"Wormwood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many have used the Seeds of Wormwood, the they buy in the London Seed Shops instead of them: Others Daucus or wild Carrot Seed, that grows in our common Fields, which many of the poor People in this Country gather and dry in their Houses ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... his Magazine would have been sufficient to make Constable hate with a perfect hatred. To see not only his old "Scots Magazine" eclipsed, but the authority of the Edinburgh Review itself bearded on its own soil by this juvenile upstart, was to him gall and wormwood; and, moreover, he himself had come in for his share in some of those grotesque jeux d'esprit by which, at this period, Blackwood's young Tory wags delighted to assail their elders and betters of the Whig persuasion. To prevent the proprietor ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... made under the name of herbes, which were merely infusions of wormwood, myrtle, hyssop, rosemary, &c., mixed with sweetened wine and flavoured with honey. The most celebrated of these beverages bore the pretentious name of "nectar;" those composed of spices, Asiatic aromatics, and honey, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... said quietly. "He wa'n't comin' in. He drew up because he see you, an' he knew 'twould be wormwood to both of us to have him do ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... delight at the condescension of the Holy Father in sending a nuncio to that city. For two full years this representative of the Holy See was feted and toasted on all hands, as little less than the Pope himself, whom he represented. But last year all these happy feelings were dashed with gall and wormwood by an announcement that as the bishops controlled all this immense property by virtue of their spiritual authority, there was a resulting trust in his favor, or at least in favor of the Pope, whom he represented with full powers. It was Pandora's box opened in ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... with his morning cocktail, and mixed a lot of wormwood with it," said one of the "convalescents," in an undertone to ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... five miles round the point of the inlet, along a high and level shore. Wild greens were plentiful; some resembled those at the Cape of Good Hope, "and may be used in place of wormwood;" others were long and saltish, and like sea parsley. They found many dry gullies, and one watering place in which the water was good, but obtained with difficulty, and in very small quantities. Some human voices were heard, and a sound like ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Alexander Loudon. In his time, the old gentleman had been a working mason, and had risen from the ranks more, I think, by shrewdness than by merit. In his appearance, speech, and manners, he bore broad marks of his origin, which were gall and wormwood to my Uncle Adam. His nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in conspicuous mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and wrinkles like a ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and dragging: take him at his best, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... ranks but low among the elements of social happiness,—that, in general, the brighter the gift, the more disturbing its influence, and that in married life particularly, its effects have been too often like that of the "Wormwood Star," whose light filled the waters on which it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... me again. This time he unmercifully beat me with his wormwood club. And after cuffing me about until I was nearly dead, he again left me. Then he came every day. It is peculiar how long he kept my company. Or, rather, it is strange how long I allowed him to be with ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... word; but he could not keep from smiling a bit as he turned away; and this must have been gall and wormwood to the ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... with them. The squat little house will tumble down and the place where it stood will be overgrown with that which, according to my grandmother, always grows over the spot where man's handiwork has been—that is, nettles, burdock, thistles, wormwood, and dock leaves. The very street will cease to be—other people will come and never will they see anything like it again, never, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... good of the love and intimacy vice. It'll never offend us in ourselves. While it will be gall and wormwood to our wife or husband. And it is on this promiscuous love and intimacy and kindness and sweetness, all a vice, that our self-consciousness really rests. If we are battered out of this, we shall be battered out ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... a fatal influence on the home-life of Wenceslas and Lisbeth. The benefactress flavored the exile's bread with the wormwood of reproof, now that she saw her money in danger, and often believed it to be lost. From a kind mother she became a stepmother; she took the poor boy to task, she nagged him, scolded him for working too slowly, and blamed him for having chosen so difficult ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... See Van der Mye's account of the siege of Breda. The garrison, being afflicted with scurvy, the Prince of Orange sent the physicians two or three small phials, containing a decoction of camomile, wormwood, and camphor, telling them to pretend that it was a medicine of the greatest value and extremest rarity, which had been procured with very much danger and difficulty from the East; and so strong, that two or three drops would impart a healing virtue to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... complaints; and he used to lament pathetically to me, and to Mr. Sastres, the Italian master, who was much his favourite, that they made his life miserable from the impossibility he found of making theirs happy, when every favour he bestowed on one was wormwood to the rest. If, however, I ventured to blame their ingratitude, and condemn their conduct, he would instantly set about softening the one and justifying the other; and finished commonly by telling me, that I knew not how to make allowances ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... could read the heart you say is hard, Princess, to see what wormwood your hate blends With all its rapture. Let not your heart rue Crowning the man with happiness who loves you And worships you, and if it is a crime To worship you, I ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... clerical jests, wherewith he of the pulpit assures him of the pew, "I am as thou art." Very nice and proper it might all be, but to the one who longed to hear some word of Him whom he loved with such fresh, intense earnestness, it was as gall and wormwood. ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... decided for the more cheerful rite, but not without a struggle; and with its marks on his face he accompanied Margaret to his daughter. But as men are seldom in a hurry to drink their wormwood, he stood silent. So Doctor Margaret said cheerfully, "Mistress, your lock is ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the gallants of the time to do some extravagant feat, as a proof of their love, in honour of their mistresses; and among others the swallowing some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent; but vinegar would hardly have been considered in this light; wormwood might. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... habit of preparing some death-routing decoction for them, in a small pitcher, and administering it to the whole squadron in succession, who severally swallow the dose with a most ineffectual effort at repudiation, and gallop off, with faces all rue and wormwood. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... suspect were not known to that captain himself. He had served in Algeria, and assented to the proposition that more soldiers died there of absinthe than of Arabs, stating his conviction that three-fourths of the whole deaths are caused by that pernicious extract of wormwood, and that he ought himself to have died of it long ago. He pointed out the difference between the massive masonry of the period of the Spanish occupation and the less impressive work of more recent times, and showed the dungeon from which Marshal Bourmont ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... his appeal fell on deaf ears, for, at the instance of Mr. T. P. O'CONNOR, the House spent most of the evening in discussing the threat of the Irish dock-labourers in Liverpool to paralyse the trade of the port unless the Government released the hunger-strikers at Wormwood Scrubs. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... steel can never lose: 'Twas shed for her, who died for me, It warmed the heart of one abhorred: Nay, start not—no—nor bend thy knee, Nor midst my sin such act record; Thou wilt absolve me from the deed, For he was hostile to thy creed! The very name of Nazarene 1040 Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen. Ungrateful fool! since but for brands Well wielded in some hardy hands, And wounds by Galileans given— The surest pass to Turkish heaven— For him his Houris still might wait Impatient at the Prophet's gate. I loved her—Love will find its way Through paths where wolves ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... bottle of schnapps for the same purpose. There is many another herb, dried by the careful Kathi between the two Lady Days, Mary's ascension and Mary's birthday, which may usefully be employed for man or beast—mullein, a very amulet against every kind of cough and sore-throat; plantain, wormwood, red and white mugwort; nor are the scrapings of hartshorn bought from a mountain huntsman forgotten. At this moment, however, no one is dreaming for an instant of being ill: that might happen after, but must not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... not at all elated. After all, he knew there were no national boundaries to valor or patriotism, and however sweet the victory it must always carry the wormwood of regret that the vanquished will see no more red dawnings and go out on no more dawn patrols. That plunging, flaming plane was as a lighted match dropped into a deep ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... foot, and right at the fringe of the rumour came a note from his mother, the rector's wife, asking him if he would be so good as to act as chloroformist. It would be inhumanity to refuse, as there was no other who could take the place, but it was gall and wormwood to his sensitive nature. Yet, in spite of his vexation, he could not but admire the dexterity with which the thing was done. She handled the little wax-like foot so gently, and held the tiny tenotomy knife ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Maremma, Madonna Pia passes before us, and Ismene, with the sorrow of earth still lingering about her, is there. Soul after soul makes us share in some repentance or some joy. He whom the mourning of his widow taught to drink the sweet wormwood of pain, tells us of Nella praying in her lonely bed, and we learn from the mouth of Buonconte how a single tear may save a dying sinner from the fiend. Sordello, that noble and disdainful Lombard, eyes us from afar like a couchant lion. When he learns that Virgil ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... customs of the mother-country, the indifference of absentees, the cruel rage for making the most and the best sugar in the world, regardless of the costly lives which the mills caught and crushed out with the canes. Truly, it was sweet as honey in the mouth, and suddenly became bitter as wormwood in the belly. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... herbs following—Wormwood, Sage, Broom-flowers, Clown's-All-heal, Chickweed, Cumphry, Birch, Groundsell, Agremony, Southernwood, Ribwort, Mary Gould leaves, Bramble, Rosemary, Rue, Eldertops, Camomile, Aly Campaigne-root, half a handful of Red Earthworms, two ounces of Cummins-seeds, Deasy-roots, Columbine, Sweet ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... and his lips trembled. It was the first time since he was a buck private that he had been spoken to in such a manner. For the first time, the yoke of discipline galled him. The bitterness of his inferiority and servitude was as wormwood within him. The harsh injustice of such treatment in this, his black hour, after years of faithful work, aroused in him a demon of resentment that made him long ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... sentiments, the cantankerous Hector was left to sulk; and I must own to a malicious satisfaction, when, soon after, two ladies came in, and seating themselves on the bench abreast of mine, opened their window, and placed Hector in a thorough draught, which, while gall and wormwood to him, was balm of Gilead to me. As I freely criticise American habits, &c., during my travels, it is but just I should state, that Hector was the only one of his countrymen I ever met who was wilfully offensive and seemed to wish ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... he has done for ME, of that as yet I am ignorant. I doubt if my soul shall by him be effectually secured, that yet a conditional verdict will be awarded concerning me, and that much bitter will be mixed with my sweet, and that I must drink gall and wormwood for my folly; for if David, and Asa, and Hezekiah and such good men, were so served for their sins, (II Chron 16:7,12), why should I look for other dealing at the hand of God? But as to this, I will ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... what she really felt was impossible to Sarah, for at the bottom of her hatred of her riches was the feeling that they had been unjustly, if not dishonourably, obtained, and that other people knew it and despised them for it, and this was gall and wormwood to a girl of her ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... Wormwood Scrubbs and Portland Prisons were there to swear to the identity of Abraham Brake, alias Lister, alias Bough, whose photographs, thumb-prints, and measurements an official from the Criminal Identification Department of Scotland Yard was prepared to place before the Court, for ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... condemns another, he condemns himself. Since he ignores mercy and all but the Law, he finds no mercy in the sight of God; in fact, he has never experienced, never tasted, God's mercy. To his taste, both God and neighbor are bitter as gall and wormwood. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... the waiter for his slowness. When the absinthe came he grasped the half-full glass and swallowed the liquid raw, a thing I had never seen done before. Into the next measure of the wormwood he poured the water impetuously from the carafe, another thing I had never seen done before, and dropped two lumps of sugar into it. Over the third glass he placed a flat perforated plated spoon, piled the sugar on this bridge, and ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... necessary, the one to the other. The parts of life contribute to the perfection of the whole. Each object has its own peculiar office, as it has its own form. The tulip delights with its beauty, the carnation with its perfume, the unseemly wormwood displeases both taste and smell, yet in medicinal value is superior to both. So each temperament, each character, has its good and bad. The one has inclinations of which the other ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... hand. Soon you will see the Angels of the Seals. I shall show the multitude Death on the Pale Horse and the vision of Ezekiel. And you shall behold the star called Wormwood, the great star of the third angel, which shall fall like a burning lamp upon the waters and turn them bitter. And at the last you will see the chariot of Elijah caught up to heaven in a fiery whirlwind. In it will be seated the Princess Mila—we, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... of pains, of great pains, do sometimes alter the taste of a man; they make him think his meat, his drink, yea, that cordials have a bitter taste in them. How many times doth the poor people of God, that are the only men that know what a broken-heart doth mean, cry out that gravel, wormwood, gall, and vinegar, was made their meat (Lam 3:15,16,19). This gravel, gall, and wormwood, is the true temporal taste of sin; and God, to make them loathe it for ever, doth feed them with it till their hearts both ache and break therewith. Wickedness is pleasant of taste ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The lady did not at all participate in the joviality; and, as it is difficult to keep up mirth entirely upon one's own resources, we were beginning to be a gloomy party. What I had unconsciously said regarding my master's voice, was wormwood to him. He had long been the butt of all his acquaintance respecting it, and what followed was the making that unbearable which was before too bitter. Many questions were put by the visitor, and the answers appeared to grow more and more unsatisfactory ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... all "gall and wormwood," as Bobby Hargrew said Hester was; but the girls of Central High as a whole did not care much for Lily because she aped the fashions of her elders, and tried to appear "grown up." And when she came in from her unexpected dip in the lake ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... was Mrs. Whately, since she, with good reason, felt under obligations to him. Even more than an adventurous scouting expedition he relished a situation full of humor, and such, his presence at Mr. Baron's supper-table promised to be. He knew his entertainment would be gall and wormwood to the old Bourbon and his wife, and that the courtesy had been wrung from them by his own forbearance. It might be his only opportunity to see Miss Lou and suggest the liberty he had brought to her as well as to ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... fertile meadows, must shiver most of the year under bitter north winds sweeping over the fields of snow which melted under neither sun nor rain; and in spring could only watch for the breaking up of the ice in the Danube, the restoration of the gloomy plains to their crop of wormwood, and the rare arrival of some brave ship from Italy or Greece. The acknowledged master of the Latin tongue, the courted talker in brilliant circles in Rome must learn to write and speak a barbarous jargon if he wished to have any intercourse with his neighbours. The husband ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... said the child. Trevelyan had intended on this very afternoon to have gone up to town,—to transact business with Bozzle; for he still believed, though the aspect of the man was bitter to him as wormwood, that Bozzle was necessary to him in all his business. And he still made appointments with the man, sometimes at Stony Walk, in the Borough, and sometimes at the tavern in Poulter's Court, even though Bozzle not unfrequently neglected to attend the summons of his employer. And he would ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... in the judgment hall, By long foreknowledge of the deadly tree, By darkness, by the wormwood and the gall, I pray thee visit ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Mrs. Hanway-Harley that he feared Dorothy had given her heart to Richard. This admission was gall and wormwood to the self-love of Storri. He made it, however, and recalled Mrs. Hanway-Harley to Dorothy's chatter concerning the morning talks between Richard ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... which he stood, would have burst forth in anathemas against the "wolf in sheep's clothing," by which title he never failed in after years to designate the traitor. The Jew trembled, and partly rose from his seat; while Zillah, whose love had turned to hate—whose affection had become as wormwood—stood erect as he advanced, with a pale but firm look. Prepared to assert her rights to the last, she was the very model of a determined woman, who, having been greatly wronged, resolves to be greatly avenged. If her lip quivered, it was evidently from eagerness, not from ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... plain. This bird is the largest of the grouse kind, though it is neither a bird of handsome plumage, nor yet is it delicate in its flesh. On the contrary, the flesh, from the nature of its food, which is the berry of the wild wormwood, is both unsavoury and bitter. It would not have deterred the appetites of our four trappers, could they have laid their hands upon the bird, but without guns such a thing was out of the question. For ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... months, and still Princess Sudolisu's kingdom looked like one large bedchamber. The people snored in the streets, the brave army lying in the fields slept soundly, hidden in the long grass under the shadow of nettle, wormwood, and thistle, rust and dust marring the brightness of their armour. Inside the palace everything was the same. The twelve maids of honour lay motionless. The princess alone kept watch, silent amid this reign of sleep. She walked up and down her narrow prison, sighing and weeping bitter tears, but ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... charming duet, which seems made for the very purpose of spoiling your drugs;" her answer would be, "If you make me burn them, I'll make you eat them:" thus disputing, I drew her to the harpsichord; the furnace was presently forgotten, the extract of juniper or wormwood calcined (which I cannot recollect without transport), and these scenes usually ended by her smearing my face with the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... that interested me more deeply—my grandfather, Alexander Loudon. In his time the old gentleman had been a working mason, and had risen from the ranks—more, I think, by shrewdness than by merit. In his appearance, speech, and manners, he bore broad marks of his origin, which were gall and wormwood to my uncle Adam. His nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in conspicuous mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and wrinkles, like a ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and dragging. Take ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would substitute in its place, the shavings of deal-boards, as he affirms, to give a grateful odor to the drink; and how soveraign those resinous-woods, the tops of fir, and pines, are against the scorbut, gravel in the kidneys, &c. we generally find: It is in the same chapter, that he commends also wormwood, marrubium, chamelaeagnum, sage, tamarisc, and almost any thing, rather than hops. The bark of the pine heals ulcers; and the inner rind cut small, contus'd, and boil'd in store of water, is ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... turn justice to wormwood And cast down righteousness to the earth; Who trample upon the poor And afflict the just; Who take a bribe And thrust aside the needy in the gate: I know how manifold are your transgressions, Saith the Lord, God of hosts, And how mighty ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... wormwood to Jessie. "Child," I said to her, "this is the best singing lesson you have ever had. Your study is all right and you have a better voice than that woman, but you cannot sing "The Last Rose of Summer" yet, for you do not know ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... acquainted with another Algeria, not less weird and to be dreaded—the Algeria in the towns, surcharged with lawyers and their papers. He got to know the pettifogger who does business at the back of a cafe—the legal Bohemian with documents reeking of wormwood bitters and white neckcloths spotted with champoreau; the ushers, the attorneys, all the locusts of stamped paper, meagre and famished, who eat up the colonist body and boots—ay, to the very straps of them, and leave him peeled ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... not for that accursed cousin—that puritan Colonel—I could forgive every thing else to so noble a wench. But a roundheaded rebel preferred to me—the preference avowed to my face, and justified with the assertion, that a king might take a lesson from him—it is gall and wormwood. If the old man had not come up this morning as he did, the King should have taken or given a lesson, and a severe one. It was a mad rencontre to venture upon with my rank and responsibility—and yet this wench has made me so angry with her, and so envious ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... we were now passing, was a mingling of hills, steep rocks, and valleys covered with wormwood; the stems of which shrub are nearly six inches thick, and might serve for fuel. We killed six rattlesnakes on the 15th, and on the 16th saw a great many more among the rocks. These dangerous reptiles ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... opportunity of my life. With the exception of one accident caused by the inexcusable negligence of a ballast-train crew, everything went well in his absence. But that this accident should occur was gall and wormwood to me. Determined to fulfill all the duties of the station I held a court-martial, examined those concerned, dismissed peremptorily the chief offender, and suspended two others for their share in the catastrophe. Mr. Scott after his return of course was advised of the accident, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... like the broom-corn straws. These stems are very bitter and are often used by the range-riders on long rides or roundups to excite the flow of saliva when thirst overtakes them too far from water. Because of its bitterness it is often called wormwood. ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... neither might be agreeable seems not to have occurred to him. Did you ever know such assurance? Assurance? My dear, it was gall, downright gall! Well, I didn't find it wormwood, and replied, with my untutored Redhorse heart in my throat, "I—I shall be pleased to do anything." Could words have been more stupid? There are depths of fatuity in me, friend o' my soul, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... this ingenious naturalist who has already given us more useful works and has still others in preparation, uses for this odious task, a pen dipped in gall and wormwood. It is true that many of his remarks have some foundation, and that to each error that he points out he at the same time adds its correction. But he is not always just and never fails to insult. After all, what does his book prove except that a forty-fifth ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... have felt from the time when he first became Exciseman, that he had parted company with all thought of steadily working out his ideal, and that whatever he might now do in that way must be by random snatches. To his proud spirit the name of gauger must have been gall and wormwood, and it is much to his credit that for the sake of his wife and children he was content to undergo what he often felt to be a social obloquy. It would have been well for him if this had been the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... found they could not change his purpose, their affection for him forced them into outward acquiescence, but their reluctant condescension was gall and wormwood to me. I saw things only from my own point of view, and was keenly sensitive to their politely concealed disapprobation, and my offended vanity found its victim in Miles. I belonged to the class who admit and resent slights, instead of ignoring them, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the same time, of every human heart which is unkindly and unjustly treated. And whilst he himself has so painfully suffered in that deep combat in which the Laocoon-snakes seize upon the outstretched hand; whilst he himself has been compelled to drink from that wormwood-steeped bowl which the cold-blooded and arrogant world so constantly offers to those who are in depressed circumstances, he is fully capable of giving to his delineations in this respect a truth and an earnestness, nay, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... see And wasteth to ashes inwardly Is verily but an imaging Of man's own life, the piteous thing. The whole is brittleness and mishap: We sit and dally in Fortune's lap Till tears break in our smiles betwixt, And the shallow honey-draught be mix'd With sorrow's wormwood fathom-deep. Oh! rest not therefore, man, nor sleep: In the blossoming of thy flower-crown A sword is raised to ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... Palliser's description of The Knoll and its occupants—the picnics, carpet-dances, afternoon teas; and the thought that all these enjoyments and festivities, the good things to eat and drink, the pleasant society, ought to have been hers instead of Ida's, was wormwood. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... houses. Cynthia laughed, a little bitterly, perhaps, at the thought of a picture gallery being added to the tannery house. And she told herself stoutly that Uncle Jethro was a greater man than any of the others, even if Miss Sadler did not see fit to mention him. So she had her first taste of a kind of wormwood that is very common in the world though it did not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... would her jealousy taunt him with his poverty, revile him for his idleness, and square accounts with him for the manifest preference of the boy. He could bear them with patience when they were alone, but in Philip's presence they were as gall and wormwood, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... manner in which Mrs. Hooker and you go on refusing to give any address leads us to believe that you are dwelling peripatetically in a "Wan" with green door and brass knocker somewhere on Wormwood Scrubbs, and that "Kew" is only a blind. So you see I am obliged to inclose Mrs. Hooker's epistle ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... 1572]; of the Admiral of France slain in his chamber, and divers other murders: so that he "thought those Frenchmen the happiest which were farthest from France, now no longer France but Frensy, even as if all Gaul were turned into wormwood and gall: Italian practices having over-mastered the French simplicity." He showed what famous and often reports he had heard of our great riches. He desired to know of our Captain which way he might "compass" ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... this craven life of ours, Our honey out of bitter herbs is blent; The songs that fall as soft as April showers Came of the whips and scorns of chastisement, From smitten lips and hearts in sorrow bent, Distilled of blood and wormwood are they all— Idly you heard, indifferent what they meant: Poets must make their honey ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... King of love and truth! Who wouldst not hate my froward youth, And wilt not leave me when grown old, Gladly will I, like Pontic sheep, Unto my wormwood diet keep, Since thou hast made ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... out from before Fredericksburgh, through a country, well enough by nature, but neglected, barren and depopulated. How large a portion of this great State was in this sad condition? Its naturally rich fields were grown up to scrub pines, mugworts and wormwood. Its fair valleys desolate of inhabitants, or inhabited by low white trash, as idle as ignorant. The groves and fields where we now rested were pleasant for a bivouac, but the fields were waste land, and the oak timber was all that seemed of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... got some wormwood—the stuff she made for Phronsie's toe when 'twas pounded," suggested Joel, quite oblivious to the black looks which Peletiah was ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... married. They married men o' means, and the gall and wormwood entered into my soul, and ate it away. Laban was awful good. He laughed and worked, but we couldn't make it. Times was too hard. I'd see Samanthy trailin' silks and satins in the dust, and —and my underskirts was made o' flour sacks. Yes—flour sacks! ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... to darken the colour of the beer. Some brewers made use of the infusion of malt instead of sugar colouring. To impart to the beer a bitter taste, the fraudulent brewer employed quassia wood and wormwood as a ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... the wormwood in his heart. He had not grown up among the young people of Stackpole without similar experiences, but it had been his youthful boast that no girl had ever "stopped speaking" to him without ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... silence. Head down, hands thrust deep in pockets, he paced like a captured animal in bars. The bitterness of his spirit was wormwood. What meant, to him, the interests and pleasures of other men? Profit and loss, alcohol, tobacco, women—all alike bore him no message. Clubs, athletics, gambling—he grumbled something savage as his thoughts turned to such trivialities. And into his aquiline face came something the look of ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... he did love his wife dearly, though the more he saw of her the more he admired her, yet his marriage had not made him happy. He had to live on her money, which galled him, and to be assisted by the Dean's money, which was wormwood to him. And he found himself to be driven whither he did not wish to go, and to be brought into perils from which his experience did not suffice to extricate him. He already repented the step he had taken ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... throughout, that if there yet remained at large any of the rioters who had been concerned in the attack upon it, the sight of the old, goodly, prosperous dwelling, so revived, must have been to them as gall and wormwood. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... its bosom, yet sustains all the harvest of the world. If like a desert itself, it makes all the other wildernesses of the earth to bud and blossom as the rose. Though its own waters are as salt and wormwood, it makes the clouds of heaven ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... the doctrines of Christian Healin', or Mind Cure. Now I can't exactly believe that if I fell down and hurt my head on a stun—I cannot believe as I am a layin' there, that I hain't fell, and there hain't no stun—and while I am a groanin' and a bathin' the achin' bruise in anarky and wormwood, I can't believe that there hain't no such thing ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... its merry chat, was gall and wormwood to her. Mrs. Nat's kind eyes seemed probing for something Patricia could not show her. Doris Leighton's quiet pleasantries and Constance's gay quips were dust and ashes in her mouth, and when finally she had walked across the Square to the big brick house and the ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... and Sal Armoniack; lastly deterging and cleansing away the Pus and Sanies, whilst it is thick and too corrosive, with Lotions made of Barley Water, Honey of Roses, Camphire; or with vulneraine Decoctions of Scordium, Wormwood, Centaury the less, and Birthwort. And when the Ulcer has been well deterged, and the tumified Glands entirely consumed by Suppuration, there remains nothing but to apply a simple Plaister to bring the Wound ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... perceiving the hesitation, went out gleefully, persuaded that the decision was gall and wormwood to ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... humbler walk. Samuel Rutherford confides in a letter to his old friend, Alexander Gordon, that he knows a man who sometimes wonders to see any one laugh or sport in this so sinful and sad life. But that was because he had embittered the springs of laughter in himself by the wormwood sins of his youth. William Guthrie had no such remorseful memories continually taking him by the throat as his divinity professor had, and thus it was that with all his melancholy he was known as the greatest humorist and the greatest sportsman ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... could see what made Josh think so quick that day. We never thought he was brighter 'n common; but jest see how in that flash o' bein' mad with Lyddy Ann he'd planned out what would be most wormwood for her! He gi'n her the half o' the house she'd furnished herself with hair-cloth chairs an' a whatnot, but 'twa'n't the part that was fit to be lived in. She stayed pretty close for three or four days, an' I guess she ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... nitrate or chlorate of potash. But, till then, they had not found any of these polypores or even any of the morels which could replace them. On this day, the engineer, seeing a plant belonging to the wormwood genus, the principal species of which are absinthe, balm-mint, tarragon, etc., gathered several tufts, and, presenting them to ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... history of those who fail; the vessels that never came back from their venturous voyages left us no log-books. Many have written the History of Success. What melancholy Plutarch shall arise to record, with a pen dipped in wormwood, the ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... to hands and feet when he heard, and soon saw, Furneaux and the two constables coming toward him. The little detective held the electric torch above his head, and was striding on without looking to right or left. The bitterness of defeat was in his face. Life had turned to gall and wormwood. As the expressive American phrase has ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... colours and tones. Mr. Maugham ... has suffered for the joy of the many who are to read after him. By no willing of his own he has been compelled to take life by the hand and go down where there has been little save sorrow and degradation. The cup of gall and wormwood has obviously been lifted to his lips and to the last drop he has been compelled to drink it. Because of this, we are enabled to see the rug, woven of the tortures and delights of a life. We may actually walk and talk with ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... been right in thinking the little model was not speaking the truth when she said she had seen Hughs, for it was not until early on the following morning that three persons traversed the long winding road leading from Wormwood Scrubs to Kensington. They preserved silence, not because there was nothing in their hearts to be expressed, but because there was too much; and they walked in the giraffe-like formation peculiar to the lower classes—Hughs in front; Mrs. Hughs to the left, a foot or two behind; and a yard behind ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the pressure of debt, and the struggle for existence. It had eaten into her flesh like a canker, and had turned her heart into wormwood. In her pinched circumstances, even the pittance paid by her brother for doing his cooking and washing had been a consideration. This now was ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... and baking receive mention. Brewing and the different kinds of beer are fully examined. In those days adulteration was practiced, for wormwood and quassia were found as substitutes. The preparation of beer and ale for home consumption would very likely find little favor in the "dry-bone" spirit of the present, much less would the refining of wines and other spirituous liquors of high alcohol content meet with approbation. However, ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... hair from the House of Commons, of the throes and convulsions it would occasion to restore them to their natural rights. What mobs and riots would it produce! To what infinite abuse and obloquy would the capillary patriot be exposed; what wormwood would distil from Mr. Perceval, what froth would drop from Mr. Canning; how (I will not say MY, but OUR Lord Hawkesbury, for he belongs to us all)—how our Lord Hawkesbury would work away about the hair of King William and Lord Somers, and the ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... anxious to see a wolf-hunt the Judge volunteered to get one up, and asked old man Prindle to assist, for the sake of his two big fighting dogs; though the very names of the latter, General Grant and Old Abe, were gall and wormwood to the unreconstructed soul of the Judge. Still they were the only dogs anywhere around capable of tackling a savage timber wolf, and without their aid the judge's own high-spirited animals ran a serious risk of ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... leeks; Nor weeds are now, for whence arose the weed, Scarce plants, fair herbs, and curious flowers proceed, Where Cuckoo-pints and Dandelions sprung (Gross names had they our plainer sires among), There Arums, there Leontodons we view, And Artemisia grows where wormwood grew. But though no weed exists his garden round, From Rumex strong our Gardener frees his ground, Takes soft Senecio from the yielding land, And grasps the arm'd Urtica in his hand. Not Darwin's self had more delight to sing Of floral courtship, in th' awaken'd Spring, Than Peter Pratt, who simpering ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... such, for instance, as calcin'd chalk, calcin'd oyster or scallop-shells, calcin'd egg-shells, alabaster, &c. But if a hogshead can soon be drank, use a stronger alkali, such as salt of tartar, salt of wormwood; but in using them, you must always preserve their colour with lac, or else the alkali will turn the liquor black, and keep ...
— The Cyder-Maker's Instructor, Sweet-Maker's Assistant, and Victualler's and Housekeeper's Director - In Three Parts • Thomas Chapman
... in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly; they come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom reciprocally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... with strangers alone, She hears in her anguish his piteous moan, As he eagerly listens—but listens in vain, To catch the loved tones of his mother again! The curse of the broken in spirit shall fall On the wretch who hath mingled this wormwood and gall, And his gain like a mildew shall blight and destroy, Who hath torn from his ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... the old miller, as Aunt Alvirah informed her, grew grumpier and more morose all the time. "He is a caution to get along with," wrote Aunt Alvirah Boggs in her cramped handwriting. "I don't know what's going to become of him. You'd think he was weaned on wormwood and drunk nothing but boneset tea ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... Cicely disposed of it by small instalments at the windows; and a laugh over the evident horror it excited in the master, did the captives at least as much good as the camomile, centaury, wormwood, and other ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so full of interest. Now that there is no shadow, and that my voice is the first in France, as France's is in Europe, all is dull and lacking in flavour. What use is it to have all pleasure before me, when it turns to wormwood when ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hail-clouds; so he shoots at the clouds to bring down the hags, while he curses them, saying, "Curse, curse Herodias, thy mother is a heathen, damned of God and fettered through the Redeemer's blood." Also he brings out a pot of glowing charcoal on which he has thrown holy oil, laurel leaves, and wormwood to make a smoke. The fumes are supposed to ascend to the clouds and stupefy the witches, so that they tumble down to earth. And in order that they may not fall soft, but may hurt themselves very much, the yokel hastily brings out a chair ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... certainly should be vacated "P. D. Q." if it took all his clerical force to effect it, but this was sotto voce, so to speak, and presumably unheard by the general commanding. It was gall of another kind, and wormwood, after these first few flattering receptions, to be greeted thereafter only by aides-de-camp or a military secretary; then to be told by the chief surgeon that, under instructions from Washington, only those nurses and attendants recognized and employed by the general government could be permitted ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... to me so absolutely, and to refuse yourself to me as absolutely! to mingle such sweet and bitter drops in the same cup—honey and wormwood—and present it to my lips! only you, Isabelle, could be capable ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... second New York season, and he was driven to the old, socially discredited Academy of Music. They did not look with favoring eyes upon an enterprise which had achieved so tremendous a triumph at its very start, and they provided a large percentage of the wormwood which filled the cup which Mr. Damrosch drank in 1896; but they embittered their own goblet by the procedure, and when the time came for laying out the campaign of 1896-97 they were quite as ready as Mr. Damrosch to sign a treaty of peace whose provisions promised to make for ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hospital cot, heaved itself slowly upward till it loomed at its full height in air. Lincoln turned his face toward the boy standing under the flickering gas-jet and reading with soft, sliding inflections the words which had for twenty-four hours been gall and wormwood to his memory. And as the sentences slipped from the lad's mouth, behold, a miracle happened, for the man who had written them knew that they were great. He knew then, as many a lesser one has known, that out of a little loving-kindness had come great joy; that ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews |
