"Wretched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taunting reply or heed the sneer. He was still staring at this counterpart of himself, this very image yet who was not himself, but a human derelict, a wretched, sodden outcast. All at once, an overwhelming, horrible suggestion rushed across his brain. Could it be, was it—his long lost twin brother? Almost gasping, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... good talker. Indeed, I tried to induce him to go on and tell the story while I showed the pictures, but this he refused to do. I may explain that it was a talk illustrated by stereopticon. The views were good, but the lantern, a thirty-shilling affair, was wretched, and had only an oil-lamp ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... is the condemnation, that light hath come into the world, and men prefer darkness to light, because their deeds are evil." And if this has been your sin, so has it been your misery. In exact proportion as you thus "hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord," you become wretched and unsatisfied. No wonder! for with whom does the man work when he works in opposition to the will of God? In refusing to serve God, he serves Satan, and becomes a "worker together" with "the spirit who now worketh in the children ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... welcome! But I have these wretched vapours so, that I wish I might be excused—I wish I might be allowed to take an airing in the chariot for two or three hours; for I shall not be fit to be seen by such—ladies," said ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... I have witnessed of misery are something dreadful; and I must say that your wish for me to return with the work incomplete would not be expressed if you saw the state of these poor people. The horrible furtive looks of the wretched inhabitants hovering about one's boats haunts me.... I hope to get the Shanghai people to assist, but they do not see these things: and to read that there are human beings eating human flesh produces less effect than if they ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... shrouding snows. The living were dragging their slow way onward through this ghastly array of the dead, in a seemingly endless procession of wagons, drawn by half starved oxen, and bearing sick and feeble human beings and loads of household goods. Beside the laden vehicles the wretched, famine-stricken, worn-out fugitives walked, pushing forward in unceasing fear of their ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... two later I received a request, pitched in an almost slanderously sceptical tone, for more detailed information. I humoured them, and there ensued a ding-dong correspondence, in which that wretched Ref. No. was bandied backwards and forwards with nauseating reiteration, and of which the following are the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... seems to have been the result of cool deliberation. Richard Smith, a bookbinder, and prisoner for debt within the liberties of the king's bench, persuaded his wife to follow his example in making away with herself, after they had murdered their little infant. This wretched pair were, in the month of April, found hanging in their bed-chamber, at about a yard's distance from each other; and in a separate apartment the child lay dead in a cradle. They left two papers enclosed in a short letter to their landlord, whose kindness they implored ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... render life agreeable, and the sciences which elevate the mind! See education spreading the lights of religion, morality, and general information into every cottage in this wide extent of our Territories and States! Behold it as the asylum where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge and support! Look on this picture of happiness and honor, and say, WE, TOO, ARE CITIZENS OF AMERICA—Carolina is one of these proud States her arms have defended—her best blood has cemented this happy Union! And then add, if you can, without horror and remorse, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... from America, and whose smoke now began to perfume, or, according to James, to poison, the air of England. His Majesty had all the superstitions of the age, and one of his earliest acts was the passage of a statute punishing witchcraft with death. Under that law many a wretched woman perished on the scaffold, whose only crime was that she was old, ugly, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... myriads of Tipperary, or like one of Napoleon's armies, is a noble sight and a mighty power; but a scolding, hooting mob, which meets to make a noise, and runs away from a stick, a horse, or a sabre, is a wretched affair. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... shouldn't I be a gentleman?' Even the girls in this town are taught to look upon Northerners as boors. I had only to pick up an old woman, and face a bully, when, as if in utter surprise that one of my ilk should be so grandly heroic, I heard the words, 'You are a gentleman.' You see it was my wretched egotism that got me into the scrape. When I thought of you, not myself, I saw the truth at once, and felt like going back to the expressman and meekly asking him to give ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... bunch of boys. Never saw anything to equal you," gasped the engineer. "I can't forgive myself for getting you into this wretched mix-up." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... and monks may be turned over even to the bigots of Oxford; and the wretched Travis still smarts under the lash of the merciless Porson. I consider Mr. Porson's answer to Archdeacon Travis as the most acute and accurate piece of criticism which has appeared since the days of Bentley. His strictures are founded in argument, enriched with learning, and enlivened with ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... to get married—the Bishop told him so. It creates confidence, like with young doctors. And if you really think mother never will—Of course I could keep house for him, and hold the Mothers' Meetings and all, and make him more comfortable than that wretched Dilsey." ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... between them, were not able to give an account of that fox when they had done with him. But if he should find no such fox—if he, the master of the Galway hounds, should have ridden backwards and forwards across County Galway, and have been impeded altogether in his efforts by wretched Landleaguers, then—as he thought—a final day would have to ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... speak so bitterly. It was clear that opposition had gone far enough. Sim's watery eyes were never for an instant still. Full of a sickening apprehension, they cast furtive glances into every face. The poor creature seemed determined to gather up into his wretched breast the scorn that was blasting it. The turf on the hearth gave out a great heat, but the tailor shivered as with cold. Then Ralph reached the coat and cap, and, after satisfying himself that they were dry, he handed them back to Sim, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... am arm'd and well prepar'd. Give me your hand, Bassanio: fare you well.! Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you, For herein Fortune shows herself more kind Than is her custom: it is still her use To let the wretched man outlive his wealth, To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow An age of poverty; from which lingering penance Of such misery doth she cut me off. Commend me to your honourable wife: Tell her the process of Antonio's end; Say how I lov'd you; speak me fair in death; And, ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be sufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless artisan who he fancied had done him some small ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he said. "The Apache Chief! Is this what you read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these things for a drink. I'm surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could understand it if you were... National School boys. Now, Dillon, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... efficiency and discipline with the iron bound box and crew of "horse marines" which I had just left. But it was in no spirit of depreciation of the gallantry of my comrades, for I was quite sure that they would stand to their guns. The wretched "bowl of Gotham" which had no efficient motive power, and which could not even be got under way, when anchored, without slipping the chain cable, caused the misgivings. It is no disparagement to the prowess of the ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Pope's.(253) My Lord Hervey pretended not to thank him. I am told the edition has waited, because Warburton has cancelled above a hundred sheets (in which he had inserted notes) since the publication of the Canons of Criticism.(254) The new history of Christina is a most wretched piece of trumpery, stuffed with foolish letters and confutations of Mademoiselle de Montpensier and Madame de Motteville. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... if he had let them get in with him. Among other things they would have told him that, if there was any truth in his opinions, neither man nor woman ought to become a father or mother at all, inasmuch as their doing so would probably entail eternity of torture on the wretched creature whom they were launching into the world. Life in this world is risk enough to inflict on another person who has not been consulted in the matter, but death will give quittance in full. To weaken our faith ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... long denied, rushed down like summer rain as she clasped the child in her arms. Dame Perrine wandered to and fro, like one beside herself, not only at her Lady's wretched accommodations, but at the ill omens of the moonlight illumination, of the owls who snapped and hissed incessantly over the hay, and above all the tears over the babe's face. She tried to remonstrate with Eustacie, but was answered only, 'Let me weep! ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... told Ross, first of all, meaning to have a quiet talk with him to clear the ground before arousing her own family; but he was suddenly away just as she opened the subject, by a man on a wheel—some wretched business about the store of course—and sent word that night that he could not come up again. Couldn't come up the next night either. Two long days—two long evenings without seeing him. Well—if she went away she'd have to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... almost to a close in these fearful struggles and fatal preparations; and the twilight was falling, when, exhausted and in tears, the wretched man folded, with trembling hands, a letter he had penned to his wife. This done, he threw himself, weak as a child, upon the bed, and, ere conscious that sleep was stealing upon him, ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... panniers and spices and bags with his wonderful recital of that vast and busy scene one would imagine that he was describing a kitchen. Let us suppose that in that show of magnificence some one had taken a set of wretched baskets and bags and placed them in the midst, among vessels of gold, jewelled bowls, silver plate, and tents and goblets of gold; how incongruous would have seemed the effect! Now just in the same way these petty words, introduced out of season, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... We had a wretched voyage, good weather, but such a petaudiere of a ship. I am competent to describe the horrors of the middle passage—hunger, suffocation, dirt, and such canaille, high and low, on board. The only gentleman was a poor Moor going to Mecca (who stowed his wife ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... reflected bitterly, I had but one satisfaction. Wretched as I felt, I knew that it had spared Craig from slowing up on the case at just the ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... is not the only lion of Bourges; the house of Jacques Coeur is an object of interest scarcely less positive. This remarkable man had a very strange history, and he too was "broken," like the wretched soldier whom I did not stay to see. He has been re- habilitated, however, by an age which does not fear the imputation of paradox, and a marble statue of him ornaments the street in front of his house. To interpret him according to this image - a womanish figure in a long ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... a cry. It took some time to reduce the town to ashes, and the lookers-on enjoyed the spectacle immensely, cheering as each house fell, dancing like wild Indians when the steeple flamed aloft, and actually casting one wretched little churn-shaped lady, who had escaped to the suburbs, into the very heart of ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... before, after Mrs. Morrison's visit, she had been wretched enough, spending most of it walking very fast, as driven spirits do, with Fritzing for miles across the bleak and blowy moor, by turns contrite and rebellious, one moment ready to admit she was a miserable sinner, the next indignantly ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... invented the pedal! I mean the pedal which raises the dampers on the piano. A grand acquisition, indeed, for modern times! Good heavens! Our piano performers must have lost their sense of hearing! What is all this growling and buzzing? Alas, it is only the groaning of the wretched piano-forte, upon which one of the modern virtuosos, with a heavy beard and long hanging locks, whose hearing has deserted him, is blustering away on a bravoura piece, with the pedal incessantly raised,—with inward satisfaction and vain self-assertion! Truly time brings into use a great ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... gentle mockery; and nothing further came of it. Once, however, he really came near to strapping his trunk in good earnest, when, after a three years' course of architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paul refused to compete for the Prix de Rome. The father could scarcely speak for indignation. 'Wretched boy! It is the Prix de Rome! You cannot know; you do not understand. The Prix de Rome! Get that, and it means the Institute!' Little the young man cared. What he wanted was wealth, and wealth the Institute does not bestow, as might be seen in his father, his grandfather, and ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Mount Olympus. Instead he preferred to spend his time on the earth, helping men to find easier and better ways of living. For the children of earth were not happy as they had been in the golden days when Saturn ruled. Indeed, they were very poor and wretched and cold, without fire, without food, and with no shelter ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... and frankly. He did visit at the Ewes, but he found the plainest opportunities ready made for him during one fortnight at Hurlton, to come in contact with Joanna Crawfurd. She had gone there to look after Conny, suborned by Mrs. Maxwell, and laid up with a sore throat, and forlorn and wretched if one of her sisters was ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... went away in haste, as the process had already occupied half an hour, and I was telephoning to avoid delay. Five minutes later I passed the bureau. The landlord was still at that wretched instrument. I hurried by without daring to look up, fearing that I should be appealed to again. I dared not even ask whether the message ever reached the office ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... scarce any society so wretched as to be destitute of some sort of weak provision against the injustice of their governors. Religious institutions, favourite prejudices, national manners, have in different countries, with unequal degrees of force, checked ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... to understand, Wife, that our customs are different from those of Egypt. There I was happy as a slave and you were held to be beautiful as the Cup of the holy Tanofir, also learned. Here I am wretched as a king and you are held to be ugly, also ignorant as a stranger. Oh! do not answer, I pray you, but learn that all goes well. For the time you are accepted as my wife, subject to the decision of a council of matrons, aged ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... bless the union!" sighed the empress. "I shall be wretched until I know how it is to terminate, and day and night I shall pray to the Lord that He preserve my people from the horrors ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... companie, still my care hath bin To haue her matcht, and hauing now prouided A Gentleman of Noble Parentage, Of faire Demeanes, Youthfull, and Nobly Allied, Stuft as they say with Honourable parts, Proportion'd as ones thought would wish a man, And then to haue a wretched puling foole, A whining mammet, in her Fortunes tender, To answer, Ile not wed, I cannot Loue: I am too young, I pray you pardon me. But, and you will not wed, Ile pardon you. Graze where you will, you shall not house with me: Looke too't, thinke on't, I do not vse to iest. Thursday ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... stroke or two he managed to propel their craft as far as the rock. They scrambled up on it, and then he tried to haul the boat around the miniature islet; but the more he hauled, the quicker the water seemed to run away, and the deeper the wretched thing stuck in the mud. He jumped in again, and made an effort to push her off with an oar; meanwhile Robinette nearly fell off the rock in her efforts to get the head of the boat around towards the current again, and making a frantic plunge ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... have said, a horse of huge proportions, and needed "steadying" at the start, but the good deacon had no experience with the "ribbons," and was therefore utterly unskilled in the matter of driving; and so it came about that old Jack was so confused at the start that he made a most awkward and wretched appearance in his effort to get off, being all "mixed up," as the saying is,—so much so that the crowd roared at his ungainly efforts, and his flying rivals were twenty rods away before he even got started. But at last he got his huge body in a straight line, and, leaving ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... and ascertain what is what with some distinctness. I suffer also terribly from the solitary existence I have all along had; it is becoming a kind of passion with me, to feel myself among my brothers. And then, How? Alas! I care not a doit for Radicalism, nay I feel it to be a wretched necessity, unfit for me; Conservatism being not unfit only but false for me: yet these two are the grand Categories under which all English spiritual activity that so much as thinks remuneration possible must range itself. I look around accordingly ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... impute the loss of this battle to the misconduct of Villeroy, who, it must be owned, made a most wretched disposition. When he returned to Versailles, where he expected to meet with nothing else but reproaches, Louis received him without the least mark of displeasure, saying, "Mr. Mareschal, you and I are too old to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... becomes an interesting question to determine what may be the nature of the food which produced the same character in the ancient Egyptian and the modern Australian. Did the fathers of science live on barks and roots, like the wretched Australian? Although attrition may cause this singular appearance of the teeth, the real question is, why does the lower jaw so perfectly and exactly meet its fellow? And is this ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... priest found no word of praise for my beautiful pig! You're a thief, a cheat! You took my dear little pig, which all the other gods might envy the mother of Eros, put in its place a wretched animal just like yourself, and falsely said it came from me. Oh, I see through the whole game! That fine Mopsus was your accomplice; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the wretched text, it remained for the translation to discover the depths of Thorkelin's ignorance. It will be seen by reading the extract given from the translation that he did not even perceive that two men were swimming in the sea. It is to be remembered, too, that ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... him. The bewilderment, of it all, with my long insensibility and wet garments, had taken from me either the power of motion or of volition, I do not know which: speechless in the moonlight, I must have looked to the wretched ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... he went, and I was left there wretched in my loneliness and completely mystified. The house seemed full of grim shadows now that she, the sun of my life, had gone out of it. Old Browning moved about silent as a ghost, watching me, I ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... render myself thoroughly wretched, by attempting to extricate the articles necessary for a change of dress from the very bottom of my trunk, where, according to the nature of such things, they had hidden themselves; grammars, lexicons, and other like "Amenities of Literature," being the things that came to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... London. You remember how I came to see you. I had very little money, just twenty pounds, and mother, who had only fifty pounds a year, could not help me, and I was so wretched that I did not know what to do. I went from one place to another offering myself as teacher, although I hated teaching and I could not teach well; but no one wanted me, and I was in despair, and I ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... you're so ready to be married to any one, and after you've been married you don't dare marry any one." Then she took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "Oh, dear," she sobbed, "it doesn't seem as if I could possibly be more wretched with him than ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... firmer hold of the cork grips of his handlebars—the road being in a wretched condition after the recent hauling of the crop—and quickened his pace. He told himself that, no matter what the time was, he would not stop for luncheon at the ranch house, but would push on to Guadalajara and have a Spanish dinner ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... left us. It was, he said, the day of the election for President. How wretched that America should not be governed by hereditary sovereigns and an order ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... But whosoever had dared to go and unloose her would have been a dead man. Fright, fatigue, and exertion brought on her delivery. The wolves, attracted by her cries, came and consumed the fruit of her womb, and then devoured alive the body of the wretched creature. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... The wretched George Deaves played with the objects on his desk. "All very well to say I'll send it," he muttered. "But where am I going to get it? ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... happy race! soon raised and soon depress'd, Your days all pass'd in jeopardy and jest; Poor without prudence, with afflictions vain, Not warn'd by misery, not enrich'd by gain; Whom Justice, pitying, chides from place to place, A wandering, careless, wretched, merry race, Whose cheerful looks assume, and play the parts Of happy rovers with repining hearts; Then cast off care, and in the mimic pain Of tragic woe feel spirits light and vain, Distress and hope—the mind's the body's wear, The man's affliction, and the actor's tear: Alternate times of fasting ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... could divine the intention of the wretched man he was attacked by his bayonet. It was solely the rearing of a frightened horse that saved the Captain's life; the thrust of the bayonet grazed the animal's neck. At the same moment the terrible sword-cut of ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... hardest and cruelest sting Was that father once called you a horrid old thing: He said, 'What a battered and wretched old fright! Do take her away, pray, out of ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not to be made of such statements, or the still stronger expressions of Jacqueline herself in her letters regarding her brother’s final conversion. When she speaks of “wretched attachments” binding him to the world, and of his being still “haunted by the smell of the mud which he had embraced with such empressement,” {64} we are to remember that she speaks not only out of the severity of her own youthful judgment, (and what judgment ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Fitzjames, 'can fail to be touched' when he sees an eminent lawyer 'bending the whole force of his mind to understand the confused, bewildered, wearisome, and half-articulate mixture of question and statement which some wretched clown pours out in the agony of his terror and confusion.' The latitude allowed in such cases is highly honourable. 'Hardly anything short of wilful misbehaviour, such as gross insults to the court or abuse of a witness, will draw upon (the prisoner) the mildest ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... a very vexatious and improper lawsuit their mother brought against me. Do you know that some wretched impostor, who, it appears, is a convict broke loose before his time, has threatened me with another, on the part of one of those young men? You never heard anything ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the third son. I haven't as much pocket-money in a month as Oswald gets through in a week. Now that microscope costs twenty pounds, and if I were to ask the governor for it, he wouldn't give it to me, but he would sigh and look wretched at being obliged to refuse. He's a kind-hearted fellow, you know, who doesn't like to say 'No,' and I hate to worry him. Still—that microscope! I must have it. By hook or by crook, I must have it. I've set my ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... HAMET was implicitly obedient, as to the revelations of the Prophet; but, like his instructions, it was neglected by ALMORAN, who became every moment more wretched. He had a graceful person, and a vigorous mind; he was in the bloom of youth, and had a constitution that promised him length of days; he had power which princes were emulous to obey, and wealth by which whatever could administer to luxury might be bought, ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... suddenly rang out through the hushed court-room, and the crowd, turning involuntarily at the familiar name of Eleanor Houghton Mainwaring towards the seat occupied by Mrs. LaGrange, saw that wretched woman sink, with a low, despairing moan, unconscious to the floor. As several sprang to the assistance of the unfortunate woman, Mr. Scott, turning swiftly towards the ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... hostess and bow to the people present. Leave the room sideways, so as not to turn your back upon the company, and bow to them as you reach the door, thus bowing yourself out. Remember, do not be a lingerer or a sitter. No men are more dreaded in society than these wretched bores. The first arrivals leave first. Freezing out is ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... his army up the narrow valleys into the heart of the Alps. The snow had already fallen thickly upon the upper part of the mountains, and the Carthaginians shuddered at the sight of these lofty summits, these wild, craggy, and forbidding wastes. The appearance of the wretched huts of the inhabitants, of the people themselves, unshaved and unkempt and clad in sheepskins, and of the flocks and herds gathering in sheltered spots and crowding together to resist the effects of the already extreme cold, struck the Carthaginian troops with dismay. Large bodies of the mountaineers ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... 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
... own opinion, their initiative extended over a vast field and in all directions. They seriously maintained that they were the first to introduce the poor into French fiction, the first to awaken the sentiment of pity for the wretched; they admitted the priority of Dickens, but they apparently forgot that they had likewise been anticipated by George Sand—that George Sand whose merits it took them twenty years to recognise. They forgot, too, that compassion ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... wretched fellow alive," he said. "If ever there was a child of misfortune, it's me. I can only throw myself on the mercy of the court and grovel—yes, grovel —if you'll show me a place to grovel ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... these days, Grindhusen,' says he to me. 'And what's a man to do; can you tell me that now?' 'No,' says I, 'but Inspector knows himself,' says I. Those very words I said. 'I wish to Heaven I did,' says he again. 'But it's all these wretched women,' says he. 'If it's women,' says I, 'why, there's no doing anything with them,' says I. 'No, indeed, you're right there!' says he. 'The only way's to give them what they were made for, and a good round slap on the backside into the ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... Rainy River there was a small out-station of the Hudson Bay Company kept by a man named Morrisseau, a brother of my boatman. As we approached this little post it was announced to us by an Indian that Morrisseau had that morning lost a child. It was a place so wretched looking that its name of Hungery Hall seemed ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... remember the melancholy face with which the good old rector, the very first evening we spent together, related to me in confidence that he had three years' dues in arrear to him from Lexley Hall; but that so wretched was said to be the state of Sir Laurence's embarrassments, that, for more than a year, his dread of arrest had kept him a close prisoner in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... and my deep and endless sighs shall stir unceasingly the leaves of these mountain trees, in testimony and token of the pain my persecuted heart is suffering. Oh, ye rural deities, whoever ye be that haunt this lone spot, give ear to the complaint of a wretched lover whom long absence and brooding jealousy have driven to bewail his fate among these wilds and complain of the hard heart of that fair and ungrateful one, the end and limit of all human beauty! Oh, ye wood nymphs and dryads, that dwell in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to move about, I was pinned to my chair, and the ceiling was apparently descending upon me. With a shock of horrified memory I recalled the old torture of the 'living tomb' practised by the Spanish Inquisition, when the wretched victim was compelled to watch the walls of his prison slowly narrowing round him inch by inch till he was crushed to death. How could I be sure that no such cruelties were used among the mysterious members of a mysterious Brotherhood, whose avowed object of study was the searching out of ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... witnesses to the occurrence except the Indian wife. But he derived small comfort from this. Alessandro's face haunted him, and also the memory of Ramona's, as she lay tossing and moaning in the wretched Cahuilla hovel. He knew that only her continued illness, or her death, could explain her not having come to the trial. The Indians would have brought her in their arms all the way, if she had been alive and in possession ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... face in his hands, utterly wretched, beginning already to see the great circle of confusion that he had caused. Mrs. Parsons looked at him and looked at her husband. Presently she went up ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... classical authorities. Helen of Troy calls herself by a sad name, "[Greek: kuon hos eimi]," dog (feminine) as I am—her wrongs must, therefore, go to no account. I know but of one who really takes it in hand to catalogue them, and she is Medea. "We women," says she, "are the most wretched of living creatures." For first—of women—she must buy her husband, pay for him with all she has—secondly, when she has bought him, she has bought a master, one to lord it over her very person—thirdly, the danger of buying a bad one—fourthly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... great advantage of health in the severe winters. One wishes very heartily that the prohibition might be made perpetual, for only so will fur become the native wear again. It is good to see the children, particularly, in beaver coats and breeches instead of the wretched cotton that otherwise is almost their only garb. Would it be altogether beyond reason to hope that a measure which was enacted to prevent the extermination of an animal might be perpetuated on behalf of the survival of an interesting ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... in Jamaica proved to be very discouraging material, and the army was soon in a wretched state. The officers and soldiers plundered and mutinied instead of working and planting. Their wastefulness led to scarcity of food, and scarcity of food brought disease and death.[139] They wished to force the Protector to recall ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... most brilliant part; he is willing to renounce honors, fame, and fortune, and will consent to live humbly and be forgotten, like the poor for whom he founded the Conferences de Saint-Vincent de Paul, and whom he so often visited in their wretched lodgings; but let him at least dwell a little longer in his home, that he may see his daughter grow up, and pass a few years more with the companion of his choice. Finally, he is impassioned by his Faith, he no longer reasons with Heaven, but says: ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... length. My fortunes underwent the variations which befall all. Sometimes I was rich one day, and poor the next. I never thought too exclusively of money, believing rather that we were born to be happy, and that the surest way to be wretched is to prize it overmuch. Had I done so, I should have mourned over many a promising speculation proving a failure, over many a pan of preserves or guava jelly burnt in the making; and perhaps lost my mind when ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... though I knew well he wasn't thinking about himself. I don't believe Jim ever looked miserable for so long since he was born. Whatever happened to him before he'd have a cry or a fight, and it would be over. But now his poor old face looked that wretched and miserable, as if he'd never smile again as long as he lived. He didn't seem to care where they took him; and when the old horse stumbled and close upon fell ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... too, full to the brim; at least, the second one was; no wretched burglarious Da Silvestra had been filling goat-skins out of that. As for the third chest, it was only about a fourth full, but the stones were all picked ones; none less than twenty carats, and some of them as large as pigeon-eggs. ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... was their god, The withered Cromm with many mists... To him without glory They would kill their piteous wretched offspring, With much wailing and peril, To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich. Milk and corn They would ask from him speedily In return for a third of their healthy issue, Great was the horror and fear of him. To him noble Gaels would ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days, the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might not come to distract him from his supreme efforts ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of General Washington were no longer exhibited to the public eye, his time continued to be usefully employed. The judicious cultivation of the earth is justly placed among the most valuable sources of national prosperity, and nothing could be more wretched than the general state of agriculture in America. To its melioration by examples which might be followed, and by the introduction of systems adapted to the soil, the climate, and to the situation of the people, the energies ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... half for the roses on my ward's cheeks, did you? Thank you, but I'll not part with her even at that price." How high he would hold his head before those young dandies who fancied they could buy Fanny's love for a few shameful thousands of florins, wretched beggars that they were! ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... it, you wretched blight, you miserable weed!" said Mr. Brewster, having recovered enough breath to be going on with. He glowered at his son-in-law despondently. "I might have, expected it! If I was at the North Pole, I could count on ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... taken to it first to obtain relief from intense bodily suffering; and he seriously contemplated entering a private insane asylum as the surest means of its removal. His remorse was terrible and perpetual; he was "rolling rudderless," "the wreck of what he once was," "wretched, helpless, and hopeless." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... 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 ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... suffering or anguish." "The poor are in poverty; the sick are in misery." "Poverty is the condition of being very poor financially; misery is a feeling which any class of people can have." "One who is poor is in poverty; one who is wretched or doesn't enjoy life is in misery." "Poverty comes from lack of money; misery, from lack of happiness or comfort." "Misery means distress. It can come from ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... Christianity that we mean Christ's Christianity. Other versions are either caricatures, or exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or shortsighted and surface readings. For the most part their attainment is hopeless and the results wretched. But I care not who the person is, or through what vale of tears he has passed, or is about to pass, there is a new life for him along ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... church of the twentieth century, would be constrained to say: "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.... Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... cold and wretched that he was tempted to call out to them—the sight of Harry was like a light in the darkness—but the temptation was gone in an instant. His way lay in another direction. What they wished he did not ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... last conquest. She had known the boy only a few weeks. Ward had brought him home for a visit, at Easter, but Isabelle, besides admiring his unusual beauty and identifying him with the Pope fortune, had paid him small attention. She had been absorbed then in the wretched conclusion of the Foster affair. Derrick Foster had been distressing and annoying her unmercifully. After the warm and delightful friendship of several months, after luncheons and teas, opera and concerts in the greatest harmony, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... chestnuts and feel lonely.' And I asked my little girl what she did, and she said—'I cry till you come back again.' There's the difference between men and women. I am like my poor Lilian. You, Sara, if you could be wretched, would be more ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... she did. She went to live in one of the poorest and most wretched parts of Chicago. There she furnished her house exactly as she would if it had been in some beautiful street. She called her home a Settlement, and invited her neighbors to come in daily ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... exertion, kept in good health. Sailing by night as well as day, they caught up with the rest of the flotilla before dawn on the second morning afterwards, the men being roused from their watch-fires by the cries of "help poor Jennings," as the wretched and worn-out survivors in the disabled boat caught the first glimpse of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Senators. So if every one had your aims, millions would starve. Yet millions are working happily, and earning wages which buy them what they need, if their ideas are not too selfish. They do not need to bow to wretched, cringing politics." ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... was strange. The sequel to her memoirs, in English, avers that in 1791 a bailiff came to arrest her for a debt of 30l. She gave him a bottle of wine, slipped from the room, and locked him in. But he managed to get out, and discovered the wretched woman in a chamber in 'the two-pair back.' She threw up the window, leaped out, struck against a tree, broke one knee, shattered one thigh, knocked one eye out, yet was recovering, when, on August 21, 1791, she partook too freely of mulberries (to which she was very ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... could know his weakness better than the Spanish Admiral. He had fine ships and fine guns, but his crews were undisciplined. They were wretched marksmen and in no respect to be compared with our gunners, who demonstrated in the War of 1812 that they have no equals in the whole world. Knowing all this, Admiral Cervera was loth to venture out of the harbor of Santiago, and the ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... with two troopers at his heels came clanking in to the hut, and the wretched creature, half swooning, was dragged ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... husband?" It has been said that so frantic were her struggles, that it was with main force they had to hold her in the carriage which conveyed her into the city. Much has been written of the pathetic and voiceless woe of this wretched and sorrow-stricken woman, but we will ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... 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 as ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... of human life as it is found in the savage, in the barbarian, and in the civilized man, fixes us more unalterably in our belief in the worth of progress. The savage and the barbarian are hopelessly ignorant, and therefore weak and wretched, since ignorance is the chief source of man's misery. "My people," says the prophet, "are destroyed for lack of knowledge." From ignorance rather than from depravity have sprung the most appalling crimes, the most pernicious vices. In darkness of mind men ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... arch-fiend himself, but with Mendouca it only had the effect of goading him into a state of mad, ungovernable fury. "See," he exclaimed at last, stalking up to me and grasping me savagely by the arm—"see the result of the thrice accursed meddlesome policy of your wretched, contemptible little England and the countries who have united with her in the hopeless task of suppressing the slave-trade! But for that, these negroes might have been comfortably stowed in three or four ships, instead of being packed like herrings ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... crimes and fears of Lord Bellingham made supremely wretched, we must rank his amiable and repentant son, who, languishing to cleanse his house from the foul stain of usurpation, had long resolved to do justice to his injured uncle, and to relinquish his surreptitious honours to Eustace, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... part of the prison was the "Press Yard," the place then allotted to convicts cast for death. There were as many as sixty or seventy sometimes within these narrow limits, and most were kept six months and more thus hovering between a wretched existence and a shameful death. Men in momentary expectation of being hanged rubbed shoulders with others still hoping for reprieve. If the first were seriously inclined, they were quite debarred from private religious meditation, but consorted, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... on the other theory though," she pointed out to him. "Think of the people you've patched together just so that they can live at most another wretched ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... The lift had stopped, you know. I was frightfully angry at him and said something cruel, but the next morning he looked so white and wretched and wrote me such a pathetic letter, asking me to forgive and forget and all that sort of thing, and I sent him a wire to the ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... ignorance of mankind. All the peoples which have been obliged to sustain a long and serious warfare have consequently been led to augment the power of their government. Those which have not succeeded in this attempt have been subjugated. A long war almost always places nations in the wretched alternative of being abandoned to ruin by defeat, or to despotism by success. War therefore renders the symptoms of the weakness of a government most palpable and most alarming; and I have shown that the inherent defect of federal governments ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... pelted upon retiring to the castle by the inhabitants, treatment which they seem to have deserved in setting fire to the town, bombarding St. Leonard's, burning the adjoining buildings and driving the wretched population in search of such shelter as the rocks and ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... did not come back. All night his young wife sat waiting for him, hushing the feeble cries of the weary infant upon her breast. With the dawn, she muffled herself and child in a shawl, and went forth to seek him. Half way from her wretched home to the palatial mansion of Mr. Trevlyn she found her husband, stone dead, and shrouded in the snow—the tender, pitiful snow, that covered him and ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... the characteristic exploits of the assembled throng on those old-time mustering occasions. The wretched diversity in height and build of the marshaled hosts; the wild assortment of accoutrements, from the ancient battle-ax to the modern broom-stick, the trooping boys, the slovenly girls, the mock enthusiasm ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... 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 ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... enough to make the accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since the day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her out to Jansen, nominally to nurse those stricken with smallpox under Father Bourassa's care, actually to be where her wretched husband could come to her once a year, as he had asked with an ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... strolling up and down the block, smoking a cigarette, as he watched the flitting girlish shadows in a certain window opposite, saw the child's frantic struggles in the snow and was intensely amused. "Bah Jove!" he chuckled. "I believe he's after the wretched dawg that I tossed over there with my stick. Fahncy it!" And carelessly he puffed ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... qualities, she had soon become both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew. She had made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange. At the age of thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home. The widow and children of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of life. "I hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count John, "how the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the honour ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this, ma'amselle? O miserable, wretched, day—that ever I should live to see it!' and she continued to moan and lament, till Emily thought it necessary to check her excess of grief. 'We are continually losing dear friends by death,' said she, with a sigh, that came from her heart. 'We must submit to the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Blest in each name of Husband, Father, Friend, Must those strong ties, those dear connexions end? Must be thus leave to all the woes of life His helpless child, his unprotected wife? While thus to earth these lov'd ideas bind, And tear his lab'ring—his distracted mind: How shall that mind its wretched fate defy? How calm his trouble, and how learn to die? In vain would Faith before his eyes display The opening realms of never-ending day; Superior love his faithful soul detains Bound, strongly bound, in Adamantine chains. But lo! the gates of pitying ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... very much in love with you," he said vehemently, his feelings getting the better of his pride for once. "However badly I may have expressed myself, I am very much in love with you. I have been wretched for days." ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as evidence enough, and turned to the wretched toughs. "He squealed," he announced. "If he should turn up dead, I'll know you boys are responsible, and I'll find you. Now get out of this district, or get honest jobs! Because every time one of my men sees one of you, this will happen again. And you can pass the ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... and of their race, trustworthy. Here, the reader of men would say, are a brace of assassins who hold a sort of honor in their hearts, who would never skulk in a corner to stab an enemy in the back, nor wrong a wretched woman who plainly was unwilling to be wronged—a brace of heroes. And the reader of men would for once in a way, ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... emit bills of credit, in defiance of the prohibition of the Federal Constitution. The Egyptians abandoned their folly after seven plagues; but we have had eight bank convulsions, and yet we adhere to the wretched system. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in me? I could be only wretched, and feel all my life—such a life as it would be—that you had wrecked my happiness. Oh yes! I do believe that you would try to make me happy, but don't you see that it would be quite impossible with such a grief ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... think of some of the events that happened while Johnson lived in Bolt Court. Here he exerted himself with all the ardour of his nature to soothe the last moments of that wretched man, Dr. Dodd, who was hanged for forgery. From Bolt Court he made those frequent excursions to the Thrales, at Streatham, where the rich brewer and his brilliant wife gloried in the great London lion they ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... can assure you. We mean to live as God intended men should live—eat, drink, and be merry. Look there!" The speaker exhibited a handful of shining gold pieces. "That's the way our church provides for its apostles. Your daughter will be a thousand times better off there, than in this wretched hovel. Perhaps she will not mind the change so much as you appear to think. I know many a first-rate girl that would be glad of ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... by trade and handicrafts; they have beautiful gardens and vineyards, and fine estates, and grow a great deal of cotton. From this country many merchants go forth about the world on trading journeys. The natives are a wretched, niggardly set of people; they eat and drink in miserable fashion. There are in the country many Nestorian Christians, who have churches of their own. The people of the country have a peculiar language, and the territory extends for ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a wretched substitute for that beautiful contrivance, the alphabet, which, employing a few simple characters as the representatives of sounds, instead of ideas, is able to convey the most delicate shades of thought that ever passed through the mind of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... nor the one after that. Exactly. We shall have to wait until this wretched place is emptied, when they will find our bleaching skeletons—if skeletons can bleach in ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... the city's boundaries; the performances themselves could arouse no enthusiasm. The singers were on a level with the usual summer itinerants; the orchestra, made up partly of inexperienced men from Italy and non-union players from other cities, was unpardonably wretched. It was foolishly reckless in the composer to think that with such material as he had raked together in his native land and recruited here he could produce four of his operas within a week of his arrival in America. He must have known how incapable, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... skins of water, which served only to enrage the appetite, and increase the general agitation. There was no other way of conveying it through the windows but by hats, and this was rendered ineffectual by the eagerness and transports of the wretched prisoners, who at sight of it struggled and raved even into fits of delirium. In consequence of these contests, very little reached those who stood nearest the windows, while the rest, at the farther end ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... money's worth, by spoiling his splendid looks and turning him into something different from what nature had intended. His broad shoulders were increased in size by the padded cutaway coat, until they seemed out of proportion. His collar was an inch too high, and he was evidently wretched in it. Also he had the look in his eyes of a man whose boots are so tight that he wishes to die. His fancy waistcoat and maroon necktie must have been forced upon him by a ruthless salesman who would stop at no crime in the way of trade, and the consciousness ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... done as you wish," returned his father, in the same subdued tone; "but let us remember how much of that recent happiness the goodness of Providence hath brought out of this wretched man's offence. Were I extreme to mark what is done amiss, how could I abide the sentence that might be justly pronounced against myself? To- morrow we will talk over this matter, and settle it, I trust, with satisfaction ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... monarch wept and wailed, And maddening grief his heart assailed, The sun had sought his resting-place, And night was closing round apace. But yet the moon-crowned night could bring No comfort to the wretched king. As still he mourned with burning sighs And fixed his gaze upon the skies: "O Night whom starry fires adorn, I long not for the coming morn. Be kind and show some mercy: see, My suppliant hands are raised to thee. Nay, rather fly with swifter pace; No longer would I see the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... strength of his conceptions, and for his resolute and persistent determination to apply himself only to great subjects, than for his skill in designing or for beauty in his colouring. His drawing is rarely good, his colouring frequently wretched. He was extremely impulsive and unequal; sometimes morose, sometimes sociable and urbane; jealous of his contemporaries, and yet capable of pronouncing a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... watched his daring attempt with painful anxiety, and when he was out of sight, they fixed their attention on the land where their hope of safety lay, while eating some shell-fish with which the sand was strewn. It was a wretched repast, but still it was better than nothing. The opposite coast formed one vast bay, terminating on the south by a very sharp point, which was destitute of all vegetation, and was of a very wild aspect. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... fee is half-a-crown." The doctor's views of the glory of his profession cried out against this wretched haggling, and yet what was he to do? "Where am I to get 'arf-a-crown? It is well for gentlefolk like you who sit in your grand houses, and can eat and drink what you like, an' charge 'arf-a-crown for just ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... trashy things that you hate except when you are not yourself. It makes me ill to think that you have been with us all these years, and been so kind to me, and now are come to this. Oh, do not do it! Surely we all are wretched enough, without your adding ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Don't answer him, Hazel, don't tell him. Oh!" Too late the wretched woman realized that she had betrayed her daughter, and she ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... and he might have been supposed to be really moved, so much his look changed, "do not abuse your power over me—do not make me wretched; if you could ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... 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
... "For a dismal, wretched, man-forsaken stretch of country it beats anything I ever saw," Walter exclaimed in disgust. "The river itself is about a half mile wide, but it twists, turns, and forks every few yards so as to puzzle a corporation lawyer. The shores for ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely |
