wretched and oppressed life. But as years instead of months went by, the sole influence no longer rested with the girl, drawing Roger Pierce upward, as she longed and strove to do, into her own sunshine. Their mutual relation had only lightened his darkness in part, while it had drawn over her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... she would have liked to "coddle her child," but Nan was not one of the coddling kind, and would have scorned being made a baby of. She went about the house in one of her unhappy moods, restless and wretched and unable to amuse herself, and ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... "true sherry vallies," that is, trousers reaching to the ankle with strips of leather on the inside of the thigh. Lee immediately published in the Pennsylvania Advertiser an angry letter upon "the impertinence and stupidity of the compiler of that wretched performance with the pompous title of the magazine of the United States." In reply, Brackenridge compared Lee, as usual, to his favorite ourang-outang, and added: "You are neither Christian, Jew, Turk nor Infidel, but a metempsychosist! You have been heard ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... along the Strand to-night, arm in arm, a woman of the town accosted us, in the usual enticing manner. 'No, no, my girl, (said Johnson) it won't do.' He, however, did not treat her with harshness, and we talked of the wretched life of such women; and agreed, that much more misery than happiness, upon the whole, is produced by illicit ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... about love, Tim, but I'm very sure it's no use trying to manufacture it to order, and—listen, Tim, dear," the pain in his face making her suddenly all tenderness again—"if I married you, and afterwards you couldn't teach me as you think you could, we should only be wretched together." ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... results in an agreeable change of morality in many regards, it is yet accompanied with wretched traits in others. The whole silliness of superstition exceeds belief. Because Bh[a]llabheya once broke his arm on changing the metre of certain formulae, it is evident to the priest that it is wrong to trifle ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... and so wretched his fate;— And thus, sooner or later, shall all have to grieve, Who waste their morn's dew in the beams of the Great, And expect 'twill return to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Louis is conducted to the scaffold; his behaviour is steady and dignified, he speaks a few words protesting his innocence, forgiving his enemies, and hoping that his death might restore peace to his wretched country. The commander of the troops orders the drums and trumpets to strike up, that his voice might be drowned, and that he should not proceed. In a minute after this, his head is severed from his body. ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... man who wished to smoke should betake himself, but in his own study, which rather shocks his mother. Pen goes from bad to worse during his University days, and, sad to say, one Sunday in the last long vacation, the "wretched boy," instead of going to church, "was seen at the gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar, in the face of the congregation as it issued from St. Mary's. There was an awful sensation in the village society. Portman prophesied Pen's ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... "Well, they were wretched, even if you don't believe it," says she; "so I just told them to come right down here for the rest of ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford |
