"Bitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man's marrying has looked pretty grave to me for a long while. How have they the courage to keep on doing it? It depresses me now to buy wedding presents." For some time the doctor watched his guest, who was sunk in bitter reflections. "Such things used to go better than they do now, I believe. Seems to me all the married people I knew when I was a boy were happy enough." He paused again and bit the end off a fresh cigar. "You never saw Thea's mother, did you, Ottenburg? That's a pity. Mrs. Kronborg ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... This last action gave rise to the French Spoliation Claims, which remained unsettled for nearly a century thereafter, Adams's determination to make peace was statesmanlike and patriotic, but it gave bitter offence to the warlike Federalists. In May, 1800, Adams found his cabinet so out of sympathy that he removed Pickering, Secretary of State, and appointed John Marshall. This meant a formal breach between the Adams and the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... in crape and hatband, Of mourners was the chief; In bitter self-upbraidings Poor Edward showed his grief; Tom hid his fat, white ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... and in his familiarity, present and prospective, with the House, the Captain, when he reached the outer office, could not refrain from rallying Mr Perch a little, and asking him whether he thought everybody was still engaged. But not to be bitter on a man who had done his duty, the Captain whispered in his ear, that if he felt disposed for a glass of rum-and-water, and would follow, he would be happy to bestow ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... restoring order. Thomas liked sumptuous living, and the magnificence of his housekeeping and of his feasts was the talk of the whole country. Yet though he laughed and jested in the midst of his grandeur, he kept himself from every kind of vice. Henry was fond of horseplay, and once on a bitter winter's day, when he was riding with Thomas, he snatched at a fine new scarlet mantle from the Chancellor's neck to throw to a beggar. Thomas struggled hard, and the two men nearly pulled one another off their horses, but in the end ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... for animal life. When it spread to Africa and Europe it became more Christian, just as it became more Buddhist in China, but it is exceedingly curious to see how this Asiatic religion, like the widely different religion of Mohammed, was even in its latest phrases the subject of bitter hatred ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... something is done at once," he says, "there will be bitter complaint. [The Transvaal] Government is already being severely, though ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... running upstairs to her dripping daughter, wiping her down with a handkerchief, calling her "my poor darling," and saying, "Didn't I tell you to have nothing more to do with that little vixen?" she fell on my mother with bitter upbraidings. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Honey-Bees. That impatience with the vanity of his own pursuits and with the injustice of existing conditions, which hovered like a phantom at the feast of life, had at last found form and utterance. Parini's satires and the bitter mockery of the "Frusta Letteraria" were but instruments of demolition; but the arguments of the Professor's friends had that constructive quality so appealing to the urgent temper of youth. Was the world in ruins? Then here was a plan to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... renewing the conflicts and cares that filled that summer with sorrow. There were fightings without and fears within; there was the surrender of an enterprise that had been cherished since boyhood, and the bitter sense of irremediable weakness that follows such a reverse; there was a touch of that wrath with those we love, which, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... nature both of the widow and her son. Had the honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended. But Mrs. Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff, plain-spoken one; and after all she had some little feeling for the son of a gentleman, and a decayed, fallen gentleman, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up to the fateful month of June, 1900. Rumours of impending trouble were numerous, but missionaries in China become accustomed to threatening placards and slanderous reports. Though it was evident that the opposition was becoming more bitter, the missionaries did not feel that they would be justified in abandoning their work. Several, however, were temporarily absent for other reasons. Of the Congregational missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. Noble and Mrs. Pitkin were on furlough in America and Mr. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... orange starfish and bristly sea-urchins in the shallow pools. All these dainties had shells that the cub's young teeth could easily crush, and they yielded meaty morsels that made beetles and grubs seem very meagre fare. Moreover, in the salty bitter of this sea-fruit there was something marvelously stimulating to the appetite. From pool to pool the old bear wandered on, lured ever by richer prizes just ahead; and the cub, stuffed till his little stomach was like a black furry ball, no longer frisked and tumbled, but waddled along beside ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... If Ted's heart ever warmed toward a living being it surely ought just then; when these lads, whom he was wont to regard as his bitter rivals, and enemies in everything at school, took such chances simply because they could not see ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... campaign of General Pope has been the topic of very bitter controversy and crimination. In my brief account I have eschewed the view of Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, who seem to me if I may say it, to have written with the single-minded purpose of throwing everybody's blunders into the scale against McClellan, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... beer vaults, where a man drew beer into a long black jack, such as Scott describes. It is a tankard, made of black leather, I should think half a yard deep. He drew the beer from a large hogshead, and offered us some in a glass. It looked very clear, but, on tasting, I found it so exceedingly bitter that it struck me there would be small ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... burning thirst at his throat, and he moistened his dry lips with a bitter-coated tongue. His mouth was lined with a brown slime of dead liquor, which nauseated him and sent the dull ache to his head in ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... penury; but that was not all. There was yet "something different." The one looked like a man who had done, or suffered, a wrong in his time; who had an old quarrel with the world; and who only sought to hide himself, his poverty, and his bitter pride from the observation of his fellow men. The other stood before us dignified, decore, self-possessed, a man not only of the world, but apparently no stranger to that small section of it called "the great world." In a word, the man of the Cafe, sunken, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... would willingly have stayed at home and shouldered her share of the daily toil, but an education meant a great deal to her, more than to most girls, and she would have relinquished her schooling only with bitter regret. ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... highest work in this earth, whoever they are, Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves—one and all, their fate has been the same—the same bitter cup has been ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... has nothing to say except "let us draw the veil," but memory is strong and the bands of love and kinship are unbreakable, even under the adversities of long and bitter years—nay, rather are they strengthened by the threads of common woe, woven into their very fibre at such a ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... from his chair. The old story! Control and discipline undermined, and these bitter ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... refer to your foolish act a little while ago. If you hadn't fired that salt cartridge the men would have gone quietly away, and we could have remained where we were until morning. Now you have made a bitter enemy, and if he don't give us future annoyance it will only be through the intercession of Batters' brother—provided he has ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... for this sad voice, Stealing amid our mirth to say, That all in which we most rejoice, Ere night may be the earth-worm's prey: But for this bitter—only this— Full as the world is brimm'd with bliss, And capable as feels my soul Of draining to its depth the whole, I should turn earth to heaven, and be, If bliss ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... first her grief absorbed her; then, roused to sudden anger, she proudly raised her head, for now her love was changed to scorn. Robert, amazed at her cold and haughty reception of him, following on so great a love, was stung by jealousy and wounded pride. He broke out into bitter reproach and violent recrimination, and, letting fall the mask, once for all lost his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "What bitter pill is this," I asked, "that you are sugar-coating to such an extent? Don't you see that I am aching to begin the improvement in my manners, as soon as you point ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... silent and bitter disappointment. She had expected much from Ranald. Her husband ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... sons; I have never deceived them; when they have been ill I have told them that there was a very bitter medicine, and that they must have the courage to take it; "it would harm you if it were sweet." I have never allowed their masters and teachers to make them afraid of spirits, ghosts, goblins, sorcerers; by this means I have made brave, wise young ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... thunder-tones the commands of virtue and religion, it is in the seclusion of the Marriage relation. Men, and women, too, ought to look to Marriage with a profounder respect and a higher purpose. It is a holy institution. To degrade it is wicked and brings the most bitter unhappiness. If I should induce a single young woman to look more reverently upon the life-union, to regard it in its moral and religious aspects, and determine to enter it under the sanctions of true religion, and demand ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... shadowy and disappears. Rosecrans, however, was made to think he had suffered a wrong. He forgot the generosity with which Garfield had saved him from humiliation in the session of 1863-64, and said bitter things which put an end to the friendly relations which had till then ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... at momentous times of indecision of taking two full packages of cards and playing Napoleon's solitaire. If I get it out once in three times, I generally go into the matter in hand without question. It never has failed me. Twice in my life I went against it; twice I had bitter cause of regret. ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. Under UN supervision, the last Serb-held enclave in eastern Slavonia was ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... less than a minute they ran up against a rock; the tall trees changed into low bushes, and the high land into a clump of trees in the middle of a small island. Bitter was their disappointment. A moment's consideration made Philip and Harry certain that it was an island they had visited at the southern end of the lake, and three or four miles distant both from their own and D'Arcy's clearings. On examining the bark of the trees, and the direction ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... mountains bare their fangs unto the moon, There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon, And the glacier-glutted streams sweep down at the clarion ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice of her implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew many women who answered this description, when Mr. Hurst called them to order, with bitter complaints of their inattention to what was going forward. As all conversation was thereby at an end, Elizabeth ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of Maraquita's love for Azinte, of the utter impossibility of his being able to take Azinte back to her old mistress, now that she had found her husband and child, even if it had been admissible for a lieutenant in the British navy to return freed negroes again into slavery, and wound up with bitter lamentations as to his unhappy fate, and expressions of poignant regret that fighting and other desperate means, congenial and easy to his disposition, were not available in the circumstances. After which explosion he subsided, felt ashamed of having thus ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... me than I could afford to lose, even in these changed and happy circumstances. So I thank you once more, my dear kind friends, I thank you both—I never shall forget your goodness. I feel it, of course, the more deeply, in proportion to the painful disappointment in other quarters.... Am I bitter? The feeling, however, passes while I write it out, and my own affection for everybody will wait patiently to be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody shall be at leisure properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my case is not to be classed ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... her and at the prince who could not tell a lie once in his life, and I felt angry and bitter against truth and falsehood, which play such an elemental part in the personal happiness ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Lord Grey, but was never quite at his ease with him (this accounts for his taking Lord Grey's resignation as quietly as he did); has a very John-Bullish aversion to the French, and the junction of the English and French fleets two years ago was a bitter pill for ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... did not seem to me a lofty and inspiring view that Sylvia took. On the contrary, it exercised a choking effect upon me, by reason of what I regarded as its intense littleness and narrowness. The too often bitter and sordid realities of the struggle of life, as I saw it in London, had the effect upon me of making Sylvia's esoteric exclusiveness of interest seem so petty as to be an insult to human intelligence. I would stare out of the train windows, on ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... coursed through my mind; but there were others equally bitter, and with bitterness springing from a far different source. What would be the effect of the disclosure? How would it affect our future—the future of myself and Aurore? How would Eugenie act? ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... feels very bad that I did not leave when I still had the chance. So do I,... but now it is too late. I must stay till the bitter end, and no doubt the end will be bitter: battle, murder, and sudden death, and all the things we pray against in ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... twelfth month of the year, and the cold was bitter. One night, during a heavy fall of snow, when the whole world was hushed, and peaceful men were stretched in sleep upon the mats, the Ronins determined that no more favourable opportunity could occur for carrying out their purpose. So they took counsel together, and, having ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... only watched me! Once when Jose was in a rage with me Conrad said he could make of me a great lady in his own land if I would listen. Instead of listening I showed him my knife. After that God only knows what he told against me, but Jose became bitter—bitter, and jealous, and spies ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... book will say that he has not read it. No, we have no anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism. But if the Jupiter, Who passes his opinion on the novel, ever happens to peruse it in some weary moment of his subsequent life, we hope that he will not be the victim of a remorse bitter but too late. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... like light," he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we went along. As we approached the spot we could hear a low moaning, broken occasionally by a bitter cry. "Perhaps that is your voice," said the Doctor; "I thought it must be something of the kind. That's a poor brute caught in some of these infernal traps of yours; you'll find it among the bushes somewhere." I said nothing. I felt no particular fear, but a triumphant ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... not true. They show their conviction that their faith is the best in the world with the same sort of naivete that I have seen in very innocent and ignorant English women; in fact, display a sort of religious conceit; but it is not often bitter or haineux, however ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... could not remember one critical moment in which Elspeth had not been foremost in his thoughts. It passed through her head, "Even now he must make sure that Elspeth is in peace of mind before he can care to triumph over me," and she would perhaps have felt less bitter had he put ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... indeed, was the interest which he had aroused in the breasts of those men, as the sequel showed. But while it lasted it seemed doubtless very genuine to the boy, as such evidences of human regard must have afforded him, in his forlorn state, the keenest pleasure. Bitter, therefore, must have been his disappointment and grief to find, at the end, that he had, in reality, no hold whatever upon the regard of the slave traders. True he had been separated by captain and officers from the other slaves during the voyage, ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... bitter execration she murmured in her heart the word 'If.' If Cyril's childish predilections had not been encouraged! If he had only been content to follow his father's trade! If she had flatly refused to sign his indenture ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... nature. It was inexpressibly comic to hear her repeating her sire's denunciations in his nervous northern Doric; as hearty a little Jacobin as ever pent a free mutinous spirit in a muslin frock and sash. Not malignant by nature, her language was not so bitter as it was racy, and the expressive little face gave a piquancy to every phrase which held a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Yet it would be a crime to a woman of her pride, of her power of loving, to allow the deceit, his pretence of love, to go as far as marriage. A disclosure would come in time, and would bring her a bitter awakening. The falsehood, natural if not excusable in its circumstances, and broached without thought of ultimate consequence, must be stopped at once. He must leave her presence immediately, but, ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... day, dropped into a sound sleep. The next morning I hurried down into the cellar, wondering whether I should see two dogs, or a dozen. To my surprise and dismay, I saw none at all. The cellar was silent and deserted. I opened the outer door, and with a failing heart, stepped into the clear, bitter cold of a temperature something like fifteen degrees below zero. Just around the corner of the house, in a nook slightly sheltered from the biting air, I came upon the family. Fanchon lay upon the ground, the snow carefully pushed up around her, and her clinging little ones, who were taking their ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... much more than a satire, and its exuberant humour has a bitter core; the laughter that rings through it is the harsh, implacable laughter of Carlyle. His criticism of commonplace love-making is at first sight harmless and ordinary enough. The ceremonial formalities of the continental Verlobung, the shrill raptures of aunts ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... how one was rewarded for a generous impulse! He felt very bitter. "So, so," he said inwardly; also, "Very well, ve-ry well." Then he turned upon himself. "Serve you right," he said brutally. "Better stick to your books, Thomas, for you know nothing about women." To think for one moment ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... absurd marriage—absurd in the eyes of the world, and therefore also in his own—he gave himself up to it more and more. He neglected his playing—so secure in his own superiority that very soon he lost it. Other virtuosi came to succeed him in public favor. That was bitter to him, but instead of rousing his energy, these rebuffs only discouraged him. He avenged himself by crying down his rivals with his pot-fellows. In his absurd conceit he counted on succeeding his father as musical director: another man was appointed. He ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that made the tears come to Miss Balfour's handsome eyes, and afterward wrote a bright, hopeful letter to Marcelle that lifted a burden from the elder sister's heart. Marcelle had been half afraid that Cicely would be growing bitter against ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... great subject to excite public feeling.... Alas! I have no object in life now but my wife and children, and almost wish I had not them, that I might sit still and meditate on human grandeur and human ambition till I died.... I am not yet forty, and can tell of a destiny melancholy and rapturous, bitter beyond all bitterness, cursed, heart-breaking, maddening. But I dare not write now. The melancholy demon has grappled my heart, and crushed its turbulent beatings in his black, bony, clammy, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... (vndoubtedly with religious entent) endeuour theim selues to the worshippe of God, and echeone taketh vpon him to be the true and best worshipper of him, and whilest echone thinke theim selues to treade the streight pathe of euerlastyng blessednes, and contendeth with eigre mode and bitter dispute, that all other erre and be ledde farre a wrie: and whilest euery man strugglethe and striueth to spread and enlarge his owne secte, and to ouerthrowe others, thei doe so hate and enuie, so persecute and annoy echone an other, that at this daie a man cannot safely trauaill from one countrie ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... bitter experience we had learned that the gendarme never by any chance could get our meaning and that we never could understand his gestures, we hit upon the wise expedient of going right away to the Last Chance ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart— Go ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... young man who sees his lofty ideals confronted with the ignoble facts which strew the highways of political life. But we can recognize real conviction and the deepest feeling beneath his scornful rhetoric and his bitter laugh. He was no more a mere dilettante than Swift himself, but now and then in the midst of his most serious thought some absurd or grotesque image will obtrude itself, and one is reminded of the lines on the monument of Gay rather than of the fierce ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Francis Drake. Raleigh's second attempt a year later to establish a colony on Roanoke Island ended in the pathetic story of little Virginia Dare and the "Lost Colony." Queen Elizabeth died, and the tyrannical reign of James I came to an end. Charles I and Cromwell waged their bitter war; the Commonwealth and Protectorate ran their brief course, and the Restoration of 1660 brought back the third of the Stuarts to the throne ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... distress, misery and calamitous woe, are not the inalienable portion of the susceptible bosom. Say, if the possession of refined feeling is enviable——the lot of Nature's children covetable—whether to such, through life, the sprinklings of comfort are sufficient to give a zest to the bitter banquets of adversity—whether, indeed, sorrow, sighing, and tears, are not the inseparable attendants of all those whose hearts are the repositories of tender affections and ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... act, and shows Olof with his two sons outside the city walls of Stockholm, where they witness a miracle-play introducing God as the principle of darkness and Lucifer as the overthrown but never conquered principle of light. The bitter generalizations of this afterthought explain Sufficiently why it was excluded. To the later Strindberg—the man who wrote Advent, for instance—it must have seemed one of ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... Bitter and sweet, when wintry evenings fall Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear Old memory's notes sway softly far and near, While ring the chimes across the gray ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the Holy Roman Empire, Italy held a dual relation to the emperor and the pope. Between the Roman pontiffs and the secular heads of the Empire the struggle for supremacy had been long and often bitter. At the time of Hildebrand's active appearance the papacy was in a state of degradation which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... freshly-important ridicule on the sensitive mind of Cass might have been foretold by Blazing Star had it ever taken that sensitiveness into consideration. He had lost the good-humor and easy pliability which had tempted him to frankness, and he had gradually become bitter and hard. He had at first affected amusement over his own vanished day dream—hiding his virgin disappointment in his own breast; but when he began to turn upon his feelings he turned upon his comrades also. Cass was for a while unpopular. There is no ingratitude so revolting to the human mind as ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... afterwards completely threw in his lot with the United Brethren and became one of their bishops,[594]—all these incidents betoken a deep and cordial sympathy. It is true that all this fellow-feeling came at last to a somewhat abrupt termination. Passing, at first, almost to the bitter extreme, he even said in his 'Second Journal' that 'he believed the mystic writers to be one great Anti-Christ.'[595] Some years afterwards he retracted this expression, as being far too strong. He had, he said, 'at one time held the mystic writers in great veneration as the best explainers of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... spectacle of regiments of soldiers becoming debating societies to discuss whether or not they shall obey orders and fight, are ominous signs for the next period. Emancipated Russia must learn, if necessary through bitter suffering, that liberty is not license, that democracy is not anarchy, but voluntary and intelligent obedience to just laws and the chosen executors of those laws. Meantime, whatever her immediate future may be, Russia's transformation has ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... eyebrows and smiled, but he was soon assured that Love's messenger was not forgotten. He was instantly enveloped in a rapturous hug, and heroically endured the bitter of the watchcase pressing into his jugular for the sweet of the rose-leaf kisses that were assaulting his cheek like the quick reports of a tiny ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... a warlike band. The leaders of the army welcomed not among that number the weak, who yet because of youth could not defend them under board and byrnie against a wily foe, who never yet had known the baleful thrust, the bitter wound, the insolent play of the spear over the edge of the linden shield. Nor might the aged, grey-haired warriors be of service in the battle if their strength had failed them. But according to their strength they joined ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... been poisoned or conjured, take a bitter gourd and remove the seeds, then beat 'em up and make a tea. You sho will heave all of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... like a mildew. And Mrs Kenrick wept in silence, as she thought—though it was not true—that even her own son did not love her, or at least did not love her as she had hoped he would. It was the last bitter drop in that overflowing cup which it had pleased God that she should be called ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... inspired her with feelings the most akin to humanity. For him, despite her bitter memories of his father, she felt something of compassion, and shrank from the touch of his frank hand in remorse. She had often need to whisper to herself that his life was an obstacle to the heritage of the son of whom, as we have seen, she was in search, and whom, indeed, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... corruption began and continued. Corruption in Ohio was so notorious that it formed a bitter part of the discussion in the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1850-51. The delegates were droning along over insertions devised to increase corporation power. Suddenly rose Delegate Charles Reemelin and exclaimed: "Corporations ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... narrow, and the houses are built of mud and small stones mixed, many of them having a story above the ground-floor. A small court is open in the centre, and the doors, which open from this area, give the only light which the rooms receive. The water of Sockna is almost all brackish or bitter. There are 200,000 date trees in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, which pay duty; also an equal number, not yet come into bearing, which are exempt. These dates grow in a belt of sand, at about two or three miles distant from the town, and are of a quality far superior ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... great gift, yet did the old man Grudge not to pluck from his store even this, for his spirit impell'd him Eager to ransom his son: But the people who look'd on his treasure Them did he chase from the gate, and with bitter reproaches pursued them:— "Graceless and worthless, begone! in your homes is there nothing to weep for, That ye in mine will harass me—or lacks it, to fill your contentment, That the Olympian god has assign'd ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Greek joyousness. And yet the Greek sense of beauty, half intellectual, half sensuous, had always seemed to her the strongest force in him. Was it now besieged by something else?—was the Faun in him, at last, after these three years, beginning to feel the bitter grip of humanity? ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with which he was pleased to surround a very practical purpose, did not however compensate me for the inconvenient publicity. This paragraph soon found its way into other journals, and at last confronted me—to my infinite disgust—in the "Baltimore Clipper," a bitter Unionist organ. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... saving the family, to the public conscience which he had too grossly outraged. In a few cases the government was in the hands of the whole family, or at least the ruler was bound to take their advice; and here, too, the distribution of property and influence often led to bitter disputes. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... benight!' 'Tis for that sleep like hood enveils their eyes * Right soon, but from our eyes is fair of flight: When night-falls, dread and drear to those who love, * We mourn; they joy to see departing light: Had they but dree'd the weird, the bitter dole * We dree, their beds like ours ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... canvases; his masterpiece, among others, an harmonious Descent from the Cross. I wouldn't give a fig for the equilibrium of the figures or the ladders; but while it lasts the scene is all intensely solemn and graceful and sweet—too sweet for so bitter a subject. Sodoma's women are strangely sweet; an imaginative sense of morbid appealing attitude—as notably in the sentimental, the pathetic, but the none the less pleasant, "Swooning of St. Catherine," the great Sienese heroine, at San Domenico—seems to me the author's finest ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... disastrous an end. And war, since it is always and by its nature must be a return to savage conditions, now leads to the sacrifice of women and children in much the ancient manner; and faced by its horrors at close touch, the mother-instinct essays the old task to the same bitter defeat. ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the water was all that could be seen. They embarked, however, in montarias, determined upon vengeance; the monster was traced, and when, after a short lapse of time, he came up to breathe—one leg of the man sticking out from his jaws—was despatched with bitter curses. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Dublin mounted infantry, lined the farm walls; the remaining two sections of the mounted infantry of the Dublin Fusiliers held a small kopje, two hundred yards from the building. The Boers closed around in force and poured a bitter fusilade upon the troopers. A gun, which had opened ineffectively from the colliery, was then brought forward to 1,400 yards, and its projectiles shattered the buildings, and scattered the horses. In a few moments another gun opened more to the left and 1,100 ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... His sister laughed in bitter scorn. "And to half a dozen other men as well. Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, what a fool you are, how you've been fooled. Do you think she's been true to you? Do you think a vile creature like that could be true to anyone? No, I will speak for all your swearing at me. Do you think that whilst you have been ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... is possible, although not probable, unless the two had a bitter quarrel between themselves. Every crime must have a motive. People do not commit murder unless there is a reason for it or unless they are insane. Motives may be divided into three classes—jealousy, revenge, or gain. In this instance I think we can ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... set in purple heather. The loveliness of the woods in March is not, assuredly, of this blowzy rustic type. It is made sharp with a grain of salt, with a touch of ugliness. It has a sting like the sting of bitter ale; you acquire the love of it as men acquire a taste for olives. And the wonderful clear, pure air wells into your lungs the while by voluptuous inhalations, and makes the eyes bright, and sets the heart tinkling to a new tune— or, rather, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sake and her own; and in an unhappy hour he received a pressing invitation to meet her at the house of one of them, and have a week with the pheasants before he had to rejoin his regiment. It was a bitter cold month that year, and every sportsman's temper was a little on edge at having to face December blasts in October. And one day when they were out in a preserve that adjoined Richard Carew's, he and his friend heard shots and voices over the dividing hedge; ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... had not passed through his hands without giving him much bitter suffering. As is always the case in such matters, the thing done was worse than the doing of it. He had taught himself to look at it lightly whilst it was yet unaccomplished; but he could not think of it lightly now. Kate had been right. It would have been ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... France, in a dungeon, removed from every hope, languished the man who had, till now, held in his hand the destinies of Europe; whose galleys filled every port, whose merchandise crowded every city, who divided with Cosmo de Medici the commerce of the world. Here did Jacques Coeur reflect, with bitter disappointment, on all the selfishness, cruelty, meanness, and ingratitude, of the man he had mainly assisted to regain the throne of his ancestors. It was here he was told that the falsehood of the charge against him had been proved; but when he quitted this, the first prison ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... of the swellings, which, though it might not make people raving and distracted, as they were before, and as I have given several instances of already, yet they put the patient to inexpressible torment; and those that fell into it, though they did escape with life, yet they made bitter complaints of those that had told them there was no danger, and sadly repented their rashness and folly in venturing to run into ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... property of a select, privileged few. A monopoly of this sort would enable a few men to control posterity and build up a Trust in the Matrimonial Industry that would engender not only a great deal of bitter feeling between the masses and the classes, but enforce a system of compulsory bachelorhood which ... Nevertheless, if woman wants to vote let her do so. In spite of all that I have just said about the subtle quality of her intellect, I still say let her vote. What harm can ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... growled Captain Wopper, as if he had a special and bitter hatred of that sea. "Yes, the Doldrums, or Sargasso-sea, where ships used to be detained by long, vexatious calms, and islands of floating sea-weed, but which now we escape, because studious men have pointed out, that by sailing to one side of that sea you can ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Duryodhana, the very embodiment of sin and the disgrace of his race, been born, at the end of the Yuga, amongst us the Kurus. Therefore, O thou of fierce prowess, thou shouldst address him slowly and mildly, not in bitter but sweet words fraught with virtue and profit, and discourse fully on the subject so as to attract his heart. All of us, O Krishna, would rather in humiliation follow Duryodhana submissively, but, oh, let not the Bharatas be annihilated. O Vasudeva, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a bitter truth, and Lee himself, high and honorable in all his nature, saw it. The girl, too, had old-fashioned ideas of duty to parents, and when her father bade her think no more of Lee she humbly bowed her head. But the ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... children God has given you.—Watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger.—In the forcible language of Scripture, "Be not bitter against them." "Yes, they are good boys," said a kind father. "I talk to them much, but I do not beat my children: the world will beat them." It was a beautiful ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Napoleon, in which the first opening right leads into the Place Letitia. A little beyond this opening is No. 17, the house of the Pozzo di Borgo family, of whom Charles Andre, 1768-1842, was the great upholder of Paoli and the bitter enemy of Napoleon I. Napoleon's house, though not equal to that of the Borgo family, was one of the best in Ajaccio. It is well built, of three stories of six windows each, and all the rooms have a more or less handsome marble chimney-piece. Over the door is inscribed ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... the noble unsightliness of it; the record of its years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay; its stern wasteness and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling; its desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly fissures, and yet strong, like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of what any one thinks ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... battalion of tiny balloons in a cloud. No, it was not by the violins the dread enigma was solved. But there were few other instruments on the leaf except the harp. Pooh! The harp was innocent enough with its fantastic spray of arpeggios; it was used only as gilding to warm the bitter, wiry tone of the fiddles. No, it was not the harp, Pobloff decided. The tam-tam, a pulsatile instrument! Perhaps its mordant sound coupled to the hissing of the fiddles, the cheeping of the wood-wind, and the roll of the harp; perhaps—and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... with a good conscience, occupying it with such pursuits as his taste suggested. Even at the time when his labors were the most multiplied, and the church and the college were successively engaged in bitter controversy, he had but little to do with administrative and practical matters. Even then a life of reflection appeared to be more attractive than a life of action. And when his public duties were ended, he naturally chose such a life. He was still ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Coalbrookdale and Madeley were ignorant, brutal, and much given to drunkenness and profanity. The Sabbath was ignored, decency frequently flouted, bull-baiting a favourite pastime, and religion a matter of coarse ridicule and bitter scorn. After their day's work the inhabitants frequently held nights of revelry, lasting until dawn, when dancing, drunkenness, and obscenity ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... who brought up the rear appeared alone to betray his real thoughts, without fear of observation or dread of consequences. He gazed at the most appalling sight with eyes and muscles that knew not how to waver, but with execrations so bitter and deep as to denote how much he denounced the crime of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... both for their own intrinsic value, and to induce the growth of other plants. "We are bitter," say the Lupins in an Italian work on agriculture; "but we enrich the earth which lacks other manure, and by our bitterness kill those insects which, if not destroyed, would destroy our successors in the soil. You owe much, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the girls who felt the most bitter probably Clara Adams was the one who was chief among them. It was the greatest grievance she had ever known, in the first place not to take part in such a thing and in the second not even to be invited to the entertainment. Each girl in the club ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... who had gathered so much here to give the King pleasure, a far different fate was reserved. The sumptuous entertainment, the show of wealth on all sides, aroused bitter jealousy in the King's heart, and when some designing person (Colbert, it is said) whispered in his ear that Fouquet, not content with outshining his sovereign in the magnificence of his chateau, had raised his eyes to the royal favorite, Louise de La Valliere, the King's wrath ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... do thou, O uncle, go cheerfully, for by my power thou wilt in nowise suffer. Then they will speak of drowning, but thou must beg and pray that this may not be; and then they will the more seek to do so, and thou shalt fight them to the bitter end, and yet it ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... companies from the Low Countries to strengthen the Bearnese in the north of France, formed the subject of much bitter diplomatic conference between the States and England; the order having been communicated by the great queen herself in many a vehement epistle and caustic speech, enforced by big, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... determined to make a trip eastwards, to see what the country in that direction was like. We chopped up some rifle bullets for shot, to enable Gibson and Jimmy to remain while we were away, as a retreat to Fort Mueller from here was a bitter idea to me. Before I can attempt to penetrate to the west, I must wait a change in the weather. The sky was again becoming cloudy, and I had hopes of rain at ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... brought the bulletins of the National Assembly, which were read publicly amid clamorous interjections. Spies found their office a perilous one, for, if discovered, they were ducked in the basins of the fountains, and when feeling grew more bitter, risked meeting a violent death. Later the Cafe Foy made a complete volte-face, raised its ices to twenty sous and grew Royalist in tone. Its frequenters came armed with sword-sticks and loaded canes, raised their hats when the king's name was uttered, and one evil day ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... garden of the palace. They brought him some food, consisting of parboiled rice, which, in his displeasure, he allowed to remain untouched. At first, several curious people had collected from among the servants around him; but they soon dispersed, and left him alone to despair and bitter reflection. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... singing, in search of thorns or long roots, or even the straggling plants of bitter colocynth, as fuel ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the fish. "And my fish's heart feels pain like yours. It would be as bitter to me to die as it would be ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... delirium, which something sterner than even duty extinguishes in the cold darkness of death. His energy survives but to vent itself in wild gusts of reckless passion, or aimless indignation. There is a touching poignancy in his expression of the bitter melancholy that oppresses him, in the fixedness of misery with which he looks upon the faded dreams of former years, or the fierce ebullitions and dreary pauses of resolution, which now prompts him to retrieve what he has lost, now withers into powerlessness, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... more may we In this sweet-bitter pastime: The love-light shines the last time Between you, Dear, ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... wanted to take it to heart; all wanted to banish it away and forget it. And all had succeeded, and would go on to the end placid and comfortable. All but me alone. I must carry my awful secret without any to help me. A heavy load, a bitter burden; and would cost me a daily heartbreak. She was to die; and so soon. I had never dreamed of that. How could I, and she so strong and fresh and young, and every day earning a new right to a peaceful and honored ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... call flavor or savor is a joint effect of taste and odor in which the latter predominates. There are only four tastes of importance, acid, alkaline, bitter and sweet. The acid, or sour taste, is the perception of hydrogen atoms charged with positive electricity. The alkaline, or soapy taste, is the perception of hydroxyl radicles charged with negative electricity. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... would certainly only recall very bitter remembrances; then we shall never be masters of three hundred pistoles to redeem it, so that we really should lose two hundred pistoles by the bargain. Go and tell him the ring is his, d'Artagnan, and bring back the two hundred ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... At even, when tired out and thirsty, I would sit for a while outside a humble cafe on the outer boulevards, I watched the amorous couples wander past me on their way to happiness. At night I could not sleep, and bitter were my thoughts, my revilings against a cruel fate that had condemned me—a man with so sensitive a heart and so generous a nature—to the sorrows ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
