"Worst" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ride a baggage-camel. Apart from all ideas of etiquette, the motion of the latter animal is quite sufficient warning. Of all species of fatigue, the back-breaking monotonous swing of a heavy camel is the worst; and, should the rider lose patience, and administer a sharp cut with the coorbatch that induces the creature to break into a trot, the torture of the rack is a pleasant tickling compared to the sensation of having your spine driven by a sledge-hammer from below, half a foot ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,—that it has no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended upon ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... And the world would be a great deal better if men, in their greed, did not seek to snatch every thing for themselves, instead of leaving something as a thankoffering to the giver of the blessings. Greed is man's worst fault.' ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... wheat is the one that suffers most from insects. There are three insects that cause to the wheat industry an annual loss of about ten per cent. The chinch bug is the worst, and it is charged with five per cent ($20,000,000) of the total loss. The Hessian fly comes next in order, and occasionally rolls up enormous losses. In the year 1900, that insect caused to Indiana and Ohio alone the loss of 2,577,000 acres of wheat, and the total ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... three children—'needs' as viewed by educated parents. The most sympathetic administration would have its hands full for many a year coping with the problem of helping those thousands of our people who have been just on or very near the bread-line. Those worst off hitherto need help first. A man earning between three and four hundred a year should not claim Government help to breed children, when there are such numbers of people living on a much lower wage. But it must be perfectly clear to ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... turned his back on me, and walked rapidly away. I returned to my inn a little crestfallen and depressed. Worst of all was that, as I was undressing, I discovered my watch ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... noted, and have the effect of some rare and beautiful flower pinned into his buttonhole. He is the confidant of his intrigues, his guest when he gives small, special entertainments, his daily familiar table companion, and the buffoon whose sly humor one stimulates, and whose worst witticisms one tolerates." ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of the worst which it has ever been our painful task to pass sentence upon. Your reckless disregard of what you recognised as your duty and of the consequences of your misdemeanours on the bench render mercy in your case entirely out of place. It is ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... levies of farmers, English generals had surrendered to men of their own race and their own speech, and a new flag floated over a new world between the day when Franklin went smartly dressed to Westminster to hear Wedderburn do his best and worst, and the day when Franklin vent smartly dressed to Paris as the representative of an independent America. Franklin's flowered coat is no ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... fears of the storm, understood the men of his world. Nor had he any fear of them, and Buck's threat only had the effect of rousing the worst side of his nature, at all times ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... deficiencies, and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming. Into his picture he began to fit these two speculatively, with a purely tentative adjustment of their personalities to his requirements. They were arguing about which of the two was the worst farmer; but Luck, riding alongside them, was seeing them slouched in their saddles and riding, bone-tired, with a shuffling trail-herd hurrying to the next watering place. He was seeing them galloping hard on the flanks of a storm-lashed stampede, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... Cora turned up the path with her. "I met Ray," said Bess, "buying a new veil, of course. I would hate to be as pretty as Ray, and have so much trouble to keep up the reputation. That's the worst of pretty girls. They really ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... this side and that side, front after back, and returned to the back; but it was no good, for the fact was that he was over-tired; and over-weariness, that is to say, exhaustion, is one of the worst opponents to a calm and ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... but the worst that can be urged against this portrait is that it is superficial. But what charm and grace there is in its superficiality! Romney was aware of the grace and charm of the young girl as she sat before him in her white dress: he saw her as a flower; and in fluent, agreeable, well-bred and cultivated ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... full well there be some, and may be a good many, who have been robbers of their neighbours ('And who is my neighbour?' quoth the rich man), or lechers, or despiteful haters, or talebearers, or fawners on rich men for the hurt of the poor (and that is the worst of all)—Ah, my poor brethren who have gone astray, I say not to you, go home and repent lest you mar our great deeds, but rather come afield and there repent. Many a day have ye been fools, but hearken unto me and I shall make you wise above the wisdom of the earth; ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... promote to an enormous extent the advance of the human mind. All progress in our knowledge of truth means an advance in the higher cultivation of the human intelligence; and all progress in its application to practical life implies a corresponding improvement of morality. The worst enemies of the human race—ignorance and superstition—can only be vanquished by truth and reason. In any case, I hope and desire to have convinced the reader of these chapters that the true scientific comprehension of the human frame can only be attained in ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... the fatal secret tied his tongue under all the many slights (as he reckoned them) which the Lord Proprietor put on him. No; worst of all was the self-reproach he carried about in his own breast. But none the less the Commandant, as a sensitive man, chafed under the Lord Proprietor's tyranny, which was the harder to bear for being slightly contemptuous. He felt that all his old ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... not! And you wanted to manage without servants! You forget your wounds, and that you only have the use of one arm. Why, you are not able to dress alone. I am indispensable to you; and I am—without boasting, Major,—I am a servant who, if the worst comes to the worst, can beg and steal for ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... Rastignac left the embassy together about one in the morning, and before getting into their respective carriages, Rastignac said to Maxime on the steps of the portico: "Come and see me just before the elections. Between now and then I shall know in what locality the chances of the ministry are worst, and what resources two heads like yours and ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... governour.... His God is Mammon, his aim is the ruin of his country." The meagreness and uncertainty of his salary, which was granted by yearly votes of the Assembly, gave color to the charge that he abused his official position to improve his income. The worst accusation against him was that of conniving in trade with the French and Indians under pretence of exchanging prisoners. Six prominent men of the colony—Borland, Vetch, Lawson, Rous, Phillips, and Coffin, only three of whom were of New England origin—were brought ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... strength of will that would enable him to act for himself. Of energy he had more than enough, but it was always misplaced. In personal character he was one of the weakest of all the kings of England, and his reign was the worst and most shameful in English history. In the golden days of his father, Edgar the Peaceable, all things had gone exceeding well in the land. There was a strong and well disciplined navy to protect the coasts, and all intending invaders were ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... conduct. But what disgusts me most is, that though the characters are very low, and aim at low humour, not one of them says a sentence that is natural or marks any character at all. It is set up in opposition to sentimental comedy, and is as bad as the worst of them.' Horace Walpole's Letters, v. 467. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 286) says that Goldsmith gave him an order to see this comedy. 'The next time I saw him, he inquired of me what my opinion was of it. I told him that I would not presume to be a judge of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of these fair criminals, according to circumstances. "Those who offend only against themselves," says he, "and are not a scandal to society; but, out of deference to the sober part of the world, have so much good left in them as to be ashamed, must not be comprehended in the common word due to the worst of women. Regard is to be had to their situation when they fell, to the uneasy perplexity in which they lived under senseless and severe parents, to the importunity of poverty, to the violence of a passion in its beginning well-grounded, to all the alleviations which make unhappy ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average wine-bibber is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the worst white, slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best vice crusader. In the same way I am convinced that the average woman, whatever her deficiencies, is greatly superior to the average ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Three new victims within the last ten days had to be inscribed on the register of those who died during this fatal voyage! Ah! fortune had favoured us up to the hour when the Halbrane was snatched from her own element, but her hand was now against us. And was not this last the worst blow—must it not ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... things could not long continue. As already said, the soul of man holds within itself a power of resuscitation. So long as it continues to live, it may hope to recover from the heaviest blow. Broken hearts are more apparent than real; and even those that are worst shattered have their intervals in which they are restored to a perfect soundness. The slave in his chains, the prisoner within his dark dungeon, the castaway on his desert isle, all have their hours of joy— perhaps as vivid and lasting as those of the king upon his throne, ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... filling the entire apartment with their clamor. That the voice which uttered them was that of Ruth Morton none of the three doubted for a moment. With sinking hearts they went on, prepared for the worst. Duvall found himself dreading the moment when they should reach the bedroom door, and face the girl, her beauty, ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... recognize and deal with the nervous disturbances to which overtasked women are so liable. He saw well enough that Helen Darley would certainly kill herself or lose her wits, if he could not lighten her labors and lift off a large part of her weight of cares. The worst of it was, that she was one of those women who naturally overwork themselves, like those horses who will go at the top of their pace until they drop. Such women are dreadfully unmanageable. It is as hard reasoning with them as it would ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... up at him from her low seat with brilliant, mocking eyes. "I have thought of that. It would not be the worst thing that could happen. Would you think ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... worst of all insurrections, at least in the beginning. You have to deal with barbarians, but they possess the arms of civilised people ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... whisper—'he's no darker than this. And do, please, Sheila, take this infernal stuff away, and let me have something solid. I'm not ill—in that way. All I want is peace and quiet, time to think. Let me fight it out alone. It's been sprung on me. The worst's not over. But I'll win through; wait! And if not—well, you shall not suffer, Sheila. Don't be afraid. There are other ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... work enough of true difficulties, but we still owe many of our worst errors to want of absolutely complete study of our cases, and with the careless these slips are obvious enough to enable any one who is watchful to sit in judgment on the failures. The more delicate illustrations of the fine union of qualities which attain the highest triumphs are, of ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... outbreak. The scene concluded with the removal of the mutineers in one of the ship's boats to the man-of-war, where, in a few moments, several dozen lashes were administered to every man in detail, and the whole party were then sent on shore, and committed to a dungeon darker and dirtier than the worst among them had ever before been acquainted with. But before all this was done, and when the boats had pulled about a hundred yards from the vessel, Shiny Bill began to descend from his post. He slipped down unobserved by any one, and the first notice we had of his intentions ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... piu nell uno" symbolism of Nature and its teachings, generation of phenomena,—appearances,—from spirit, to which they correspond and which they obey; evolution of the best and elimination of the worst as the law of being; all this and much more may be found in the poetic utterances of this slender Essay. It fell like an aerolite, unasked for, unaccounted for, unexpected, almost unwelcome,—a stumbling-block to be got out of the well-trodden highway of New England ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fresh young life. It stood on the table that was spread for tea, it was lifted by a very delicate hand; but the very delicate hand was awkward, the Teapot fell. The spout snapped off, the handle snapped off; the lid was no worse to speak of—the worst had been spoken of that. The Teapot lay in a swoon on the floor, while the boiling water ran out of it. It was a horrid shame, but the worst was that they jeered at it; they jeered at it, and not at the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... worst of the teething period, and, later, when the junior partner wrestled with the whooping cough. You could always tell the state of the baby's health by the Captain's choice ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... set on high, and, in repose, folded back like the Greyhound's, though raised above the head in excitement without losing the fold, and even, in some cases, semi-erect. A prick ear is bad. A big, thick ear, hanging flat to the head, or heavily coated with long hair, is the worst of faults. The ear should be soft, glossy, and like a mouse's coat to the touch, and the smaller it is the better. It should have no long coat or long fringe, but there is often a silky, silvery coat on the body of the ear and the tip. Whatever the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... counsel in great emergencies. Each of them had a great part in the overthrow of the political forces that were on the side of slavery, and in the triumphant overthrow of the combination which would, if successful, have corrupted Massachusetts and made of her the worst instead of the best example on ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... of it, sir—it is just about the time when I find it beneficial to partake of it, as a medicine for my own weakness, and I doubt not, it will have a powerful effect also upon you. A single draught has been found to relieve the worst case of flatulence ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... day. It is a town of some extent, large enough to afford two fountains of a certain pretension, but execrably dirty within. Twelve thousand inhabitants has Partenico, and five churches. Out of its five locandas, who shall declare the worst? Of that in which we had first taken refuge, (as, in a snow-storm on the Alps, any roof is Paradise,) we were obliged to quit the shelter, and walk at noon, at midsummer, and in Sicily, a good mile up a main street, which, beginning in habitations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Mrs. Madison and asked her to intercede with the President for her father. The answer gave the required assurance, and she wrote to her father, urging him to go boldly to New York and resume the practice of his profession. "If worse comes to worst," she wrote, "I will leave everything to ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... all that is best in you; you must love me—take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you. I'll love you so confidently that we'll kill it—you and I together—my strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet contempt for weakness wherever it may be, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... juice of the butternut. In the towns it was not long before calico was seen, and calfskin shoes; and in such populous centres bonnets decorated the heads of the fair sex. Amid these advances in the art of dress Lincoln was a laggard, being usually one of the worst attired men of the neighborhood; not from affectation, but from a natural indifference to such matters. The sketch is likely to become classical in American history of the appearance which he presented with his scant pair of trousers, "hitched" by a single suspender over his shirt, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the dark. As he went to bed he grinned. "And the worst of it is," he soliloquized, "she'll think I did it because she asked me to let him go. Guess I been steppin' on my foot ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... "Jackson is the worst of the reactionaries here, while I—why should I conceal it?—have thrown in my lot with the party of progress. You will see how we suffer from him at the masters' meetings. He has no talent for organization, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... love gayety—I choose the mildest phrase I know. Yet, take us at our worst, Irish that we are, and if there be a taint of license to our revels, and if we drink the devil's toast to the devil's own undoing, the vital spring of our people remains unpolluted, the nation's strength and purity unsoiled, guarded forever by the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Agnes, "to leave her, and expressed a sense of her own weakness, and the necessity of spiritual support, as I have already told you. I am sure the worst is over." ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the same with God; If now, as formerly He trod Paradise, His presence fills Our earth, each only as God wills Can work—God's puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... cranks in this state can influence me in the least item about running my own business you're the worst lunatic outside the state asylum," ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... to have stopped on another common, but there were small houses not very far away. The worst of it was that wherever he went he was followed by a small crowd of children who made loud remarks about him. Still he wandered in and out amongst the vans, and stopped a long time before the cage which contained the lion. The ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... we are not much more safe in this place than we were in camp in an Indian country. The town is dreadful and has the reputation of being one of the very worst in the West since the railroad has been built. They say that gamblers and all sorts of "toughs" follow a new road. After breakfast this morning we started for a walk to give Hal a little run, but when we got to the office the hotel proprietor told us that the dog must be led, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... to the far country and built a castle for himself and his men, and when winter came they found that it was indeed very cold—so cold that the wine and the cider froze and had to be given out by the pound instead of the pint. But that was not the worst of it. There was ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... by the neck; For prodigal, thriftless, bestowing, His merit had won him respect: An' there will be rich brother nabobs, Tho' nabobs, yet men of the first, An' there will be Collieston's[123] whiskers, An' Quintin, o' lads not the worst. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... great smuggler on the coast, but coming to Horncastle, he reformed, and was appointed constable. The sign of this inn is a portrait of the great hero of Trafalgar and the Nile, originally well painted by the artist, Northouse, but it has recently been repainted in the worst style, and almost ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... But the worst of all in this matter was that Angelique soon despaired of her charity. This young man spoilt all her pleasure of giving. In other days he might perhaps have been equally generous, but it was not among the same people, not her own particular poor, of that she was ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... scrape I have mentioned in this sketch of my life, with many of which I have not spoken; and all with a fidelity and truth that satisfy me that man can keep no log-book that is as accurate as his own conscience. I saw that I had been my own worst enemy, and how many excellent opportunities of getting ahead in the world, I had wantonly disregarded. Liquor lay at the root of all my calamities and misconduct, enticing me into bad company, undermining my health and strength, and blasting ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... hunting-crop was called "Volapuek," because every tribe understood its meaning, and during the march Baden-Powell found it of inestimable value. "But, though often shown," he says, "it was never used." The men might be stupid, they might be idle, but B.-P. can get work out of the worst men without bullying and without ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... But the worst was yet to come. When the poor fellow tried to crawl out of the log, he was unable to do so! The opening by which he had so foolishly entered had been only just large enough to admit his body, and the wood, shrunken by the long drought, had in the rain swelled to such an extent ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... a dozen men and three boys," said she, "and the boys are the worst by a heap sight. Look at that, will you," holding up a darn with a bit of stocking attached. "That hole ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... was forgetfulness of his rank and the dignity of demeanor which it demanded of him. Every one has heard the adventure of the gambling-house, when he tore up the cards, upset the furniture, and beat both bankers and croupiers, to indemnify himself for the loss of his money; and the worst of it was, he was at that very time Governor of Paris. The Emperor, informed of this scandal, sent for him, and demanded of him (he was still very angry), if he had sworn to live and die mad. This might have been, from the sequel, taken as a prediction; for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which he might be subjected, and warned that unless he possessed nerves of steel, he had better turn back—for which measure there was yet time. Stevens, in a faint voice, indicated that he was ready for the worst, and desired to go on. Then all (except Amidon) in awesome accents intoned, "Be brave and obedient, and all may yet be well!" and they passed back into the lodge-room. Amidon was now thoroughly impressed, and wondered ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... this the worst of it, for as the deep snows above thinned, great boulders that had been buried beneath them, perhaps for centuries, were loosened from their resting-places and began to thunder down the hill. At first they moved slowly, throwing up the hard snow around them as the prow of a ship throws foam. Then ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... and very shy, Her jokes aren't in my line; And, worst of all, I'm seventeen While She ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... friends, to deepen the thought in its impressiveness, that the cross of Christ it to be the pattern of our lives. It stands alone, thank God, for mighty power in its relation to the salvation of the world, and it stands alone in awful terror. You and I are, at the very worst, but at the edge of the storm which broke in all its dreadful fury over His head; we love to go but a little way down the hillside, while He descended to the very bottom; we love to drink but very little of the cup which He drained the last drop of and held it up empty and reversed, showing that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... this, colonel. I stand charged at division headquarters of crimes that if proven would dismiss me from the service. The death of the principal witness is the worst mishap that could have befallen me. It leaves me unvindicated, because now we cannot impeach his testimony; because now my enemies can say that had he lived the result might have been different. I urge, I claim that I must be tried; ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... of all, a rank indiscretion for any but men to dine at these places. They are almost, as a rule, the resort of all that is disreputable in both sexes. You are sure to eat badly, and in the very worst of company. My warning is, however, meant for my countrywomen only: men can, or at least ought, to take care of themselves. As for myself, don't be shocked; but I do like doubtful company—that is, I am immensely interested by all that class of people which the world calls adventurers, whether the ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... believe the worst. It saves useless expenditure of sympathy. And you may be quite certain that the ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... speculation." It is certain that they got handsome presents at Mourzuk from the credulous believers. Of others, the Moors say they became Muslims to prevent the Tuaricks from killing them. I asked Ibrahim how he passed the Tuarick countries, and was informed that the Ghatees treated him the worst. They swore he was not a Muslim, but still a Jew, and demanded one hundred dollars from him to pass. He got off with fifty; whilst to the Aheer people he paid about twenty dollars. A Christian or a Jew must never think he will be able to save his money, or, much less, his credit, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... by the announcement, and for a moment could not speak one word. To be separated from her beloved nurse who had always taken care of her!—who seemed almost necessary to her existence. It was such a calamity as even her worst fears had never suggested, for they never had been parted, even for a single day; but wherever the little girl went, if to stay more than a few hours, her faithful attendant had always accompanied her, and she had never thought of the possibility of ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... solitude, and wounded love, and mortified vanity. One hour with him!—one hour of love, scolding, tears—would have saved them both. Alone, she was incapable of the merest common sense. She came prepared to discover the worst—to find evidence for all her fears. And for the worst she had elaborately laid her plans. Only if it should turn out that she had been an unkind, unreasonable wife, wrongly suspicious of her husband, was she uncertain what ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... She knew the worst was over, unless the lightning killed her, for the wind had ceased, and the walls were still standing; but the atmosphere was thick with dust, and redolent of lime, and she conjectured that the plastering in the gallery had fallen, though the tremendous ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... by accident," observed Alick. "My worst apprehensions are fulfilled. The Indians must have attacked the fort, and having succeeded in capturing it, put the whole ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... mountain only to cast myself down; that I had clambered up, through so many and hard trials, to be rich, to be recognised, to wear city clothes and a sword to my side, all to commit mere suicide at the last end of it, and the worst kind of suicide besides, which is to get hanged ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the wild death-curse of the Yaga Tah, she could at least stoop and spit upon the dead face of the one worst white man. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... do it for my worst enemy, if I knew—and maybe this poor miller is that. What ails that man is—remorse. He hasn't done right but I'm going to give him the chance now, and see his round face fall into its old ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... Louis is a smoky town, where people have gray lungs instead of pink; a town where franchise grabbing and an antiquated system of taxation have their consequence of more than New York city rents. A town whose slums, says Lee Frankel, are the worst in the country. A town where wages are low (in some occupations twenty-five per cent lower than in New York City); where employment is irregular, the speeding-up tremendous, the number of women entering industry steadily ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... powers of nature, not for their employer's sake alone, but for the sake of their own year's labour and their own year's bread. The sheep have been driven off the land below; the cattle stand ranged shivering on high dykes inland; they will be saved in punts, if the worst befall. But a hundred spades, wielded by practised hands, cannot stop that tiny rat-hole. The trickle becomes a rush—the rush a roaring waterfall. The dyke-top trembles- -gives. The men make efforts, desperate, dangerous, as of sailors in a wreck, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... he found himself deceived by him in his opinion that these spirits, which ministered unto him, were messengers of the Deity. They had several quarrels before-time; but when he found Kelly degenerating into the worst species of the magic art for purposes of avarice and fraud, he broke off all connection with him, and would never afterwards be seen in his company. Kelly, being discountenanced by the Doctor, betook himself ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that's your fault too, Archibald Maine. You take a fancy to and make a companion of a private who bears the worst character in this detachment. You see even now, sir, you have made so much of a companion of him that you are ready to take the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Tell Pedro not to wait luncheon for me. And keep an eye on him if you want anything fit to eat. He's the worst cook west of the plains. You'll find books, and the piano to amuse you when you ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The worst mischief he can work is to bring a shade on your sweet face. All this evening I have noticed a troubled look in those grey eyes of yours, which must be banished ere I see you again. You surely do not think I am frightened at what such ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth
... faintest echoes of the faith which they professed, still flickered in a few of the best and noblest, they could but look on with folded hands in ineffectual mourning; they could do nothing without soldiers, and the soldiers were the worst offenders. Hispaniola became a desert; the gold was in the mines, and there were no slaves left remaining to extract it. One means which the Spaniards dared to employ to supply the vacancy, brought about an incident which in its piteous pathos exceeds any story ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Scott's sick-room this morning I found her suffering, and I doubt if she knew me. Yet, after breakfast, she seemed serene and composed. The worst is, she will not speak out about the symptoms under which she labours. Sad, sad work; I am under the most melancholy apprehension, for what constitution can hold out under these continued and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... disproven; wherefore thou be wise, Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith! She reels not in the storm of warring words, She brightens at the clash of Yes and No, She sees the Best that glimmers through the Worst, She feels the sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... require the aid of argument or elucidation; it is native to the conscience, and will be apparent to all who consult the monitor in their own breast. The wrong is aggravated when the taint of personal interest mingles with it, as when committed by a party to the cause, but appears in the worst form when it is the act of attorneys or counsel, who are the sworn officers of the court, whose duty it is to act as guardians of the fountains of justice, and who are false to their charge when they defile or taint those waters, which they are pledged to ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... Amerindian civilizations, Mexico came under Spanish rule for three centuries before achieving independence early in the 19th century. A devaluation of the peso in late 1994 threw Mexico into economic turmoil, triggering the worst recession in over half a century. The nation continues to make an impressive recovery. Ongoing economic and social concerns include low real wages, underemployment for a large segment of the population, inequitable ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... wide-spreading branches. She realized that she must now be some distance from the road and the big oak tree where she had left the pony-cart, and Fluff perhaps was deep in this wilderness, unable to make his way back; and, worst of all, night ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... day on the back Ministerial benches. With the Liberals the pathway of promotion, Chiltern says, opens from below the gangway. Mr. Lowe came from there, so did Mr Goschen, Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Childers, Mr. Foster, and even Mr. Gladstone himself. The worst thing a Liberal member who wants to become a Cabinet Minister or a Judge can do is to sit on the back Ministerial benches, vote as he is bidden, and hold his tongue when he is told. He should go and sit below the gangway, near Mr Goldsmid or Mr. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... believe that my squareness, guided by your advice, would secure you? I have applied for a loan of only ten thousand dollars. You will absolutely control the expenditure of the money. You know, therefore, that at the worst I could not have a large loss. I have offered you life insurance to protect you against the possibility of my death within the next five years. It is altogether improbable that I should have a loss of as much as a thousand dollars in the new business. Certainly you have sufficient confidence ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... divine mission; they constitute themselves a spiritual and temporal power superior to the established powers and inevitably hostile to them. A dangerous illusion and productive of shocks in which the illuminated are generally the worst sufferers! Every day of her life living and holding converse with saints and angels, moving in the splendour of the Church Triumphant, this young peasant girl came to believe that in her resided all strength, all prudence, all wisdom and all counsel. This does not mean that she was lacking ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and ready to help everybody. I do not know how I happened to fall in love with him nor when, but I did, anyway. He was a favorite with the girls, and that is what spoiled him. He got into the company of bad girls and boys, and before he was fifteen years old he was the worst boy in town. He is now about twenty-one or twenty-two, and no respectable girl will have anything to do with him. I prayed and prayed that he might be changed, but it seemed that it was not to be. I was only a child then, but I loved as earnestly as any woman ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... repeated to himself. And to his imagination appeared with unusual vividness the beautiful face of the second dead convict, with a smile on his lips, the forbidding expression of his forehead, and the small, strong ear under the shaved, bluish scalp. "And the worst part of it is that he was killed, and no one knows who killed him. Yet he was killed. He was forwarded, like the others, at the order of Maslenikoff. Maslenikoff probably signed the usual order with his foolish flourish, on a printed letter-head, and, of course, does not consider ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... from the worst enemy that had afflicted them since the Babylonian captivity. Neither Assyrians nor Egyptians nor Persians had so ruthlessly swept away religious institutions. Those conquerors were contented with conquest and its political results,—namely, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... fierce and dominant passion. Unfortunately, though an ardent, it was at the same time a corrupt and degenerate, Whiggism; a Whiggism so narrow and oligarchical as to be little, if at all, preferable to the worst forms of Toryism. The young lord's imagination had been fascinated by those swelling sentiments of liberty which abound in the Latin poets and orators; and he, like those poets and orators, meant by liberty something very different from the only liberty which is of importance ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... audience that they know far more about the subject than the lecturer. But worst of all is the chairman who knows absolutely nothing about the subject or about yourself. I remember one evening some pompous chairman getting up and saying: "I have great pleasure this evening in introducing to you Mr. Furniss. I know ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... conductor and the waiter is really quite correct, and there is no air with healing power enough to counterbalance hotel annoyances, if one is at all affected by them. So let us keep her here. If that is not the best thing, it is certainly not the worst." ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... to affirm its first rise is from our unwholesome stagnating waters, and especially those that come off a clayey surface, as there are about Londonderry and Amsterdam, for that where the waters are worst, there this Distemper is most common, so that in their Writings they have put it out of all doubt, that most of our complicated symptoms that are rank'd under this general Name, if they don't take their beginning from such water, do own it to be ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... children—that first night at school—hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing, and jarring you with their hateful merriment—as for the first night at a strange school, we most of us remember what THAT is. And the first is not the WORST, my boys, there's the rub. But each man has his share of troubles, and, I suppose, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lesson to watch the expression and movements of a number of rustic conscripts undergoing their first drills, and to contrast them with the finished result as seen in the faces and bearing of the soldiers that throng the streets. A military training is not the worst preparation for an active life, any more than the years spent at college are time lost, as another school of utilitarians insists. Is it nothing that wars are less frequent, peace better secured, by the mutual ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... welfare of—and so on. Ta dee dum da, ta, ra, rum dee. They always send on the agenda beforehand. That's all I want, and I'll lay you twenty to one I'll turn out as good a report as any of our rivals. You rely on me for that! I know exactly how debates go. At the worst I can always swop with another reporter—a prize distribution for an obituary, or ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Subaltern's name. A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on the peg-tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior Subaltern was, and sobbing. We rose to our feet, feeling that things were going to happen and ready to believe the worst. In this bad, small world of ours, one knows so little of the life of the next man—which, after all, is entirely his own concern—that one is not surprised when a crash comes. Anything might turn up any day for any one. Perhaps the Senior Subaltern had been ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... my Lords, none. He must therefore have been either a madman, a fool, or a determined declarer of falsehood. Either he thought there was no danger, and therefore no occasion for providing against it, or he was the worst of governors, the most culpably improvident of his personal safety, of the lives of his officers and men, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... please, and be hanged to you!" howled Mr. Walraven. "I am driven to the verge of madness among you! Mollie Dane and her disappearance, my wife and her cursed taunts, you and your infernal threats! Do your worst, the whole of you! I defy ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... The worst, however, was, that the count was very near hating his wife. He had heard so many people say that she was not his equal, that he finally believed it himself. Besides, he blamed her for the prestige ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... eye, upon the face of the letter, would condemn the writer of it, as I did, and acquit my cousin. But yet, such is the spirit by which the rest of my relations are governed, that they run away with the belief of the worst it insinuates, and the dear creature has had shocking letters upon it; the pedant's hints are taken; and a voyage to one of the colonies has been proposed to her, as the only way to avoid Mr. Belford and you. I have not seen these ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... of a feeble, superannuated old man, by means of a certain prayer, became on a sudden youthful and strong for battle; but the Stoics wise man was yesterday most detestable and the worst of villains, but today is changed on a sudden into a state of virtue, and is become of a wrinkled, pale fellow, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... upon the walls she had every reason to believe that Miss Pride was lending the detective a willing hand. If so, it was well in character; nothing could be more consistent with the spinster's disposition than this eagerness to believe the worst of the woman she chose to consider her rival in the affections of Mrs. Gosnold. A pitiful, impotent, jealousy-bitten creature: Sally was almost sorry for her, picturing the abashment of the woman when her hopes proved fruitless, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Nor was this the worst, for hardly had we begun to draw breath again in the stifling vapour-bath-like atmosphere surrounding us, ere we could utter a cry, indeed, or exchange a word of speech with reference to what had just occurred, there arose a sudden and violent oscillation of the vessel, which pitched and rolled, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... of a prosecuting attorney. He regulated the trial.... He directed coarse jokes at the unhappy Pepin; but reckless as he was, he dared not meddle with Morey. He had no hesitation in accusing himself. He owned himself the worst of criminals, and declared that he esteemed himself happy to be able to pay with his own blood for the blood of the unhappy victims of his crime. But the more he talked about his coming fate, the plainer it was that he expected ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... slumber by the sound of that bell which bore the name of cloche d'argent. Massacre was on foot, seeking with keen eye for its victim—man was busy in slaying man. That slaughter was called forth by mingled passions of the worst description. Hatred of all kinds was there urging on the slayer—hatred of a religious, a political, a personal character. And yet on the anniversary of that same day of horror, and in that very city whose blood was ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... had she imagined that so many different sorts of noises could exist in the same place at one and the same time. There were the cries and sobs of little children, the moans of sickness, the thuds of falling furniture and the crashes of breaking crockery. There were yells of rage, and—worst of all—bursts of appalling profanity. Rose-Marie, standing there in the darkness of the fourth flight, heard words that she had never expected to hear—phrases of which she had never dreamed. She shuddered as she started up the fifth flight, and when, at last, she stood in front of ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster |
