"Miserable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were all in marching order. We proceeded by an early train on the Chatham and Dover Railway, and by nine o'clock in the morning had reached our destination—Dover. It was, I think, one of the coldest and most miserable mornings I ever experienced. The sea was very rough, the waves lashing on the roadway; and the rain came down in torrents. During the night there had been such a storm in the Channel, the natives said, that ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... had come here this afternoon partly because he thought it his duty, and partly because he wanted to create closer relations with a parishioner so likely to be useful as Mrs. Murray. He was miserable with a cold, and was weak with fatigue. His next sermon was turning out dull and disjointed. His building committee were interfering and quarreling with Wharton. A harsh north-west wind had set his teeth on edge and filled his eyes with dust. Rarely ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... just been born unto thee will I take under my protection. When she will have grown up and be a fine lass, give her but to him who will build her up a temple, where there will be ten columns, each composed of ten stones. If thou dost not execute these my orders thy daughter will be as miserable ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... a metal plate set upright in the wall, and secured to it by straps of metal. Evidently the miserable being knew what this portended, for he began to scream—a monotonous, high-pitched shriek that didn't stop till he was ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... Burghers determined on the destruction of every soul of them. They procured the assistance of a Toda, as they invariably do on such occasions, as without one the Curumbers are supposed to be invulnerable. They proceeded to the Curumber village at night and set their huts on fire, and as the miserable inmates attempted to escape, flung them back into the flames or knocked them down with clubs. In the confusion one old woman escaped unobserved into the adjacent bushes. Next morning she gave notice to the authorities, and identified seven Burghers, among whom was the Moneghar or ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... a fool, Ikey; I can't deny it. I can't even lift my voice in protest. No man in his sober senses would have sold that necklace of glorious gems for such a miserable pittance. Here, Ikey, take back your money and give ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... follow Christ fully than to follow with a half heart and halting step. The prophet was right in his pungent question, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" The undecided man is a halting man. The halting man is a lame man and a miserable man, and the out-and-out Christian is the admiration of men and angels, and ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Hindus of a growing feeling, not very different from that which Tacitus described, when he said of the Germans: "Who would go to Germany, acountry without natural beauty, with a wretched climate, miserable to cultivate or to look at—unless it ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... revoke your power of attorney. And as much for Morty's sake as for your own. He will lose your money if he keeps it in his hands, and then he will suffer agonies of remorse. He will be infinitely more miserable than if he merely failed in business. That is honorable. It would only hurt his pride. Then he could get a position again, and you would have ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... crime more fell, more foul; if there be anything worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother, it is that of a deliberate instigator and abettor to the deed; this it is that shocks, disgusts, and appals the mind more than the other; to view, not a wilful parricide, but a parricide by compulsion; a miserable wretch, not actuated by the stubborn evils of his own worthless heart, not driven by the fury of his own distracted brain, but lending his sacrilegious hand, without any malice of his own, to answer the abandoned purposes of the human ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in the crime of that Good Friday wear a peculiar brand of infamy as they are portrayed on the pages of history; but among them all, the most despicable, the one whose name bears the deepest infamy, is Judas, an apostle turned traitor, for a few miserable coins betraying his best friend into ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... "You miserable dog—I ought to kill you!" The words came from between his set teeth. He drew back his hand and slapped him first on the right cheek, then on the left. He flung Slim from him the length of the cabin, where ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... his father of having been smoking in the boathouse just before the fire, and Danny was so miserable, and so surprised at being caught in the barn, that he made a full confession. Tearfully he told the story, how he and some other boys, finding the boat house unlocked, for some unknown reason, had gone in, and smoked ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... three months, Balzac received no letter from his "Polar Star," but he expressed his usual fidelity to her. Miserable or fortunate, he was always the same to her; it was because of his unchangeableness of heart that he was so painfully wounded by her neglect. Carried away, as he often was, by his torrential existence, he might miss writing ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the finest scene in the fillum ought to 'appen. Imagine a crowd of defrauded an' infuriated soldiery, led by Reginald, marching up to the F.P. compound and demanding that the miserable Blaney an' their stakes should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... touched the hearts of all those present, the unhappy Kwan-yu fell upon the floor. This time he did not bow before his master, for at the sight of the miserable conglomeration of useless metals his courage failed him, and he fainted. When at last he came to, the first sight that met his eyes was the scowling face of Yung-lo. Then he heard, as in a dream, the stern voice of ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... hand, "our union is too essential to the good cause to be broken off upon such idle terms of dissension. I am fixed to gratify Glendinning in this matter—my promise is passed. The wars, in which I have had my share, have made many a family miserable; I will at least try if I may not make one happy. There are maids and manors enow in Scotland.—I promise you, my noble ally, that young Bennygask ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... good jest in a time of misfortune is food and drink. It is strength to the arm, digestion to the stomach, courage to the heart. It is better than wisdom or wine. A prosperous man may afford to be melancholy, but if the miserable are so, they are worse than dead—but it is sure to kill them. Near me I had a comrade whose wit it was alone that kept life in me upon the desert. All the way from Emesa, had it not been for the tears of laughter, those of sorrow and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... come—and all was done Swifter than I have spoken—I beheld Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun. I rushed among the rout, to have repelled That miserable flight—one moment quelled 2375 By voice and looks and eloquent despair, As if reproach from their own hearts withheld Their steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there New multitudes, and did those rallied ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... you think literature is only produced by the miserable noodles who sit in their studies at home, till their muscles wither and their hearts get flabby? My book will be a man's book, with a man's blood and a man's brains in it. It will be a book that will make posterity ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... appearance evidently bears the mark of the improvement in their situation. Their dress is upon the whole neat and comfortable, covered in general by a species of smock frock of a light blue colour, and exhibiting none of that miserable appearance which Mr Young described as characterising the labouring classes during his time. They evidently had the aspect of being well fed, and both in their figures and dress, afforded a striking contrast to the wretched and decrepid inhabitants of the towns, in whom the real ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Besides, I always had a dumb dislike of business. I used to moon. We were so troubled with business-troubles we had no time to live. We never really got to know each other. I used to think my mother was hard and unsympathetic because her view of life wasn't mine—as if it could be. It was a miserable tangle. There was my father, whose love for us made him leave us that horrible legacy of investments. And my mother was so busy providing for us she had no leisure to love us. And my brother and I were so different in temper and age and inclination ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... prove myself a fool, to avoid being a criminal. Go on and spoil your life; you seem to be wholly bent upon it. Face rebel bullets or do some other reckless thing. I only wish to give you the solace of knowing that you have made me as miserable as a girl can be, and that too at a moment when I was awakening to better things. But I am wasting your valuable time. You believe in your heart that Mr. Strahan can console me with his gossip to-morrow evening, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... wish to disobey him, but the very thoughts of the life I should have to lead, talking and debating, or worse, listening to long debates in the close atmosphere of the House of Commons, would make me miserable. So, pray, if he suggests such a thing to you, tell him you are sure that I should not like it, and beg ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... your present comfort for the purpose of being as grand in that respect as the White people. It is a cheering thought throughout life, that something can be done to ameliorate the condition of those who have been subject to the hard usages of the World. It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... in his case the experiment had proved more enjoyable, but I am not one to break the bruised reed by making such a suggestion. On the contrary, I expressed my firm conviction that Orlando was probably even more miserable than ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... object of our examination in the afternoon. There was a little stream falling in at the head, but rocks prevented it from being accessible to boats, or to a raft; and a walk of perhaps a mile to the eastward, afforded nothing but the sight of a stony country, and of a few miserable huts. Our greyhound started a kangaroo, but it was lost in the wood; and there were no ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... city. Even what she has confessed regarding you, my friend, does her honor: I have read her deposition in the secret reports myself, and seen her signature."—"The signature!" exclaimed I, "which makes me so happy and so miserable. What has she confessed, then? What has she signed?" My friend delayed answering, but the cheerfulness of his face showed me that he concealed nothing dangerous." If you must know, then," replied he at last, "when she was asked about you, and her intercourse with you, she said quite frankly, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... be its own punishment." The Philosopher, too, says of the wicked (Ethic. ix, 4) that "their soul is divided against itself . . . one part pulls this way, another that"; and afterwards he concludes, saying: "If wickedness makes a man so miserable, he should strain every nerve to avoid vice." In like manner, although, on the other hand, the good sometimes do not receive material rewards in this life, yet they never lack spiritual rewards, even in this life, according to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... is most picturesquely grouped on a kind of esplanade, and runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some forty miserable huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them worthy of the name of cottages. A stairway made of crossed trunks of trees leads up to the village, which lies hidden from the traveler's eyes until the steps ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... revelling in its bloomy wetness; strong and fit in muscle and nerve, carrying wood, getting his head soaked, doing all the foolish things which youth does with impunity and careless joy. The new restlessness, which he had come so far to quiet, broke over him in miserable, taunting waves. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Cartier (Roberval having failed to arrive in time) sets out; again he passes the gloomy Saguenay and the cliff of Quebec; again he leaves his companions to prepare for the winter; again he ascends the river to explore the rapids, still dreaming of the way to Asia; again after a miserable winter he sails back to France, eluding Roberval a year late, and carrying but a few worthless quartz diamonds and a little sham gold. Then Roberval, the Lord of Norembega, reigns alone in his vast and many-titled domain, for another season of snows and famine, freely using ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... signal of the muddy pools under her mother's eyes and the little quivering nerve beneath the temple, she shut him out of her presence for a day and a night, and when he came fuming up every few minutes from the hotel veranda, miserable and fretting, met him at the closed door of her mother's darkened room ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... a panting supplication To hear my voice, my face to see; Thy mighty prayer prevails on me, I come!—what miserable agitation Seizes this demigod! Where is the cry of thought? Where is the breast? that in itself a world begot, And bore and cherished, that with joy did tremble And fondly dream us spirits to resemble. Where art thou, Faust? whose ...
— Faust • Goethe
... of this little family party, gentlemen, sits Tom all the while, as miserable as you like. But, when everything else is arranged, the old gentleman's daughter says, that their strange conduct was a little device of the waiting-maid's to disgust the lovers he had chosen for 'em, and will he forgive her? ...
— The Lamplighter • Charles Dickens
... scribbling. "Personal habits are tabu? I so regret. The demonstration." He waved grandly at the tray. "Anti-grav sandals? A portable solar converter? Apologizing for this miserable selection, but on Capella they told me—" He followed Melinda's entranced gaze, selected a tiny green vial. "This is merely a regenerative solution. You appear to have no cuts ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made Learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacancies given ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... before, Willem Van Wyk was the happiest hunter in existence, and now he was about the most miserable. One of the two captives, for which he had suffered so many hardships, had escaped, and in all probability would never be again seen by the eyes of a white man. The realisation of his fondest hopes was delayed for ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... girl's great extremity, God, the great physician, dictates to her, then languishing in her miserable, hopeless condition, what course to take and what to do for a cure, which was to go and touch the Duke of Monmouth. The girl told her mother that, if she could but touch the Duke she would be well. The mother reproved her for her ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... beasts and cattle and fish and fowl, but never that man should exercise a like dominion over his fellow-man. * * * * * * * * * Monuments, laws, institutions, through a continuous series of ages, teach and splendidly demonstrate the great love of the Church towards slaves, whom in their miserable condition, she never left destitute of protection, and always to the best of her power alleviated. Therefore, praise and thanks are due to the Catholic Church, since she has merited it in the prosperity of nations, by the very great beneficence of Christ, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. In a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go farther and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude, to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness. Whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... same Personage who has in all ages been disposed to buy men's souls at his own delusive price, and to make his dupes sign the infernal contract with their blood, has been very busy in certain parts of the State, trying to get signatures, under the miserable pretence that party pays better than patriotism, and that times of whirlwind and disaster are those in which he, the contractor, has most power to advance the interests of his adherents. But some ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... invincible repugnance, and in a frenzy of dismay and terror she screamed aloud and started up as if to fly. Then, recollecting herself, she sank down moaning.—Oh, heavens! she thought, there was no escape, no help! How wretched she was! how utterly miserable! all alone, alone, in such a dreary, lonesome world, with no home, nor father, nor mother, nor brother,—with only a sister who had a husband and children, whom she loved, as she ought, far better than she did her. There was nobody to whom she was the dearest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... he, "hate me, despise me; I believed I could do something and I can do nothing. Madame, you are now the recognized wife of M. de Monsoreau, and are to be presented this evening. I am a fool—a miserable dupe, or rather, as you said, M. le Baron, the duke is ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... they should go down and attack the town and pillage it. When the captain heard this, he shouted out to the men, 'My fine fellows, I hear what you say, and I hope you will not longer think of doing that same. You will agree that it is beneath us to make a number of poor people miserable by destroying their houses and such comforts of life as they possess. Remember, you are Englishmen, and should scorn to injure people who, though they are called our enemies, have not lifted even a finger against us. Let ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... prefer to be alone in the boat?" she asked hastily, fixing her eyes upon him. But when she saw the long helpless creature standing before her in such a miserable state of confusion, strong and handsome as he was, she sprang up, threw her arms round his neck, and said, half laughing, half crying, "Oh, ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... morning, over there in Paris, when she had told me that she had invited one of de Mersch's lieutenants to betray him by not concealing from Callan the real horrors of the Systeme Groenlandais—flogged, butchered, miserable natives, the famines, the vices, diseases, and the crimes. There came suddenly before my eyes the tall narrow room in my aunt's house, the opening of the door and her entry, followed by that of the woebegone governor of a province—the ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... admirable picture of the Elevation of the Cross, proved too much for his endurance. After he had exerted all his powers to produce a masterpiece of art, the canons, upon viewing the picture, pronounced it a contemptible performance, and the artist a miserable dauber; and Vandyck could hardly obtain payment for his work. When the picture had received high commendation from good judges, they became sensible of their error, and requested him to execute two more works; but the indignant ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... and night at her bedside. The Dutch Envoy wrote that the sight of his misery was enough to melt the hardest heart. When all hope was over, he said to Bishop Burnet, "There is no hope. I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the most miserable. She had no faults; none; you knew her well; but you could not know, none but myself could know, her goodness." The funeral was remembered as the saddest and most august that Westminister had ever seen. While the queen's remains lay in state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... should take place in the morning, in which the cook's talent should be fairly tested. Certainly every chance was afforded him. Not only was he encouraged by Rubini and Lablache (whose gravity on the occasion was wonderful), but by a few others, Costa included, as instrumentalists. The failure was miserable, ridiculous, as everybody expected." Frederick Crowest describes a certain Count Castel de Maria who had a spit that played tunes, "and so regulated and indicated the condition of whatever was hung upon it to roast. By a singular mechanical contrivance this ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... heaped over with flowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and women, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in shapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how miserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificial discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne, and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... gallant and bold. O was an Oyster Wench, and went about town, P was a Parson, and wore a black gown. Q was a Queen, who was fond of good flip, R was a Robber, and wanted a whip. S was a Sailor, and spent all he got, T was a Tinker, and mended a pot. U was an Usurer, a miserable elf, V was a Vintner, who drank all himself. W was a Watchman, and guarded the door, X was expensive, and so became poor. Y was a Youth, that did not love school, Z was a Zany, a ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... got a garden," continued my mother, ignoring my aunt's last remark; "which is quite an unusual feature in a London house. And it isn't the East End of London; it is a rising suburb. And you won't make me miserable ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... risen that kept between them sixty-two horses and two hundred and fifty-two cows, beside the sheep, and the manor farm was worth twice as much as before. The town of Herning, sometimes called "the Star of the Heath," is the seat of Hammerum county, once the baldest and most miserable on the Danish mainland. In 1841 twenty-one persons lived in Herning. To-day there are more than six thousand in a town with handsome buildings, gas, electric lighting, and paved streets. The heath is half a ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... man's sin-bearer; that He had fulfilled the obedience which man had neglected to fulfil; that He came to save sinners, to lift the weary and heart-broken, the wretched and the penitent, out of their miserable state; that man is saved simply by turning away from his sins, from his idolatries, from the thoughtless course he may have hitherto followed, and looking trustfully, believingly, on Jesus crucified for him. The young man ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... fellowship, though all the resident dons wished it. "A servitor never has been elected student—ergo, he never shall be." Brown admired Gaisford, and always spoke kindly of him "in all his dealings with me." Yet the night after he won his double first was "one of the most intensely miserable I was ever called to endure." Relief, and of the right kind, came with his election as Fellow of Oriel in April, 1854. In those days an Oriel Fellowship still kept and conveyed its peculiar distinction, and the brilliant young scholar had at ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that .. I must help him to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries; —aye, he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh! I plainly see my miserable office, —to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... mountains, and down on the other side. The country was quite strange to them, and somehow, before they knew it, they were not on the road recommended to them by their hosts of the night before. Night overtook them when they were still, as the phrase has come down in our family, "in a miserable, ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... called, and claimed often, with apparent truth, to be of more ancient descent than the masters whom they served, bore, nevertheless, the livery of extreme penury, being indifferently accoutred, and worse armed, half naked, stinted in growth, and miserable in aspect. Each important clan had some of those Helots attached to them: thus, the MacCouls, though tracing their descent from Comhal, the father of Finn or Fingal, were a sort of Gibeonites, or hereditary servants to the Stewarts of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... women, cannot affect, so far as I can see, purity, religious sanctity, or religious sentiment itself. But here is where the change begins. In order to accommodate a religion to all natures, all sorts of petty, miserable, paltry things are introduced. The pomp of the ceremonies, instead of being a true pomp which lays hold on the soul, often degenerates into a commerce in relics, medals, of little saints and Virgins. To what, gentlemen, do the ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... ago. I fear I cannot stand the heat this summer. I said 'heat' but do not mean that exactly. This climate is rather pleasant, if we could only provide comforts. It is the constant hard work and miserable way of living that makes ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the barn, which still—as always—whistles with wind and water. Fouillade lights his candle, and by the glimmer of the flame that struggles desperately to take wing and fly away, he sees Labri. He stoops low, with his light over the miserable dog—perhaps it will die first. Labri is sleeping, but feebly, for he opens an eye at once, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... is simply that of a fearless, sensible, and conscientious minister, who took a strong interest in the political drama of his time, and advocated liberty of conscience before even Milton or Locke. But his chief distinction is to have been marked out for revenge in company with Milton by the miserable Restoration Parliament. ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... they could not work her into port. It was reported that a ship in evident distress was outside, and at once a boat's crew of Flinders' men from the Investigator was sent down to assist in towing her to an anchorage. "It was grievous," Flinders said, "to see the miserable condition to which both officers and men were reduced by scurvy, there being not more out of one hundred and seventy, according to the Captain's account, than twelve men capable of doing their duty." Baudin's ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... numbers, was fixed for the distribution of our miserable provisions. The ration of wine was fixed at three quarters[21] a day: we shall say no more of the biscuit: the first distribution consumed it entirely. The day passed over pretty quietly: we conversed on the means which we should employ to save ourselves; we spoke of it as ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... continued two months and gives no sign of cessation. Professor Airy says it will continue five weeks longer. Not a drop of rain has fallen in all that time. We have frosts every night, the hedges are as bare as at Christmas, flowers forget to blow, or if they put forth miserable, infrequent, reluctant blossoms, have no heart, and I have only once heard the nightingale in this place where they abound, and not yet seen a swallow in the spot which takes name from their gatherings. It follows, of course, that the rheumatism, covered by a glut of wet weather, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... still more outraged than your climate. Your mildness, humanity, and benevolence, are no more; cruelty, barbarity, a sanguinary love of torture, are now your distinguishing characteristics; the scream, the yell of the miserable, unresisting African, bleeding under the scourge of relentless power, affords music to your ears! Ah! from what unfriendly cause does this arise? Has the God of heaven, in anger, here changed the order of nature? In every other region, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... law, as well as the stealing or the forgery itself; and that the Prohibition law does not make the drinking or even the buying of liquor, but only the making or selling of it, a crime; but what a miserable refuge this is for a man who professes to believe that the abolition of intoxicating liquor is so supreme a public necessity as to demand the remaking of the Constitution of the United States for the purpose! Not ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... think! She wanted to go prancing about the settlement. She might have heard something there, so I told her she mustn't. It wasn't safe outside our fences, I said. Thereupon she rushes at me with her ten nails up to my eyes. 'You miserable man,' she yells, 'even this place is not safe, and you've sent him up this awful river where he may lose his head. If he dies before forgiving me, Heaven will punish you for your crime . . .' My crime! I ask myself sometimes whether I am dreaming! It will make me ill, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... He did not need to remind her of that. Even when she closed her eyes so that she might not see him, she was aware of it. Even when he was through talking and she did not hear his voice, she was aware of it. And, though she was miserable about it, she would have been more miserable had he ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... into the garden, when she saw a bed which was planted with the most beautiful rampion (rapunzel), and it looked so fresh and green that she longed for it, she quite pined away, and began to look pale and miserable. Then her husband was alarmed, and asked: 'What ails you, dear wife?' 'Ah,' she replied, 'if I can't eat some of the rampion, which is in the garden behind our house, I shall die.' The man, who loved her, thought: 'Sooner than let your wife ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... sheep in nearly every large family; and these two were Gerard's black brothers. Idleness is vitiating: waiting for the death of those we ought to love is vitiating; and these two one-idea'd curs were ready to tear any one to death that should interfere with that miserable inheritance which was their thought by day and their dream by night. Their parents' parsimony was a virtue; it was accompanied by industry, and its motive was love of their offspring; but in these perverse and selfish hearts that homely virtue was perverted ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... down upon the seat of rock. "Now you are mine, Bruennhilde,—Gunther's bride. Withhold not your favour from me now!" She cowers, shattered and stupefied, murmuring, "How could you have helped yourself, miserable woman!" The right of the stronger she recognises, primitive woman, as a right. Fairly vanquished, she must accept the fate of battle,—no dignity, as no success, would pertain to further struggle. When with a gesture of command he points her to her stone chamber, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... roubles in his pocket, Russian officialdom is not so gracious. By the expenditure of a few more coins I got my dog through the Customs without trouble, and had leisure to look about me. A miserable object was being badgered by half a dozen men in uniform, and he—his lean face puckered up into a snarl—was returning them snappish answers; the whole scene suggested some half- starved mongrel being worried by school-boys. A slight ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... you perceive the force of thought. Now consider what miserable thinking is likely to bring you. It, according to the analogy above, can only eventually attract for you in fact the miserable conditions that you have dwelt upon in imagination. If, on the contrary, you think constantly of fine and prosperous things, ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... enmity and the two dukes gave King Birger no end of trouble, there being war between them three times in succession, bringing the country into a miserable state. During the second war King Birger was taken prisoner by his brothers, but he was afterwards set free under the promise that he would no more disturb Sweden, a third part of which ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... my youngest brother Davie, a very little fellow then, for he could not speak plainly, came running in great distress to Kirsty, crying, "Fee, fee!" by which he meant to indicate that a flea was rendering his life miserable. Kirsty at once undressed him and entered on the pursuit. After a successful search, while she was putting on his garments again, little Davie, who had been looking very solemn and thoughtful for some time, said, not in a questioning, but in ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... window-sill, and inside, a canary, in an alcove hung with plants and flowers, sang as if it were the heart of summer. All was warm and comfortable, and it was like a dream that I had just come from the dismal chance of a miserable death. My cloak and cap and leggings had been taken from me when I entered, as courteously as though I had been King Louis himself, and a great chair was drawn solicitously to the fire. All this was done by the servant, after ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... smoke before the flames reached them. But he would allow of no little chamber, and had a stake erected on the summit of the pile, round which an iron chain was fastened, and to the end of this chain the miserable criminal: and truly many hearts were moved with pity when Pug-nose was fastened to the stake, and the pile was lit, seeing how she ran right and left to escape the flames, with the chain clattering after her, in her white death-shift, stitched with black, which Sidonia gave out she made for ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... at such a height for his feet to work on the axle that the machine, of necessity, is very unstable, and is likely to upset if ridden without great caution round a curve. Thirdly, to diminish as far as possible this last objection, miserable little wheels must be employed, which cannot be geared up, that is, made to travel faster than the treadles, and so be equivalent to larger wheels. Therefore, though it is likely that at such low speeds only as it is safe to run such a machine it may move more easily than a machine of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... suddenly before a sentry on duty in the palace, offering him his gold. But the man refused the bribe and instantly called the guard. Fortunately the mass of the people were not near by. Some life-guards who just then came up placed the miserable captive between their horses, and conveyed him as rapidly as they could towards their barracks. But these were at some distance, the news of the capture spread like wild-fire, and they had not gone far before the mob began to gather around ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... to his parents, so neglectful of his affianced, is not to be redeemed. I brought about this betrothal: tell Isaura that I release her from it. I have watched her closely since she was entrapped into it. I know how miserable the thought of it has made her, though, in her sublime devotion to her plighted word, she sought to conceal from me the real state of her heart. If the betrothal bring such sorrow, what would the union do! Tell her this from ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... o'clock in the morning. And in case you are a little short I beg of you to make use of the enclosed, with my best wishes and apologies. You may take it as a loan; I do not care as to that. I am utterly miserable. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... appears to a friendless young writer. And from our brief correspondence I had already pictured you grim and elderly, with huge black brows bunched together as if your eyes were ready to spring upon me miserable. I even thought of adding a white beard,—you do use long graybeard words sometimes, and naturally I had associated them with your chin. You can imagine, then, my relief as I entered your office, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... 374) the common ruin. Plots were hatched for kidnapping the Cardinal and bringing him home to stand his trial for treason. Sir Geoffrey was arrested in August, 1538, was induced, or forced, to turn King's evidence, and as a reward was granted his miserable, conscience-struck life.[1041] The Countess was spared for a while, but Montague mounted the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... artist? Look at your friend, Bertrand Ballard. What has he to live on? What will he have laid by for his old age? How has he managed to live all these years—he and his wife? Miserable hand-to-mouth existence! I'll see my son trying to emulate him! You'll be an artist? And how will you support a wife if you ever have one? You ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... years. These hundred-and-eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mohammed's word at this hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most things sooner than that. One would be entirely at ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... Old Greek Life.—In all of the traditions and writings descriptive of the old Greek social life, with the exception of the Works and Days of Hesiod, the aristocratic class appears uppermost. Hesiod "pictures a hopeless and miserable existence, in which care and the despair of better things tended to make men hard and selfish and to blot out those fairer features which cannot be denied to the courts and palaces of the Iliad and ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... betrayed their secret. Suppose that she was even now telling his wife what had happened in the wood. Well, he must go down to them and flatly deny whatever Norah said. But he tingled and grew hot with a most miserable shame; his heart quailed at the mere notion of the sickening, disgraceful character of such a scene—he, the highly respected Mr. Dale, the good upright religious man, being accused by a little servant girl and having to rebut her accusations in the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... "it is a miserable old thing; but there is no other in the village, and his daughter has got the 'Anadyrski ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... heart, destroys All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake: "When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake! When move in a sweet body fit for life, And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife 40 Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!" The God, dove-footed, glided silently Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed, The taller grasses and full-flowering weed, Until he found a palpitating snake, Bright, and cirque-couchant in ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... no toil or danger. He did not care if the enemy were five or twenty to one. But he was not a workman who never complains of his tools, or an ox content to be muzzled while treading out the corn. He spoke of his soldiers as such poor and miserable creatures as their captains did not dare lead them into battle. Wellington sometimes was as uncomplimentary to his. He bitterly criticized Ormond. Grey had granted him the custody of Barry's Court. He wrote in February, 1581, to Sir Francis Walsingham, with ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... pasture-land in the older States are so poor and worn out that from four to eight acres furnish but a miserable subsistence for a good-sized cow. No animal can flourish under such circumstances. The labor and exertion of feeding are too great, to say nothing of the vastly inferior quality of the grasses in such pastures, compared with those on more recently seeded lands. True economy would dictate that ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... a prospect without horizon, a boundless space into which an all-consuming desire prompted them to plunge. But, fastened to their miserable bodies, they had the desire without ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... matter of fact the girl was rather dazed, at this time, too deeply sunk in a miserable contemplation of her own affairs to be conscious of the immediate discomfort of the moment. She had dreamed many a happy dream, as the years went by, of her father: had thought he would claim her some day, be proud of her. ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... tradition of public service behind it—that brings before the mind a gathering of Greek humanity in the smiling peace of a Greek country place. It is idle to pretend that a man of ability who goes into the schoolmastering profession does not have to make many sacrifices. His salary is usually miserable; his chances of a head mastership must be at present in inverse ratio to the vigour with which he acts on the principles he believes in, for these posts are mostly reserved for the "safe," as the debates of the Head Masters' Conference used to show, until, a few years ago, that body very ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... circumstances," restricted itself to Fare Thee Well; while the Times, in a leading paragraph, feigned to regard "the two extraordinary copies of verses ... the whining stanzas of Fare Thee Well, and the low malignity and miserable doggerel of the companion Sketch," as "an injurious fabrication." On Thursday, the 18th, the Courier, though declining to insert A Sketch, deals temperately and sympathetically with the Fare Thee Well, and quotes the testimony of a "fair correspondent" (? Madame de Stael), that if ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... your consent may in time be obtained—that is the hope; and I shall be a miserable man ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... herself in the deepest sables; she spoke of herself as a wretched widow who could never taste hope again; and of her baby as a poor hapless orphan, as yet unwitting of its misery. She declined to see any visitors, and persisted in being miserable and disconsolate, and in taking lonely walks to brood over her wretchedness. And at the end of that time she electrified her husband's family—all but one—by the announcement that she was about to marry again. Not ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... away and left the place: cautioned of her danger, as I then believed; self-doomed to destruction, as I know now. From that point, I have already traced the succession of events which led me to the astounding discovery at the quicksand. The retrospect is now complete. I may leave the miserable story of Rosanna Spearman—to which, even at this distance of time, I cannot revert without a pang of distress—to suggest for itself all that is here purposely left unsaid. I may pass from the suicide ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... other, after a pause, "I come late to see you, for which I crave pardon; but—I am myself so miserable! See, I ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... and he went down to Salem. As he said good-bye to Kitty he had an impression that she was sorry she had made him go; but she kept up bravely, and put a bold face on it, and saw him off, and went home and cried for an hour, and was perfectly miserable until he came ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... should do. I was to be in the same garden with this lad, who was always sneering at me; and I felt that if I let him have the upper hand he would make my life very much more miserable than it had ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... seemed to be speaking more kindly to me now, and this made me all the more miserable, for I had felt quite at home; and though Shock and I were bad friends, and Ike was not much of a companion, I did not ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... freely pardons, he cannot be accounted mild, but, on the contrary, cruel. He would assuredly be accounted an abominable tyrant if he chose punishments of long duration, and if he eschewed bloodshed only because he was convinced that men would prefer death to a miserable life; and if, finally, the desire to take revenge were more responsible for his severities than the desire to turn to the service of the common weal the penalty that he would inflict on almost all the rebels. Criminals who are executed are considered to expiate their ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... dark, miserable place, very low and very damp; the walls disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches. The water was trickling out of a leaky butt, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with the sickly eagerness of starvation. The grate was screwed up so tight as to hold no more ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... mechanically, he emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He did not eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture certain. But better anything than this passive, meek, miserable waiting. I told Soames that for the honour of the human race he ought to make some show of resistance. He asked what the human race had ever done for him. 'Besides,' he said, 'can't you understand that I'm in his power? You saw him touch me, didn't you? There's an end ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... the day after you performed the grand transformation scene in your brotherhood extravaganza. I should have been greatly amused by what was told me of this prank, if I had not seen that it had caused so much trouble. Sylvia was in a wretched way, and in an extremely bad temper. Marcia was almost as miserable, for she was acting the part of an extinguisher not only to Sylvia's hopes and aspirations, but to her own. So far as I could see there was no way out of the doleful dumps in which you seemed to have plunged yourself and all parties concerned, but I set ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... aloud, but the horror of the prospect had for a moment a so paralysing effect that they could not reply. Leave Sandhurst in the middle of one's course, and become—a clerk! Leave Eton and the fellows, and go to one of those miserable, second-rate shows which all good Etonians regarded with ineffable contempt! Was it possible to suffer ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fable, as I can easily prove. But supposing it to be correct, the Romans would not be the less deserving of pity. It is a miserable consolation to people who have nothing, to be told that their taxes are low. For my part, I would much rather have heavy taxes to pay, and a good deal to pay them with, like the English. What would be thought ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... said, "some of them were, but not like your men, Alessandro. They were very different; miserable looking; they could not read nor write, and they ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... window. He nodded and his nod was returned. Hannah's experience was as gloomy as his own. She did not look happy and somehow the idea that she was not happy pleased him; Abbie Larkin had been altogether too happy; it grated on him. He was miserable and he wanted company of his own kind. He stopped, hesitated, and then turned in at ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... furniture. On its filthy walls hung innumerable bunches of rusty keys, of all sizes, disposed without order. Among them, to the astonishment of Jochonan, hung the keys of his own house, those which he had put to hide when he came on this miserable journey, and he gazed upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... in, little by little, till he got it ashore, when lo and behold! he saw in it a one-eyed, lame-legged ape. Seeing this quoth Khalifah, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah! verily, we are Allah's and to Him we are returning! What meaneth this heart- breaking, miserable ill-luck and hapless fortune? What is come to me this blessed day? But all this is of the destinies of Almighty Allah!" Then he took the ape and tied him with a cord to a tree which grew on the river-bank, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... barely enough vitality to hand your name down to posterity and blast the fair future of Dakota by leaving your trade-mark on future generations, you snivel and whine over your blasted life! If your life had been blasted a little harder twenty years ago, the life of your miserable little wife ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... less, that the newly thrown up shingle of a seashore is hardly less free from soil; beneath these surface-stones is not so much a sand as a cemented rubble, with a small admixture of loam. Vegetation is rare and miserable, some of the absinthium and lavender so low and poor as scarcely to be recognised, and two or three miserable grasses, with Centaurea calycitropes and solstitialis, were the principal plants I could find." A mineralogical examination ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... how glad I am!" cried one of these creatures, while the other, less vital or more miserable, whimpered and gurgled ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Rumania. Had I succeeded in this the situation would be much better. No reasonable man will deny that the Balkan States are neutralizing each other at the present time, which in itself makes the whole situation all the more miserable. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... this morning. To tell the truth that place has lost all charm for me. Whenever I find myself there I get to shivering, and looking around, just like I half expected to see a ghost step out, and pick up one of those miserable coins right before my very eyes—ugh! it's horrible to feel that way, and I used to be so fond of my ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... with particulars of Cynthia's private life, and the awful knowledge became Val's that, if he liked, Crum could go behind. He simply longed to say: "I say, take me!" but dared not, because of his deficiencies; and this made the last act or two almost miserable. On coming out Crum said: "It's half an hour before they close; let's go on to the Pandemonium." They took a hansom to travel the hundred yards, and seats costing seven-and-six apiece because they were going to stand, and walked into the Promenade. It was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that, during all this scene of horror, not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, had not my support been founded in that miserable, though strong, consolation that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined I was perishing with the world itself! At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees, ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... me—how he used to borrow my money and never pay me—and how he used to thrash me and make me obey him, because he was my eldest brother—I shed a torrent of tears at his loss; and then I reflected how miserable my poor mother must be, and ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... eternal snows. There I can love at liberty. There I can breathe my sighs without one tell-tale wind to carry them to the ears, with them to disturb the peace of those whom beyond all mankind I venerate and adore. I may be miserable, I may be given up to ever-during despair. But my patron and his spotless ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... The cold and miserable weather clung to us long. In Paris it snowed heavily, and I was constrained to betake myself in a cab—"chauffe," it is needless to remark—to seek out a kindly dentist, the bitter east wind having sought out and found a weak spot wherein to implant ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Ineffectual restrictions! Vile profanation of oaths! Miserable mockery of legislation! If a bare majority of the voters in any one State may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free from its operation—say here it gives too little, there too much, and operates unequally—here it suffers articles ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... territories about the Niger to consult the Long Juju on various matters. They were led by a circuitous route to Arochuku, and housed in a village. Batches of from ten to twenty were regularly taken away, ostensibly to the Juju, but were either sacrificed or sold into servitude, only a miserable remnant of 130 succeeding in reaching the hands ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... badly. He constantly repeated to himself the old adage, that there was no smoke without fire; and lamented the misfortune that had brought him into close relation with things and people that were so little to his taste. He sat for awhile, with a pen in his hand, at the miserable little substitute for a library table which had been provided for him, and strove to collect his thoughts and go on with his work. But the effort was in vain. Bozzle would be there, presenting his document, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... present time this condition of craving for knowledge is confined, from the point of view of numbers, to a small portion of the people. But the intellectuals of every country are in a minority—in some countries in a miserable minority—and the influence they exercise is never proportionate to their numbers. At the same time the intellectuals of Japan are, in view of the fact that the country has for some short time been open to Western influences, an amazingly large proportion ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... several times, and as often was the miserable man hunted from his place of refuge only to seek another, from which he was in like manner hunted by those who ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... lost them forever. She has begun to burn our seaport towns, secure, I suppose, that we shall never be able to return the outrage in kind.... If she wishes to have us subjects ... she is now giving us such miserable specimens of her government that we shall ever detest and avoid it, as a combination of robbery, murder, famine, fire, and pestilence." His humor could not be altogether repressed, but there were sternness and bitterness underlying it: "Tell our dear, good friend, Dr. Price, who sometimes ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of God," Jack continued, nodding to a pony with a low-hung head and pendant lip, whose lugubrious expression was exaggerated by a scar. "He looks it, don't you think?—always miserable, whether his nose is in the oats or we run out of water. He is our sad philosopher, who has just as dependable a gait as P.D. I have many theories about the psychology of his ego. Sometimes I explain it by a desire ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... there be no Ship fitted up for the Reception of sick Officers, those who are taken ill on Expeditions must be in a most miserable Situation; as there is no Place to receive them in the common Hospital Ships, they must remain almost without Assistance in a crowded Cabin amongst People in Health; as was the Case in some of our Expeditions during the ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... deplorable as is their condition, it is still not so wretched as Colonizationists and slaveholders, for obvious reasons, are fond of representing it. It is not true that free negroes are "more vicious and miserable than slaves can be,"[97] nor that "it would be as humane to throw slaves from the decks of the middle passage, as to set them free in this country,"[98] nor that "a sudden and universal emancipation without colonization, would be a greater CURSE to the slaves ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... malice no longer irritated him like nettles. He looked with curiosity upon them and began to understand. The agony of his unconscious fury was replaced by a clear contemplation of the separating abyss; and this made him even more miserable. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... roi de Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper, nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out, and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of himself and of how to get ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... desire to render me miserable for life?" he asked so seriously that at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush and pallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... But, somehow, word got around, and the lives of them men were made miserable by the questions they were asked about the gold on the island, and when they intended to go ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... observed Martin; "I'd rather pass the winter hunting beavers, than pass it at Quebec, miserable as you may ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... erected that of St. Stephen. Ducarel's description of it, which I have just seen in a copy of the "Anglo-Norman Antiquities," in a bookseller's shop, is sufficiently meager. His plates are also sufficiently miserable: but things are strangely altered since his time. The nave of the church is occupied by a manufactory for making cordage, or twine: and upward of a hundred lads are now busied in their flaxen occupations, where formerly the nun knelt before the cross, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... not say so, but he feared just that. What miserable black luck! Almost I threw the rod and reel overboard. Some sense, however, prevented me from such an absurdity. And as I worked the tuna closer and closer I grew absolutely sick with disappointment. The ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... into a harsh laugh. "And do you think I care for that? That having been driven by a woman's perfidy into crime I am going to bridle my tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her, and if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... had rented about thirty boys, with whom he was trying to work the completely decayed plantation. Many acres were covered with coffee trees, but owing to the miserable management of the French company, the planters had changed continually and the system of planting just as often. Every manager had abandoned the work of his predecessor and begun planting anew on a different system, so that now there was an immense tract of land planted which had never ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... come, was erected at the cost of his mistress, the Countess of Albany, who herself sat to Canova for the figure of bereaved Italy. This curious and unfortunate woman became, at the age of nineteen, the wife of the Young Pretender, twenty-seven years after the '45, and led a miserable existence with him (due chiefly to his depravity, but a little, she always held, to the circumstance that they chose Good Friday for their wedding day) until Alfieri fell in love with her and offered his protection. Together ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... 9. The miserable ends of those who were opposed to the honour of the Virgin. 1. The death of Julian the Apostate, very oddly represented; he lies on an altar, transfixed by an arrow, as a victim; St. Mercurius in the air. (For this legend ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... over the advantageous offer that had been made to me. It was added: 'I have come to know your reply; I will keep my promise if you will give your consent; if, on the contrary, you refuse, you will be the most miserable girl in the world, and all sorts of mischances will happen to you.' I replied: 'If there were no God I would fear those threats; I am consecrated to Him.' It was replied to me: 'You will not get much help from God; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "Miserable that you are, you throw yourself at Caesar's feet asking only permission to be his slave. You sought for yourself that state of slavery which it has ever been easy for you to endure. Had you any command from the Roman people to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Anglais! How dare you venture here? This is our island, far better than your miserable Malta. We have taken possession of it, and will hold it against all the world. Begone with you, or we will sink you, and your ship to the bottom; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... position where he might listen to their converse while he pursued his avocation. Their words distil into his soul; they speak the language of Canaan; they talk of holy enjoyments, the result of being born again, acknowledging their miserable state by nature, and how freely and undeservedly God had visited their hearts with pardoning mercy, and supported them while suffering the assaults and suggestions of Satan; how they had been borne up in every dark, cloudy, stormy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... these meditations by a wild tumult which came up from the slaves' hall some distance off and reached her ears in the women's sitting-room. Could her grandmother have opened the wine stores all too freely; were the miserable wretches already drunk? ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to say you pay anything for that old rookery!" said a slug, who was characteristically insinuating himself between the stems of the celery intended for dinner. "A miserable old shanty like that, without stables, grounds, or ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... inconsiderate of others; everlastingly complaining, and, in herself, drearily uninteresting. We travelled down in the omnibus from Ober-Ammergau with three perfect specimens of the species, accompanied by the usual miserable-looking man, who has had all the life talked out of him. They were grumbling the whole of the way at having been put to ride in an omnibus. It seemed that they had never been so insulted in their lives before, and they took care to let everybody in the vehicle know that they had paid ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... do, Karl did not know. He was naturally a stupid sort of lad, and what little sense nature had given him, had been nearly beaten out of him by harsh treatment. He had had a miserable life of it, and had never found himself so comfortable as he was now with his aunt and her husband. They were kind to him, because they wanted to make use of him. He did not want to offend them, nor to leave them; for if he did, he must return home again, which he dreaded ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various |
