"Parlous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Truth, and who by the help of its light pronounces all these zealous worshippers alike, to be but "Infidels and Turks," and says to all, in language not quite so polite as that of Touchstone, "Truly, shepherds, ye are in a parlous state," herself makes no such public demonstration of her faith. To an Eastern infidel travelling in the West, she would even appear, to outward eye, a tenfold greater infidel than her neighbours. Except ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the truth of a single word you have said, my dear Prince," the Prime Minister remarked, "there is another aspect of the whole subject which I think that you should consider. If you find us in so parlous a state, it is surely scarcely dignified or gracious, on the part of a great nation like yours, to leave us so abruptly to our fate. Supposing it were true that we were suffering a little from a period of too lengthened prosperity, from an attack of over-confidence. Still think of the part ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the sight of Lesley's inaction needed but this last breath to fan it into a very blaze of wrath. And what he said to them touching themselves, their country, and the Kirk Committee that had made sheep of them, was so bitter and contemptuous that none but men in the most parlous and pitiable of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the prayer was over. Esther removed her hand from her eyes and looked up at the minister. For a tiny second his glance met hers. A thrill shot through her, a thrill of dismay. With all the force of a new idea, it came to her that she and he were in the same parlous case. He loved her, as she ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... I found the lady so impolitely named "the Old Cow" in a parlous state. There she lay upon the floor, an unpleasant object because of the blood that had escaped from her wound, surrounded by a crowd of other women and of children. At regular intervals she announced that she was dying, and emitted a fearful yell, whereupon all the audience ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... thus the dog was born; the gathered crowd Cheered their approval of this wise remark; A glad tail wagged its pride, and clear and loud Rang out the music of the earliest bark, While envious Nature sighed, "O parlous miss! I was a silly not to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... Furneaux had an almost uncanny knowledge of the kinks and obliquities of the criminal mind. In the phraseology of logic, Winter applied the deductive method and Furneaux the inductive; when both fastened on to the same "suspect" the unlucky wight was in parlous state. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... not one of the fixed fools of history was such a fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmothers told a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls (though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it did correspond ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... seem an odd thing that this lady should so readily have taken a stranger into her confidence. Yet reflect upon the parlous condition in which she found herself. Deserted by her dispirited grooms, her enemies hot upon her heels, she was in no case to trifle with assistance, or to despise an offer of services, however frail it might seem. With both hands she clutched at the slender hope I brought ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... say further, let me ask thee, plainly, and without offence, Dost thou so love the House of York that no chance could ever make thee turn sword against it? Answer as I ask,—under thy breath; those drawers are parlous spies!" ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but made jestingly familiar by the old school curricula) which our fathers could use with safety in any chance company of the society to which they were accustomed; but even the most familiar of them would be a parlous experiment in small talk to-day. They have vanished from common conversation even more completely than they have disappeared from the debates of the House of Commons. And this is only a type of the change which has come over the educated ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... should I make a long story of it? You must know that it was the most parlous and fierce and fearful battle that ever has been fought in our day. Nor have there ever been such forces in the field in actual fight, especially of horsemen, as were then engaged—for, taking both sides, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Melchizedek the Jew, with a story of three rings, escapeth a parlous snare set for him ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "Hi, hi! That's parlous odd. Keep her as you have her, and have out Bill, the carpenter, to see if there's any iron overside. Nay, let her off a little more, for that's a hard-looking piece of shore out yonder, for all of the palms ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... they had achieved a height of over 6,000 feet, and by that time the sledges were in such a parlous state that Scott had all of them unpacked and the runners turned up for inspection. Horrid revelations followed; one sledge remained sound, and Scott promptly decided that there was one course and only one to take, and that was to return to the ship as fast as they could. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... of joy than a letter are always the most keenly pleased to hear the news of an engagement. There was the sober sheet (crossed) from the elderly relative living in the country, who, never having been married herself, takes the opportunity of giving four pages of advice to one about to enter that parlous state. There was the fatherly letter from the country rector who christened Millicent, and thinks that he may be asked to marry her in a fashionable London church—and so to a bishopric. On heavily-crested ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a liar!" shouted the boy. Lescott, standing at his side, felt that the situation was more than parlous. But, before the storm could break, some one rushed in, and whispered to Wile McCager a message that caused him to raise both hands above his ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... wishing to know more of Master Gilbert's plans ere disclosing himself. The boy was full of chatter, and had news for them, too. He gave them the sequel to the Bishop's adventure, and told how my lord of Hereford had come into Nottingham in parlous state—more dead than alive: how he had lain prostrate upon a sick-bed in the Sheriff's house for the best part of three days: how, having briefly recovered, he had made a full statement of his experiences, and had cursed the greenwood men with bell, book, and candle: how he had sworn that he they ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Inner Route in consequence of its desirability for steamers, and our business has been to mark out this Inner Route safely and clearly among the labyrinth-like islands and reefs within the Barrier. And a parlous dull business it was for those who, like myself, had no necessary and constant occupation. Fancy for five mortal months shifting from patch to patch of white sand in latitude from 17 to 10 south, living on salt pork and beef, and seeing no mortal face but our own sweet countenances considerably ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... grant that the time of privation may soon end, and that I may not see a soul from below till the snow disappears." These days of the early forties when England was engaged with the Chartist risings at home and her Chinese wars abroad, were surely parlous times up on this edge of empire. The Fort Simpson journals of February 4, 1843, record, "The Cannibal, with young Noir, and others of the party of Laman, arrived this evening in the last stage of existence, being compelled by starvation ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... between them—no other hand making one at all for six-and-thirty years), there appeared 314 cartoons in about 286 weeks. It sometimes happened that Punch appeared without a cartoon at all, especially in those parlous cashless days of 1842, and again in 1846 and 1848; but, on the other hand, two cartoons were frequently given in the same number, usually from different hands, though occasionally Leech would do both. The 314 ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... and below me stood the walled-in town that paid tribute to the good and bad Rothhoefens in those olden days: a red-tiled, gloomy city that stood as a monument to long-dead ambitions. A peaceful, quiet town that had survived its parlous centuries of lust and greed, and would go on living ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... convenience of Members who could not find room elsewhere," mused the MEMBER FOR SARK, looking on from one of the side galleries, "was in 1886, when GLADSTONE introduced his first Home Rule Bill. Twelve months earlier, under guidance of Land League, Ireland was in a parlous state. Coercion Act in full force. Jails thronged with patriots convicted under its rigorous clauses. Still there were left at liberty enough to maim cattle and shoot at landlords. If Germany had happened to step in at that epoch it would have been a perilous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... fortress and the forest a parlous passage wherein dwells the fiend, the which I have much discomfit of. But with ye aside me, fair knight, there is ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young |
