"Wretched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she said; "she always felt it, that she was destined to be the most miserable of mothers. Here she was, with her wretched health, and her only darling child going down to the grave before her eyes;"—and Marie routed up Mammy nights, and rumpussed and scolded, with more energy than ever, all day, on the strength of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sought for words of comfort, but they would not come. To have uttered one cheering sentence I must have contradicted every impression of my own mind. I felt too much awed to attempt it. Shortly afterwards, M'Donough arrived. No wretched patient ever underwent a more thrilling revulsion at the first sight of the case of surgical instruments under which he had to suffer, than did I upon beholding a certain oblong flat mahogany box, bound with brass, and of about two feet in length, laid ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... They were discreditable to the Council and disgraceful to DeWitt Clinton; yet sentiment of the time seems to have approved them, regarding Clinton's conduct merely as a stroke of good politics. In the midst of this wretched business it is pleasant to note that Jenkins' transfer from comptroller to secretary of state opened a way for the appointment of Archibald McIntyre, whose safe custody of the purse in days when economies and husbandries ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... while five minutes' walk from almost any point will bring one to a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one unending slum. The streets were filled with a new and different race of people, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden appearance. We rolled along through miles of bricks and squalor, and from each cross street and alley flashed long vistas of bricks and misery. Here and there lurched a drunken man ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... thought, have been made when the invention was in its infancy, and its pictured slides seemed the remnants of various outworn series. Those of the Rake's Progress were something too hideous and lamentable to be dwelt upon. And the ruinous, wretched old man did not merely seem to have taken to this as a last effort, but to have in his dotage turned back upon his life course, and resumed a half-forgotten trade—or perhaps only an accomplishment of which he had made use for the benefit of his people when he was a ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... struggle. Margate packets were sailing every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note, on their way to Brussels and Ghent. People were going not so much to a war as to a fashionable tour. The newspapers laughed the wretched upstart and swindler to scorn. Such a Corsican wretch as that withstand the armies of Europe and the genius of the immortal Wellington! Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it needs not to be said that this soft and gentle creature took her opinions from those people who surrounded ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by a new and wretched stockade, the outskirts being fenced or pangaed; the people are on the qui vive, and the whole village seems to be in a constant state of alarm. All the jungle immediately adjoining the town is cut down; many of the houses are unroofed, and all the gates are guarded. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... junction with the troops of Brandenburg; but they dared attempt nothing further, and left the Palatinate in the quiet possession of Turenne. Under his eye, and, as it appears from his own letters, at his express recommendation, as a matter of policy, that wretched country was laid waste to a deplorable extent. This transaction went far beyond the ordinary license of war, and excited general indignation even in that unscrupulous age. It will ever be remembered as a foul stain upon the character of the general who executed, and of the king ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... my earnings will click into your great brass collection plate, mon reverend! Ah no!—I have been a foolish woman indeed, to trust so long in a God who for all my tears and prayers never gives me a sign or a hope of an answer,—and though I suppose this wretched world of ours was made by somebody, whoever it is that has done it is a cruel creature at best, so I say,—without as much good feeling as there is in the heart of an ordinary man, and without the sense ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... comfort. There are no subtle harmonies in the papers and chintzes; there are no hidden suggestions of form and tone in the cornices and bell handles; all is barren of proportion, concord, and meaning. Still, this poor woman, with her inartistic eye and foolish heart, loves this wretched shelter, and would pour out her idiotic tears if she were leaving it ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Mrs. Stein. "So he is certainly not with Rikli." And as the little girl's shrieks grew louder she began to think something serious was the matter, and the two ladies started away in the direction of the sound. Poor Rikli was indeed in a wretched plight. She was standing in a ditch, covered quite to her neck in the muddy water, and holding up her arms above her head, in an effort to protect it from the many little green frogs that were sporting about ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... to England as a royal captive, there to be held in honorable custody until death should close his career. But this purpose was not to be achieved. A death of violence awaited the old Indian chieftain. A wretched fellow of the neighborhood, one of the kind who would not have dared to face an Indian in arms, slipped secretly behind the famous veteran and shot him with his musket through the back, inflicting ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... which they sold all articles of food. Their extortions became scandalous impositions, and more than one foreigner making an excursion to Fontainebleau thought himself held for ransom by a troop of Bedouins. During the stay of the court; a wretched sacking-bed in a miserable inn cost twelve francs for a single night; the smallest meal cost an incredible price, and was, notwithstanding, detestable; in fact, it amounted to a genuine pillage of travelers. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... mountains, and many canals radiating and glistening in the sun-light. Of the fort I have but little to say. From below, its position renders it imposing, but a nearer inspection dispels the illusion. Inside it there is a Hindoo temple, two or three tanks filled with green, slimy water, and some wretched hovels for the occupation of the garrison. The ramparts though high are weak and a few shells dropped within them would blow the whole place to pieces. The ordnance consists of four ancient brass guns; two of them about 9-pounders ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Dickens' new tale, "Davy Copperfield." It purports to be his life, and begins with his birth and childhood; it seems a poor plot, but some of the characters and scenes are good. One of the persons that amused me was a Mrs. Gummidge, a wretched melancholy person, who is always crying, happen what will, and whenever the fire smokes, or other trifling accident occurs, makes the remark with great bitterness, and many tears, that she is a "lone lorn creetur, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... them. When they lay down in the trenches at brief intervals for rest, they kept their arms from the wet as they could. Cooking was out of the question, and the men were compelled to take up with the unaccustomed fare of hard biscuits and raw pork. Their wretched plight is referred to in more than one of the letters of the day. Writes General Scott: "You may judge of our situation, subject to almost incessant rains, without baggage or tents, and almost without victuals or drink, and in some part of the lines the men were standing up to their ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... tumbrils contained royal ladies and gentlemen, ci-devant dukes and princesses, aristocrats from every county in France, but now this stock was becoming exhausted. The wretched Queen Marie Antoinette still lingered in the Temple with her son and daughter. Madame Elisabeth was still allowed to say her prayers in peace, but ci-devant dukes and counts were getting scarce: those who had not perished at the hand of Citizen Samson were plying ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... exercise of pride—the basis, beyond doubt, of many great things. His vanity had triumphed in the previous encounter; he had shown himself as a rich man, happy and scornful, to two persons who had scorned him when he was poor and wretched. But how could a poet, like an old diplomate, run the gauntlet with two self-styled friends, who had welcomed him in misery, under whose roof he had slept in the worst of his troubles? Finot, Blondet, and he had ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... faithful—you reproach me! It is because you cannot feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life. And you reward me after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage, forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!" Sick and sorry felt poor William; more than ever wretched and lonely. He would like to have done with life and its vanity altogether—so bootless and unsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect seemed to him. He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to go home. Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him. No fidelity, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... money."—Appendix to The Congressional Globe, Thirty-seventh Congress, Third Session, 1862-63. Part ii: 136. Fuller details are given in subsequent chapters. ] They supplied shoddy uniforms and blankets and wretched shoes; food of so deleterious a quality that it was a fertile cause of epidemics of fevers and of numberless deaths; they impressed, by force of corruption, worn-out, disintegrating hulks into service as army and naval transports. Not a ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... want; misery comes from any kind of suffering or anguish." "The poor are in poverty; the sick are in misery." "Poverty is the condition of being very poor financially; misery is a feeling which any class of people can have." "One who is poor is in poverty; one who is wretched or doesn't enjoy life is in misery." "Poverty comes from lack of money; misery, from lack of happiness or comfort." "Misery means distress. It can come from ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... as quickly as they could be framed. Artists then built their mansions, drank champagne, and played on their grand pianos. When I, still in my teens, first met these good fellows, I might have been tempted, seeing what wretched work satisfied the picture-dealer, to abandon black and white for colour; but already the boom was over. Artists, like their patrons, had found out their mistake. They had either to let or sell their costly houses, and have, with few exceptions, little to show now for ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... enmeshed and clothed. The Methodist Church positively forbids Billy to play poker or drink, but it just as positively forbids him to see Pavlowa dance or Beerbohm Tree play Falstaff or Forbes Robertson incarnate Hamlet. And look at its wretched machinery—they allow a young man to give his life and expect inspiration from him at six hundred dollars a year with a wife and two dozen children, which he has been encouraged to bring down upon himself, dependent on that ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... top, the yawning mouth of the crater. The doctor then hoped that the wretched man, having attained his object, would perhaps return and have only ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... courage; but what is the use of fighting when there is nothing to win. Let that wretched newspaper alone. It is ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... to the open window, he heard a father lamenting the wretched fate to which his three lovely young daughters were doomed by poverty. St. Nicholas' gentle heart was touched. He returned at night and threw in at the window three bags of gold sufficient for the dowry of the girls. His kindness to them, and to many others equally wretched, made ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... dead; and every person who possesses a gun is glad to help in their massacre. For the bird is a pest and he who shoots it is doing something for England; furthermore, shooting it is first-rate sport, not like slaughtering wretched little sparrows or innocent young rooks just out of their windy cradles. And when shot it is a good table-bird, with as much tasty flesh on it as a woodcock ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... would shoot from the beady eyes of Running Deer. Running Deer's peltries would be spread out, and after a half hour of silent consideration on his part and trader's talk on mine, furs to the value of so many beaver skins would be passed across for the coveted gun. I remember it was a wretched old squaw with a toothless, leathery, much-bewrinkled face and a reputation for knowledge of Indian medicines, who first opened my eyes to the sort of trade the Indians had been driving with Hamilton. The old creature was bent almost double over her stout oak staff and came hobbling in ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... everlasting remorse I am the man," said Anstice rather bitterly. "But since you know the facts of the case, and yet are good enough to welcome me to your house, I gather this wretched letter carried no weight with you, Sir Richard. And if that is so, why not tear it up, and make an end ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... indispensable prop? It is not incompetent from want of ability, but of unity.... He is considered by them to have wedded himself to them for better for worse more closely than ever by the withdrawal of Reform.... The wretched fears and delays and doubts which have, I firmly believe, first produced this war, and then made its beginning of so little promise, have had no effect as warnings for the future.... There will probably soon be great pressure put upon him to take office.... Nothing but the fact of his ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... us better and stronger. He has given us His Spirit as we knelt before the bishop. We must go forth in that strength. We must use it, live on it, and it will be ours. Kata ten pistin humon genetheto humin. When we feel most hopeless, most wretched, most distant from God, remember 'feelings don't matter.' Remember that God's Son felt the same temptation, remember that He too was forsaken by His God. And when all seems lost, Satan seems master, we are misunderstood; ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... wounded and the refugees were still more miserable than those we had passed on the way. Loaded carts blocked the streets. Every house was occupied, and the narrow sidewalks were crowded with Russian soldiers, who looked wretched enough in their dripping overcoats, as they stamped their rag-swathed feet. At the corner, in front of the great Khan, motley groups of Greeks, Bulgarians, and Russians were gathered, listlessly watching the line of hobbling wounded as they turned the corner ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... hope for,—or you? Surely you would not want to marry a girl who loved another man. But is it much better to marry one who feels that she does not love you? Think of it, Steven: I am very lonely, very far from happy, very wretched over Kate's evident trouble and all the sorrow I am bringing you and yours; but have I misled or deceived you in any one thing? Once only has a word been spoken or a scene occurred that you could perhaps have objected to. I told you the whole thing in my letter ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... with your bread and apples," responded Mrs. Evringham flippantly. "I have a real worry now that that wretched little cousin of yours ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... so unhappy here—so wretched, this is but a gleaning white stone prison, Justine! I stifle in this wretched land! Why did my father bring me here to die by inches?" There was no pretense in her ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... sorely disappointed. She had gone over in her own imagination this very scene a thousand times, of the supreme moment he would clasp his arms around her, telling her in glowing, passionate words how dearly he loved her and how wretched his life would be without her. He ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... are not dreaming of going on the river in that!" he says, indicating the wretched punt by a contemptuous wave ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... that wretched crowd, And Francis of Accorso; and thou hadst seen there If thou hadst had a hankering ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Wigtown, the wretched man went about, wildly seeking to move the feelings of men whose hearts were ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... of: the guitar is my limit, the fandango my repertoire. As for alert intelligence, artistic comprehension, ability to appreciate, I can not make the running with you; I am outclassed—hopelessly. Now, if this is all true—and I have spoken the wretched truth—what can a man like me have to say ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... to call me plump!" returned Camilla reproachfully. "Anyway, anybody would yawn with the Captain keeping the entire household awake all night. I vow, I haven't slept one wink since that wretched news from Charleston. He thinks he's a battery of horse artillery now; that's the very latest development; and I shed tears and the chandeliers shed prisms every ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... children, and because of the mere suspicion that she was attempting to poison him, he cut off her nose and mutilated her ears. He sent her back to her father in Gaul thus despoiled of her natural charms. So the wretched girl presented a pitiable aspect ever after, and the cruelty which would stir even strangers still more surely incited her father to vengeance. Attila, therefore, in his efforts to bring about the wars 185 long ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... hand to his side, and rolled his eyes agonizingly towards his mother, but she took no notice. She got some paper out of the cupboard, and Ephraim sat down and began quirling it into long spirals with a wretched sulky air. ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to sit down to their dinner of dried meat, Frank, Archie, and Johnny suddenly appeared in sight, accompanied by the two trappers. Archie had repeatedly declared that he owed the traitor a debt, which he intended to settle the very first time he met him; but when he saw what a wretched condition Arthur was in, he relented, and pitied him from ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... signs of having become ruinous while they were yet new. The wailing of children, the scolding of their mothers, the miserable exhibition of ragged linens hung from the windows to dry, spoke the wants and distresses of the wretched inhabitants; while the sounds of complaint were mocked and overwhelmed in the riotous shouts, oaths, profane songs, and boisterous laughter, that issued from the alehouses and taverns, which, as the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... looking at her, "I traveled and hunted with him one whole season, two years ago. I sometimes exchange letters with him, and have his address now. He seemed to me a restless, wretched man, trying to drown some mental suffering in physical activity. He gave no title with his name, and, like the rest of us, lived in the most absolute simplicity, but I noticed the crest on his linen, and in some books. I knew him ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... confession, on the part of the employers, involved in this protest against the ten-hour day, a confession of the wretched state of women's wages in the State of Illinois. If women of mature years—one of the petitioners had been an expert box maker for over thirty years—are unable, in a day of ten hours, to earn enough to keep body and soul together, ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... leave the capital, and pass six months with me in the deserts, as he called them, of Le Morvan, loved this species of sport intensely, though he never shot anything. His bag, however, was always better filled than that of any of his comrades, for though a wretched shot, he had the wit to stand near a good one, and as he was wonderfully quick with his legs, eyes, and fingers, he was constantly picking up his neighbour's birds, vowing all the time they were ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness from the peculiar state of his disposition; and so frivolous is he, that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... house. His little Wife, however, told him he must go and tidy his Hair, which he was preparing to obey. Oh! these are the People who somehow interest me; and if I were not now too far advanced on the Road to Forgetfulness, I should be sad that my own Life had been such a wretched Concern in comparison. But it is too late, even to ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... Everybody is watched. No man knows who are the secret spies around him, even though he may be and is acquainted with those that are official. The emperors themselves are not exempt; governors, grand councillors, vassal princes, all are under the eye of an everlasting unknown police. This wretched system is even extended to the humblest of the citizens. Every town is divided into collections of five families, and every member of such a division is personally responsible for the conduct of the others; everything which occurs, therefore, out of the ordinary ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... that the Tuskegee Institute is determined to become more and more a distinctive influence among the regenerative agencies that are gradually bringing order out of chaos, and justice, peace, and happiness out of the wretched disorders of a painful past. It is easy to trace the influence of such well-established institutions as Harvard and Yale in the progressive life of the American people. The sons of Harvard and Yale almost dominate civilization ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... apologize, my dear M. Gaston," said the Greek; and, although unable to see him, for there was little light in the car, M. Max seemed to FEEL him smiling—"but this little device has proved so useful hitherto. In the event of any of those troubles—wretched police interferences—arising, and of officious people obtaining possession of a patron's name, he is spared the necessity of perjuring himself ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... ridge, where he again killed and buried the faithful girl, who was again restored by the owl. When he was on his way back, as before, she sang a song, describing the perils and difficulties of the way traversed by them, and ended by pleading for pardon for the unknown fault. The wretched man, on hearing her voice again, was very angry; and his repeated acts of cruelty and the suffering endured by the girl, far from softening his heart, only served to render him more brutal, and to extinguish what little spark ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... cowardly depositions of the Duc d'Orleans, at Villefranche, in Beaujolais, and then at Vivey,—[House which belonged to an Abbe d'Esnay, brother of M. de Villeroy, called Montresor.] two miles from Lyons, where this wretched prince had received orders to go, begging forgiveness, and trembling, although surrounded by his followers, whom from very pity he had been allowed to retain, carefully watched, however, by the French and Swiss guards. The Cardinal had ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... that he speculated in horses—bought wretched crocks cheap and sold them to the army for the cavalry, with the connivance of the vets he's ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... you wretched old miser," exclaimed Philip, seizing hold of the little man by the collar, and pulling him out ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. My memory of past errors and perplexities, makes me diffident for the future. The wretched condition, weakness, and disorder of the faculties, I must employ in my enquiries, encrease my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending or correcting these faculties, reduces me almost to despair, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... into the drawing room of the establishment—which was a very wretched drawing-room indeed. There was a leather lounge wheeled up before a large fire, and thereon the ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... has read the report itself and put himself into any imaginative understanding of conditions can escape seeing that prostitution to-day is organic to our industrial life, our marriage sanctions, and our social customs? Low wages, fatigue, and the wretched monotony of the factory—these must go before prostitution can go. And behind these stand the facts of woman's entrance into industry—facts that have one source at least in the general poverty of the family. And that poverty is deeply bound up with the economic system under ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the woman, stepping into the room, her gaunt face looking more wretched under the flickering light of the candle than it had done in the morning. "I'm the new-comer in the tenements. Ye were in to see my girl th'other night. We're ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... found, on inquiry, the direction which the prisoners had taken. With a single servant and two Burman children, she started, with her babe, three months old, in her arms, to find her companions in suffering. She overtook them at Oung-pen-la, and found their condition to be wretched beyond description. Their journey was over a rough, burning road, and, chained two by two, they were whipped along like cattle bound to the place of slaughter. Their backs were blistered by the sun, and their feet scorched by the ground, until ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... felt wretched in body and mind, and began to think himself neglected and was consequently aggrieved. He hesitated a few minutes before he opened the door leading to The Man's part of the house, took a few steps into the square hall, and called "Mr. Blake" in a quavering voice; but no answer came, as the ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... common, smug-faced Clergyman, capable, no doubt, if he were left alone, of guiding his flock quietly into the strait paths of goodness and humility. You turn him into a loud-voiced Clerical quack, vending his wretched patent medicines of salvation in a style of offensive denunciation that would have ruined a host of Dulcamaras, trained in the insinuating methods of the ordinary trade. But on this the Clergyman thrives, and weak women fall prostrate before his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... throbbed, and her pale face grew whiter still with the passionate thrill that stirred her. The old blood was in her veins yet, and, though modified, and in some sense transformed, she was still Pepita's daughter and the child of Andalusia. And here was truth; not like that poor wretched madame's talk, which even she had found out to be false and only making believe to know what she did not know. Spain was the name of power with Learn, as it had been with her mother, and she lifted her face, white with its passionate desires, listening as if entranced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... to the disappointment and wrath of all the crew, who had expected to extort a bountiful ransom, in money and liquor, from their victims. There was an incessant chafing between the two commanders; and when at length, after a long and wretched voyage, they reached St. Domingo, Beaujeu showed clearly that he was, to say the least, utterly indifferent to the interests of the expedition. La Salle wished to stop at Port de Paix, where he was to meet ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... their fate. They outnumbered the Boers by twenty-five to one, taking their numbers at a million and those of the Boers at forty thousand, a fair estimate, I believe.... As the lash and the bullet have been the lot of the wretched Transvaal Kaffir in the past, so they will be his lot in the future.... After leading those hundreds of thousands of men and women to believe that they were once and for ever the subjects of her Majesty, safe from all violence, cruelty, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... not to die, or even to die of hunger that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die. But it is to live miserable, we know not why: to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heartworn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... particular as to size," Alice hastily replied, "only one doesn't like changing so often, you know. I should like to be a little larger, sir, if you wouldn't mind," said Alice. "Three inches is such a wretched height to be." ...
— Alice in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... and his stout heart was torn with pity. It is easy to be patient in social economy when that vague jumble of impossible ideas is calmly discussed across the dinner-table. But the result seems hopelessly distant when the mass of the poor and wretched stand before one in ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Retire to your sylvan groves and academic shades, gentlemen, as Mrs. Stanton suggests, and let the Deborahs, the Huldahs, and the Vashtis come to the front, and let us see what we can do toward the remedy of your wretched legislation. But suffrage for women in Utah has accomplished great good. I spent one week there in close observation. Outside of their religious convictions, the women are emphatic in condemnation of wrong. Their votes banished the liquor saloon. I saw no drunkenness anywhere; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... was conducted in this way. The wretched women who had sold their souls to the Devil, left a stick in bed which by evil means was made to have their likeness, and, anointed with the fat of murdered babies flew off up the chimney on a broomstick with cats attendant. ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... careless and reassuring. The fight, or whatever it was that made the noise, was still some distance ahead in the shadow of the pine-tree, and as he walked towards it he was thinking casually of other matters—of the wretched condition of the road after the winter rains, of the need of greater thrift among the farmers, both white and black, of the touch of indigestion which still troubled him. There was nothing to warn him that he was approaching the supreme event in his life, nothing ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... more ability than character, but possessed little of either. His 'Memoirs' (1815) describe his literary undertakings, one at least of which was of a blackmailing kind, and are interspersed with protestations of his desire for independence, and of regrets for the wretched stuff that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... what I do know, and you may not,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'I shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage, into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the sole and most ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... but one whose Person and Humour did by no means hit with my Inclinations: And this gave Fondlove the unhappy Advantage over me. For, finding me one Day all alone in my Chamber, and lying on my Bed, in as mournful and wretched a Condition to my then foolish Apprehension, as now I am, he urged his Passion with such Violence, and accursed Success for me, with reiterated Promises of Marriage, whensoever I pleas'd to challenge 'em, which he bound with the most sacred Oaths, and most dreadful Execrations: ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... cries out, "I demand that my enemy submit his slaves to torture." Theoretically the challenged party might refuse, practically a refusal is highly dangerous. "If his slaves didn't know something bad, why were they kept silent?" the jury will ask. So the rack is brought forth. The wretched menials are stretched upon it. One must hope that often the whole process involves more show of cruelty than actual brutality. What now the slaves gasp out between their twists and howls is duly taken down as "important evidence," ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... shop, and he was quite unhappy about it. He was afraid she would 'overdo' herself, and rather than that should happen he desired her to let the business go to the—ahem! He made her write every day to say how she was, and was wretched till he returned to relieve her of her arduous duties. She made friends with me during the scarlet fever epidemic. Number eight was a baby then, and she was afraid he might catch the disease and be taken to the hospital and die for want of her; and I sympathised strongly ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... I did first. I was very excited—elated one minute, deeply wretched and very frightened the next. I must have sat down; for I was shaking very much, and felt a little sick. The sight of that key had brought up pictures of the club-house; and I thought and thought how quiet it was, and how ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... feelings,' said his grave friend. 'From my very childhood these tunes have made me wretched, and have often well-nigh driven me out of my senses. They are to me the ghosts and spectres and furies in the world of sound, and come thus and buzz round my head, and grin at me with ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... any in the world except his mother and his sister, yet he had been happy in his hopes,—happy in his hopes, even though he had never taught himself really to believe that they would be realised. But now there was nothing in his hopes or thoughts to make him happy. Everything was black, and wretched, and ruinous. What would it matter, after all, even if he should marry Amelia Roper, seeing that Lily was to be given to another? But then the idea of Amelia as he had seen her that night through the chink in the door came upon his memory, and he confessed ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... say, "the poor, the failures, the wretched—what of them?" And I answer: "Ah! that is one of the weak points of your religion, not of mine." Consider these unhappy ones, what do you offer them? You offer them an everlasting bliss, not because they were starved or outraged here—not at all. For your religion admits the probability ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... is the blessedness that you expect?—to have the joys of earth with the addition of the element of eternity? Men think that heaven is to be a compensation for earthly loss: the saints are earthly-wretched here, the children of this world are earthly-happy; but that, they think, shall be all reversed—Lazarus, beyond the grave, shall have the purple and the fine linen, and the splendour, and the houses, and the lands which Dives had on earth: ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... mists arise To Juniper's Magpie or Town Hall[4] repairs. Meanwhile he smokes and laughs at merry tale, Or pun ambiguous or conumdrum quaint; But I, whom griping penury surrounds, And hunger sure attendant upon want, With scanty offals, and small acid tiff (Wretched repast!) my meagre corps sustain: Then solitary walk or doze at home In garret vile, and with a warming puff. Regale chilled fingers, or from tube as black As winter chimney, or well polished jet Exhale ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... pelted upon retiring to the castle by the inhabitants, treatment which they seem to have deserved in setting fire to the town, bombarding St. Leonard's, burning the adjoining buildings and driving the wretched population in search of such shelter as ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... evening; and, to serve a man whom he had known in Mr. Thrale's household for many years, the place was fixed at his house, in Essex street, near the Temple. To answer the malignant remarks of sir John Hawkins, on this subject, were a wretched waste of time. Professing to be Johnson's friend, that biographer has raised more objections to his character, than all the enemies to that excellent man. Sir John had a root of bitterness that "put rancours in the vessel of his peace." Fielding, he says, was the inventor of a cant phrase, "Goodness ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... It was old and rickety and wretched, in keeping with the slum of which it formed a part. The whitewash was peeling from the walls, the stairs were patched, and the door-step long since worn entirely away. It was hard to be decent in such ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... to have concealed herself with her baby in a sort of cave on Star Island in order to escape from the Indians who had made a raid on the place while her husband was fishing out at sea. Unhappily the child screamed, and the wretched mother is said to have murdered it to prevent discovery. How the other wives and mothers on the island saved themselves at this juncture is not reported; and the myth no doubt originated from a dark red lichen growing on the rocks there which resembles ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... over, kissing and coaxing me. "No, it was not." "I believe it was, you once said she was young, and had dark brown hair—it was she." In vain I denied it. "I felt sure it was, and with a youth like you! Is it possible you can have harmed that nice girl! What a wretched, wicked lot you all are, you will be as bad as the others." Then she suddenly said, "Mind, you have sworn solemnly never to mention to any living soul about me; oh! once forget yourself, and it's all up with a woman." Then she laid down, again her manner became quiet and voluptuous—another fuck ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... stain'd, Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies. I then, with error yet encompass'd, cried, 'O master! What is this I hear? What race Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?' He then to me: 'This miserable fate Suffer the wretched souls of those who lived Without or praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved, Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves Were only. Mercy and Justice scorn them both. Speak not of them, but look and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... sicken at the recital. The summer passed away in marches and counter-marches, in assassinations, and skirmishes, and battles. The fields of the husbandmen were trampled under the hoofs of horses. Villages were burned to the ground, and their wretched inhabitants driven out in nakedness and starvation to meet the storms of merciless winter. Noble ladies and refined and beautiful maidens fled shrieking from the pursuit of brutal and licentious soldiers. Still neither party gained any decisive victory. The storms ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... told. Our fathers have met at that wretched pit, and the foreman has told me what passed between them. My father complained that mining for coal was not husbandry, and it was very unfair to do it, and to smoke him out of house and home. (Unfortunately the wind was west, and blew the smoke of the steam-engine over his ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... wretched hare! He's got away this time anyway. And I'm not at all sure you didn't have the worst ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... officers) who were both married. But what most of all distressed me, was the condition of their windows; they had not double sashes, which, in a cold climate, are as necessary to health as to comfort; but such even as they had, were in a very wretched condition. The panes were of glass, but notwithstanding their extreme smallness, they were all of them broken, and made of pieces fitted together. They afforded no protection against the snow and frost; and I could not, without feelings ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the time of Tiberius. He wrote a book on the ways of provoking an appetite. Having spent L800,000 in supplying the delicacies of the table, and having only L80,000 left, he hanged himself, not thinking it possible to exist on such a wretched pittance. Apicia, however, became a stock name for certain cakes and sauces, and his name is still proverbial ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... want you to go with me far, far away, where we've never been before, to make a new life, and belong only to each other. But before we go, so that we can be happy and not wretched, miserable beggars, we—not you alone—but we two together must do what will give us money to start all over again. And listen to this, dearest: it will be a thing which will draw us so closely together that we'll be one ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a pencil. Any fool can see that, and this particular fool can't see any more. It's a wretched stump of a pencil, villainously cut to an abominably bad point. It is coloured dark red on the outside and was stamped with some name that began ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Bourges, the whole of central France, as far as to the gates of Orleans, yielded to the arms of Guise. Everywhere the wretched inhabitants of the reformed faith were compelled to submit to gross indignities, or seek safety in flight. To many of these homeless fugitives the friendly castle of Montargis, belonging to the Duchess of Ferrara, to which reference will shortly be ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... of a fool. No one understands me. They do not understand me, the imbeciles!—Coglioni!" cried he fiercely, grinding the Corsican cry in his teeth and rising to walk about. "As Napoleon the Great despised them so do I, Quinet. They never but made one wretched who had genius in him. And I have it, and dare to say that in their faces. The weapon for neglect is contempt! If the wretched shallow world can make me miserable, they can never at least take away the delight of my superiority. I, who would have sympathized ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... miles. The patients improving, Kirby remains very weak and spiritless. This morning wind cool from southward; during the day changed round to east-south-east and in the evening to west-south-west and rather cloudy. This is a wretched little creek, for some miles sandy, now in its bed are layers of stone and clay; it frequently loses itself on the flat land. The timber in the forest consists of two kinds of papery-leafed bark trees, box, gum, and a very handsome tree, leafless but bears ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... Jane. "I mean to send them back and have new leaves put in. These are so wretched, there is not a teakettle in the land so insignificant that it would boil over them. Don't let us talk any more about it. Have Philip and Hope ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... naughty child she now seemed even to herself; and presently, in the library, beside those wretched books of hers, her old law-books and her Peerages, reluctantly, stumblingly, sullenly, still like the naughty child who would revolt but dare not, she spoke. And when at last he let her go with her secret told, she ran up to her own room and threw herself on the bed, sobbing. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... in her last work, says: "One dark night, I remember, as the sleet and rain were falling fast, and our Extra was slowly dragged by wretched brutes of horses through what seemed to me 'Sloughs of Despond,' some package ill stowed on the roof, which in the American stages presents no resting-place for man or box, fell off. The driver alighted to fish it out of the mud. As there ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... you, and you sink in wretched tears to the floor,—tears that bring no drop of comfort. To be shut up alone with a soul like yours, at the moment when the sin so long tampered with has escaped your control, and is pitilessly doing its devilish work on the other side your prison-walls, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the Capital of the United States? who adopted Slavery and volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and repeated the act in 1850,—in defiance of all law, all precedent, all right? Why, it was the North. 'Spain armed herself with bloodhounds,' said Mr. Pitt, 'to extirpate the wretched natives of America.' In 1850, the Christian Democracy set worse bloodhounds afoot to pursue Ellen Craft; offered them five dollars for the run, if they did not take her; ten if they did! The price ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker |
